#aoty2018

We’re approaching the end of 2018 which means we’re reaching that time when everyone compiles their year end lists. I do this every year just for my own personal satisfaction anyway, but given that this year I’m still in the process of writing a blog about my 100 favourite albums, it seems appropriate to have a brief pause to do a little write-up of top 20 albums of my 2018 too.

20. Phosphorescent – C’est La Vie

I’ve been a big fan of Matthew Houck’s music for years, although his recent flirtations with a more mainstream brand of country have yielded as many tedious lows as they have dazzling highs. This album is no different, but as with its predecessor Muchacho – the highs are high enough to make it just sneak in at number 20.

19. Ólafur Arnalds – Re:member

More experimental modern classical music using Arnalds favoured palette of stately piano, minimal strings and flurries of electronic rhythms. Re:member is more focused than usual though, and at times it’s utterly beautiful.

18. The Low Anthem – The Salt Doll Went to Measure the Depth of the Sea

Previous album Eyeland was a bit of a flop; the five year wait and eventual unfocused psych-folk experiments meant the band lost a lot of the momentum they’d built up with the excellent Oh My God, Charlie Darwin and Smart Flesh. This album goes some way to correcting that, as its hypnotic, miniature folk vignettes create a wonderfully unique soundworld full of delicate acoustic instrumentation, watery imagery and squelchy electronic rhythms.

17. Ital Tek – Bodied

It seems since the release of Blade Runner 2049 last year there’s been an influx of moody, epic, noir electronica – although in reality it’s more likely that the soundtrack of that film just increased the appreciation and presence of an already well worn genre. Ital Tek does this style with aplomb, the skyscraping synths and depth-charge basslines creating a compelling dystopian soundscape for his sinuous beats to move through.

16. Wild Pink – Yolk in the Fur

Not the kind of album that I’d usually give more than a passing listen – Yolk in the Fur is all warm, rushing guitars, driving rhythms and breathy, swooning choruses – but something about this album keeps me coming back. There’s an immediacy to the songwriting, as well as an enjoyable depth and summer twilight atmosphere to the instrumentation and production that makes it hard to be cynical about. ‘Lake Eerie’ might be my road trip song of the year.

15. Boygenius – Boygenius

Yes I know it’s an EP, but in the year of the 20 minute album the distinction seems somewhat unimportant. I knew little about Julien Baker or Lucy Dacus before hearing this, and I had only a passing familiarity of Phoebe Bridgers’ solo album A Stranger in the Alps, but the combination of these three singer songwriters makes this EP stand out in a sea of generic guitar wielding indie music. Bright, expressive melodies, backed with tight, soulful harmonies and a gift of lyrical insights make each track a perfect package.

14. Shame – Songs of Praise

Gnarly. That’s the word that comes to mind when listening to Songs of Praise. Scuzzy guitar thrash, pummelling rhythms and a singer who shifts between throaty tunefulness, rowdy strutting and a baritone Vincent Price impersonation. It’s the slightly odd spoken word sections that mar an otherwise fantastic debut album full of grit and passion. Definitely intrigued to see where they’ll go next.

  13. Laura Viers – The Lookout

I’m not sure she’s released a bad album to date, and The Lookout is another offering of warm, summery folk songs and cheerful indie pop. There’s something special in the way in which Viers works with her producer and husband Tucker Martine to create songs that exude a sense of space, place and feeling, and this album is devoted to that craft in its entirety. 

12. Hookworms – Microshift

Psych-rock wierdos learn about brit-pop anthems. A glorious concoction of abstract sonics and direct rock melodicism that’s compelling and catchy throughout, Hookworms have streamlined and opened up their sound to keep the core of their psych-rock wigouts in tact, whilst bringing their knack for strong melodies right to the fore. Where possible I try to hold on to the idea that art shouldn’t pay for the sins of its creator and I’ve enjoyed this album a great deal over the course of this year – however, the recent allegations of sexual assault against frontman Matthew Johnson definitely leave a sour taste in the mouth.

11. Pinegrove – Skylight

Pinegrove are another band whose 2018 release has been clouded by controversy. Whilst the allegation of sexual coercion toward frontman Evan Hall certainly needs addressing seriously, it seems that Pinegrove’s withdrawal from the limelight, year long hiatus and quiet return in the form of self-releasing their third album Skylight has been done in an effort to resolve the situation as sensitively as possible for everyone involved. As a result, it’s hard to not to hear Skylight as a kind of rebirth: “I draw a line in the sand / Singing this is the way I behave now / And actually live by the shape of that sound”. The starry-eyed breathlessness of these songs is beautifully countered by the raw, earthy production – two qualities that raise their country tinged emo-pop leagues above their peers. Any radio-ready glossiness would’ve killed all the charm and genuine earnestness of these songs; instead here they make an understated but worthy claim for importance in the face of their acknowledged shortcomings. If nothing else it all feels refreshingly direct in an era seemingly defined by reflexive defensiveness.

10. Skee Mask – Compro

This is one of those albums that somehow ended up skirting my periphery for quite a while this year – I kept seeing positive reviews of it in the various publications that I look to for recommendations, but I don’t really go out of my way to listen to much modern electronica these days, as braindead EDM has somewhat numbed me to the genre recently (It also has a fairly boring album cover – I know that shouldn’t matter, but honestly, it really does). When I did finally get round to listening to Compro I discovered an album that was refreshingly nuanced and far more enjoyable than I was expecting. The slower, dubbier tracks have a subtle melodicism and textural variety, whilst Skee Mask isn’t afraid to make use of negative space to let sounds breathe. When the pace does finally pick up it’s with an onslaught of breathless, glassy drum’n’bass and vast swathes of looming, buzzing synth pads. One of the most intriguing and original electronica albums I’ve heard in a long time.

9. Ben Howard – Noonday Dream

This was a surprise. I really wasn’t expecting to like this record so much. Apart from the epic title track to his previous album I Forget Where We Were, nothing Ben Howard had done up until this point had bothered me on any meaningful level. Noonday Dream is a whole new level for him though, it’s yawning atmospherics and dynamic ebbs and flows show an artist of far more maturity and skill than I was expecting. Opener ‘Nica Libres at Dusk’ is a series of gentle swells like a breath of warm air on a cool summers evening, whilst the droning, suffocating intro to ‘Boat to an Island on the Wall’ builds perfectly into a funky, buzzy guitar freakout over the course of an epic seven minutes. Throughout it Howard sounds like a stranger in his own soundscape, his murmuring voice is nothing more than one of the many instruments that are weaving the sonic tapestry around him. I’ll definitely be looking forward to seeing where he goes next. (One thing to note – this whole album hugely benefits from being played at a high volume) 

8. IDLES – Joy as an Act of Resistance

Listening to Joy as an Act of Resistance creates a great array of different emotions – on one hand its powerful and violent, on another it’s tuneful and catchy, and at the same time it’s thought provoking, savagely funny and grippingly compelling from start to finish. It’s a bit like having a screaming argument about politics whilst hugging your best friend. Or maybe like being punched in the face by a social activist. I didn’t really click with IDLES’ previous album, it seemed a bit too stodgy and macho for my tastes and I never gave it much time. When I first listened to Joy I felt much the same way; but bit by bit the clever and funny lyrics kept me coming back until eventually their thunderous punk noise had completely won me over. I think IDLES are a genuinely important band – punk was always meant to be a protest, an outsized voice for people with no voice at all, and Joy as an Act of Resistance is one of the few recent albums that addresses the current chaos of modern society and politics head on and absolutely nails it, with all the ridiculousness, ugliness and hope on full display.

7. Damien Jurado – The Horizon Just Laughed

Damien Jurado seems like a man who’s been on a vision quest for the last 10 years. Originally starting out in the late 90s as a gifted songwriter releasing album after album of above average country tinged folk, in 2010 Jurado released his first of several collaborations with producer Richard Swift – a collaboration that reaped great success and sent him deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, culminating in Visions of Us on the Land, an excellent but overstuffed record of psychedelic concept folk rock. At some point during this period, Swift developed medical complications relating to alcohol abuse, and tragically passed away earlier this year. This left Jurado to self-produce his latest album; and it seems he’s come out of his run of hyper-creative concept albums stronger than ever – The Horizon Just Laughed is his strongest set of songs since St Bartlett, and quite possibly the best record of his long career. It seems his long term collaboration with Swift has left him a more confident songwriter than ever, with a few twists and production tricks up his sleeve. Dialling back the large scale theatrics, this is an album of high quality, melodic folk songs, subtly and beautifully arranged into a fantastically cohesive whole. It may just be the album he’s always been working towards.

6. Vessel – Queen of Golden Dogs

I’m a big fan of the concept of electronica and classical music colliding. This may be the 90s kid in me – back then the fusion of orchestral grandeur and big beat seemed to be the holy grail of dance alchemy, with acts like Orbital, Moby, Fatboy Slim and William Orbit all giving it their best shot. Very little music has ever managed to make this particular bit of chemistry work though; it usually winds up as overblown film score twaddle or uninteresting elevator music. Queen of Golden Dogs comes at the task from a very different angle though, taking a fistful of traditional stringed instruments and using them to create alternately dramatic, melodic or abstract textures in which his clattering, industrial beats move though like a riot erupting in the middle of a chamber quartet performance. The key seems to be that everything shares the same sense of space – although this music is all undoubtedly created using sequencing software, it manages to create the illusion that it’s all being performed  in one intensely claustrophobic environment; the clashing of metallic percussion, teeth gnashing synths and incendiary string blasts counteracting each other in incredibly physical ways. It’s an intense, exhausting listen, but it’s also original, compelling, thoroughly unique, and on occasion utterly beautiful – maybe this is the first ever ‘Baroque-step’ album? If no one else has invented that term yet then I’m claiming it right now.

5. Mitski – Be the Cowboy

It seems that as Hip-hop asserts itself as the dominant force in 21st century pop music, the genre we traditionally think of as ‘pop’ has slowly been undergoing a radical reinvention. Whilst there are still plenty of the huge, globe straddling stars like Katy Perry and Britney Spears still churning out the same meaningless glitzy dance-pop as ever, there have also been a host of artists changing and subverting the form this year, from the art damaged mutations of SOPHIE to the chart trojan horse that is The 1975. Mitski seems to be part of this movement, chewing up every kind of popular music and replaying it through her own idiosyncratic lens. Be the Cowboy moves through genres like pop stars go through costume changes – ‘Why Didn’t You Stop Me?’ is a blast of horn driven R&B, ‘A Pearl’ is all surging Indie-pop drama, ‘Lonesome Love’ is a country inflected lament, ‘Come into the Water’ is a space-rock drift, whilst ‘Nobody’ repurposes the same sad disco that The Cardigans perfected twenty years earlier on ‘Lovefool’. Barely any of these songs runs past two and a half minutes – it’s like Mitski has taken the core of every idea from the last 40 years of pop music and created a complete encapsulation of each one in a series of short, sweet vignettes of perfect songcraft. At the same time, it’s a thoroughly cohesive record, with a consistent tone and sound palette, and a lyrical concern that ruminates on self-deprecation, self-love, modern philosophising and good old fashioned romance. It’s an album that’s timeless yet totally contemporary, artful yet accessible, and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable listen from start to finish. More pop music like this please.

4. Abul Mogard – Above All Dreams

There’s a great story surrounding the music of Abul Mogard – that he’s an octogenarian, Serbain ex-factory worker who after retirement found himself missing the relentless whiring and humming of machinery and so bought himself some synthesizers and began making drone music. There’s also a large contingent of people who think this is most likely nonsense, and that it’s all a clever marketing hook for some otherwise anonymous bedroom producer. It is a hard tale to believe for sure, but it’s also too good a back-story to ignore. Whoever Abul Mogard really is, this is still a fantastic album full of thick, swirling textures, eerie and simplistic melodies, and slow but affecting chord progressions. Mogard’s drones hang somewhere in between peaceful and foreboding, never slipping over into complete darkness, but always drifting just on the edge of comfort. ‘Quiet Dreams’ continually crests and brushes against the edge of white noise but continually pulls back like the ebbing of the tide. ‘Where Not Even’ is like the aural equivalent of an Escher staircase, always ascending but never arriving, whilst ‘Upon the Smallish Circulation’ makes good use of a shimmering arpeggio that loops relentlessly as the waves of buzzing synths gradually consume it. The two final tracks make up over half an hour of music between them, breaking the sound down even further into a vast environment of suspended tones and queasy textures. It’s like the soundtrack to the best film David Lynch never made, always balancing on a knife edge between dream and nightmare, darkness and light. It might also provide an amazing soundtrack to Serbian factory machines, but I suppose only Mogard himself has the answer to that…

3. Kids See Ghosts – Kids See Ghosts

It’s been a hard year to be a Kanye West fan. It’s never easy at the best of times, but 2018 has seen a particular spike in his inconsistent musical output, his cringeworthy attention seeking and his deeply questionable political involvement. It’s getting harder and harder to claim that he’s just a troubled musician who’s been provided a platform to talk about issues that are way out of his depth, as he’s actively waded into the quagmire of Trump MAGA hats and outrageous political commentary. But even ignoring all of that, his musical output has been mostly underwhelming this year, as he seems to be doubling down on the Bob Ross style “no such thing as mistakes” mindset that he began with The Life of Pablo. This isn’t inherently a bad thing – over-zealous perfectionism can often lead to creative paralysis, and with that album it seemed like Kanye was actively making use of the freedom the internet can provide to blur the line between demos and albums, polished and ramshackle, finished and unfinished. Unfortunately his solo album this year just sounded unfinished, its short length and limited quality made it his most inessential release in years. Thankfully his Wyoming project led to the release of several albums, and Kids See Ghosts turned out to be the exact opposite of the underwhelming Ye. A collaboration with Kid Cudi; Kids See Ghosts is still rough and short, but yet manages to be 23 minutes of absolutely vital hip-hop. Opener ‘Feel the Love’ is a frenetic burst of moody synths, martial beats, dramatic vocals and cacophonous, aggressive scatting. It’s as weird and compelling as that sounds. There’s a great variety of style on display here for such a short album – ‘4th Dimension’ is sinister and booming, whilst the title track is an atmospheric trickle of choppy beats, swirling chords and the welcome presence of Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def). Tracks like ‘Freee’ and ‘Reborn’ suggest moments of life affirming epiphany related to the mental health issues Kanye and Kid Cudi have both been open about struggling with, whilst the closing ‘Cudi Montage’ is a transcendent swell of euphoric synths, layered harmonies and finds Kanye musing on the tragic cycle of gun violence found in black neighbourhoods of inner cities such as his beloved Chicago. It’s startling and reassuring to hear him speak with such clarity and consciousness after a year of otherwise confused, rambling political murk, but even without this context it sublimely caps off an album that manages to be textured, melodic, varied, powerful and unique over the course of a mere 23 minutes. It’s a great reminder of the reason Kanye still remains relevant after all this. It’s just hard not to constantly wish he’d stop talking…

2. Jon Hopkins – Singularity

Hopkins’ last album Immunity was one of my favourite records of 2013 and has stayed in fairly heavy rotation ever since (even inching its way into my top 100 list). Hopkins is one of the very best producers of his generation in my eyes, so just like many others I was awaiting his next move with baited breath. When ‘Emerald Rush’ dropped in March, my anticipation reached fever pitch; as its warm, glistening swells of sound and bone crunching beats sounded absolutely transcendent and scratched an itch I’d been waiting 5 years to relieve. The following album did not disappoint; on first listen its symphonic song cycle and epic, complex production absolutely blew me away and I was already convinced it would be my album of the year. However, whilst it is undoubtedly an incredible album, it hasn’t quite stood up over time for me as Immunity did; its ultra glossy sheen actually holds the listener at arms length to some extent, meaning whilst it is impressive and beautiful, it doesn’t have the same sense of envelopment and depth that made that record so addictive. There’s still loads to love here though – the skyscraping melodrama of ‘Singularity’ and ‘Everything Connected’, the percolating, glitchy twinkling of ‘Neon Pattern Drum’ and ‘Luminous Beings’ and the perpetual forward motion of ‘Emerald Rush’ and ‘COSM’ are all incredible fusions of brittle electronics and lush organic matter. ‘Feel First Life’ and ‘Recovery’ both stand up amongst his most beautiful ambient pieces too, the starry eyed choral swell of the former showing a big step forward from the moody twinkling of past atmospheric experiments. I’d love to see Hopkins collaborate with someone like Nils Frahm, a composer whose own electronic experiments would make his orchestration sympathetic and whose grasp of contemporary classical music would allow Hopkins to delve even deeper into the dense, hypnotic beats underneath. That being said, as it stands Hopkins is already carving out a discography that is knowingly pushing toward symphonic electronic transcendence, and it’s only because of the release of something thoroughly remarkable that this hasn’t ended up as my album of the year.

1. Low – Double Negative

I definitely didn’t see this coming. Low have been around for well over 20 years now, yet have just released one of the best albums of their long career, and perhaps one of the defining albums of the decade. Double Negative takes the minimalist melodrama that’s always been at their core of their sound, blows it up to vast proportions and then savagely attacks it; corroding, burning and disintegrating it until the lines between pop, industrial and ambient music have been blurred into irrelevance. All the trappings of modern music have been consumed, chewed up and spat out – the vocal manipulations of artists like Bon Iver and Kanye West are reinterpreted as the cries of the ghost in the machine, whilst the electronic flourishes found in the modern rock of Imagine Dragons or Muse are turned inside out – instead of glossy widescreen production, the unnatural sidechain compression, bright, distorted synthesizers and thundering beats are designed to disorient and degrade. The effect is like stumbling through a sandstorm in the desert only to discover the ruined remains of an epic civilisation that you once knew – triumphant choruses burst out of walls of static, towering drum crashes shatter through the clouds of crumbling texture, ambient drones whistle like the wind through broken crevices, and the harmonising voices of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk weave through it all like two lost souls amongst the chaos. This culminates with incredible ‘Rome (Always in the Dark)’, the album’s pinnacle – the equivalent of finding Ozymandias’ statue half buried in the sand, with huge pulsing drums, screaming guitar solos and soaring harmonies flickering through the roar of distortion. The themes of despair and helplessness (“It’s not the end / It’s just the end of hope”) and the desolate, post-apocalyptic feeling fully match the fear and uncertainty so prevalent in our current society and politics right now – whilst it may not address issues head on in the way an album like Joy as Act of Resistance does, instead Low manage to capture the feeling of an exact moment in history – the mistrust and anger of a struggling society, the crumbling of an empire and ultimately the yearning hope for a better future.

“Before it falls into total disarray / You’ll have to learn to live a different way”

Breathtaking and absolutely essential. 

wasn't going to bother but some ppl asked if I was going to do one of these again so might as well. 🤙🤙

1. Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs 2. Natalia Lafourcade - Musas Vol. 2 3. Mac Miller - Swimming 4. Pusha T - Daytona 5. Black Moth Super Rainbow - Panic Blooms 6. Rosalía - El Mal Querer 7. J.I.D - DiCaprio 2 8. Denzel Curry - TA13OO 9. Tirzah - Devotion 10. Tierra Whack - Whack World

Nota: 8,9 

AOTY: 2018

Bruno Mars, 24K Magic (2018)

Howdy y’all! I’m fuckin’ late to the year end stuff but that’s because I actually needed some time to think about what to say and who to pick for my favorites list this year! As always, these are only in a particular order for me but all of them are very interesting albums that you should totally check out. So without further Adieu let’s get to the list!

10. ATMOSPHERES - REACH

This is one of those albums that you know if you’ll like it or not after the first few tracks. To be honest, you either sing along to the middle guitar riff of MORPH or you don’t and that’s kinda just how it is! ATMOSPHERES makes a very particular brand of airy but also heavy but also minimal but also complex metal that’s hard to pin down in words but you’ll know exactly what it is once you hear it and straight up it’s a real love it or hate it kinda thing. For me I personally fuckin’ love the juxtaposition of the djenty super heavy riffs along with the airy vocals and production but I can very easily see somebody hating this exact type of thing. If any of the adjectives I used to describe this call out to you, I suggest giving it a shot and seeing what you think!

9. Good Tiger - We Will All Be Gone

This one is just straight up fun y’all! I’ve been following Good Tiger for a hot minute and I loved the shit out of A Head Full of Moonlight back when it came out. Hell, I funded the original Indiegogo campaign!

With this, Good Tiger refines their sound breaking away from the metal origins of the band members’ pasts and creating something unique to them. Everything good about A Head Full of Moonlight is still here. Elliot Coleman’s unique vocals, electrifying dual riffs from Joaquin Ardiles and Dez Nagle, and the strong rhythmic backbone of Alex Rudinger and Morgan Sinclair without the need of the harsh vocals or heaviness that some tracks would use as a crutch.

What they traded in for surface level technical flair they got back in spades with their commitment to songwriting making for some of the most infectious songs they’ve released yet! I know for a fact I couldn’t get Such A Kind Stranger, The Devil Thinks I’m Sinking, or Ninteen Grams out of my head for a good while after I listened to them. At a tight as FUCK under 40 minutes, this album is one that you can easily replay again and again. And you’ll fuckin’ want to if you get those songs stuck in your head! Good Tiger has grown from the ashes of their metal past and is all the stronger for it!

8. Between the Buried and Me - Automata

Okay hear me out on this one. I love Between the Buried and Me but in order for me to get into listening to them, I gotta be on a kick. I can’t just pop in a BTBAM record. Partly because their albums are a bit on the longer side and partly because they have a very particular songwriting style that I need to be in the mood to listen to. Some days I just can’t handle those transitions, y’know? So you’ll need to believe me that it isn’t just fanboy squealing when I say I wasn’t ready for this album. Not to mention they arbitrarily decided to split it into two separate albums even though its length is just fine as one album. Their last album Coma Ecliptic was a hair longer than this one and it fit on one album just fine! How am I supposed to listen to this thing and really take it all in if you release it piecemeal?? Anyway, enough griping about the album’s release. In terms of actual musical content, they’ve really done something great here! They took the scale of Coma Ecliptic but let it have a broader scope so instead of the big, indulgent rock opera they use the same resources to go back to the kitchen sink approach of Colors and The Great Misdirect to really flesh out the parts that were just brief flirtations with other sounds on previous records. What I’m especially noticing on this outing is a real southern rock kind of flavor. ESPECIALLY on the album closer, The Grid where near the end they go out and deliver some killer SQUEALING blues riffs and it’s some of the straight up coolest shit I’ve heard all year.

Should this be your first BTBAM album? Probably not, That should either be Colors or The Great Misdirect but it’s a worthy album in BTBAM’s prolific and excellent catalogue that fans and people wanting to become fans should totally listen to.

7. Oceans of Slumber - The Banished Heart

Okay listen, I went through a bad breakup (and kinda still am going through it let’s be real) at the end of 2018 and I discovered this band right after I got broken up with. To be honest I kind of needed this. The fact that it’s a woman of color fronting a doom metal band would be enough to get me intrigued but then I heard the title track off of this album. I was blown away and the rest of the album capitalizes on the energy promised by the singles.

Cammie “God Damn” Gilbert has some of the most radiant and emotional vocals I’ve heard all year with such a commanding presence and control of her instrument that sends chills up my spine whenever she sings. Combine that with crushing, doomy, riffs from the trio of Sean Gary, Keegan Kelly, and Anthony Contreras as well as drumming and occasional beautiful piano playing by Dobber Beverly and it creates a dense and intense mixture.

If this list was ranking pure emotional power, this would be #1. With the aforementioned dismaying production and powerful vocals, this thing also packs a lyrical gut punch of equal parts grief, longing, and righteous anger. This isn’t just an album to feel sad to. This is for when you need to purge yourself of emotions. It’s the sonic equivalent of going out into the forest and primally screaming where nobody but you can hear you and I fucking love it. Admittedly I haven’t listened to it much because it’s a very powerful and very tough one to sit through so I need to be in the right frame of mind for it but if you ever feel like this might be up your alley I strongly urge you to give it a shot.

6. Alithia - The Moon Has Fallen

Alithia has stumbled onto something amazing here with The Moon Has Fallen. They seem to have carved out a genre of spacey, tribal, psychedelic prog rock that’s entirely unique to them crafting really creative arrangements that honestly need to be heard. If this list were based on pure creativity, this would probably be my #1 because of how interesting the avenues it goes down are. From the warbling, echoey, gigantic sounding guitars to the vocals that do everything from soft melodies to yells to the atmospheric synths, Alithia does something else on this album. There’s 2 fuckin’ drummers here for godsake that's gotta count for something! What this album totally should be is an album to expand minds to. Like, if you wanna reach the next plane of existence or something, put on The Sun or Breathe or Blood Moon and I’m almost certain that you’ll attain enlightenment or something.

5. Covet - effervescence

If I really wanted to I could put a picture of that good vibes only cup here again and I totally will but I want to stress that Covet is really good and while they have a similar chill vibe to last year’s pick CHON. It is ever so slightly different. CHON’s vibes are beachy and crunchy whereas Covet is very foresty and soft. All those 8tracks playlists about forest nymphs, replace them with Covet songs and it’ll totally fit.

4. VOLA - Applause From A Distant Crowd

If I did awards, I would probably give VOLA the “most improved” award of this year. Their previous album Inmazes was very unique and demonstrated some really interesting potential with their sound but Applause From A Distant Crowd just came in and fuckin’ blew all of that out of the water!

A lot of the fans of Inmazes bemoan how this album was lacking in the heavy department but honestly, I think that’s part of why this works so well! There’s a dime a dozen progressive metal acts that’ll just throw out some super heavy djent riffs over odd time signatures and call it a day but it takes a really good band to find the elements of that style and really make it their own and that’s what VOLA has done here.

From the synths to the emphasis on clean vocals to the melody focus of the album one can tell right away that this is a different beast but one that is entirely VOLA’s own. Outside of the aesthetic synths you have the distinctive vocals of Asger Mygind who has an intriguing low register that I rarely hear in progressive metal vocalists. His voice offers a great texture to the music. Add in a much tighter, controlled songwriting style and Applause From A Distant Crowd makes for an endlessly listenable, utterly unique experience that I urge all of you to check out.

3. Dance Gavin Dance - Artificial Selection

Okay, y’all know me right? If you’ve seen any of my lists before you’ll know that I’m a big Dance Gavin Dance fan and any year they make a new record they’re almost bound to have a spot on my favorites list and pretty high at that. This feels like a career defining moment for DGD because this is the most consistent lineup they’ve had in forever and with how shaken up the fanbase has been with the frequent lineup changes over the years, a sense of calm feels like foreboding as clean vocalist Tilian Pearson and bassist Tim Feerick head in for an unprecedented fourth album.

As always, DGD fuckin’ killed it with this one. This time they transition into pop inspired production and songwriting that absolutely destroys when paired with their technical ability and overall style. Tracks like Care with its infections chorus, Count Bassy with its big leading vocals, and the anthemic closing track Evaporate all culminate to make another glorious heavy, funky, crazy, catchy album that’s become a staple for DGD. In fact Evaporate was so fuckin’ good that people legitimately thought the band was going to end after it because it was so big and final. Like, straight up y’all it’s just fuckin’ good. There’s only so many words I can use to describe it but Dance Gavin Dance has crafted another collection of rad ass tunes and it’s just fuckin’ good babey!

2. Time the Valuator - How Fleeting How Fragile

Oooh! We got some new blood on the list! And they’re really high too! “What is this?” I hear some of you asking. Well, Time the Valuator are a band I’ve been following for a good minute. Back in 2017 I saw them trickle out singles for what would eventually become this new album and needless to say I was pretty hype because they showcased something I really cherish and that is crossover appeal! Do you have a friend who you think is ready for something harder than Hands Like Houses but think the overtly djent-y style of Periphery might be too much for them to handle? Time the Valuator is for you!

Their style runs the gambit of more accessible post hardcore fair on songs like In Control and Elusive Reasons to the technical flair of Terminus and Starseeker to extremely emotional songs like Heritage and When I Met Death. Careful listeners will catch many different influences like the aforementioned Periphery but also the cadence of a certain singer from The Contortionist on How Fragile. Their influence may be in progressive metal but their style is more accessible than any prog metal band and it’s a joy to listen to. The standout performances on this thing are Rene Möllenbeck who in addition to delivering really nice riffs does all the piano bits on this thing. Pay attention to the tracks, When I Met Death, Heritage, and Starseeker to see this man’s pianowork in action. The other standout are the absolutely killer vocals of Phil Bayer who can do everything from a careful midrange to a high as hell falsetto and everything in between all while having a great amount of power. Standout tracks for him are In Control where he and Breathe Atlantis vocalist Nico Schiesewitz dual to see who the more soulful one is, Starseeker where he pierces the high heavens with his voice, and When I Met Death where he delivers the most somber of performances.

This album was one hell of a surprise and I cannot wait for what Time the Valuator has next. Do yourself a favor and give this a listen!

1. Polyphia - New Levels New Devils AND Andres - Heroes, Villains, and All That Jazz

What??? 2 albums get to be number 1?? How?? Well, I realize I’ve never been exactly consistent with how I pick my number 1. One year it’ll be how emotional the album is, another year it’ll be the one I liked the most, and this year it’s something completely different! I’ve picked these two as my number 1 because I think these two artists made some of the biggest strides in terms of moving the genre forward and their embrace of styles outside of traditional rock and roll music is integral to that. I believe that if we want rock to actually be relevant to the listening public again, it needs to take cues from different genres and not be influenced by the same crop of 60’s and 70’s rock. I love that style as much as the next guy, but it is the exact opposite of relevant or frankly even interesting in the world of rock music. These two bands I feel did something really interesting and any band looking to push boundaries or do something interesting in the following years should look to these albums as inspiration. So without further Adieu let me actually talk about the albums themselves.

Polyphia - New Levels New Devils

I’ve been a big fan of Polyphia ever since their first album Muse came out but as I’ve grown as a listener I started to realize that a lot of their music ESPECIALLY pre Renaissance is kinda indistinguishable from other instrumental bands with high levels of technical skills and something tells me Polyphia themselves realized this too. In a world with fifty thousand guitarists, you can’t be famous for being the most fast or the most technical because every single guitarist is gunning to be the next rock god. Realizing this, Polyphia has done what I think is a great move and transitioned from the prog kids noodling out riffs to style icons or to quote a twitter user

“[sic] old Polyphia concerts were a bunch of prog kids standing around in silence, currently Polyphia concerts are where a bunch of super hot people beat the shit out of each other and do cocaine in the mosh pit”.

Their music captures this superbly. If I told you that instrumental progressive rock worked well with trap influences, you’d probably laugh at me. However, upon hearing tracks like Nasty, G.O.A.T, Saucy, and even the poppy So Strange, it is evident that Polyphia didn’t just use this influence as a gimmick but as a full fledged stylistic incorporation. This leads to some of the most interesting soundscapes of the year, absolutely SAVAGE bass and drum work, and it culminates in an aesthetic that is unique to Polyphia in the prog scene. I really can’t wait to see what they do next and I hope it’s just as ambitious as this.

Andrés - Heroes, Villains, and All That Jazz

Daaang, 2 years in a freakin’ row?? I’m being entirely serious here when I say Andrés completely knocked it out of the park this year. I had high expectations for this because that last album was really good and this one completely shattered it. What Andrés does on this thing that is so special is that he demonstrates his abilities as something of a musical chameleon. Vocally and stylistically he can do anything from R&B to an emo cadence to even shrieks and he uses these influences superbly in his songwriting, crafting tightly written, expertly performed bundles of greatness into every track that have a great range but also an accessibility that rivals even the best of modern pop music.

Lyrically, he displays an awareness that was lacking on his previous release and as the album progresses you get a fuller picture of the person singing, his past, his insecurities, his flaws, and the patterns he finds himself in. To the point where once Poetry comes on and he’s screaming “And the truth is I would give up anything including you just to be famous”, it makes the lines in previous songs like “I ain't stopping till I'm big as Michael Jackson” sound like a threat.

1. Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

country

Singer / Songwriter has done it again with her third album Golden Hour. The simple and traditional writing from Musgraves just gets better and better, very little pop/radio influence and lyrically very honest and genuine. Golden Hour appeals to many different listener bases, not too twangy for pop crowds but also not to over-produced for the traditional country crowd, a true crossover artist. 

Favorite Tracks: “Happy & Sad”, “Oh What A World”, “High Horse” “Wonder Woman”

“I don't mind at all, no, I'm used to fallin' I'm comfortable when the sky is gray But when everything is perfect, I start hidin' 'Cause I know that rain is comin' my way.” -Happy & Sad