2018
very "on" year so about 30 albums missing |
| 26 |  | Charli XCX
Pop2
On December 15 2017, Pop 2 heralded in the new year with such force and style that it should top this list too. A perfect album.
Favorite: entirety |
| 25 |  | Tropical Fuck Storm
A Laughing Death in Meatspace
a laughing death… in meatspace
Favorite: “Chameleon Paint” |
| 24 |  | The Body
I have fought against it, But I can’t any longer
succumb and smile
Favorite: “Partly Alive” |
| 23 |  | Grouper
Grid of Points
stop looking at it
Favorite: ??? |
| 22 |  | Yves Tumor
Safe in the Hands of Love
The millennials are at it again.
Favorite: “Noid” |
| 21 |  | Lonnie Holley
MITH
A sobering, spiritual balm that will still fuck you up. Burly Americana jazz or something.
Favorite: “I Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America” |
| 20 |  | DJ Koze
knock knock
Electronic music’s smartest class clown finesses his seriocomic talents into a more organic melting pot of sounds and influences, from soul to house to the outer limits.
Favorite: “This is My Rock” |
| 19 |  | Tirzah
Devotion
The surprisingly good alt-pop R&B album that is really hard to write about without sounding ridiculous. Mica Levi continues to be one of the most exciting, dependable, and slept-on producers of the past two decades.
Favorite: “Holding On” |
| 18 |  | Low
Double Negative
You Won’t Not Get What You Need
Favorite: “Tempest” |
| 17 |  | Daughters
You Won't Get What You Want
Industrial sonic abrasion as pure pop confection. Doctor recommends double the lethal dose.
Favorite: “Satan in the Wait” |
| 16 |  | Chris Reimer
Hello People
A post-humous release from the former guitarist for Women that collects his private ambient recordings, the proceeds of which go toward the Chris Reimer Legacy Fund for Calgary youth music and dance education. Even as a pronounced Women fan, the quality of this batch of ambient folk guitar was a surprise, mesmerizing melodies and noise arranged with a patience that suggests the work of private concerns of no greater import, a rebuke of the public strain that once sharpened his chords into jagged angles.
Favorite: “French Death” |
| 15 |  | Jenny Hval
The Long Sleep
How do you account for an artist who returns to the same well only to find the properties of the water has shifted into something richer, more bountiful, splendid and refreshing? Does the soil leak through the stone? Is it the way our heroine pulls at the rope? Is it the incantation she whispers down the hole?
Favorite: SONG OF THE YEAR “Spells” |
| 14 |  | Tim Hecker
Konoyo
A foreign, garish, nightmarish dystopia, but at least Tim made friends…
Favorite: “Keyed out” |
| 13 |  | Robyn
Honey
Robyn walked so Fever Ray could run but the hare is sleeping, here comes the tortoise…
Favorite: “Baby Forgive Me / Send to Robin Immediately / Honey” |
| 12 |  | Beach House
7
An Urban Outfitters ‘Loveless’ but it’s on sale and in just your size…
Favorite: “Dive” |
| 11 |  | Noname
Room 25
https://gph.to/2QEsClJ
Favorite: “Ace” |
| 10 |  | Skee Mask
Compro
Music Has The Right To Intersectional Children [12x]
Favorite: “50 Euro to Break Boost” |
| 9 |  | Thou
Magus
Your fave could never [rebuke all desire to succumb to corrosive idolatry and the impulse to capitulation while delivering three of the year’s most eclectic extended plays culminating in the most generous heavy music of the year].
Favorite: “In the Kingdom of Meaning” |
| 8 |  | GAS
Rausch
The bells toll / You are not alone / The murmur in the forest / The murmur in the head / Light as mist / Heavy as lead / Music happens / To flow like gas |
| 7 |  | Kacey Musgraves
Golden Hour
The perfect positive correlation between poptimism and objectivity, mapping x- and y- values in the constellations.
Favorite: “Slow Burn” |
| 6 |  | Yo La Tengo
There’s A Riot Going On
Preeminent indie rockstars turn further ambient, sedate, lifting on their 15th record, “infinite in their abilities to turn comfort zones into a charming odyssey of epic mundanity.”
Favorite: “You Are Here” |
| 5 |  | Earl Sweatshirt
Some Rap Songs
It’s a feeling / I woke up to it / Heavy, alight with trueness / Always aware of losing / Compelled to knew it / My body traveled / My mind waits behind the music / My crime bemuses / Relax inside my shiny blueness / Time: I understand it / But I never choose it / I can’t explain it with words / I have to do it
Favorite: “Ontheway!” |
| 4 |  | Anna von Hausswolff
Dead Magic
[…] a gothic cathedral of atmosphere […] culled from doom metal and post-rock and fastened together with a medieval hauberk […] a delicate thing of […] reverence […] and […] sinister devices.
Favorite: “The Truth, the Glow, the Fall” |
| 3 |  | DJ Healer
Nothing 2 Loose
The good Lord dabbles with four-on-the-floor; floods the plains.
Favorite: “We Are Going Nowhere” |
| 2 |  | Julia Holter
Aviary
... the stunning architecture / fills with wind …
Favorite: “Chaitius” |
| 1 |  | Sophie
Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides
Sophie’s proper debut already feels like a landmark album, an iconoclastic blast of pop confetti and battering rams that draws lines as thick and textured as concrete slabs between synth-pop and industrial club music. Each song rings distinct in her oeuvre despite the precedents, and yet for all its whiplash segues and structural oddities, it hangs together with a purpose that mends the sharp edges into one cosmic, miraculous whole. What once scanned as well-crafted but ironically-distanced “deconstructed” pop (bolstered by her connections with the still-divisive PC Music) is now rendered vividly, achingly more-than human, a template not just for pop’s further exploration through genre boundaries but for the queer expression it galvanizes.
Favorite: “Pretending / Immaterial” |
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