Favorite Albums Of 2018
2018 celebrates ten years of compiling lists of my favorite albums at the end of year and writing about them. Wow. It started on Facebook, moved to my own blog, and 2 years ago, I finally migrated everything here to Medium.
Creating this every year is an arduous task that takes up a good portion of my December nights. I invest a lot of time into thinking about the effect that this music had on me, the feelings it brought out, and the ways it made me think differently—time that has no tangible return. My hope in doing so is that I am able to learn about myself. If not just in looking at the music that soundtracked this past year, perhaps in the music that shaped my past ten years. Or twenty years. Or fifty years.
Music is truly capable of moving us. It can move us to tears, to complete joy, it can move us to action, to anger, to rally together and make change, it can literally make our bodies move in rhythm. So, with that in mind, here are the 20 albums from 2018 that moved me most. (Plus a few extra highlights and lowlights.)
20. Tierra Whack — Whack World
Those who have slipped into the Whack World are quick to highlight its idiosyncratic 15 song 15 minute format, so let’s acknowledge that. Yes, that’s the amount of songs and the length of album. But to harp much longer on that novelty does disservice to the smartness that weaves in and out through the entirety of the album, which shines without regard to its format. Ideas and experimentation zip around loosely painting a colorful, spastic, and endearingly bizarre landscape. It’s a fun house that walks you down a hall of progressively distorted mirrors, the original shape of what you started looking at still there but mostly an unrecognizable mutation. One of the things I enjoy most about this album is the feeling of white knuckling the steering wheel trying to keep up with the changing voices, the kooked references, the insane phrases that are spoken with such confidence and finesse, and the awareness that she’s going to stop on a dime and take the hard left turn. It’s not easy to make something so weird that feels so effortless. Whack World is both of those things.
19. Dream Wife — Dream Wife
Dream Wife follows a well trodden pathway of feminist punk music in their definition of what that looks like in 2018. “I am not my body, I am somebody.” felt as anthemic a line as one could dream up in a time where this sentiment needs to be screamed loudly and clearly. Pairing their cries of the reality of being a woman with the unbridled energy and bursting intensity that is shared equally in their voices and their screeching weirdo guitar riffs, it goes toe to toe with the best moments of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs catalogue. Often building stabby guitar licks into larger than life choruses, each hook catchier than the last, Dream Wife captivated me early this year for its cutting nature and its pump-me-up good feels. They have paired back to the essentials to be clear in their sound and their message, which, if I’m so bold to interpret is: women are powerful.
18. Kamasi Washington — Heaven and Earth
Nothing sounds as big as Kamasi Washington does. He operates at a scale that can only be described as cosmic. The sound is huge, the ideas are huge, the instrumentation is huge, the bravado is huge — it’s an impressive achievement to create and deliver something with such unwavering magnitude.
He continues to find the mechanisms to expand his sound rapidly, stretching out from the center like an elastic — never losing form or identity, but reaching farther and farther outward to the edges of the unknown. Tracks like album opener Fists Of Fury or Vi Lua Vi Sol feel like he is twisting to play the absolutely signature Kamasi Washington sound in ways that are less direct and obvious and in doing so, redefining what the Kamasi Washington sound exactly is.
Heaven and Earth does pick up exactly where Harmony of Difference left off and that is with the sharpening of his ability to create a listening experience that is beyond the auditory. While it may sound like a platitude, the music of Kamasi Washington is as spiritual as it is anything else — including it’s hugeness. With each shrieking blow of the sax, it is as if he is connecting to the spaces between or beyond heaven and earth and it is hard to not be swept by those deep feelings as a listener.
17. Father John Misty — God’s Favorite Customer
“What’s your politics? What your religion?” It takes but a minute and forty seconds before Father John Misty swerves to the typical prickly topic poking you’d expect him to. “What’s your intake? What your reason for living?” But these are just as earnest and introspective questions as they are societally uncomfortable ones — which may clearly paint the picture of where our anti-hero Josh Tillman finds himself on his fourth LP. In a short 6 years since barn storming the scene he’s fought off the psychedelic shaman anointment, the Fleet Foxes mystique (and beef), the pitchforks that come with a Pitchfork Best New Music, and the population who can’t seem to get far enough way from him, to land somewhere pretty accepting of it all, with a sound and message that recognizes that path. God’s Favorite Customer does a lot of good for those who’ve enjoyed any of those past phases, and does a little for the crowd who finds his antics insufferable as well. For as much as Father John Misty can (or is interested in) he’s flashing a moment of relenting realness. He recognizes that everything he’s done and everywhere he’s been comes at a price. In the album’s centerpiece Please Don’t Die he heartbreakingly sings from the perspective of his wife, concerned for his well-being. “You’re too much to lose” she says. If you’re able to hear a cry like that, you best respond.
In what winds up being the tidiest effort since Fear Fun, the record flows nicely — expertly even — and Tillman further cements himself as an all-time great songwriter who’s using his wits to the full extent he’s been gifted. Last year I wrote about Pure Comedy and how he does such a good if not often painful job at forcing you to see the parts of yourself you’d rather weren’t true. This time around he hardly loosens his grip, even coming at it so much more directly. In the way he’s been critical of religion, society, entertainment — each of these things having toxic effects on people, this time he spins things inward to realize we’re all as much the cause as we are the effect. “People, what’s the deal? You’ve been hurt and I’ve been hurt but what do we do now?” Here’s to figuring that out, introspectively and with love.
16. HALEY — Pleasureland
Pleasureland starts off with an alienesque arpeggio pattern rapidly being played on a synthesizer. It is an intense and alarmingly bizarre way to start an album. Its frenetic starkness immediately starts to build the skeleton of this beautifully haunting and altogether strange album, a skeleton which carries a growing body that takes shape throughout. Slyly sashaying from odd synth bits, to piano compositions right out of the neo-classical song book, to eery fuzzed guitars that sound like they’re created in the image of the Twin Peaks soundtrack, Pleasureland is an incredible and masterful mixing of sounds and feelings and styles.
At the center of Pleasureland is Pig Latin, a track featuring the hushed and windy breaths of saxophonist Mike Lewis against a soft piano, each taking turns calling and responding to the other, joining together, and bowing it, and while no song alone can completely capture the varied essence of the record, it comes close. It certainly gets right the feeling that never strays too far at any point in the album — sadness. In that regard, it reminds me greatly of the music from the 1982 animated short film The Snowman based on the book by Raymond Briggs, which I also categorize as deeply sad instrumental music. In the story, a child wakes up to a snowfall, builds a snowman, and that night the snowman comes to life. The snowman and the child spend the next day playing and going on adventures and enjoying each other’s company, but by the next day, the child wakes up and the snowman is gone, just a lump of snow and pile of hat and scarf. The credits roll reading “The Snowman was.” It is a shaking moment of heartbreak knowing that all beautiful moments end. Pleasureland is able to bottle that same sadness, perhaps indicating too that all beautiful moments end. The pleasure was.
15. Hailu Mergia — Lala Belu
Put as simply as can be, Lala Belu is the genius work of a jazz legend. Ranging from spryly funky to drifting and beautiful to twisted and knotty, Hailu Mergia drops into 2018 with a record that sounds both as rooted and spacey as his previous work without missing much a beat from where he left off in 1985. Mergia’s story is an interesting one — he thrived in the 70s as a member of the Ethiopian jazz and funk group the Walias Band before immigrating to the US in the 80s and self-releasing a few tapes while working as a taxi-cab driver in Washington D.C. where he still lives and works today. In the time since, those tapes were discovered by archival label Awesome Tapes From Africa and reissued through them, which is how I and most Americans became familiar with Hailu Mergia and his work.
When I learned that he was to release an album this year it came as a shock to me. An artist from Awesome Tapes From Africa — which itself feels like it is reaching so deep into a history and yanking out the unimaginable that could only exist in another world and another time — felt impossible. To be honest, there was even shock he was still alive. As my surprise wore, I was mostly filled with anticipation and curiosity — what might it sound like when the artist who thrived in a time and place exists in a new time and place? Lala Belu is the sound of a celebration. A new beginning, a new act, a new place, a new year. It’s all worthy of celebration. It is preformed with a perspective and sense that has seen both the old and the new and a wisdom to know the truth in why you celebrate. The album closes out with Yefikir Engurguro, the album’s most tranquil passage, a solo piano recording highlighting classic Ethiopian scales, and it arrives in time to act as a reminder to breath, an intentional slowing down. It moves gently and delicately, meandering with such elasticity it is profoundly unbreakable. It is one of my favorite songs this year and has soundtracked the many beautiful and celebration-worthy moments of my life. I pause to breath deeply when I hear it and reflect on the romanticism of the old and the possibility of the new.
14. Saba — CARE FOR ME
Saba has his finger on the pulse of the Chicago rap scene in a way that puts him at the very front of an impressively prolific and talent-saturated scene. And at just 24, he’s positioned to be leading that scene for the next decade as he continues to stir things up. Coming off of the extremely enjoyable Bucket List Project from 2016, CARE FOR ME showcases Saba in an intimately personal light, though it catches him in the grief of his killed cousin — a theme that surfaces often — the weight of which is undeniably crushing. Perhaps driven by this, he has separated himself as one of the great storytellers in rap. His songs are fluent and expansive and he has a gift for speaking with such vulnerability, you are able to feel what he feels. Though stylistically different, the story-telling is reminiscent of Kendrick Lamar’s good kid m.A.A.d city — expertly dropping you into the life and perspective of a individual who is desperately looking for the way forward.
He first introduces us to his cousin on the first verse of the first track — “Jesus got killed for our sins, Walter got killed for a coat” Not only is he addressing the unfairness of someone being killed, but he’s reckoning with the pettiness of what for and the effect that has on him. “I don’t wanna fight no more, cause I’m not a fighter” he raps on FIGHTER. On PROM/KING Saba takes us through the glimpses of him getting close with his cousin through their experience of going to the same prom together. In the wake of his death, it is a painful picture of the precious unpredictability of life. The final verse he recalls getting the call from his Aunt asking if he’s seen her son — it is an agonizing depiction of the distress a family must face when someone is killed. The song concludes with an outro actually sung by Walter: “Just another day in the ghetto, oh, the streets bring sorrow, can’t get up today with their schedule, I just hope I make it ’til tomorrow.” The wish he sings does not come true, and the unfairness of that is deep and traumatic, and awful. The album ends on a sun-kissed track called HEAVEN ALL AROUND ME which finds Saba clinging to what peace he can find, the first indication he may have found the direction towards a path forward.
13. Kanye West — ye
In the words of President Obama, Kanye West is a jackass. And since that moment Obama wrote him off, he has said and done indefensible things — probably some as a result of that moment — and run whatever good favor he had been holding on to into the ground. Kanye fans drop off with each absurd tweet, TMZ appearance, fabricated beef, embrace with Donald Trump, because it’s uncomfortable to be the one left standing next to him, lest that be mistaken as an endorsement for those actions. People will speculate that he struggles with mental health, or that he struggles with a fragile ego, or that struggles with depression. But the entire white world wants to use these things as a weapon against him. A justification for hating him and dismissing him, vilifying him for these actions, but secretly happy this helps to justify their initial take of his perceived mistreatment of white queen Taylor Swift. Kanye West does not behave in the way that white people are comfortable with a black man behaving, and I don’t know that it is more complicated than that. Every other opinion of him, and every action and reaction he mind-bogglingly chooses to act out is connected to that idea. He is literally wearing a racist “Make America Great Again” hat because Donald Trump is merely the president who didn’t call him a jackass. He’s endorsing a political party and candidate because it is the contrarian stance to what he believes is the white expectation for him. It is neither my business or my responsibility to diagnose, accuse, or hold accountable Kanye West for his actions. And to do so, is dangerous, and perpetuates the toxic culture that has shaped this man.
The persona of Kanye is so interwoven into his music, it is so challenging to try to speak to his music without first understanding how he has been impacted by the things in his life. Isn’t that true for us all? But to try, I think that Ye strikes on the secret weapon that Kanye wields better than almost anyone: excitement. Nothing sounds like a new Kanye West album does. Nothing. When Kanye burst onto the scene in 2004 rapping through a broken jaw, he stood out in a landscape that sounded starkly unlike him, and all these years later, no longer a 20 something year old with nothing to lose, he continues to stick out. And based on his track record, I anticipate the rest of his industry to fall in line and follow the leader. Ye is maybe too short and of course imperfect and a little complicated, but it also does its best to capture a moment in time in the imperfect and complicated life of an imperfect and complicated man. The authenticity of that is the value, and it’s not lost on me.
12. Kids See Ghosts — Kids See Ghosts
Kids See Ghosts, the collaboration between Kanye West and Kid Cudi, is a fantastically insane blip of chaos that is utterly unconfined. We find the artists back at it again after having a career of pristine features on each other’s work, trying to highlight the magic that spins up when the two find themselves in the booth together. Their energies compliment each other, their psyches fuse, but simply, their voices just sound good together. The contemplative husk of Kid Cudi balances out the zany whine of Kanye, begging the question — what’s a black Beatle anyway? Dynamically speaking, is it so out there to reckon that this pair might be the most bonkers illustration of a Lennon and McCartney we have today?
I love how Kids See Ghosts took risks. In committing to the spirit of being unconfined, the whizzing energy slingshotted them in a few unpredictable directions that wound up defining the feeling of the album. Kanye’s cathartic and nonsensical freak out on Feel The Love seemed to capture his 2018 state of being without being patronizing or trite. The this-would-be-cheesy-in-another-context “I Feel Freeeeee”s of Freeee (Ghost Town Pt. 2) actually made good on conveying the feeling of freedom, and the safari-explorer beat on Kids See Ghosts became an iconic track instantly for it’s vibe alone — and captures some of Kanye’s best rapping in the past 5 years. Kudi Montage, the Kurt Cobain sampling closer, captures the tortured sound and repurposes it masterfully
With Kanye’s ambitious G.O.O.D. Music summer, a much of it felt like he was proving a point in his touted ability to do it all — trusting the process of condition, and environment, and collaborators to produce genius. If anything, Kids See Ghosts proves that sometimes, that works for Kanye like it does for no one else.
11. Soccer Mommy — Clean
I’ve been a card carrying member of the Soccer Mommy fan club since I caught wind of her rascally 2017 record Collection that had the attitude of a direct-to-Bandcamp release. On the cover of Collection her face is hidden, and she lays lazily on a bed in red velvet dress — delicately tickling the keys of a Casio. Her guitar lays beside her and magazine is spread open. It’s intimately shy — the portrait of an introvert who is quietly broadcasting. By contrast, on the cover of Clean she stares directly into the camera, a can of spray paint in her hand, the word “clean” graffitied behind her. She wears denim and flannel and boots. It’s the portrait of someone who’s empowered and no longer interested in the shyness she was birthed from.
Clean comes off categorically more certain and direct than anything else in the Soccer Mommy catalogue. Its confidence is so potent its a shook reminder that this is the work of a 20 year old. And that’s not to say it’s all bombastic. About half of the album is calm and quiet. In those moments, through her self-reflection and self-deprecation, her confidence is heard clearest. But Clean shines brightest on the moments where she pairs her wry lyrics with summery pop melodies and shreddy guitar riffs — it sounds like a throwback to 90s. In standing on the shoulders of giants like Liz Phair or Aimee Mann or even Lisa Loeb, Soccer Mommy is now at the front of the young women-led, guitar-driven slacker rock scene that’s in the middle of a rising tide. So when people ask me who my favorite member of boygenius is, I tell them Soccer Mommy.
10. ARTHUR — Woof Woof
Woof Woof is easily the weirdest and most whacked out album I listened to all year. Vocals are routinely pitched and distorted, the lyrics are at once profound and grotesque, instrumentation is trippy and jittery, and the production is playfully insane. Bass lines are funky and bopping and keyboards are like looping circus sound effects. It’s an ambitious endeavor, but notably, not by what appears to be intention. It’s one of the few albums that is doing its best impression of walking in a straight line, unaware how wonderfully loopy and crooked it is. Like vintage (Sandy) Alex G. meets Arthur Russell.
Woof Woof initially reads as one of those albums listeners will either love or hate — but I don’t think that’s quite fair. That puts all the weight on the shoulders of its weirdness. It’s weird, and that may appeal to some, but it has this earnest quality and narrative to it that feels relatable to any one willing to listen. In an interview Arthur talked about recording music with the perspective of a dog: “I try to record music like a dog. I want it to just be very natural and loving and strong, ignorant and in its own world. It’s easy for me to describe the music that way. Like a dog with its tongue out, barking into the woods at night, not knowing the dangers that await should it decide to enter.” Woof woof, Arthur, you’re a good boy.
9. Hovvdy — Cranberry
Cranberry was my sleepy time record of eternal coziness this year. It’s hushed and pillowy, mellowed out and loose. In its quiet reserve, the duo dials in a feeling of calming nostalgia, reminiscent of 90s acts like Galaxie 500, Mojave 3, or Pedro The Lion, or the more recent melodic Rocket-era-(Sandy) Alex G cuts. The simplicity and timidness of Cranberry are locked in and humming along at a pleasant, breezy pace — it’s beautiful in the way that staring at a lake can be beautiful.
Because it is such a constrained sounding record, whenever they let the windows down just even a bit, the effect is grand. Tracks like Late or Float come across as near power ballads given the context they appear — it’s a neat trick they’ve orchestrated. Cranberry is one of the most underrated records of the year, and I don’t have any explanation for that.
8. Porches — The House
In October of last year, when I first saw the video for what would be the leading single from The House, the track Country, I freaked out over how insanely good it was. The song sounds like what you’d expect from Porches — steady and clear vocals, fat plunking keyboards, and a general spaciness to it that feels like it is cementing the Porches signature sound — but excitingly, it sounded different enough that I got the feeling of chills you get when you are witnessing an artist you enjoy expand and realizing, huh, I guess they sound like this now.
The aesthetic of the video drives home the je ne se quoi of Aaron Maine. In the opening shot, he’s filling up a truck with gas at a station. His bleached blonde hair is parted down the middle and he’s wearing a bright red DKNY fleece turtle neck fleece and junky looking navy blue wind pants. His shoes look like the kind your dad wears to mow the lawn. He hops in the back of the truck with styrofoam cup and the truck pulls away as just as the opening line is sung. “When the air hit my face and it smelled like the truth” A drone camera shows him in the bed of the truck driving through the woods. The video ends with Maine in a Twin Peaks-ian red draped room, sitting at a table with his forehead pushed into the heel of his palm. A cigarette is wedged in his fingers and a beer bottle with a rose propped inside is beside him. He wears a miniature disco ball for an earring. While this song is short — under 2 minutes — it accurately captures the aesthetic he is striving for so well in that time. It’s critical to the understanding and appreciation of both The House and Porches at large. Two weeks later, the video for the next single, Find Me, came out and it crystalized everything that Country had put into place. The video and song are two of my respective favorites of the year and by the time I was finished watch the Find Me video I knew the record that was coming was going to be a titan.
One of the best ways to describe Porches’ music is that it is inspired. It pulls from and reaches for places and spaces much larger than the capacity of an individual. His dedication to the fluidity of his aesthetic sets him up for a long career of graceful sights and sounds.
7. Young Fathers — Cocoa Sugar
Cocoa Sugar is one of the few true genre-non-conforming records of the year, and boy, does it bend. It qualifies as a rap album in the way that a Death Grips album would qualify as a rap album, a pop album in the way serpentwithfeet might be labeled as such, and a rock album in the way Return To Cookie Mountain era TV On The Radio is. Each of those being a flimsy, yeah, I guess so. Muddling a little bit of this, that, and the other, Young Fathers wind up with a pie all of their own. (Side note: I was watching a lot of Great British Bake Off when this album came out and the two things are interlocked forever for me — hence the pie reference.)
As a title, Cocoa Sugar elicits a comparison of opposites and dares to consider the thought of their coexistence. Thematically, this concept plays out through the whole album. Light and dark are leaned against each other and left to support one another as essentials for the other to exist. Like in the quaking Holy Ghost “I got the holy ghost fire in me. As in hell, you can call it blasphemy” or on the sultry See How “What’s the price of the light when you’re stuck in the shadows?”
My interest in Cocoa Sugar is predominantly tied to the fact that it is a unique and eccentric sounding album that not only stands alone in its field, but its field itself stands alone. The venturesome sounds are in part a product of the internationally and culturally diverse members — this is not a record made by white Americans, and you can tell. As I listen to Cocoa Sugar it reassures me that in a world of increased homogeneity, a strange and spunky musical future is not only possible but inevitable.
6. Khruangbin — Como Todo El Mundo
Con Todo El Mundo is a fantastic journey of psychy sounds and calming moods in my unequivocal choice for the most underrated album of the year. It’s simple in its depth, but endless in its breadth, like a painting of a horizon. Usually sticking to the guitar, bass, and drum line up, with light keyboards and faint vocals peppered in to taste — the skillful playing is so airtight, it ventures into the hypnotic and magical. Not since Delicate Steve’s Positive Force have I felt like a guitar has taken on so much personality and spoken with such voice. The leads are uniquely dizzying and refined, often sounding like the warmth of a live take.
It is not an overstatement to say that I like this album more each time I listen to it — even still. It feels like being home — relaxing, warm, loved, complete comfort. This album is built on the back of grooves that carry from start to finish in a way that begs you to close your eyes and sway along. The clear quirky standout to the album is the track Evan Finds The Third Room which erupts into their funkiest moment as they put a little stank on it. It’s a danceable, bopping, jam that I’m hard pressed to find something else from this year that is more pure and delightful.
With Con Todo El Mundo, Khruangbin have excellently created a feeling that lasts and envelops. They have pulled stylistically from far-reaching and globally influenced sources and have sent it through the Khruangbin Super Processor to make it entirely and solely their own.
5. Amen Dunes — Freedom
Amen Dunes existed in my periphery for a few years — scuzzily lo-fi and enigmatic enough to have never fully invited a full bite. With the release of Freedom, however, I was able to move beyond that and sink in. Freedom begins making good use of a typically detested Intro track — a child is giving a rendition of the pep talk scene from the hockey movie Miracle. “This is YOUR time. Their time is over.” It’s a fitting framework for Amen Dunes as he is moments from releasing the catapult on his most incredible work yet.
The first thing that struck me with Freedom was the unrelenting finesse it parades. From beginning to end, the songs are crafted with great deliberateness and preformed with precision and sturdiness. This is unlike what I know of pre-Freedom Amen Dunes — a purposefully messy and freaky fuzz n buzz. But the spotlessness is something that works well for him. It compliments his unique and quavering voice. He has enlisted the help of a crowd of musicians to layer in to the birth of this new sound — most notably, the guitar of Delicate Steve’s Steve Marion, who’s bouncing pluckery sparkles on a track like Calling Paul The Suffering, a song to and for his late father. The album’s highlight is Believe, a track unpacking the coming to terms with his mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer. “Can’t stop the kid from singing, do it for you, yeah, I’m not down.” Musically, it is the perfect snapshot of all the best things that Freedom is capable of — it’s one of the best song’s I heard this year.
Freedom is as texturally dark and brooding as it is shimmering and hopeful. It is a sleekly beautiful instant classic. Should Amen Dunes carry down this path, we’d all be so lucky.
4. Hop Along — Bark Your Head Off, Dog
Just to say quickly and clearly — if not over-simply — what I’ll be trying to articulate: Bark Your Head Off, Dog is Hop Along’s best album yet in a catalogue of other great albums. As the second album under their current line up, they’ve perfected their give and take and admirably in doing so have truly defined themselves as peerless. There is no voice like Frances’ and she’s as powerful and distinctive as she’s ever been. Her lyricism is as classically heaping as anything else she’s written, her story telling is its sharpest, and the song structures are at their most dynamic and compelling. There is no guitar playing like Joe Reinhart’s. Legions of wannabes (< — no shame) were born in Philadelphia basements, idolizing his playing style as the only person to out-do the Kinsellas at their own game. His playing continues to evolve from a pure shredder to a legit studio player with the keenest ability to create a sickeningly twisted lead and apply it in a space that is so wrongfully right it’s perfect. The guitar work on What The Writer Meant will awaken the most 2008 Fishtowned Algernon fan who’s now a grown up in the workforce — his style not only growing up with you, but for you. It’s a flex that he’s still the same face melting warehouse goblin. But the more subtle and complimentary playing on tracks like Not Abel or Look of Love where the lead guitar is behaving quite rhythmically, will go down as the signature Hop Along guitar work.
They are at the start of what will be looked back as their zenith, hopefully a reign of terror that goes on for some time. For those of us who’ve been tuned into The Frances Show™ for the long haul, it’s easy to forget how insanely special this is. As their time in power rolls on, please, all hail the queen.
3. Blood Orange — Negro Swan
Just as he explored with Freetown Sound, Dev Hynes again sets out to, and succeeds in, creating a pieced together landscape, detailing and highlighting culture. Negro Swan drops the listener into a world of spiderwebbed themes and topics that are explored and discussed frequently and openly. A mood is established reminiscent of a late 80s/early 90s aesthetic which carries the sound through its conversational depictions of anxiety, belonging, and identity. The slinky and recurring saxophone, or the swelling synthesizer almost serving as the signal to listen up for the next important key message. Monologues from trans activist Janet Mock are interspersed throughout which serve as the grounding element for these themes. Yes, they may be humanly universal, but there is specificity to the way they are being discussed and contextualized on Negro Swan. “Um, because part of survival is, like, being able to just fit in, to be seen as normal and to, like, quote-unquote belong. But I think that so often in society in order to belong means that we have to, like, shrink parts of ourselves.” There is an issue with the safety of trans women of color in America, and the anxiety within that community stems from that issue. With this in mind, lyrics like “No one wants to be the odd one out at times. No one wants to be the negro swan” take on a clearer, more poignant definition and you can see why the album is titled Negro Swan and not Black Sheep.
In its weaving and stitching, Negro Swan excels at establishing a *feeling* more than anything else. And it’s a powerful one, to be sure. A patchwork as such takes on the enormous risk of feeling disjointed and scattered, and yet, I don’t feel any of that. Each track, section, interlude, feature — they all feel contextual and necessary. It’s one of the rare examples of an album so fluid that it feels impossible to isolate a piece of and enjoy without the context of the whole.
2. Earl Sweatshirt — Some Rap Songs
I first learned of Earl Sweatshirt in the summer of 2010 as I was savagely tearing into anything part of the Odd Future universe. When I saw the video for the track Earl, I was dumbfounded. Who was this middle-school-aged-looking prodigy? Where did he come from? How is he doing this? And jokingly, but also seriously, where are his parents? His lyricism, gruesome as it was, was sharp and incredible. He was rhyming like ’99 Eminem meets a hellish MF Doom. It’s still legitimately crazy that a teenager was capable of doing what he did. The shock of Odd Future was fascinating to witness partially because of the way it was being used to gain power. These obviously talented kids were finding a way to march to the front of the line with indignant gusto. Anytime any one was offended or turned off, they were playing right into their trap. Earl Sweatshirt, the “stage name” of Thebe Kgositsile, was just 16 year old when he screeched into the collective awareness of rap fans by way of Odd Future. Yet, apart from the demandingly rambunctious Tyler, The Creator, he was the one who stood out as something special. It was a comic tragedy when he was sent to a boarding school in Samoa for at-risk teens by his mother, essentially getting in trouble after she found out what he was doing. This was the reality of a 16 year old wunderkind in a shock rap collective.
2018 brings us Earl 8 years and 3 albums after his grisly Odd Future days. Each album pulling further away from his origin. In that time, he has matured as any one in that point of their life does. His voice sounds different. It’s deeper, more sure of itself, a bit worn. The physical manifestation of how growing up wears you down. Musically, it is a woozy fever dream in the style of legends like Madlib, MF Doom, and J Dilla. Beats are crackling and warmly blurry. The feel is loopy and disorienting. It’s almost like you could start it at any song and listen through in a loop and it would make just as much sense. Earl’s exemplary lyricism in which he always shone for is in play, but he’s taken all the complex rhyme schemes and patterns, and traded the pure syllabic olympics for using those same schemes to look inward. On Nowhere2go he raps “Yeah, I think I spent most of my life depressed, only thing on my mind was death, didn’t know if my time was next, tryna refine this shit, I redefined myself, first I had to find it.” Within the brief 24 minutes of zonked dopiness, Earl not so much tackles, but…passes through deeply personal and emotional reflections and ruminations. He touches on the death of his father, his relationship to performance and anxiety, depression, abuse, suicidal thoughts, family — it’s definitely heavy. It’s a bold step forward for Earl to invite us into his mental sorting of this on-going weight. As you swim in his thoughts, it’s hard to feel anything but that Some Rap Songs is nothing short of an avant-garde masterwork.
1. Parquet Courts — Wide Awake!
“It is dishonest, nay, a sin to stand for any anthem that attempts to drown out the roar of oppression” screams Andrew Savage on opening track Total Football, and in such, setting the tone for the intensity of Wide Awake! — the most unrelenting and pissed off record of 2018. “Wide Awake!” (stylized on the cover as WIDE AWAAAAAKE!) is a tongue in cheek play on the colloquial “woke”, and with the commentary on the album being so political, societal, and global Parquet Courts deliver on their claims from the titular track: “Mind so woke ’cause my brain never pushed the brakes, I’m wide awake, eyes so open that my vision is as sharp as a blade.” The album explores what it means to be wide awake in 2018 in Donald Trump’s America — both in what is required of you, and what it does to you.
“Savage is my name because Savage is how I feel when the radio wakes me up with the words “suspected gunman.” My name is a warning for the acts you are about to witness which contain images that some viewers may find disturbing. My name belongs to us all so if they ask for yours give them mine. My name is a threat.” spurts out A. Savage with great urgency on the track Violence in which he speaks to the way in which violence in our daily life has become so ever-present, it is normalized. The scary part is not the violence itself, but how we’re all so used to it. As maybe apparent with that snippet of dense lyrics, A. Savage is a writer first — Parquet Courts’ lyrics are always carefully chosen and a few layers deep, and oscillate between being allegorical and extremely direct. Sometimes, like on Before The Water Gets Too High, a track about the impending catastrophic effects of climate change, both. But some of my favorite lyrics from the record are the ones that come in the form of a question. I appreciate that in asking these question it forces the listener to attempt to answer them and reckon with themselves. Being woke to the problems does not implicitly absolve one from their complicity. A few of my favorite questions-as-lyrics:
“Have your hurt caucasian feelings left you so distraught?”
“What is an up and coming neighborhood and where is it coming from?”
“Faced with a decision: What do I call bullshit? A contemporary dilemma, can I allow this?”
“Do I pass the Turing test? Do I think?”
“What if, what if, what if, what if I’ve grown tired of being polite?”
“Living in proximity of a dollar trying to get ahead of the pack but you never learned, you never got it did ya?
“Before the water gets too high to float the powers that be, or is it someone else’s job until the rich are refugees?”
Wide Awake was produced by Danger Mouse — a less than obvious choice for a punk record, but a fantastic one regardless — and the album is pristine. The playing is fantastically cutthroat — punched up, crisp, exciting, at times groovy, at times abrasive — it matches the feeling of the message so well. It is their best record so far.
Within all of their anger surfaced through being an American today, there are pieces of optimism and satisfaction that break through the cracks. On Freebird 2, Savage’s “I feel free just like you promised I’d be.” comes off as a welcome but unexpected realization that the change is coming. Similarly, on album closer Tenderness, the danceable counterpart to Total Football, A. Savage again speaks to the destruction of the old by way of the new. “We’ve come to replace your clock’s old stubborn hands, we are the answer to why they never had a chance.” It’s a timely reminder that this wave is coming and it cannot be stopped or slowed. Change is inevitable. We’re left with a simple instruction for taking action in this change — “Open up your mouth, pollinate your peers.” Have the conversation, stand up for what’s right, don’t be complicit, and maybe, do it with just a little tenderness.
Oh, and “Fuck Tom Brady.”
–—–––
Mentionables And Unmentionables
😊😊😊
Pusha T — Daytona
Maybe the best of the Kanye-produced fab 5 from this summer, but still my 3rd favorite. Probably coulda had my arm twisted to find a spot for this on the list.
Haley Heynderickx — I Need To Start A Garden
Stunningly beautiful & jarringly minimal. Vibes of Angel Olsen creeping through. Very sneakily one of the best of the year.
Mitski — Be The Cowboy
Be The Cowboy finds Mitski as big and distinguishably offbeat as she’s ever been. While I never much cared for St Vincent, it rings in that bell choir — a new territory she is absolutely owning.
Damien Jurado — The Horizon Just Laughed
Damien Jurado should not be still making albums this good given how long he’s been doing it. His calming voice is as pure, true, and sure as it has ever been and The Horizon Just Laughed has legitimate claim to be his finest work yet.
mewithoutYou — [Untitled]
You don’t remain a band for nearly 20 years without extreme agility, and mewithoutYou shows their ability to stay flexible. Looking at their full discography they’ve traveled to far out distances and then intentionally took new routes back home. [Untitled] feels like a homecoming party in some ways — one where they’re given the mic and asked to tell of their journey. As they’ve always done, a musically beautiful and distinct sound paired with some of the most introspective, honest, and painful lyrics.
Big Red Machine — Big Red Machine
Firmly and exactly placed in the center of the line that connects Bon Iver and The National, the debut from Big Red Machine has a lot to like for fans of either and both. The precision of the crossover is perhaps its most limiting factor, but given the musicians at play, that still leaves this fairly untethered.
Dirty Projectors — Lamp Lit Prose
Any mass critique of post-Magellan Dirty Projectors seems too heavily and too easily influenced by the significance of their previous work. Both Dirty Projectors and Lamp Lit Prose exist in wonderfully interesting and exploratory nooks that would feel undeniably inventive coming from nearly any another artist. Dirty Projectors deliver again on their bankable promise of being one of the most exciting artists making music.
Ought — Room Inside The World
Smooth and brooding, their best and most beautiful album yet.
Maribou State — Kingdoms In Colour
Maribou State took me by surprise with Kingdoms In Colour. I expected something far less sophisticated, and it proved to be deeply layered and meditative. It swings from the same rafters as Jamie XX’s In Colour and Mount Kimbie’s Love What Survives, which is to position it as the latest left field emergence from British electronic music.
American Trappist — Tentada Via
Tentada Via shows off some of the finest songwriting from a song writer who has a history (River City Extension) of writing exceptional songs. It is as clear as ever that the lane to being crowned Springsteen’s heir apparent is open and there are other horses in the race besides The War On Drugs.
Kurt Vile — Bottle It In
It’s insane that Kurt Vile named his first LP “The Constant Hitmaker” and then willed that to truth over the next ten years. All he does is put out good vibes and great songs. Consistently doing this better than almost anyone else, and AGAIN on Bottle It In, KV is King.
Viagra Boys — Street Worms
Viagra Boys are creating a grotesque aesthetic in which music, visual, and words all sing in perfect harmony. This is one of the wackiest things I’ve heard all year — truly demented — and it rocks.
Idles — Joy As An Act Of Resistance
Joy As An Act Of Resistance sure is one punishing power house of a punch — a raucous pub fight in audio format. Politically pissed off, it’s something to play loud and get charged up doing air punches in your basement.
Sons Of Kemet — Your Queen Is A Reptile
Sonically bounding forward and rolling onward, and lit up with political themes and attitude, this is a punk rock album hidden in jazz’s clothes.
😟😟😟
Young Thug — Slime Language
Slime Language is far and away the most disappointing release I was anticipating for 2018. Young Thug has the power to be daring, incomprehensibly weird, and truly delightful in his penchant for idiosyncratic inflections.
Slime Language is none of that — and it is concerning that JEFFREY, a masterpiece, is already 2 years old with little to show since despite his continuously prolific output.
Natalie Prass — The Future And The Past
For as good an album as her debut was and as promising a single as Short Court Style was, The Future And The Past is comparatively a disappointment. It feels like it is too obviously reaching for a vibe and by the time you reach the apex of the album, Sisters. it plays like a corny karaoke take which becomes an unshakeable stigma for the remainder.
Drake — Scorpion
My issue with Drake is that he has the most tenuous claim to being a real artist. He’s a talented entertainer, but his interests lie in building his brand and making himself more valuable, not in the art he produces. His role as a recording artist happens to be the one that has brought him the most success, which is why he’s doing it. The artistic vision of Drake the rapper starts and ends with the payout that comes from a knowingly chart-topping, bloated as hell, 25 song, glutton to streaming numbers album. It’s trash.
At this point, his beats, flows, and topics all feel phoned for 90% of the ride. He can do better.
For thoughts sake, imagine how good Scorpion would feel if he took the Kanye-produced-G.O.O.D. Music-Summer ‘18–7 songs-model and applied for the sake of at least some perceived curation. Here’s the best 7 songs, in order:
Nice For What (Legitimately great)
God’s Plan (Also legitimately great — 2 for 2 on the singles, which explemifies the point of how bloated and dumb this album is)
Sandra’s Rose (Whatever’s left of Drake The Sweedie comes out on this)
Ratchet Happy Birthday (The only time on the album outside of Nice For What that sounds like Drake is having any fun)
Emotionless (He got burned by Push so badly he was forced to make this, but he’s still a person who loves their kid)
In My Feelings (Likely crafted in a meme lab for maximum virality, but still a good time)
Mob Ties (This song slaps, and it’s entriely because he’s doing the best Young Thug he can, which, sucks, but even a bobo Young Thug imitation is worth something.)
Should Drake one day wake up as an artist and put out something with vision and intent beyond stats and cash, he could kill it. Until then, he’s not fooling anyone.
The Carters — Everything Is Love
It speaks pretty loudly that an album this monumental is best described as “yeah, pretty good.” Yeah, it’s pretty good and pretty enjoyable. It’s also only those things on an album where the sky was the limit.
BROCKHAMPTON — iridescence
Given the 1990s singles series that preceded iridescence, iridescence is a let down. There are moments of everything clicking (FABRIC is fantastic, HONEY gets it right with sharing the mic in an overstuffed band) but there’s an overwhelming amount of the album that feels like an overly inspired BROCKHAMPTON tribute band. It’s disappointing given how early in their career they are. Plenty of time to sort this out, and their future is bright, but this ain’t it chief.
Better Late Than Never
Reggae
I started off 2018 with a heavy dose of reggae, finally cracking into a genre that felt impenetrable to me for so long. I started on Junior Murvin’s 1977 album Police & Thieves and that led me to Johnny Clarke, and Linval Thompson, and Cornell Campbell, and Burning Spear, and Mikey Dread, and now, I’m finally a chill, cool guy who likes reggae.
