DECEMBER 17 — This has been a surprisingly exciting year for the independent music scene in Malaysia. We had (or will have) festivals galore like Good Vibes, Rockaway, Northern Music Festival, Rock The World and Tapau Fest, to name some of the rock-oriented ones.

Local indie heavyweights like Hujan and Bittersweet released new albums, and let’s not even mention the sheer number of new albums released worldwide.

So it’s been a pretty decent year of musical enjoyment for me this, and even though I haven’t, of course, listened to everything new under the sun this year, it’d still be fun sharing with you the albums I do love this year.

So here we go!

Joyce Manor — Cody

By now Joyce Manor can simply do no wrong in my eyes. Taking that 90s emo pop template laid down by the likes of The Get Up Kids, The Promise Ring and Jimmy Eat World further and further into poppier territory, it’s their melancholic and yearning sense of melody that has kept on elevating their new albums and new songs into such memorable, re-playable heights.

I can put this album on repeat for a whole day (just like I did with their previous albums) and not get bored for one second. Just check out what they can do with just about three chords and no chorus whatsoever on Last You Heard Of Me to realise what a special band, and what a special album this one is.

Khemmis — Hunted

With two albums in two years, American band Khemmis came out of nowhere to wow lovers of doom metal and stoner rock who were lucky enough to discover them.

While their debut album Absolution from last year was good enough, drawing comparisons to Pallbearer, it’s their second album Hunted that really sealed the deal for me as they add in Iron Maiden-esque melodic guitar interplay and confidently explore the kind of clean, melodic and poppy vocals that only Ghost seemed to excel at (or are brave enough to do) in the last couple of years.

This is a doom/stoner album so catchy that even your non-metal friend might fall in love with it, if he or she gives it a chance.

Virtually unknown outside of their hometown Denver before their debut album dropped, Hunted will surely confirm their place as rising stars in the metal scene.

Muck — Local Trash Heroes

The road to my Ipoh compatriots Muck’s debut full-length album is a long one. Twenty years, to be exact.

But how they’ve made up for lost time with an absolute peach of an album. If you’re a fan of 90s American indie rock as personified by the likes of Superchunk, Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement, then this is a world-class album that can proudly stand side-by-side with any of the classics of that era.

Every song is crammed with all sorts of melodic delight, from catchy choruses to impossible to forget guitar lines, if Joyce Manor didn’t release their new album this year, this surely would’ve been my favourite album of 2016.

The Rain — Jabat Erat

Sometimes it’s really funny how things work out. While Indonesian band The Rain has been around since the late 90s/early 00s Indonesian music explosion, I don’t think that many Malaysians would’ve heard of them, like all of us know Sheila On 7, Padi, Dewa and even Naif.

Being on a major label back then definitely didn’t help them much, did it? But now comes Jabat Erat, their sixth album, and the first one they’ve released independently, and what a difference a change of scene can make.

They practically sound like a fresh new band, gifting the world an album so full of optimism and jangly beauty that my heart felt like it was about to burst with joy the first time I put this CD for a spin.

Berkunjung Ke Kotamu, with its irresistible Beatlesque ending is still the year’s happiest song for me, and when a band can even put a positive spin on the topic of sometimes missing your ex in Gagal Bersembunyi or getting your heart broken in Terlatih Patah Hati, you know there’s some serious magic going on here.

Weezer — White Album

By now you either accept that Weezer will never make another Blue Album or Pinkerton, or you don’t. I think I’ve accepted that fact somewhere around the time when they released their album Make Believe, which did me a world of good as I can now enjoy every new Weezer album without any nostalgic expectations.

That said, their latest album might just be the third best album they’ve made so far. If anything, this sounds like a very, very successful synthesis of the emotional melodic interplay in Pinkerton with the simple pop pleasures of Green Album.

A consistently pleasing listen from start to finish, one must have no heart whatsoever to not want to pump your fist and sing along to the likes of Wind In Our Sails, (Girl We Got A) Good Thing and King Of The World.

Dish — Aku, Dia & Nirvana

If you’ve been observing the Malaysian independent music scene in the last few years, you may have noticed a sort of Nusantara music trend forming, with Monoloque initially leading the way and younger upstarts like Pitahati and Ramayan also carrying the torch with much skill and ambition.

What I can rarely find in this new Nusantara movement (maybe we can call it Nu-santara?) is a perfectly harmonious blend of the Malay and Nusantara elements and the more Western sounds of the bands’ background in rock music.

Things are either too Malay as to be not so indistinguishable from traditional music (or "Etnik Kreatif", as the show Muzik Muzik once put it) or too Western.

Alor Setar band Dish’s new album has changed all that. While very clearly a grunge band much indebted to the sonic blueprint laid down by local legends Butterfingers’ first album 1.2 Miligrams, Dish has carved out a Melayu Asli grunge album so seamless and so elegantly executed that I’m quite simply jealous.

Not only have they not forgotten their Malay roots, but they’ve also not forgotten their roots as a grunge band. Now that’s something!

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.