How do you sum up 2018 when it comes to music? You can't, so I'll give a list of just a few of the phases of music discourse from this year: Kanye West produced five albums in five weeks, Drake and Pusha T had a beef in which a secret child was revealed, Beyonce and Jay-Z released a surprise album that everyone forgot about three days later, Eminem had a psychotic break in a Youtube video, Travis Scott rapped "She thought it was the ocean, it's just a pool," critics tried to convince us that The 1975 are good.
So yeah...it was a wild year. Let's just get to the list.
The rules: Everything is the same as usual. The window of eligibility for this list is anything released between January 1, 2018 and now. This list can include albums, mixtapes, EPs, and anything in between. I'm praying that nothing substantial comes out in the twilight hours of the year. You never know with surprise releases these days...
Honorable Mentions (25-21)
The lounge lizard sound of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino takes a few listens to get used to, but once it settles in it's a fascinating and satisfying curveball from Arctic Monkeys. Despite their buzz in past years, Ought flew under the radar in 2018, which is a shame because their third album Room Inside the World is a dynamic collection of post-punk. Though they toned down their wild streak, Kero Kero Bonito retain their catchy charm on Time 'n' Place. Perennial cornball J. Cole finally did one thing right by signing J.I.D, whose DiCaprio 2 displays his insanely dexterous rapping and ability to conquer multiple sounds. Kanye West and Kid Cudi tamp down each other's worst impulses on the Kids See Ghosts self-titled LP, a short burst of electrifying psych-rap.
It was pretty worrisome when Danger Mouse was announced to be the producer of the latest album from Parquet Courts, one of the best and most prolific art-punk bands out there. He's done some great stuff in the past, but these days his production is all the same kind of dusty-yet-still-too-clean stiffness. But the places where you can hear his touches on Wide Awake! -- that western film guitar riff that holds up "Before the Water Gets Too High," the breakbeat in the middle of "Normalization" -- are actually welcome additions. Mostly though, he stays out of the way and lets the band do what they do best. They always come at their songs from a fascinating sideways angle. Who else could make a tune named after a classic soccer strategy ("Total Football") but have it serve as a metaphor for the working class coming together and rising up? Only Parquet Courts can, and it's what makes Wide Awake! such a compelling listen.
Highlight Songs
1. NYC Observation
2. Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience
3. Wide Awake
"You think you know me" is a sampled phrase that appears frequently on Veteran. The source? It's from the entrance music for former WWE wrestler Edge. Baltimore rapper JPEGMAFIA seems like a big wrestling fan, as it's a subject that comes up on many songs on the album. "I'll whip yo ass like Sasha Banks," "Black man, white fam, I feel like Jason Jordan," "Turn Stone Cold into Simple Steve" -- stuff like that. And it's fitting that wrestling is a recurring motif in his work, because JPEGMAFIA takes the larger-than-life showmanship of the sport and channels it into this caustic, abrasive, deeply hilarious album. He's something of a trickster heel figure, throwing out blink-and-you'll-miss-it cultural references like "AR built like Lena Dunham, when I shoot I don't miss" or a song title like "I Cannot Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies," in hopes of getting a large pop from the crowd. But like all great heels, he taps into some dark truths that make him easy to secretly root for ("Sock it to a nigga like Mankind / And motherfuck your flag, nigga, we dyin'"). All of this is done over rattling, alien beats -- each of them self-produced -- that only enhance the sinister funhouse ride of the record. Veteran is an album that feels like a middle finger to conventional rap music, all while embodying the transgressive, forward-thinking nature that makes the genre special.
Highlight Songs
1. Baby I'm Bleeding
2. Rock N Roll Is Dead
3. 1488
The hype cycle surrounding Lindsey Jordan and her project Snail Mail has been enormous over the last year. She got cosigns from the likes of Waxahatchee and Girlpool, her guitar teacher was Mary Timony of Helium, and she signed to Matador Records, all while still a teen. Nobody could possibly live up to all of that anticipation, so it's something of a minor miracle that Lush is as strong and confident as it is. By all accounts Jordan is a six-string savant, but you wouldn't be able to tell from the album. She's wise enough to know how to restrain herself, and thus her full-length debut is a work of beautiful simplicity. It has small details -- the line "God around your neck, though he never did too much for you" on "Golden Dream," the little guitar wiggle that appears in the middle of the second verse of "Stick" and never returns again -- that add up to a record greater than the sum of its parts. Lush is a collection that you constantly feel like you're peering deeper into, getting warmer as you become more familiar with it. At a time where most people would just be finishing high school, Lindsey Jordan has already graduated to the indie rock big leagues.
Highlight Songs
1. Heat Wave
2. Pristine
3. Full Control
2018 was a banner year for 23 year-old singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus. After showing great potential with her debut a couple of years ago, she took a giant leap on this year's Historian. The album puts her full, bluesy voice and wry, moving lyrics at the forefront on self-reflective tracks about death, aging, history, and the difficulty of the artistic process. Her songs build so calmly and assuredly, often resulting in an explosion of emotions. And yet somehow Historian is not the greatest accomplishment Dacus was involved in this year -- that title belongs to the boygenius record, a six-song EP she recorded with fellow young superstar singer-songwriters Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. Usually supergroups have balancing issues, where people who are used to taking lead have to share the spotlight and something gets lost in the process. But working together seems to only strengthen the trio. It's a warm and generous EP, the three women trading off verses and harmonies so seamlessly it feels like they've been doing it for a lifetime. Whether it be separate or apart, the boygenius EP shows that Dacus, Baker, Bridgers are major forces in music.
Highlight Songs:
1. Yours & Mine (Lucy Dacus)
2. Salt in the Wound (boygenius)
3. Ketchum, ID (boygenius)
The massive young rap collective -- err, I mean boy band -- Brockhampton had a barnburner of a 2017, releasing their highly acclaimed Saturation trilogy of mixtapes. But when member Ameer Vann was kicked out of the band after sexual assault allegations earlier this year, it looked like their momentum was going to stall out in a major way. Even that couldn't temper their prolific hunger, as they quickly regrouped and recorded Iridescence, an album that builds on all of the excitement and promise of their previous work. Part of what makes Brockhampton such a special group is their flexibility. In an age where listeners don't have any genre allegiances, their ability to cycle through so many sounds, voices, and perspectives feels just right. Hearing an abrasive posse cut ("NEW ORLEANS") bleed into a soulful song ("THUG LIFE"), or a Soca-sampling menace ("J'OUVERT") not far from a campfire sing-a-long ("SAN MARCOS") is just a part of the electrifying Brockhampton experience. Let's hope we never have it any other way.
Highlight Songs
1. DISTRICT
2. BERLIN
3. J'OUVERT
Frances Quinlan is an otherworldly force as a writer and singer. She has the ability to lock you in right away, setting the scene with an evocative and mysterious line like "The youngest -- but that does not matter now." Hop Along's fourth album is loaded with those kind of half-phrases that only hint at a larger story -- another example, "It's how you got your limp / All your strength came from her humiliation" -- but give so much imagery and emotion. And the words increase in power coming out of Quinlan's singular voice, raspy and piercing all the same. She can do a whole range of fascinating things, like finding pockets of melody in the most unlikely of places or repeating phrases until they lose all meaning and gain them back again. Bark Your Head Off, Dog relies more on those qualities, which doesn't make it an immediate listen. In fact, it didn't fully click for me until a few listens before finalizing this list, but when it did, it hit me like a ton of bricks. If it seems like this album isn't as explosive as Painted Shut, that's only because it's more of a delayed detonation.
Highlight Songs
1. One That Suits Me
2. The Fox in Motion
3. How Simple
Kacey Musgraves has always been a crossover artist, the country musician who gets the most love outside of the country music sphere. But Golden Hour, her fantastic third album, feels like a full-on leap over any genre lines that she may have been boxed within before. The claims that it's a radio pop album are a bit inaccurate though -- sure, it's got songs like the disco stomper "High Horse" and the vocoder-laden "Oh, What a World," but the real dominating vibe is its Laurel Canyon sound. Golden Hour is an impeccably produced record, full of so much space and clarity that its tracks are basically beckoning to soundtrack a long mid-afternoon drive. And Musgraves remains a skilled craftswoman, drizzling her wit and pathos over misty-eyed ballads ("Space Cowboy"), strummy breezers ("Lonely Weekend"), and mid-tempo Vegas kitsch ("Velvet Elvis"). Throughout the year, this has been an album that's proven itself to be sturdier than many would have imagined; the songs never lose their sheen and suit many different moods. This may only be the beginning for Kacey Musgraves, which is a scary thing to imagine.
Highlight Songs
1. Wonder Woman
2. Golden Hour
3. Velvet Elvis
Natalie Prass toyed around with a variety of styles on her 2015 debut album, but the most interesting flavor she showed was on R&B and soul influenced tracks like "Why Don't You Believe In Me?" After all, she was backed by Matthew E. White and the Spacebomb band, the leading purveyors of Stax-influenced sounds in the indie landscape. Thankfully, she seemed to agree about that being her strong suit, as her sophomore album The Future and the Past fully commits to the styles of R&B, soul, funk, and even a few drops of disco. There's just something so interesting about the contrast of Prass' songbird voice over soulful organs, rolling basslines, and jazzy guitar accents. And she allows the Spacebomb band ample room to stretch out on "Ship Go Down," and go absolutely nuts on album closer "Ain't Nobody." The Future and the Past ends up being an apt title -- it's an album indebted to sounds from a few decades ago, but hopefully it points toward a trend of more artists adopting them.
Highlight Songs
1. Ain't Nobody
2. Hot for the Mountain
3. Never Too Late
After Courtney Barnett released Lotta Sea Lice in collaboration with Kurt Vile last year, I was worried that the meandering nature of that record would carry over into her solo work. And while Tell Me How You Really Feel does have its moments where it ambles, like the album's great, hazy opener, Barnett is still making ragged, rollicking rock music. The place where there is a slight change, however, is in her lyrical approach, where she turns the knob down on her rambling style of witticisms for something more grounded and emotional. Her songs have always been quietly moving, but that becomes even more clear when she's in the direct mode she's operating in here. With clarity and precision, she speaks of metropolitan isolation on "City Looks Pretty" and the politics of being a woman on "Nameless, Faceless," whose chorus centers on the old Margaret Atwood adage: "Men are scared that women will laugh at them...women are scared that men will kill them." Some may have found her style to be a little gimmicky on previous records, but the fact that she pares things back and still churns out terrific songs on Tell Me proves that Barnett is the real deal.
Highlight Songs
1. City Looks Pretty
2. Nameless, Faceless
3. Walkin' on Eggshells
The Beths make the kind of catchy jangle pop that never gets old. Usually bands that focus on creating infectious earworms rely on melody alone, but on their debut full-length Future Me Hates Me, the New Zealand trio have the instrumental prowess to back their hooks up. All the while, lead singer Elizabeth Stokes is spinning clever yarns through her winsome lyrics. For an example of all those elements in action, look no further than the album's title track, a charming jam about Stokes knowing her future self will hate her for the doomed relationships she gets herself into in the present. "It's getting dangerous / I'm in my head, I know / I've counted up the cons / They far outweigh the pros," she sings with a smirk over the song's crunching rhythm, before giving way to the song's indelible chorus. The rest of the album is loaded with songs like that, all bright, pristine guitar lines and monster hooks. It's a record that absolutely shouldn't be slept on. Your future self will love you for listening to it.
Highlight Songs
1. Future Me Hates Me
2. Great No One
3. Happy Unhappy
Last year, Vince Staples threw us quite a curveball, following up his sprawling double-album debut with the electro-futurism of the tight and compact Big Fish Theory. That chameleon streak continued this year with FM!, a short blast of buoyant summertime rap music. Done in the style of FM radio stations, the record includes DJ intros, call-in games, and exclusive teases for other artists. But most importantly, it adopts the ethos of just playing the hits. FM! finds Staples in full-on banger mode, flexing his slippery flow over the elastic hyphy-influenced beats that he grew up on, most of which are produced by up-and-coming star Kenny Beats. The modern radio landscape is a barren wasteland of mostly inane garbage, but I'd be alot more excited about hopping in the car and channel surfing if it sounded like FM!.
Highlight Songs
1. FUN!
2. Run the Bands
3. No Bleedin'
I've gotten to a point where I've run out of accolades for Wye Oak. They're a mainstay on these end of the year lists and there are no new ways to describe their excellence. Every few years they just put their heads down and put in some studio time, and the end product is a finely sculpted gem. Again, they do just that on The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs, another work of unconscious excellence. It's clear that at this point Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have a near-telepathic connection, as they start off locked in and never leave that state throughout the album. Stack plays off of Wasner's lurching bassline on album highlight "It Was Not Natural" and the two of them build to a crashing climax on the post-rock sounds of "Say Hello." But the band's secret weapon has always been Wasner's voice, which swaps between breathy and forceful at all the right moments, making lyrics about finding a mysterious object in the woods or flying on a plane feel otherworldly. The Louder I Call features Wye Oak playing to every single one of their strengths. It may be difficult to talk about them in new ways, but the freshness of their music has yet to die.
Highlight Songs
1. It Was Not Natural
2. Say Hello
3. You of All People
When Cardi B released "Bodak Yellow" last year, everyone figured she'd be a one-hit wonder. Then "Bartier Cardi" dropped and we all sat up, because it was equally as good, if not better. Surely, this was a fluke though. A streak that would soon stop. But there was no denying that Cardi B was the real deal once Invasion of Privacy came and completely cashed in on her potential. It's an album that's done in the style of many major label rap debuts, trying on every fashionable sound for size and hoping to score a few hits. These usually turn out to be disasters, leaving even the most capable rappers looking lost at sea. But Cardi takes every style thrown at her on Invasion and bends it to her will, turning them all into hits. From the Latin-inflected "I Like It," to the West Coast Mustard-wave "She Bad," to the scorned slow jam "Thru Your Phone," there's nothing that she can't steamroll with her charisma and skill. In an age of sputtering and mumbling hip hop, people just want to hear someone rap. Cardi B does that with aplomb, exhibiting an uncanny ability to flip flows and weave in and out of a beat on songs like "Money Bag" and "Bartier Cardi." This album feels like a miracle, an example where hype and popularity actually equates to quality in 2018. She could flop on her next album, but after what we've seen so far, it's best not to doubt her.
Highlight Songs
1. Money Bag
2. Bartier Cardi
3. I Do
The first of the "Wyoming Tapes" -- a series of five albums produced by Kanye West during a musical retreat in the mountainous state -- was also the best. Daytona plays with the strengths of both of its collaborators. In Kanye West, Pusha T found another singular producer who can elevate his raps the way The Neptunes did in the Clipse heyday, and in Pusha T, Kanye West found somebody who sounds absolutely monstrous on top of his beats. Over the album's seven song run, Pusha puts his head down and barrels through minimal, precise production in glorious fashion. But its shortness belies how dense the record is. It reveals new textures with each listen, as you start to catch the way Pusha builds his verses so meticulously, delivering a string of money lines without wasting any space. The Wyoming Tapes that followed were met with varying reception, but there's no doubt that Daytona is the undisputed classic of the bunch.
Highlight Songs
1. The Games We Play
2. If You Know You Know
3. Santeria
It's time for a difficult and sobering admission: I'm getting old. And in the aging process, I've become a bit less adventurous as a music listener. Nowadays, my sense of curiosity has dimmed -- I need ample references before I dig into a new band or artist, which leads me to finding out about fewer acts that live outside of the standard buzz cycle. It's the kind of habit that would have led to me missing out on Retirement Party. Thankfully, I decided to give them a listen after they were given a Band To Watch feature in Stereogum and I instantly fell in love. This Midwestern emo band plays their instruments like their lives depend on it: the drums hit like the skins are about to be thacked off, the guitars blaze and spark off of each other. Consequently, the songs careen and yaw through their verses and choruses like a derailed train. Somewhat Literate is a riot of a listen, from the jerky rhythm of "Take Your Vitamins" to the catchy riffage on "Shoulder It." There's alot of music out there and nobody can listen to all of it, but Retirement Party are a band that I'm happy to make others aware of.
Highlight Songs
1. Scene 48
2. Grand Am
3. Take Your Vitamins
In an effort to find a silver lining to hang on the 2016 election results, many people responded to Donald Trump's win with an optimistic, "well, at least it will make for some good punk music." While that's a dumb and not at all comforting statement, it turned out to be true with What a Time to Be Alive. Superchunk's eleventh album -- you read correctly, eleventh! -- doesn't use the T-word directly, but its title is meant to be taken as a sardonic response to our current state of affairs. Almost all of the songs come from a feeling of a world gone awry. (As an example: a track titled "All For You" might sound like a love song, but its chorus includes repeated exclamations of the phrase "fight me.") This ends up being beneficial for the band. Their tunes have always been ragers, but this record charges forward with a heretofore unseen sense of reckless abandon, blitzkrieg choruses giving way to squealing guitar solos and vice versa. We may be on a ship that's sinking at an alarming rate, but at least What a Time To Be Alive is here to soundtrack the demise.
Highlight Songs
1. All For You
2. Erasure
3. Dead Photographers
A third Swearin' album was something nobody really expected would happen. In 2015, lead singers Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride broke up and so did the band itself, and after Crutchfield's success with last year's excellent Tourist in This Town, it didn't seem like a band reunion was in the cards. But the winds of indie rock fate were kind to us and made the impossible materialize in the form of Fall into the Sun. In terms of quality, the return finds them at the head of their class, just as they left. Sonically, however, there's been a bit of maturation from the gang -- the songs still kick, but they've got a weariness that comes with approaching the end of your 20s. The push and pull between Crutchfield and Gilbride is the strongest element of the record, with tracks alternating between her hooky head rushes and his slower, more tangled tracks. Sometimes, bands should just stay broken up, but Fall into the Sun is a welcome addition to the Swearin' canon.
Highlight Songs
1. Untitled (LA)
2. Grow into a Ghost
3. Treading
You would think that by now Beach House's whole aesthetic would get old, but they continue to surprise and amaze. The band is always slowly accumulating new sounds -- so much so that it can seem like they don't change much from album to album, but their aptly-titled seventh album represents their biggest sonic leap in a while. The pounding live drums of "Dark Spring," the psychedelic synth siren on "Lemon Glow," the motorik second half of "Dive" -- it's an impressive new set of weapons that they've stocked in their arsenal. As ever, though, the intoxicating beauty remains in their songs. It's like Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally are privy to a secret no other band has access to, the formula for creating songs that fill your head with a floaty, dazed sense of euphoria. 7 shows that they've got no plans of slowing down on giving us the most haunting, dreamy, intimate music out there.
Highlight Songs
1. Drunk in LA
2. Dive
3. Woo
Greta Kline had alot to live up to after releasing the objective and definitive best album of 2016, but somehow she made another album that was just as good. On this year's Vessel, she remains one of the great purveyors of capturing a mixture of curiosity, wonder, and melancholy that is often difficult to articulate. The album uses its title to speak of body (not feeling like it's the functioning vessel it was designed to be) and mind (not feeling like it's the proper vessel for one's art) and the ways one can feel unmoored with both. Vessel is never a heavy listen, Kline is too funny and clever for that. She comes off as someone who spends so much time turning everything over in her head that her thoughts are razor-sharp by the time they come out of her mouth. And she can take words that are simple and direct and make them sound like a poetic maxim, with something like "Being alive matters quite a bit, even when you feel like shit." That's pretty much the summation of the worldview expressed through her music. Even through all the breakups and feeling like you're a square peg in a world full of round holes, you still have the power to spin that into something funny, beautiful, and meaningful. It's all just material for the next chapter of your life. Vessel shows that it's not just Frankie Cosmos, but all of us, who have alot more story to tell.
Highlight Songs
1. Bus Bus Train Train
2. This Stuff
3. Being Alive
We're about three levels past critical mass when it comes to singer-songwriters making flinty, gut-scraping songs indebted to 90s alt-rock, so it's hard to describe a new act in that vein in a way that will make people excited. But then there are artists like Sophie Allison, whose band Soccer Mommy is so good that it absolutely must be heard. Allison is a classic five-tool player. She's got lyrics that alternate between literary language and plainspoken efficiency. Look at how she conveys the pain of insecurity and a tumultuous relationship in so few words: "Always talk to other people / Dart my eyes across the room / Forehead kisses break my knees and leave me crawling back to you." She's got a superhuman ear for melody displayed on effortlessly catchy songs like "Last Girl" and "Cool," the latter of which sounds like the best song Sheryl Crow never wrote. Elsewhere, she's got the versatility to switch it up on tracks like the barren, aching "Wildflowers." And on top of that, there's her incredible voice, which can catch you off guard and completely slice your soul in half. Look no further than the chorus of "Blossom (Wasting My Time)" for evidence of that. But most of all, she's got songs. That's what had me coming back to Clean more than any other album in 2018 -- at the end of the day, sturdy songwriting wins out every time.
Highlight Songs
1. Cool
2. Skin
3. Last Girl
Well, that wraps things up for my best albums of 2018 list. I love reading other lists, so feel free to share yours in the comments. Or if you want to share your thoughts on my list, then you can do that too! Most of the highlight songs contain Youtube links if you want to listen to them, but I've also created a Spotify playlist if that's your preferred method. You can find it below. And if you want a complete ranking of all the albums that were in consideration for this list, along with some other data you might find interesting, you can find them on this Google Doc.
Previous lists
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
Pusha T's Daytona + "The Story of Adidon", Janelle Monae's Dirty Computer, Jay Rock's Redemption, Boygenius' EP, Soccer Mommy's Clean ("Flaw" is the song of the year), Vince Staples' FM! + "Get the Fuck Off My Dick", Mitski's Be the Cowboy, the Black Panther motion picture soundtrack, Cardi B's Invasion of Privacy, good times at the el music. Gotta say I wasn't hitting it off with a lot of the albums this year, but Christine & the Queens should have made more songs like "Five Dollars" if they wanted a spot on my list. Also shout out to Brockhampton for making a song called "San Marcos" while I was attending school there, and for ending it saying "I want more out of life than this", which is exactly how I felt about the town as I prepared to leave it for good. I don't wanna get geeky about it, but Pusha T's diss was the event of the year. We were all overloaded about it, my friends and I really believed in when they said Clipse was going to reunite to finish Drake off. Looks like Kanye may be the one to do it though go getem Yeezy.
ReplyDeleteI still remember the thrill of first hearing "The Story of Adidon." It reignited that communal feeling of "DID YOU HEAR WHAT HE JUST SAID???" that's been missing from rap lately. People felt guilty for loving it so much and started doing the "well, he went too far with some of his lines" hand-wringing, but there are no rules of engagement in a rap war if you ask me!!!
DeleteAlso I'm not much of a Reddit guy but the other day I found myself on /r/indieheads because I wanted to read some end of the year discussions and wow, I discovered that alot of dudes on there HATE Soccer Mommy (and, conveniently, Snail Mail too...big surprise!). It was like stepping into an alternate dimension and I do not recommend it.
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