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These are the releases that were overlooked, until now.

Much like life, pop music isn't always fair. For every talented artist that makes it big in music, there's another that's unfairly ignored. It's easy, and often even necessary, to overlook artists and albums in an industry so crowded with aspiring newcomers, but it's still a shame to see a deserving record, full of ambition and ideas and creativity, go unrecognized. So with 2016 drawing to a close, we're recognizing the releases from this past year that didn't generate the critical or commercial buzz they rightly deserved. 

 

Ryley Walker — 'Golden Sings That Have Been Sung'

Ryley Walker draws upon a few relatively straightforward genres — folk and blues chief among them — but then infuses his influences with a psychedelic ingenuity that makes his music particularly hard to describe. His fourth album in three years, Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, is a tapestry of warmly produced cosmic folk rock, rich with complex interplay and perfectly integrated flourishes of swelling orchestras, tribal drums and electronic keyboards. The songs are exploratory and often defy expectation without becoming indulgent, always anchored by Walker's melodic singing and skillful acoustic fingerpicking — at least until the 40-minute live jam included with the digital release, which rivals the instrumental tracks of pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd at their most far out. 

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