Jeremy's 18 Favorite Albums of 2018!!
- petsch6787
- Feb 17, 2019
- 19 min read
Hello friends, and welcome back to Jeremy's annual best albums of the year list. It is currently January 30th, the temp outside is a balmy -8 degrees Fahrenheit, so cold that everyone at my company has to work from home today and tomorrow. So since I am an admin, that means I basically have no work to do for the next two days, so it's time to finally knock out 2018's best albums. Without further ado, let's jump into this mess.
Category A: On the list, but just barely
18) The Field - Infinite Moment
The Field (aka Axel Willner) has been making minimal ambient techno for over a decade, and throughout this time has released a bunch of albums that range from being superb to being just monotonously boring. Luckily the latter description only really applies to two of his six albums, so his overall discography is worth a listen to. The even more interesting thing about The Field's oeuvre is that the differences between the good albums and the bad albums seem to be....indecipherable. This new album, Infinite Moment, does not sound specifically different from his last album, The Follower, but this album makes me feel happy and uplifted while that album left me feeling completely indifferent. (Editor's Note April '20: I came around to The Follower eventually) There is perhaps a bit more space on this album than usual, but other than that, I can't really say why this one works for me while others don't. And this doesn't seem to be an opinion specific to me, I've read a couple of professional reviews that say the same of Infinite Moment while singing its praises. It's a great album to read to, and while all of the tracks are ten minutes plus (save Who Goes There which clocks in at a brisk 8:52), I never seem to get tired of any of them. If I had discovered this album had been released previous to about a month ago, it would definitely be higher on the list, but I can at least say that this is in The Field's top three albums for me.
Song: Divide Now
17) Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs
This album can also fall squarely in the "I need more time with it" category, as Earl's most recent album was released on the last day of November and his albums always take me a minute to get fully into. Earl produced a big chunk of his breakthrough album, Doris, but ever since he has fully taken over the producing reigns on his last album, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside, Earl has been progressively mixing his vocals quieter and the beats louder. On this album, they are mixed almost completely on the same volume, which leads to Earl's voice almost mixing in with some of the more aggressive samples. It sounds like Earl is mumbling sometimes, but it's really just that the sample has taken the front seat. And let's talk about those samples, I have not heard a rap album owe so heavily in production to J Dilla and Madlib, with the repeating processed soul singing samples (much shorter than your typical Kanye soul sample that took over the music industry for the majority of the Aughts) and honestly Earl has such a deft hand at producing that it all just works. I have always been much more drawn to rappers who sing about how shitty they feel than how much they love to party (even Kanye on his partiest tracks, he always kept it grounded with his insecurity, until Kim K came along and ruined all that shit) and Earl's depression has been front and center for his entire career. Great album, sad Earl.
Song: Red Water
16) Aphex Twin - Collapse EP
This year Aphex Twin released an EP, it is very similar to the style that his last full length, Syro, and as that was the last thing he released that I significantly enjoyed, this EP obviously clicked with me. Lots of the usual Aphex Twin skittering drum beats, distorted vocal samples, and then the occasional thumping bass beat pops in. Basically, your typical Aphex Twin release (thank god for the internet that these releases come so frequently now that we can just pick and choose the good ones, there was a time when Aphex Twin waited thirteen years to release an album). Anyway, I have nothing else to say about this EP, it's a good AT release, if you like Aphex Twin, you'll like this EP.
Song: Mt1 T29r2
15) Lily Allen - No Shame
Lily Allen's life in England seems rough. She's scrutinized in the public similar to how Miley was in America a couple of years ago. She got divorced two years ago, and completely withdrew from public life. And when she reemerged, she had an album full of electropop songs about her pain and isolation, her relationship with her ex-husband, the media, and with her kids. It's a great album. It really is an emotionally bare and honest album, but the only thing it reminds me of a is a very specific week in June. "Oh Jeremy, you mean the end of June when your brother got married?" No imaginary person who knows the timeline of my summer too well but not well enough, I am talking about two weeks before that when I got picked for jury duty on a rape and aggravated kidnapping case. For a week in sweltering heat, I had to take the Red Line to the Pink Line, the Pink Line to California, and then freaking trek it down California to the courthouse. Every day when we would finally get out of the courthouse, I'd listen to this album as I made my way back home. I hope life gets easier for my girl, Lily. She's precious.
Song: Lost My Mind
Category B: Bridesmaids, as in that they are never the bride, as in just outside the Top Ten
14) Beach House - 7
My relationship with Beach House has been that I love every other album and then just medium like the others. However, that got a little muddled when they released Thank Your Lucky Stars in 2015 and an album that was scheduled to be one of my "loves" turned out to only be an above average "medium like." What was to come next? Well 7 came out this year, and it's not a love, but it's definitely a step up. There are like five amazing songs on this album, and then the other six are simply very good. The beat on Lemon Glow is hypnotizing, even more so when the random stings of electronic lightning start sparking up a minute into the song and continuing through its duration. Drunk in LA pulses for three minutes until a background guitar brings the dreamy atmosphere to it's most hallucinogenic, as if dropping from the sky during a California bender. But the best track on the album is easily Black Car. I put it on my very first monthly Spotify playlist, An Eclectic August, the keyboard beat it's centered around makes everything else disappear when I listen to it. Good dream pop is so dang good.
Song: Black Car
13) Beak> - >>>
I legit didn't know this album existed until a month ago, so I kind of crash coursed myself real quick in December because I knew I would love it. And I did! I was compelled to say that the song structures on this album are more traditional than on the last album, but as I'm listening to the first track, The Brazilian, I know that's not even true. I think it's just that the production is just a tiny bit clearer than before. It's still a big weird krautrock extravaganza. It's like the soundtrack to a 70's freakout movie. Some of the bass lines on this album, both traditional and keyboard created, really remind of the music from this old Nintendo game called Gauntlet 2 that my Grandma Kathryn had at her house when I was growing up, even though it doesn't really sound anything like it. And that's where were going to end that one.
Song: Birthday Suit
12) Damien Jurado - The Horizon Just Laughed
This album was a bit of a surprise to me for a couple of reasons. First, I was surprised at how straight up folksy this album got at times, after Jurado's last three releases had been part of the increasingly psychedelic Maricopa trilogy. It almost reached Americana styles of folksy. And Second, I was also surprised that it's even on this list. When I first started listening to this album in May, I was immediately struck by the beautiful opener, Allocate, which is probably my favorite song of 2018, but was not particularly swayed by the very earnest rest of the album. I mean, there's a song on this album where one verse is addressed to Mr. Charles Shultz and the next is addressed to Mr. Charles Brown. Just super earnest. But then! I listened to this album about a month ago, and all of a sudden I realized that not only did I recognize each of the songs on the album, but that I was actively wanting to listen to them. Somehow, my mood on this album changed without me noticing. Now I love it, honestly. I'm going to put Allocate as the song below, but that song's orchestral background doesn't really represent the rest of the album, which has a lot of acoustic guitar and open space on it. Not exclusively! But there's a bunch of it.
Song: Allocate
11) Screaming Females - All at Once
My enjoyment of Screaming Females is usually 100% relative to how heavy they get. When they take a foot off the pedal, I get less interested. And this new album is about half and half. I love all of the heavy songs: the opener Glass House is basically just one metal riff over and over, Black Moon, with its churning, chunky guitar riffs, is my favorite song on the album, Dirt with its broken glass percussion whose entire lyrical content is the following lines "I medicate myself, suspect that idols lie to me, I medicate myself, so that the world can lie to me, words made of dirt, you're dirt beneath my feet," and also the power of the chorus sections in Agnes Martin. Basically the whole first half of the album. But then we get to the second half of the album, which is decidedly more 90's alt-rock and significantly more hit and miss, almost perfectly encapsulated in the two parted Chamber for Sleep. The first portion is great, the second portion is basically just an anthem chant repeat of the first song which is already six minutes long. But there are some gems on the second half: Fantasy Lens is great, and the closer Step Outside is closer to Alice in Chains than it is to VH1. All in all though, thumbs up, just outside the Top Ten.
Song: End of my Bloodline
Category C: Top Ten, or how I learned to excel in the art of making music during the year of 2018
10) Robyn - Honey
Robyn, the most famous person that no one I interact on a daily basis knows who she is, came out with her first full length solo album since 2010 this year. It's a little lighter style of the poppy house music she loves (also I love that type of music, too). Most of this album was produced with and by Joseph Mount from Metronomy, and y'know....some of it basically sounds like a Metronomy song with Robyn singing. But I like Metronomy so that's not really an insult. You can feel Mount's fingertips on the almost clinically sterile beats on Human Being and the weird duet of Robyn and a modulated robot version of herself on Baby Forgive Me. Every song on this album is pretty great, even Beach2k20, which is my last favorite song on the album, is still mostly great, maybe just don't rhyme food with cool is all I'm saying. My favorite moments on the album are when it starts to get close to the EP she made a couple of years ago with Röyksopp, like the super housey beats on Send to Robin Immediately or the poppy muffled siren beat on In Between the Lines.
Song: Send to Robin Immediately
09) Turnstile - Time and Space
Well, if you couldn't tell from that album cover, this is some heavy shit. Turnstile is basically a mix of hardcore punk and the heavier nineties rock bands, plus every once in a while they throw in some weird curveballs, 311 style. When I was running last year, this was one of my main jams. Turnstile mixes so many genres that you aren't surprised to all of sudden have some random keyboard lines show up in High Pressure during the chorus, or when the interlude Bomb is basically a lounge song, especially because it just followed the guitar solo ending of Generator. This is an album that makes me miss having a car because it's definitely on the "can't listen to this on the train" list. Too loud, too many face melting guitar solos, so good.
Song: I Don't Wanna Be Blind
08) Gouge Away - Burnt Sugar
Of the albums that I downloaded in December, this is the one that found the path to my music heart the quickest and strongest. This album was on AV Club's Best Punk and Hardcore albums of 2019 list. I was, of course, intrigued, so I downloaded all the albums on that list that I hadn't heard of yet, and this was the only one that I liked. But damn. My computer crashed in November so my iTunes reset all the play counts of all my songs, and since then, this album has taken over the Most Played autoplaylist victory spot. Gouge Away is named after a Pixies song, and you can hear the similarities between the two bands in the sound of the guitar (although Mick Ford's guitar squeals a lot more than Joey Santiago's ever has), but every other aspect of Gouge Away is a lot louder than Pixies were/are. Singer Christina Michelle screams most of her vocals and spits straight vitriol through her lyrics. She finishes off Subtle Thrill with the repeated line "I've just been trying to quit, whatever that means" followed by a minute of chanting "Hurt is a commodity!" This album pretty much rips my face off.
Song: Subtle Thrill
07) Perfume - Future Pop
My favorite J-pop group came out with a new album this year, and it is significantly shorter than most of their previous efforts, clocking in at only 43 minutes over 12 songs. What caused this change? Well, the songs are shorter, mostly at the expense of the super lengthy instrumental breakdowns that I love so much, and there are less of them than usual (the last three albums have all had fourteen tracks and Future Pop's twelve includes a fifty second intro). Sounds like a recipe for an album that Jeremy won't like: took out his favorite parts of the last albums and included less material. And yet........and yet. And yet, I still really like it. The dancey instrumental areas have been supplanted by super heavy bass drops during the choruses. If the internet is to be believed, this was in an attempt to appeal to American sensibilities, but I don't know if that's true, I don't listen to the radio so I'm not sure that these kinds of beats are tearing up the eardrums of fourteen year olds or whatever, they could be. But I'm sure the ladies in the group are probably happy about the new material (all their stuff is written by producer Yasutaka Nakata). There's still one fully instrumental dance track (per usual) Fusion, and that song is definitely awesome, but I find that the new style on this album is more conducive to chilled out environments for me. When I go see them live again in April, I'm sure the electro beats of Tokyo Girl and If You Wanna are going to make me jump up and down, but it's the chilled out pop of Chorairin that really personifies the album. Man though, Fusion just came on while I was writing this, I freaking love this song. It's like a Japanese version of the bass beat from Bjork's Army of Me, with the girls just popping in with Yeah's and anguished cries of Fusion throughout, like music androids.
Song: Future Pop (I wanted to put Chorairin here, but I literally could not find it on YouTube)
06) Kid, Feral - Live and Let's Die!
This is the album that I can guarantee that no one that possibly reads this will have heard of and is probably the one that most people that read this list would not like. I found this album on the "best of the year so far" list that Sophie's Floorboard posted at the end of June. Kid, Feral are a band from Sweden, three dudes who make (according to their Bandcamp) "violent emo rock n' roll." I went through a big period of screamo discovery during the summer, and I discovered that the kind of screamo that I enjoyed was when they would mix the vocals low enough that they become like an additional instrument, rather than when the screaming is the foremost part of the mix which makes it super annoying. But as an equal contribution to the song, the screaming on this album feels perfectly at home, and it really sets the stage for the instrument that gets the forefront: the howling guitar. When the songs really get going, the guitar just rips through, melting faces at an altogether unprecedented rate, like the scene in War of the Worlds where Tom Cruise is running away from the energy beams that are turning people into ash all around him, like that but with face melting guitar licks. There are a couple of slower, experimental songs, a little more atmospheric with some samples of the band talking. Those are good, too. Also, the song name game on this album is legit, there's an interlude called Listen Up You Nazi Fucks followed by Firedragon3651 Logs Out for Good which is just chaos with only the drums to keep you anchored in the song's melody. I'm going to put that one down there, even though it's too brutal for y'all, just so you can understand that description. Also, the whole album is only seventeen minutes, I just listened to it all the way through while I was writing this.
Song: Firedragon3651 Logs Out for Good
Category D: The Top Five, the Big Kahunas, the Top Dogs, the Kings of the Castle, the Big Cheeses, the Creams of the Crop
05) Kero Kero Bonito - Totep
This EP came out at the end of February and marked a big time change in KKB's sound. Before this EP, I would describe KKB's sound as being something akin to Nintendo 64 J-Pop, despite the band being British, but Totep saw the band change to a place of sort of fuzzy indie rock. Gus Lobban and Jamie Bulled played drums and bass, respectively, and recruited James Rowland to come play guitar, and made an EP (and then an album later) as a full band. They didn't ditch the samplers and keyboards, but they became a part of the sound instead of the main component. But I guess I'm actually getting ahead of the timeline a little, let's just stick with this EP. It's four songs, starting with murky opener The One True Path, led down the dark alley by the drums and the keyboard bass note. The song is the first indication that things are different, there's still electronic elements but the tone of this song is already much darker than anything of the past, before it explodes about halfway through into the kind of kaleidoscopic electronic glitter that we are accustomed to from the group. The second track, single Only Acting, starts off sounding the most traditionally KKB, a song of old, until the 90's guitar in the choruses and then also when the last half freaking implodes in on itself in a vaporwave black hole of fuzz and glitching and insanity. The third track You Know How It Is is literally just a straight forward fuzzy indie rock song, the band completely transformed at this point, barely recognizable. And the last song, Cinema is so good that I almost put this EP ahead of the actual album the band released later in the year. Cinema is definitely my favorite KKB song of 2018, a perfect mixture of everything on the three songs preceding and the ultimate north star of what was to come.
Song: Cinema
04) Kero Kero Bonito - Time 'n' Place
If you listened to Totep and thought "I wonder if this new style is an indication of what's to come or just a temporary deviation?" you are answered quickly by Time 'n' Place. The album starts with the pummeling fuzzed guitar and bass of a seasoned indie hardcore band. Yup, this album is going to sound different. Every song still has moments and shades of the electronic J-Pop wonderland they created in the past, but this album is all made by a full band. However, the wonderment and playfulness haven't gone anywhere, the wonderment and playfulness is just wearing some new makeup and bought a dress at Goodwill that they altered themselves and made it look really nice. I saw the band in October, and that concert was seriously rocking. The guitars were loud and Sarah Midori Perry was headbanging to the drums in between her vocals when they were performing Only Acting. It was 1) awesome and 2) crazy, not what I would have expected. My only complaint was that they didn't play my favorite song from this album, Dump, which is a mellower song led by a super light distorted bass beat and Gus's drums. But they did play Cinema from the EP, so I'm not really complaining. The keyboards on this album are still so good, too, they sufficiently represent the electronics from the first two albums. Basically, this album is just a more full figured version of KKB sonically. And thus ends the two spot segment of Kero Kero Bonito albums.
Song: Dump
03) Jorge Elbrecht - Here Lies
Jorge Elbrecht makes some 80's sounding music. His last album with Violens, True, was a mix of heavy rock and eighties new wave pop sounds, and like sort of all mashed together into a style that I, to this day, have a really hard time describing. I love that album though, it's somewhere in the top 75 of my best albums list. This solo album eschews the hard rock, mostly, and dives into super, super, SUPER 80's sounds. I think it's because Elbrecht's vocals are produced in an echoey distant way, similar to how a lot of singers in new wave and pop sang in the 80's, they bring a sort of ghostly haze to all the songs, so even on a track like Here Lies, which does feature a synth beat but also gunshots and police sirens, you never escape the retro feel. There are slower songs like Words Never Fail to Fail which succeed in a breezy way. But there are so many songs on this album built around just killer synths. While the drum machine is upbeat in Guillotine, the accompanying synth beats have an almost paranoid, authoritarian sound to them. Rainbow Skies is like a surf rock track recorded on an 8-bit beach. Basically, this album sounds like if someone from the 80's was making the greatest new wave album, then went into a coma for thirty years, and then when they woke up, they were given a crash course on how to use computers and modern production techniques, and then that coma musician went out and made this album. I love it.
Song: Guillotine
02) Gorillaz - The Now Now
Last year, Damon Albarn set out to tour the Gorillaz for possibly the last time (he laid out tons of hints that the Gorillaz would probably not be going back out on the road for a long time after this one), and bless his heart, he decided that he needed to write some new material for the tour, and bless his heart, this album is so much better than the one that preceded it and necessitated the tour. Gorillaz' last album, Humanz, was just too much of everything. There were so many guest appearances, which isn't always bad, Plastic Beach was full of guest appearances, but where each song on Plastic Beach felt like one piece of a bigger puzzle, the songs on Humanz have almost no connection to each other whatsoever, like someone just threw together a playlist of everything in the Top 40, although shoutout to the Vince Staples track, Andromeda, and Busted and Blue, no Gorillaz album is devoid of some good songs. But anyway, The Now Now doesn't suffer from any of those issues. There are only two songs with guest appearances, and one of those appearances is Snoop Dogg, a frequent Gorillaz collaborator. This album is so much more centered than Humanz, and the songs are much less scattershot. After the sunniness of opener Humility, things get a bit more darker. Tranz examines the power of the club scene and its escape "Do you dance like this? Forever?" before getting to the bumping Jeep ride that is Hollywood, where Snoop Dogg starts his verse with "Man, I came through with a big fat chain on my neck." The iPad beat on Sorcererz is a call back in style to the last tour album Gorillaz released, The Fall. Idaho is straight from the digital home on the range, and instrumental Lake Zurich is a jam, the standout of the album. Well actually, Lake Zurich is probably tied with Fire Flies for standout of the album, two different sides of the same coin, Lake Zurich exploding with sticky sunny beats, Fire Flies' dour thwomp of a beat coupled with the snickettering drum machine. The difference between walking out of your hotel to a sunny morning or a rainy one. Also, Fire Flies has my favorite line on the album, "If you say Goodbye, too many times, sentinels will find me and switch me off this time." A welcome return to form for one of my favorite bands, cartoon or otherwise.
Song: Fire Flies
01) Against All Logic - 2012-2017
This wasn't even close. I love the Gorillaz and Jorge Elbrecht albums, but this Against All Logic album was number one by a long shot. When I started putting together the order of this list, it was Against All Logic at number one and then figure out the rest of the bunch. Against All Logic is actually Nicolas Jaar, half of Darkside, generally well known maker of obscure, space filled electronic music. I love the one Darkside album, but I've never really gotten into Jaar's solo stuff. Against All Logic, though, is Jaar showing that he can do any kind of house music and make the best version of every house sub genre. There are zero bad songs on this album, I have put a different song from it on almost every one of my monthly Spotify playlists. The album opens with a big fuzzy distorted set of beats, that makes it seem like your speakers are messed up, until all of a sudden the most luscious piano line breaks through with the sampled line that gives the song its title, This Old House is All I Have. I Never Dream is basically a less insane Aphex Twin song with a Dilla-esque vocal sample. Some Kind of Game follows that with a dark-ass bumping bass beat until the soul samples come in for the chorus, and all of a sudden the song explodes into the Moby-ist piano beat ever, which underscores the entire rest of the song. Hopeless is a straight up Zomby beat turned into an actual song, something Zomby rarely bothers to do. Know You is an electro-funk gem with pitched up vocal samples. I could go on describing every song on this album....and I will. Such a Bad Way takes a really tender bass beat and runs all kinds of soul stuff over it, some Avalanches mixing, and at some point the Kanye screams from I Am a God. Cityfade is probably my favorite song on the album, the piano beat that runs through its duration is so good. The police sirens that break out halfway through and the German youth singers throughout give the song a haunted, dirty alley kind of feel. Now You Got Me Hooked runs on a two part harmony consisting of a pitched up soul vocal and a cow bell beat, creating a contrast between the warmth of the vocal sample and the stark coldness of the beat behind it. Flash in the Pan is the deepest house track of the album, the beat is shaking my speakers right now as I'm typing this. You are Going to Love Me and Scream is also possibly my favorite song on this album. The vocal sample is a straight up Moby bellowing female singer, and the beats are all fuzzy and distorted, the song ends in one big wave of distortion, soooo nice. And then the album closes with Rave on You, the most expansive sounding song on the album, blanketed in the soft warmth of its lower beat, which helps mellow out the tinniness of the treble beat, perfect for a slow motion montage of people dancing in a club. This album is a masterpiece, easy number one.
Song: Cityfade
Well that's it folks, time to say goodbye to 2018. It took me two and a half weeks to get this thing fully written, but I'm mostly going to blame that on the fact that I got a new computer last week, the updating and such of which has taken up a lot of my spare time. Thanks for reading all this, and I'll see you around Oscar time, maybe? Which is next week.
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