| 4.0 excellent |
| Andrew Reed If All The World Were Right |
| Nothing wrong with good pop/rock, and this one is a very sophisticated, listenable version. |
| Astral Cloud Ashes Dear Absentee Creator |
| Even if you don't care about the story of the Bitcoin creator, the bands take on Dinosaor Jr./Husker Du/Death Cab For Cutie combination should. |
| Aurganic Distant Echoes and Close Encounters |
| The album covers a lot of musical ground - from Postal Service to Radiohead. |
| Beach Skulls Las Dunas |
| Benjamin Dean Wilson The Smartest Person in the Room |
| A former filmmaker turns to music and storytelling with excellent results. |
| Black To Comm Seven Horses For Seven Kings |
| Cary Heuchert Blue Rain |
| An excellent musical overview of late psychedelic/early progressive sounds |
| Dan Tuffy Letters of Gold |
| Excellent songwriting, a great singing voice, and a great knack for a good melody. |
| David Williams Tipping My Hat To Leonard |
| A cross between Tom Waits and Randy Newman that works on all levels. |
| Den of Ashes Garden of Ashes |
| Den of Ashes tries to combine Seventies country rocks tendencies with modern touches, and succeeds. |
| Eric Frisch Late In The Night |
| A great, late night piano pop influenced by the likes of The Beatles and Real Estate. |
| Giant Flying Turtles Waltz To The World |
| An ecclectic and versitile band cover the ground between Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead. |
| Groupoem Dirt Church |
| A great post-punk album in the tradition of Husker Du and Minutemen. |
| Jasmine Karimova From the Womb |
| An excellent, surprising debut album from a media artist living in Amsterdam with an intriguing voice. |
| JP Harris Sometimes Dogs Bark At Nothing |
| A true find among the pile of 'standard' country music releases. |
| K-HAM CA Astro Traveling 2: Albatros Hill |
| To make a good beat sampling album you don't only have to have good beats, but also to perfectly tackle the samples you're using and K-HAM CA does that. |
| Kachinga Sky Falling |
| Canadian Katchinga has come up with one of the best debut hip-hop albums of 2018. |
| Mah-Ze-Tar Mah-Ze-Tar |
| What world fusion music should sound like, where neither world or electronics dominate but work in unison. |
| Morgan X Barrie Fall |
| The Canadian singer/songwriter that pulls all the right strands from Neil Young and Nick Drake. |
| Negativehate Solipsis |
| From metal to harmony vocals to progressive and back. |
| Nick Campbell Destroys Lo-fi Bass Music for Quarantine |
| There might be a lo-fi in the title of this EP, but the jazz-funk presented is of high quality. |
| Populuxe Lumiere |
| The missing link between the Sixties melody rock and bands like XTC brought to today. |
| Ryan Dugre The Humors |
| Seabuckthorn A House With Too Much Fire |
| Seabuckthorn presents musical images that are focused, melodic and experimental at the same time. |
| Tango With Lions The Light |
| While labeled as shoegaze, this album goes much wider in its scope |
| The Cool Moonmist Mountain Band Fire Sign EP |
| Tryin to fuse trip-hop, ambient and electro and making it! |
| The General Maynyrd Band The General Maynyrd Band |
| West Coast Sound combined with Southern Rock the way it should be done. |
| Theresa Lucia Boxes |
| One of those debuts where you can immediately spot the strengths, in this case, Lucia's vocals and her songwriting. |
| 3.5 great |
| Agency Philosophies |
| Yet another good combination of earlier r&b and soul sounds with the modern beats and hip-hop innovations and socially conscious lyrics. |
| Alya Ten Years of Solitude |
| Good pop music is one of the hardest things to make, you have to stick to a formula and be inventive at the same time. |
| Andrew Reed As a Bird of the Air... |
| On his latest album, Reed tries to resurrect the Eighties sounds of Tom Petty and Echo & The Bunnymen and bring them into this century. |
| Chickn Wowsers! |
| Chris Ianuzzi Olga In A Black Hole |
| A classical composer that crosses the border into electronics with both ambient and techno leanings. |
| Damon Mitchell Elise |
| A bit of The Beatles, a bit of Steely Dan turns into a powerpop/jazz-pop combination. |
| Eric Anders and Mark O’Bitz This Mortal Force |
| Even though they didn't end up on their previous album, these songs still resound with quality and message. |
| Faces on TV Night Funeral |
| An excellent official debut by the Belgian musician/producer who has already made a name for himself in his native country. |
| Fracktura Oculus |
| A good, promising combination of few old progressive styles. |
| Galapaghost Pulse |
| A mixture of musical styles combined with lyrics that make you stop and think for a while |
| Galapaghost Sootie |
| Does a great job crossing lines between electro pop, ambient, and rock. |
| GEA Butterflies |
| Finnish singer GEA is on a good track to earn that often misused epithet ethereal. |
| Ghost Color American Book of The Dead |
| If you're in for something leaning towards heavier sounds, be it grunge or even shoegaze, definitely worth checking out. |
| Good Field Surface Tension |
| An excellent take on the Wilco/The War On Drugs Sound with shades of the Nineties. |
| Ivan Beecroft Dirty Lie |
| A great combination of classic rock and Eighties alternative sounds |
| Ivan Beecroft The Cynical Express |
| Jackson Price and The Blues Rockets I Used to Have Fun |
| Has all the key qualities for a good roots album - great playing, good singing, and original tunes. |
| Jane in Space Gorerunner |
| Thoughtful and detailed industrial that doesn't strictly stick to genre rules. |
| Kate Fenner Middle Voice |
| An emotionally charged album form the Canadian singer. |
| Kid Lab Rat More Sad Songs |
| Combining hip hop with other genres is not an easy thing, but on "More Sad Songs" Kid Lab Rat does an excellent job of it. |
| King Ropes Green Wolverine |
| An excellent EP that covers the ground between Jeff Tweedy, Velvet Underground to Tom Waits. |
| Mark Peters Spirits |
| Some great vocals and acoustic guitar picking, but much more than just another singer/songwriter. |
| Metaspion Folktronika Schmolkfonika |
| A smooth blend of EDM and Scandinavian folk, more for the dance floor rather than a lounge. |
| My Autumn Amor Letters to Brie |
| A rare exception - singer/songwriter that is not afraid to rock out. |
| Oliver Cheung Remembrance |
| A progressive/post-rock/metal surprise from Hong Kong with some excellent guitar work. |
| Pale Blue Dot Anatomy |
| A very good take on Pearl Jam/Foo Fighters sound with a social conscience. |
| Patrick Grant A Sequence of Waves (Twelve Stories and a Dream) |
| Paul Maged The Glass River |
| A very accomplished outing from a singer/songwriter who obviously prefers Green Day and REM to Simon and Garfunkel. |
| Paul Maged Culture War |
| Keeping classic hard rock line alive and combining it with some serious social messages. |
| Post Death Soundtrack It Will Come Out Of Nowhere |
| Genre-bending album, covering everything from industrial and death metal to ambient and psych. |
| Ruiners Typecast |
| An excellent post-punk outing from this Houston, Texas band. |
| Ryan Hutchens Last Ten Years |
| It is very hard these days to come up with something good and stand out in the Americana genre, and Hutchens does. |
| Ryan Summers ii |
| A very interesting take on ambient Krautrock and early Eno. |
| Strange Culprits Strange Culprits |
| A great debut by a trio that does simple things the way they should be done. |
| The Blue Collar Army Norrland |
| The Swedish heavy purveyors with a sound that is not easy to categorize, spanning a few things from screamo to post-rock. |
| The Noise Figures Telepath |
| Excellent take on classic psychedelia from this Greek duo. |
| The Thirds Dork Matter |
| The Thirds pick up where the likes of Minutemen, Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr. left off. |
| Todd Warner Moore Overnight Flight |
| A singer/songwriter album that grows on you the more you listen to it, showing its intricate details. |
| Trigram Trigram |
| Heavy sounds, heavy thoughts that fall lightly on the ears. |
| Weather McNabb Cubicle Zombie |
| Excellent voice over a souped-up trip hop make a very inviting EP. |
| Wulijimuren Sun of UTC+8 |
| Some brilliant guitar work from a man who made his way from Mongolia to New York. |
| Yvan Poisson Blind Experiment |
| An interesting sampling technique making the beats used hard to recognize. |
| 3.0 good |
| 12xPretty 12xPretty |
| Following in the footsteps of electro-bands that combine pop with more serious lyrics. |
| American Amnesia Yet Here We Are |
| Teenagers that skipped teen pop and dived into more heavier waters, the right way. |
| American High Bones in the Attic, Flowers in the Basement |
| Arden and the Wolves Who Can You Trust |
| Very radio friendly sound with a Ramones cover of particular note. |
| Aya Maguire The Sandcastle King |
| A solid debut effort by a singer/songwriter with a good voice and melodic touch. |
| Barb Carbon The Fighter |
| A solid debut effort that combines all the better elements of rock, country and a dash of soul. |
| Benjamin Elias On The Way |
| Hip hop that does not come from one of the genre's central points, but still works. |
| ButchQueen and the Bad Habits Bare Grits |
| Well played debut EP that mostly stays in the 'pure punk' tradition. |
| Coral the Merknight vs. Searantula It Weaves a Web of Metal |
| A heavy metal spoof that works on quite a few levels. |
| Cordova Runaway Summer |
| Some summer rocking on the heavier side of things. |
| Dark Model Saga |
| An interesting and intriguing variation on orchestral electronics. Quite suited for an anime film. |
| David Thompson The Wall |
| Good electro-pop that brings a social message along with it. |
| Eric Anders Eleven Nine |
| Good, solid album, with very strong political views that are sure to polarize Eric's audiences. |
| Eric Frisch Head Up In The Clouds |
| Henry Metal Metal O'Clock |
| A good, solid attempt to present a variety of heavy metal genres and inject some humor in the lyrics. |
| Henry Metal War In Heaven |
| The fifth release in less than a year continues Henry Metal's journey dominated by heavy riffs and humor. |
| In the Light of Led Zeppelin Pompeii Sessions |
| A tribute band that neither plays Zeppelin note for note nor does it distort the originals beyond recognition. |
| Jon Magnusson Always A Rebel |
| A nice and varied introduction to a Swedish singer/songwriter making splashes on Spotify. |
| Lord Sonny the Unifier All New Information |
| Mailman Yang Yin |
| Something like a traditional prog rock concept double album that works. |
| Marty Thompson Romantic Stories |
| Thompson, an experienced member of many jam bands, comes up with an interesting musical and lyrical concept on his second solo album |
| Matt Townsend The Dream (Part 1) |
| Good combination of early Dylan and Jackson Browne and few other West Coast singer/songwriters. |
| Mavara Consciousness |
| Michael P. Cullen and The Soul Searchers Live at the Lazybones |
| Australian singer/songwriter inspired by his compatriots like Nick Cave and The Saints comes up with a good live EP. |
| Natural Drummer End of Time |
| Minor misgivings about the narration should not detract from a good solid album of heavy prog. |
| Nick Lamb Gettin’ High Off You, Simple Man |
| Nick Lamb manages to cover at least three or four music styles in a span of an EP but will have to decide soon which way he wants to go. |
| Novagolde Novagolde |
| A promising debut EP from a Madison, Wisconsin psych/prog quartet. |
| Psychocide Alcohol and Bad Decisions |
| Revolushn Further!! |
| An inspired take on the late Sixties San Francisco sound with a dash of Midwestern guitar attack. |
| Run DMT Revolutionaire |
| A well crafted, dark sounding dubstep soundtrack to an imaginary movie. |
| Sam Levin I Am |
| Levin is yet another teenager that sounds much more accomplished than his age would indicate. |
| Snailmate Existential Anxiety |
| Quirky post-punk that mixes angular synths, hip-hop and much else. |
| Temporary Hero Indigo |
| Intelligently crafted modern pop done with soul and care. |
| The Goldwyn Experiment Avenue B |
| Good, solid melodic prog, that brings in a number of genres. |
| The League of One Dispatch |
| The League of One is hard at work at making classic heavy metal cool again. |
| Todd Warner Moore Love and Change |
| Singer/songwriters are dime-a-dozen these days, but Warner is certainly above average. |
| Umbrella Bed Rotate |
| Good American ska in the style of the Eighties ska revival lead by Specials and Selecter. |
| Venice May Illusion Is Inevitable |
| Quite a valiant effort from a duo that is searching their place in the crowded space of melodic rock. |
| Versal Self-Titled EP |
| Versal comes up with a promising orchestrally-oriented ambient EP. |
| Veseria RLTVTY |
| Familiar Sixties and Seventies sounds but done with aplomb. |
| Zeistencroix Gemini |
| Accomplished industrial/metal with traces of new directions. |
| zenxienz Cosmosis |
| Cameron Williamson or zenxienz continues on his productive trail based on writing a new song every day. |
