My 20 Favorite Albums of 2018

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...

My 20 Favorite Albums of 2015

2015 felt like a more enjoyable year for music than 2014.  There's always good stuff to find in any year, but there was more of it this year and it was better.  I could stretch my list out to 40 albums and it would still only consist of records I liked quite a bit.

This year also had more albums that seemed to grab the entire internet at large.  Of course, the one that towered above the rest was Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly, which is currently running laps around everyone else on end of the year lists.  But there was also stuff like Sufjan Stevens, Jamie xx, Tame Impala, Deafheaven, and Father John Misty.  There was even a jazz album that the big blogs loved! (I haven't had the time to sit down with Kamasi Washington's triple album The Epic in full, but the bits I've heard of it certainly make the praise seem warranted.)

My top 20 only represents a fraction of the diversity of greatness we saw in 2015, but I'm still satisfied with how it turned out.  There's rap, punk, R&B, pop, old favorites, exciting newcomers, and an out-of-left field choice or two.

The rules: Due to the constant changing of the way music gets released, anything can be an album for the sake of this list.  You especially have to play fast and loose given the fact that many rap mixtapes function as albums anyway.  So LPs, mixtapes, 40-minute songs, EPs if they're good enough -- they're all albums to me!  If something got released in another country in a previous year, but got an American release this year, it works on a case-by-case basis (although there are no examples of that this year).  Otherwise, the eligibility window is that the album has to have been released between January 1, 2015 and today.  That means that D'Angelo's Black Messiah, which came out at the very end of 2014 but has appeared on many publications' lists this year, will not show up here.  (Plus it was my number 5 last year, since I actually wait until the end of the year to finalize my lists.)  So now with that bit of business out of the way, on to the actual list...

My 20 Favorite Albums of 2014

Last year, I wrote about how many different narratives there were for music in 2013.  On the other hand, 2014 was a year that seemed to have no narrative at all (which maybe was a narrative in and of itself?).  Coincidentally, this was not a great year for music.  It was one full of good albums, because every year has good albums, but much less great ones than previous years in this decade.  There were also no real event albums like there were last year, which gave us Yeezus, Modern Vampires of the City, and Random Access Memories, among others.  And even the ones that got many people talking this year -- like Benji or Lost in a Dream -- I wasn't crazy about.

It was, however, a good year for women, at least judging by my list.  12 of the picks on my list are either by women or bands fronted by women.  So shout out to the ladies, I guess!  (Anti-shout out to rap music, which didn't fare as well.  Only one of the albums in my top 20 is a rap release.)

The rules: Due to the constant changing of the way music gets released, anything can be an album for the sake of this list.  You especially have to play fast and loose given the fact that many rap mixtapes function as albums anyway.  So LPs, mixtapes, 40-minute songs, EPs if they're good enough -- they're all albums to me!  If something got released in another country in a previous year, but got an American release this year, it works on a case-by-case basis (we'll see an example of that later).  Otherwise, the eligibility window is that the album has to have been released between January 1, 2014 and today.  That means Beyonce's self-titled album, which came out during the last week of 2013 but will probably appear on one or two 2014 lists, is not eligible for this one.  (Spoiler: it wouldn't have made it anyway.)  So now with that bit of business out of the way, on to the actual list...

"A Sea of Split Peas" introduces Courtney Barnett as a talented rambler

Courtney Barnett makes it look easy.  If you watch the 26 year-old Australian singer-songwriter perform, she exudes a lackadaisical charm -- her hair slightly tousled, her shoulders slouched a bit, her left-handed guitar picked with her fingers.  And when you actually pay attention to the songs that she's playing, there's an off-the-cuff nature to them too.  A Sea of Split Peas, her 12-song double EP, is a conversational record.  Each of the tracks feel less like songs and more like a saunter through the tangled wires in her brain, where you are treated to observations like "I got drunk and feel asleep but luckily I left the heater on / And in my dreams I wrote the best song I've ever written...can't remember how it goes."

The biggest hit on the record, "Avant Gardener" -- a verbose, discursive tale about some sort of asthma attack she has while gardening -- is the epitome of Barnett's rambling style.  Somehow it manages to start off in a mundane place ("Sleep in late, another day") and over the course of five minutes, it casually ends with a trip to the hospital and an inhaler prescription ("I was never good at smoking bongs," Barnett notes in response to her inability to use the inhaler correctly).  The song functions much like a story told to a friend, full of diversions and extraneous details, and you get to know so many character details through these little lyrical alleyways.  "Reminds me of a time / when I was really sick and I / had too much pseudoephedrine and I / couldn't sleep at night," she remarks at one point, taking a break to tell a story within the story.  She even finds the time for comedy in the genius line, "The paramedic thinks I'm clever 'cause I play guitar / I think she's clever 'cause she stops people dying."

Many of the songs on the album involve the opposite sex in some way, but even when she's dealing with conventional subject matter, she manages to find an unconventional approach to it.  "Lance Jr." candidly opens with, "I masturbated to the songs you wrote."  But lest the guy get any ideas, she later says, "Doesn't mean I like you man / it just helps me get to sleep / and it's cheaper than Temazepam."  Barnett has a tough, no-nonsense attitude towards the men in her songs.  On "Out of the Woodwork," she dryly tells a former paramour, "Just because you're older than me, doesn't you have to be so condescending," and later she gives the sly dressing down, "It must be tiring trying so hard, to look like you're not really trying at all."  She has the ability of ruthless efficiency, cutting straight to the bone with lines like "I may not be 100% happy but at least I'm not with you."  But when she wants to, she can also be extremely tender, as seen on  "Anonymous Club," which is all about the simple act of human connection.  It's a song that's stripped bare and stretched wide, finding her at her most sincere and romantic.

However, Barnett doesn't only rely on the template of the love song to pack an emotional wallop, as seen on "Are You Looking After Yourself," the album's centerpiece.  It's structured like a conversation between her and a loved one -- probably older, maybe a parent.  The  loved one asks "Are you working hard my darling?  We're so worried." "I don't want no nine-to-five telling me that I'm alive," Barnett responds, more concerned with freedom and individuality.   Her elder asks her if she's saved some money for rainy days, but she's just thinking about her friends in bands, who are "better than everything on the radio."  Finally, there's a turnaround at the end, as she comes to the conclusion, "I don't know what I was thinking, I should get a job."  She then resolves to get a dog, get married, have some babies, and watch the evening news. In just a few lines, she captures the negotiation between early 20s aimlessness and real-world responsibility with a piercing poignancy.

"Are You Looking After Yourself" runs for nearly eight minutes, complete with a four-minute guitar squall at the end.  Barnett isn't afraid to let songs stretch out elsewhere on the album either.  Many of the songs expand past the point where she's finished with what she has to say, giving way to extended instrumental outros.  The seven-minute somber ballad, "Porcelain," slowly builds around a central melody before unleashing a staggering piano solo.  But for the most part, these codas don't really grow or transform -- they just remain locked in a powerful groove, a direct contrast to the wandering lyrics.

At its core, however, A Sea of Split Peas is sweet, simple rock 'n roll music.  The instrumentation feels very loose -- jagged guitars, limber basslines, playful drums -- but it's all of a piece with Barnett's casual vibe.  The record has a little bit of garage rock ("History Eraser," "Canned Tomatoes (Whole)"), boozy bar rock ("Scotty Says"), and even some country twang ("Out of the Woodwork," "Porcelain").  It's a mixture that keeps the record moving along without its bare bones nature becoming mind-numbing.  Each of the first 11 tracks feel like a bunch of friends assembled to bang out a song really quickly, and then the album ends with "Ode to Odetta," a lovely tune that features a lone Barnett on the guitar.

There's something magically all-purpose about this record -- it's an album for when you're sad, when you want a laugh, or when you just want to stare into the middle distance and listen to some high-quality songs.  This is a record that teaches you how to listen to it as well.  What at first feels oblique and off-kilter just becomes natural, and eventually, tuneful.  For instance, "Avant Gardener" has this odd delivery where it feels like Barnett emphasizes the wrong words in a line, rising too early and singing just slightly off-key.  However, it just adds to the song's strange charm.  (That charm becomes even stranger when you discover that she actually has a terrific voice.)  Courtney Barnett might make it look easy, but A Sea of Split Peas contains a clear vision and a level of depth that can't be faked.