100-76 | 75-51 | 50-31 | 30-11 | 10-1

100. The Menzingers – On the Impossible Past

[Spotify] // [Review]

The urge to repost lyrics in lieu of a blurb? Strong. (In all caps, obviously.) Maybe italicised, maybe emboldened, undoubtedly justified. That’d require, though, some prior knowledge of the album, its melodies; and as much as I’d like it to be, this isn’t karaoke. (You might as well listen to the album; not a bad idea.) A case regardless:

Despite my unfortunate Australian identity, On the Impossible Past makes me feel American. A weird thing, I imagine; after all, I don’t feel Japanese driving my girlfrend’s Toyota, listening to Kero Kero Bonito. (Make a bounce playlist: start with Iggy, transition into KKB’s ‘Trampoline’. You won’t regret it, I promise.) It’s testament, though, to the impressive songwriting capacity of the band’s two frontmen, Greg Barnett and Tom May — their underwrought narratives, and the ease with which one relates to them. And though it’s far from the album’s best song (fans could debate this forever), nowhere is this better epitomised than on closer ‘Freedom Bridge’, a song that anthemises (with irony, of course) suicide, detailing in vignette-form the short lives of victims of the so-called American dream. It is, as far as I’m concerned, a perfect (pop) punk song, perfect in its capacity to make earnest and powerful a line that would work in no other context: SOMETHING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO HELL / THE NEW GUARD THEY TOOK MY SISTER. What does it mean? Who cares, sing along. –BlushfulHippocrene

99. The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

[Spotify] // [Review]

An Empty Bliss Beyond This World is a uniquely affecting album of ambient music and a staggering step forward in the modernist project of depicting alienation. The alienation I’m talking about isn’t the kind where one finds themselves estranged from friends or family, or even society; this alienation runs deeper. One could call it metaphysical: An Empty Bliss seems to describe a world that has been emptied not only of people but even of the observing consciousness processing this emptiness, giving it some kind of form. What does a world unseen, “solitary like a pool at evening,” look like? Leyland Kirby is happy to guide listeners’ conceptual procedure by adducing a famous study in which Alzheimer’s patients were found to recall memories and sensations, otherwise obscure to them, by listening to music from their past. (Kirby slyly figures “music remembered from the past” as pre-war parlor jazz cast in a dense cobweb of reverb and looped until it’s not.) In the battle for aesthetic supremacy, in other words, consciousness is, as always, victorious. Nobody can make a piece of art while wholly unmaking themselves in the process. An Empty Bliss nonetheless remains pitched miraculously between an enveloping nothingness and a piercing there-ness—a presence of absence. Form follows function here: the material deterioration indexed by the scratches of 78-inch vinyl against the recording device’s needle, amplified by the intransigent reverb, asks through its very structure whether we ourselves will eventually fade, whether we too will perish. Yes, we must answer. Surely. And yet we remain. –robertsona

98. Nujabes – Spiritual State

[Spotify] // [Review]

For an artist whose affectional songwriting felt uniquely life-affirming, Spiritual State feels ineffably somber. Arriving within a year of Nujabe’s untimely death, the once relaxing beats and piano keys are now achingly melancholic, replacing the airy brio of Metaphorical Music, Modal Soul, and the Samurai Champloo soundtrack. It’s a love letter to Nujabes and his legacy, but keenly aware of the circumstances of its existence. Traditional ‘on brand’ tracks like “Dawn on the Side” and “Prayer” recall the chill leanings of Modal Soul but here the unwound sounds are different. Existing outside of a vacuum, Spiritual State may sound different from its original intent, but its all the more impactful for it. –Eli K.

97. The Smith Street Band – More Scared of You Than You Are of Me

[Spotify] // [Review]

It’s perhaps a little surprising that one of the decade’s most sensitive charters of emotional turbulence should have come out of an all-male Australian punk rock band, but so it went. The Smith Street Band made this mark on the 2010s with four albums which detailed their frontman Wil Wagner’s anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other psychological uglinesses with increasing clarity, culminating in 2017’s More Scared of You…. The record chronicles a destructive relationship, but, despite bubbling with the bitterness of hate-love and then shuddering with the shame that follows it, it doesn’t really feel like a breakup album. Maybe it’s a symptom of just having slipped into my thirties, but More Scared… feels more like a tribute to the trials and tribulations of one’s twenties: the decision paralysis; the increasing sense of smallness; the gradual disappearance of friends; the sudden appearance of responsibility; the conviction that you really should be feeling like a grown-up by now. Yet, for that same reason, it’s also a huge amount of fun. We know what it is to take those hesitant and disaster-laden steps along the awkward path of this decade, and so to watch Wagner and his band take the same, and to see them find reason for hope, laughter and gratitude amongst the inevitable wreckage, is immensely enjoyable. –Matt Wolfe

96. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Skeleton Tree

[Spotify] // [Review]

Whenever I listen to this album, I always have ruminations about Skeleton Tree and how it could have turned out, had Arthur Cave not passed away. Previous research indicates that the band were in the midst of making Skeleton Tree before the tragic event occurred, which proves Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds were already diving deep into something really dour and intense anyway. But unfortunately, the horrendous news that Nick’s fifteen-year-old son, Arthur Cave, had died from a cliff fall came to be, and with it came unmitigated effects on Skeleton Tree‘s development. As such, Skeleton Tree is, arguably, the rawest Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds album to date, offering an intensely poignant and transparent dive into themes of loss, grief and death. Housed in a brittle, electronic skeletal husk, Skeleton Tree‘s entire demeanour is worn-down and lethargic; a set-piece of minimal, whirring ambiences that delicately tiptoe around Cave’s incredible poetry and lamented words. Make no mistake; this is a difficult listen. You have to be in the right frame of mind to venture through this decaying, barren wasteland. But when you’re in your right mind to take Skeleton Tree in, it’s a beautifully bleak journey, and quite like nothing else. –Simon

95. D’Angelo – Black Messiah

[Spotify] // [Review]

The 2010s brought us a whole bevy of brilliant projects by popular and acclaimed black American musicians who wanted to stage a highly visible response to the multitude of grievances faced by their people in the context of deep-rooted structural racism. Bolstered by the arrival of the Black Lives Matter movement nationwide, this approach to aesthetics-as-politics rose precipitously to the very cream of the crop of popular music, in no small part thanks to the rousing critical and commercial success of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. But what about what came before? I’m no music historian or sociologist, but even a cursory listen to D’Angelo’s bold and beautiful Black Messiah, released 14 whole (and evidently very troubled) years after the celebrated Voodoo–and three months before Butterfly–gives one a sense of the profound connections between the agitations of popular artists now and those who were carving out a musical space for themselves generations ago. Straddling the sonic tenets established by rebellious and politically conscious titans of funk, soul, psychedelic rock, and acoustic balladry, D’Angelo is just as serious about the content of an inflammatory Khalid Abdul Muhammad speech—”When I say Jesus, I’m not talking about some blond-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned, buttermilk complexion cracker Christ!”—as he is about the unrelenting intensity of the Questlove drumbeat layered over that speech. Could it be that he considers them inseparable, constituent parts of the same ethos? Can aesthetics truly function as politics? Looking forward and backward and right at you, D’Angelo’s consummate artistry will disarm any notion that music can’t change the world–or at least how we see it. Black Messiah presides without a hint of pretension over the multifarious melange of genres and styles that became gleefully difficult to separate out during the past decade. Praise be. –robertsona

94. Grouper – A I A: Alien Observer

[Spotify] // [Review]

Liz Harris, one of the most popular ambient and drone artists of the 21st century thus far, doesn’t like to stick with one idea for long in her discography, but her wayward travels never earned a more fully engaged and passionate performance than on the double album A I A. Alien Observer, in particular, is the masterpiece of the twinned releases, as Grouper turns to a well of therapeutic songcraft and to a reverb-heavy production ethos that leaves her guitar chords lit up hanging, trembling in the sonic background. Jean-Pierre Leaud, in the film The Mother and the Whore, promises his audience that there exist movies that “teach us how to live”. Alien Observer is an album that teaches me how to live. It is one of the very rare albums that fully engages me in an embodied practice of mindfulness of the world around me, but it also envelops me in the vast lacuna of the mysterious unknown. A sparkling nugget in the grand tradition of aesthetic escapism, the album’s weighty yet intimate production and cloudy swathes of electric guitar work to dissolve boundaries between musician and listener, between listener and world. I listen to Alien Observer to experience oneness. Who among us can say where the sky ends and where it begins? –robertsona

93. The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream

[Spotify] // [Review]

An original fusion of musical traditions like Americana, shoegazing, dream pop, and indie rock reaches its peak on the third The War on Drugs album. The band achieve greatness here thanks to impeccable attention to detail and beautifully realized musical passages throughout. “Under the Pressure” begins with an urgent rhythm and gorgeous guitars that build and build until devolving into an ambient outro. “An Ocean Between The Waves” similarly keeps an infectious energy going for seven minutes and proves to be one of the band’s best songs. Lost in the Dream in an incredibly compelling record with extended jamming and layers of sound indulging in melancholy. “Disappearing” is moodier, with a beautiful descending piano melody anchoring the song while guitar soloing and layers of sound ebb and flow in the background. The band have released a highly impressive run of albums this past decade, but Lost in the Dream is a stunning display with profound lyrics and detailed, gorgeous compositions. –Ben K.

92. The National – Sleep Well Beast

[Spotify] // [Review]

With 2017’s Sleep Well Beast, The National finally lost their grip on a run of improbably consistent albums dating all the way back to 2005’s Alligator. Yet its inclusion on our list is fully deserved because it also contains some of the band’s best work. “Nobody Else Will Be There” is not just one of the band’s best openers, but one of the decade’s, a song which captures a moment of adulthood-fatigue with such photographic precision that it should be hung in a gallery. “Carin at the Liquor Store” produces a piano line so exquisite it needs bottling, so that I can open a liquor store, stock it with the stuff, call it Carin’s, and never let anyone in. “Sleep Well Beast” is the perfect glitchy closer, crawling along on its eight legs and providing the best environment for Berninger’s soothing, slightly slurred baritone, forever trailing off and leaving you to follow it into the next room. And, hot take of the decade, even “Turtleneck” is maybe kind of okay too. –Matt Wolfe

91. The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten

[Spotify] // [Review]

The apprentice works his fingers to the bone on his way to journeyman before becoming the master in his trade. The heralded prospect sharpens his skill set in the minor leagues before getting the call to the majors. The entry-level associate pulls long hours, which bleeds into longer hours as a supervisor, and even longer still as she graduates to the corner office as CEO. These are tales as old as time, paralleled by The Gaslight Anthem’s similar trajectory in cultivating a rabid following from the ground up, pivoting from independent SideOneDummy and signing with Mercury Records. No, despite all the shimmer and sheen producer Brendan O’Brien pumps Handwritten with, it doesn’t soar to The ’59 Sound‘s highest apexes. No, the Springsteen, Petty, and Mellencamp allusions won’t go away. Yes, a razor-thin margin separates the trio of “’45′”, “Handwritten”, and “Here Comes My Man” (with its resplendent, Van Morrison- or Thin Lizzy-like “Oh, sha-la-la”s) as the New Jersey quartet’s best three cuts to open an album since the quintessential run that is “Great Expectations”, “The ’59 Sound”, and “Old White Lincoln”. Despite the sparkling glitz and glamour, Gaslight’s workmanlike ethos is never lost. Wistful nostalgia permeates throughout Handwritten, so while the roulette wheel of female character names and romanticizing the construct of ‘the radio’ might be de-emphasized, Brian Fallon’s earnestness in his narratives remains as steadfast as ever — and “Mae” integrates the two aforementioned elements anyway without sounding hackneyed. Handwritten is a pure rock-and-roll record through-and-through, but the band’s punk origins aren’t completely eradicated. Raucous “Hey-ey-eyy”s notwithstanding, “Howl” sounds frustratingly incomplete, yet it’s one of the band’s most enticing numbers in their entire discography, and it’s criminal that “Blue Dahlia” didn’t make the standard edition tracklist. “’45′” invokes perseverance and hope in the form of vinyl and an engine, with guitarist Alex Rosamilia’s leads burning hottest here and on “Mulholland Drive”. Not to be outdone, Benny Horowitz and Alex Levine shine in the bluesy, stomping “Biloxi Parish”, although their reliability has never been put into question. Even though Gaslight’s dissolution can be solely attributed to Fallon, who has quipped that he doesn’t have “a Born to Run in [him]” and that he “doesn’t have anything to say with Gaslight,” he masterfully balances catharsis and control throughout the record, with his gritty lower register effortlessly complementing his cleaner, resonating vocal lines. This effortlessness is neatly juxtaposed with how seamless it is for listeners to connect to Fallon’s emblematic, biographical storytelling. As I sit here greyer than I was a decade ago, Handwritten indisputably belongs in our Top 100 of the 2010s — even if it’s selfishly “to ease the loss of youth.” –Jom

90. The Brave Little Abacus – Just Got Back from the Discomfort…

[Spotify] // [Review]

I don’t know how this album made it onto this list. (Trebor.’s placement must have pushed it over that edge, amplified it beyond its weight.) It deserves it, though. Conjuring images not only of The Brave Little Toaster, but also its own (imagined, by me) animated television series, The Emo Band That Could, the band’s name positions the members of the band as underdogs of sorts, this prior to any knowledge of their sound (math rock? emo?) or history (defunct? per Trebor.’s lovely blog piece, “The Most Underrated Band on the Planet”?). A sound and history that’s difficult to explain: Like throwing candy at the wall to see what sticks. Like watching Rugrats as a 22-year-old and identifying with its infant characters. Like trying to justify the importance of an album to an audience of readers, mostly music listeners, who may or may not have heard it, may or may not have identified, resonated with its charm — frontman Adam Demirjian’s awkward, teenage lisp; the sometimes somber, mostly chaotic, always sweet instrumentation of the band behind him; the Malcolm in the Middle samples. However one identifies with the music on Just Got Back from the Discomfort…, though, this much is true: its placement on this list (and this high!) is, though in some ways miraculous, ultimately reflective of the band’s reach beyond their relatively small, maybe eventually forgotten beginnings. I can only hope that, through this screen, they reach you. –BlushfulHippocrene

89. Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising

[Spotify] // [Review]

Titanic Rising is a supernaturally immersive piece of art pop, projecting a vintage and maybe slightly “uncool” sense of elegance rather than coarseness. From the slide guitar lining the wordless refrain of “Andromeda” to the restrained (thank God) string arrangement for the elegiac “Picture Me Better,” the choices Natalie Mering makes with her instruments–their timbre as well as their distribution across the sonic fabric–reinforce the romantic and lightly nostalgic vibe of her words (opening line: “If I could go back to a time…”). And where the aforementioned “art pop” might be a highly contingent genre label, maybe even a silly one, Weyes Blood here straddles and at the same time knowingly confounds the boundaries between the two generic poles contained therein. Once we’ve finished the swinging “Everyday,” with its extended parade of an outro, where have we landed? What about the Joni Mitchell-esque ballad “Something to Believe,” pitched one level above the pack in the complexity of its construction? Simple sentiments are bent and reshaped in their multifarious musical contexts; musical ideas that scan as immediately pleasurable are deepened by throaty and profound words. This shit is dialectical. My favorite moment of all, the one that really convinces me this lady knows her way around expectations and their deconstruction, acts as the lyrical climax of the magisterial synth-arpeggio ditty “Movies”. A one and a two and a three: “I love movies.” -robertsona

88. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

[Spotify] // [Review]

Memories, dreams, and experiences are the backbone of human life. M83 harness feelings of nostalgia and bliss in Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming; twenty-two songs that could back a Bellagio Fountain show. Whether it is a booming track like “Echoes of Mine” or the up-tempo “New Map,” M83 show a master class in cohesion. M83 douse listeners with synth-pop riddled with messages of living in the moment while embracing the past. Look no further than “Midnight City,” which took the world by storm as one of the catchiest songs of this decade. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is a journey through a life reinvigorated, and as we enter this new decade, it feels more needed than ever. –IsItLuck?

87. My Bloody Valentine – m b v

[YouTube] // [Review]

Loveless deserved a follow-up. Or rather, the genre it defined deserved Kevin Shields. The neat trick of that seminal masterpiece is its genialness, the way its revolutionary production practices are offset by warm, fluid melodies and plaintive expressions. People speak of it in reverent whispers because it induces something hallucinatory and grounded, the dulcet tones of romantic longing that proved Shields created a language with his music that went beyond simple genre trappings. There is something aching and exploratory about its make-up that suggests a step not yet taken within the My Bloody Valentine discography, that perfecting this sonic world now might later free its creator to carve bolder canyons into its crust. In this regard, mbv is a perfect successor, the trademark pink reverb lending texture to a rich patchwork of genre-bending records that would feel as natural in 1993 as they are revelatory in 2013. Sequenced to accentuate its evolutions, the album expends with its woozy Loveless palette as a welcome concession upfront before dovetailing into surprisingly abstract experiments in style of drone and drum ‘n’ bass, never losing the punch of its melodic sensibilities; in some cases stirring them from the bottom end of pummeling drum patterns to head-turning effect. Just another disorienting shift in this exquisite album, each track acting as another exemplar of what, exactly, shoegaze has been missing in the 22 years it took for its most important orator to find the words for now. –plane

86. Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel…

[Spotify] // [Review]

In an interview with NPR, Fiona Apple talked about what she felt was her most important lesson on the path to adulthood, and it was this: “to give up (in the nicest way)”. This unintuitive, liberating insight finds expression (in the nicest way) in The Idler Wheel…. When every single night’s a fight, but every single fight’s alright, we hear what happens when an artist doesn’t try to vaporise, minimise, rationalise, or otherwise neutralise uncomfortable feelings. On the contrary, Apple wants to feel everything. As a result, Apple’s ten songs seem to emerge as extensions of herself, extractions of mind gliding into the world, uninterrupted and untainted by second-thought complications and reevaluations. The heavily animalistic and sometimes violent imagery, the jittery percussion, the off-kilter twists and turns, and, of course, Apple’s inimitable voice, soothing, biting, teasing, caterwauling by turns, all speak to this celebration of the limbic system. “If you’re not overflowing with something,” Apple once said, “there’s nothing to give”. An overflowing is the perfect image for The Idler Wheel…, and we’re all the richer for the runoff. –Matt Wolfe

85. Danny Brown – XXX

[Spotify] // [Review]

A good few high profile, mostly young, hip hop-centred deaths in the latter half of the 2010s. XXXTENTACION. Lil Peep. Mac Miller. Two overdoses, one shooting. In each of these cases, a declaration of prophecy, even martyrdom. One can’t help but wonder, then, what kind of mythos might have surrounded XXX – the album, not the artist – had Danny Brown actually, as the song goes, died like a rockstar: ‘Cause bitch I’m Frankie Lymon, Heath Ledger / Hyped up in a jacuzzi, doing that John Belushi / With Brittany Murphy, we blowin’ hershey / I’ma die like a rockstar.

One that overemphasises his foresight, undoubtedly, that gives too much credence to his prophetic capacity to predict his own death on songs like ‘Die Like a Rockstar’; that undermines what was (and, thankfully, still is) his music, in favour of what could have been, that immense potentiality. True, we wouldn’t have gotten Atrocity Exhibition – an album on which Brown arguably reaches the potential ostensibly hinted at on XXX – or last year’s uknowhatimsayin¿ which, as Rowan so eloquently puts it, is where “the Hybrid and the Abstract connect”. But what Danny does on these later albums (with, admittedly, a greater amount of finesse), he does on XXX with far less pretense and, I’m willing to argue, far more charm. Which isn’t to detract from them, but XXX is undoubtedly where Danny proves himself. On it, the rapper renders the obvious with impressive subtlety, finding himself in a balance act between the fun-loving, drug-addicted Danny of the past, and the maturer, scene-dominating Danny of the future. It’s a blend of fun and profundity that makes XXX so effective. If there’s a glorification of addiction, it’s met with equal parts reality check. It’s a fine line, sure, and I can’t really say how well Danny toes it – but he and his listener have a damn fine doing it. –BlushfulHippocrene

84. Tame Impala – Lonerism

[Spotify] // [Review]

The best Tame Impala record does what any sophomore effort should do: build on what made the debut work and make it even better. Innerspeaker remains a wonderful, sunny psych-rock album and Lonerism stays in that wheelhouse while covering more musical terrain and being even more unconventional. “Keep on Lying” descends into a full-fledged instrumental jamming session of guitar riffing and cosmic sound effects in the second half. “Elephant” begins as a standard Led Zeppelin tribute song, until the amazing bridge section swiftly takes the listener on a mind-bending journey of guitar and synth soloing before landing right back to Led Zeppelin tribute land. Kevin Parker proves himself a remarkably skilled songwriter with these blissful experimental rock songs dressed up as pop rock hits. The most straightforward track, “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” is a contender for best pop song of the decade. As always with Parker, the production and mixing is top notch and allows for the at times dense compositions to shine through a clear yet surreal haze. Lonerism is a consistently fantastic effort that shows off all of Parker’s strengths. The songwriting is taken to a new level and makes for the most memorable, rewarding, and best Tame Impala album. –Ben K.

83. Brandi Carlile – By the Way, I Forgive You

[Spotify] // [Review]

Brandi Carlile’s 2018 masterwork, By the Way, I Forgive You, was transcendent, uplifting, empowering, and authoritative in that most critical dimension I can think of—sincerity. While I’m always inherently skeptical of late-decade entries to these sorts of lists, and the invisible hand of recency bias interfering with the SeRiOuS BuSiNeSs of figuring out which hundred records truly earned their spots here, I’m not really concerned about this album proving its mettle. In an era where it seems to be getting easier and easier to slip into the darkest, loneliest features of our relationships—with loved ones, with strangers, with art—Carlile gave us a record where empathy bleeds from every song and the urgency of truth in perspective hits harder than ever. By the Way, I Forgive You represents a peak in the career of one of music’s great storytellers and one that enriches her past work because of the way it colors her authority over the march of time’s arrow. –theacademy

82. Earl Sweatshirt – I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside

[Spotify] // [Review]

Earl Sweatshirt raps like he’s running for his life and has all the time in the world to do it. Try not to marvel at how he wraps an unassuming monotone around a compact labyrinth of bars like “lately I’ve been panicking a lot, feelin’ like I’m stranded in a mob, scramblin’ for Xanax out the canister to pop”, and does it seemingly without effort. Earl’s skill with production is too often unheralded; beneath his bars the rapper traces dusty, skeletal outlines which actively seem to decay, lacing his relaxed voice with a shroud of existential dread that’s both exquisite and terrifying to hear. When music and lyrics work perfectly in tandem – as they do on the unbelievable “Huey”/”Mantra” opening salvo, on “Faucet”‘s dusty hazed-out nod, of course on “Grief”‘s fathoms-deep bone rattle – Earl makes a case for himself as one of the most well-rounded talents in hip-hop today. And even though I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside can’t quite hold that laser focus all the way through, there’s a different kind of brilliance in how Earl’s hermit-like isolation inside his own beats gives way – making room for a few dusty shafts of sunlight, the voices of some friends, something like camaraderie. –Rowan

81. Circa Survive – Blue Sky Noise

[Spotify] // [Review]

Waxing poetic is a pitfall with these types of album retrospectives, but Circa Survive makes it easy to avoid. Blue Sky Noise isn’t the sound of the decade. It isn’t a genre referendum or a ‘sign of the times.’ It’s simply the Warped Tour style alt-prog the band excels in, honed to acid-washed perfection. Each song, replete with loopy guitars and Anthony Green’s signature vocals is a joyous and rollicking adventure; breathless and lively from the beginning of “Stranger Terrain” to the beautiful end of “Dyed In The Wool.” Even the morose “Spirit of the Stairwell” has a certain buoyancy to it, though unfettered by the show-stopping exuberance of “Get Out” and “Imaginary Enemy.” This collection of songs has been, for ten years, unmatched by the band and their contemporaries; the product of a self-assured group playing to its strengths. The peerless result is one of this decade’s most endlessly exciting and fun albums. –Eli K.

80. FKA Twigs – Magdalene

[Spotify] // [Review]

Last April, FKA Twigs chose to release the heart-rending, utterly desolate, heart-bleeding-like-a-haemophiliac Cellophane as a lead single. A bold enough decision; in choosing to close Magdelene with it, the starkest and barest song on the album, her creative process transmogrifies into something audacious. The song, about the dissolution of the relationship and the blame and self-recrimination which necessarily follows, is the kind of utterly bleak closer that takes gumption to pull off. It’s not a one-song album, of course – with Magdelene, Fallen Alien and Daybed on the curriculum vitae it’s bound to be strong throughout – but by closing with a thesis statement which confronts the suggestion that people are destined to hurt each other in ways small and large, and the more one invests the more hurt accrues, the album proves itself achingly human (that in spite of the abounding extraterrestrial, religious allusions). FKA Twigs always demonstrated potential swallowed up by forced quirk and peccadillo. On this album she reconciles it into a powerful, humane and courageously honest statement. –Winesburgohio

79. Vektor – Terminal Redux

[Spotify] // [Review]

Upon its release in 2016, Terminal Redux was received very positively by critics and fans alike. Its progressive leanings, courtesy of innovators like Voivod, Death, and Rush, provided a much-needed air of freshness in an otherwise saturated genre, and its unique approach separated it from an array of thrash metal LPs that saw the light of day during the past decade. Vektor’s third effort is quite dense, but at the same time, the sheer number of inspired riffs, solos, twists, and turns, make up for an extremely engaging listen. The Arizona outfit filtered its influences, pushed its boundaries, and came up with a sound entirely its own. Terminal Redux is complex, demanding, rewarding, and absolutely brilliant; it’s a modern classic and the best thrash metal album of the past decade. –manosg

78. Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear

[Spotify] // [Review]

Josh Tillman’s Father John Misty is an exercise in balance and excess. This is a vanity project that’s in on the joke and peppered with moments of incredible sincerity during its rare bouts of lucidity. On I Love You, Honeybear, his preacher-pastiche hits its artistic peak by walking a tightrope between sarcastic eye-rolls and genuine insights into the man behind the mask. This is an album that acknowledges, then dismantles, the fourth wall. Between layers of irony and self-effacing humour is a flawed man standing behind a flawed character masking his insecurities with an oddly-timed laugh track and soaring-but-smooth vocal melodies.

I Love You, Honeybear‘s deeply cynical energy somehow rarely feels at odds with the loving stories it tells. This is a carefully crafted album, and it shows. The electronically-tinged “True Affection” manages to take aim at digital isolation without dumbing its thesis down to “phone bad,” and the shockingly mean spirited “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.” is dripping with enough layers of self-loathing that the listener almost goes from relating-to to rooting for its callous narrator. Crazier still, neither sounds out of place on an album inspired by and dedicated to the love of his life. I Love You, Honeybear is singer-songwriter done fun, a sentiment rarely considered in an era littered with sad white guys mumbling over acoustic guitars and a pile of bad side-projects that would have been better left in the basement. It’s the perfect storm of an artist cocky enough to know he’s at the top of his game and talented enough to pull it off. –Tyler

77. Phoebe Bridgers – Stranger in the Alps

[Spotify] // [Review]

“Smoke Signals” has a lot of references. From “Walden,” to Lemmy and “Ace of Spades,” to Bowie, and “How Soon is Now?” And that eerie bassline has to be a Twin Peaks reference. Everything about the song is so familiar, and since it already has so many references whenever I listen to it I start to overanalyze and see things that aren’t there like Charlie Kelly with his Pepe Silvia collage. “Burning trash out on the beach,” yes, there’s a Mark Kozelek cover on the album so this has to be a “Carissa” reference. Bury the hatchet, definitely Insane Clown Posse. “Coming up lavender,” coming up Milhouse? “Your dad lived in a campground in the back of a van,” of course a woman of such culture as Phoebe Bridgers would reference that classic Farley SNL sketch. I realized this overanalyzing is just a facade, a way to lessen the blow that is this song on my emotions. The veil is lifted when she gets to “You are anonymous, I am a concrete wall” and I’m crying for the fiftieth time. And that’s only the first song. The rest of Stranger in the Alps hits like a ton of bricks. It’s emotionally exhausting, overwhelming to the point of agony, and yet I always come back for more. –Trebor.

76. Teebs – E S T A R A

[Spotify] // [Review]

E S T A R A is gorgeous. It is electronic music awash in rustling rhythms and sun-dappled melodies that are stitched with exquisite detail, blended together with watercolor vibrancy. Teebs compiles his music in a modest bedroom setup with Fruity Loops, but the pointilism of his compositions belies his celebrated work as a painter; there appears to be nothing synthetic about this music. E S T A R A is written with a nuanced sense of melancholy that only enhances the joy bubbling through his looped samples of birds and windchimes, shaming the rote slacker vibe of his Spotify-algorithm peers. –plane

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