Author: Riley Urbano
- The Voidz – Virtue
One of the more clever of the bourgeoisie’s children demands the best equipment, musicians, mixing (oh god, the mixing) and production that money can buy for his weirdo rock opus. It turns out… great, actually. The conflict at the heart of this thing is that, try as he might, Julian Casablancas really can’t stop writing pop songs. He seems to sincerely want to make neu-metal, and noise rock, and Middle Eastern-influenced psych, and honest to god hardcore punk. He just can’t help but make all those things sound like Strokes songs, and that’s what makes the album so delightful. My favorite parts are the more chilled out moments that let the exceptional performances of drummer Alex Carapetis shine, but any fan of good old fashioned pop music would no doubt find something to like here. This is the guy who wrote Last Nite, after all. (Bonus points for the fact that when Julian is trying to affect a nerdy tone on this record, it sounds like Will Toledo… Like, this is how good Car Seat Headrest can sound, people.)
- Rosalía – El Mal Querer
Unquestionably the breakout act of the year. After firmly establishing her hometown bona fides last year with a stunning record full of fresh takes on Spanish Flamenco music, Rosalía returns to totally revitalize the genre with this forward thinking, sexy, and futuristic album. The production is crisp, often danceable, and occasionally pretty heady – those motorcycle samples on track four are a trip. The fulcrum of the record is easily Rosalía’s stunning voice – there’s just so much passion imbued in every note she sings, and she demonstrates a technical virtuosity that’s pleasantly out of step with the not-so charming sloppiness most pop singers bring to their music these days. Furthermore, two of the absolute best singles of the year, Malamente and Pienso en tu Mira, come from this record. I really hope she inspires more European artists to offer their takes on US style pop — if this is what flamenco sounds like crossed with hip hop, maybe chanson would work just as well. If we’re lucky, maybe she’ll inspire everyone to sing a little better, too.
- Amen Dunes – Freedom
A sleeper hit that’ll knock you clean out – when I reviewed this earlier in the year, I wasn’t comfortable offering too much of an opinion, ’cause this album is just such a grower. Having spent a few more months with these tunes though, they’re some of the best that 2018 had too offer. The instrumentation is great: peep the Rhodes on single Mikki Dora, how you can almost hear his fingers coming up off the keys; you can’t fake production that good. What really holds this album together for me is the totally affected way Damon McMahon sings. There’s just this creepy vibrato in his intonations, I mean I swear, he sounds totally haunted on tracks like Skipping School and especially the title track. This record doesn’t sound like Cocteau Twins in any tangible way, but there’s a shade of Liz Fraser’s style of delivery in what Damon is doing here I think. Some sort of vague, devotional purity to it.
- Autechre – NTS Sessions 1-4
If 2018 was supposed to be the year of shorter albums (looking at you, Kanye), Autechre must have missed the memo: this vanguard electronic act really dropped an eight-hour album this year. I mean, I don’t know how many bands that I like have released eight hours of music total, let alone as their thirteenth record, thirty years into their career. What’s crazier is that this thing is mind-blowingly good, the whole way through. Rob Brown and Sean Booth seem to be leaning further into generative sequencing and production than ever before, resulting quite literally in music that transcends the human creative capacity. Highlights all over this thing: the crushing glitches of “gonk steady one,” the sonic destruction of “violvoic,” the cavernous ambience of “clustro casual,” or the intergalactic transcendence of the hour-long closing drone cut, “all end.” Each session has a unique vibe and structure to it, the flow from track to track and session to session has a weirdly intuitive internal logic to it, and the way some motifs crest and resolve over literal hours creates an intense level of emotional engagement that honestly made everything else I heard this year feel like cheap thrills in comparison. The level of commitment this thing asks for is pretty high: I mean, it’s eight hours, and it’s not like Autechre has ever had a reputation for making easily accessible music to begin with. But for brave listeners willing to take the dive, this record offers musical heights that can’t be reached through any lesser means.
- Louis Cole – Time
This guy brings a physicality into Electronic Music that veers far off from the brute force of popular EDM over into subtler territory, invoking funk and jazz fusion as well as AM Radio throwback vibes not dissimilar from those of his labelmate and collaborator Thundercat. He’s also got a wicked sense of humor; both of these things play an equal role in the success of his Brainfeeder debut, Time. This record has got bangers on bangers, all running just-that-much faster than your average dance floor fare, and always with that biting lyrical edge you’d only get from a child of the internet who’s been churning out content since 2008. Cole also demonstrates a serious knack for sound design, invoking a nostalgic reimagining of ‘80s synth pop at will when he isn’t flexing some seriously whacked out synth passages on tracks like the opening cut, “Weird Part of the Night.” Oh, and if his recent videos are any indication, there’s probably a good chance he put a lot of this stuff together live, which only makes it even more impressive. If you’re a fan of synth pop but, like me, think the genre so frequently produces really cookie cutter style music that rarely stands out, then you might also find this record to be a catchy and fun breath of fresh air.
- Clarence Clarity – THINK:PIECE
After dropping one of the more forward thinking pop albums of the decade with 2015’s No Now and producing a spate of hits for 88 Rising artist Rina Sawayama, Clarence Clarity finally dropped his second (and supposedly final LP), THINK:PIECE. And… it’s a masterpiece, front to back, with much more momentum and much less fluff than his first record. After a short intro cut, THINK:PIECE pretty much plays like a greatest hits of all new songs, while still pushing forward and illustrating new directions for pop at the turn of the 2020s. What’s more, there’s a way that the choruses and hooks sort of haunt the tracklist, acting as the centerpiece of one song only to reappear as a counterpoint in the next. It’s a bold way to add cohesion to the record that works in surprising ways, giving some moments the off-the-cuff feel of a DJ set where Clarity is mashing up bits and pieces of his own work in real time. What really sets this record apart though is just how weirdly meme-y Clarence can get; there’s just such an uncanny valley feel to how “W€ CHANG£” evokes that “We Are Number One” song from Lazytown, and it’s super addictive. Very spooky.
- Low – Double Negative
The best produced album of the year is also a super unlikely turn for Low, who’s made their name with some of the most melancholy and lilted slowcore music of the ‘90s and 2000s. Traditional instrumentation is pretty much nowhere to be found on Double Negative, which is built up more around slabs of digitally distorted static and tape loops. Traditional song structures are similarly eschewed, the band instead opting for repetitive, mantra like meditations on dark, dadaist lyrical motifs. The only holdover from Low’s initial style is the haunting interlocked vocal performances of the dual leads, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker – the vocals were already the best part of any given Low record, but they take on a new level of import and significance as really the only organic-sounding part of Double Negative. Once every few years, real production masterpieces come out that prove to be bellwethers for the shape of pop music to come – Artificial Intelligence, James Blake’s debut self-titled, Jai Paul, stuff like that… I think that a few years from now, Double Negative will sit comfortably within that canon.
- George Clanton – Slide
Underground Bandcamp phenom and Vaporwave pioneer George Clanton (AKA Espirit) sets out to make the ‘90s cool again with Slide, and honestly makes a pretty convincing case. There are massive, gorgeously simple square-wave leads, almost neu-metal like vocal riffs, and, best of all, totally kitschy ‘90s drum shuffles that are actually super, super pleasant. It isn’t just a nostalgia act either: the record comes complete with ambient interludes, surprising moments of shoegazey noise, and some really punchy live instrumentation that appears totally out of nowhere throughout the record. This album also represents, to me, a huge victory for DIY music and culture: this kid is totally independent, tours relentlessly, and makes all of his stuff top down, all the way up to the album art, which is very cool. I really respect and appreciate artists that work this way, especially as the industry further orients itself against artists and especially DIY artists in the age of streaming. Also – peep the Sketchers on that front cover. Nice.
- Kero Kero Bonito – Time ’n’ Place
Yet another boundary pusher of 2010s pop comes back to put a spin on their established formula in 2018 – this time, Kero Kero Bonito folds pop punk, Brit-pop and twee music into their incredibly bubblegum aesthetic with Time ’n’ Place. The impossibly bright synth pop and aggressively cheery delivery of singer Sarah Bonito is still there, but there’s a new edge, a new bit of angst in the lyrics that pairs adorably well with the Weezer-style guitars on singles like “Only Acting” and “Make Believe.” Elsewhere, genre exercises like synth pop masterclass “Time Today” and acoustic ballad “Sometimes” further accentuate just how far Gus and Jamie have come as producers and songwriters, really expertly tying all the disparate sounds and styles in a way that’s unmistakably KKB. But really, what’s always excited me about Kero Kero Bonito is that by forgoing the cynicism and veneer of coolness most bands strive for, they tap into our generational experience better than almost any other working artists; the brightness of the music just belies this vulnerable, earnest quality that hits a lot closer to home than most other indie acts for me. That rare and valuable quality hasn’t gone anywhere on Time ’n’ Place, it’s just grown up a little, and there’s a real beauty to that. I think this is the album I’m most thankful for in 2018.
- Mid-Air Thief – Crumbling
If nothing else, I hope something blindsides you this year the way Crumbling did for me – it’s not often that albums come this far out of left field, only to leave this much of an impression on me. Self-released on Bandcamp, supposedly recorded on consumer-grade equipment at home by a solo artist working in Seoul with a singer he found on Soundcloud, this record somehow sounds like a long lost Fishmans album, as remixed by Four Tet or the Avalanches. Whether working with swirling fingerpicked guitar parts on “These Chains” and “Crumbling Together,” or with gorgeous chip-tune style synth parts on “Why” and “Curve and Light,” every composition moves in surprising and emotionally stunning ways, always hitting the chord you’d least expect to continually remarkable effect. Almost none of these songs work within verse-chorus-verse structures, instead drifting languid from one composition to a totally different composition, often several times in the same song. I don’t know, maybe it’s simpler than anything I could say about the music itself: I do have a soft spot for psychedelia-tinged folk music, which is ostensibly the easiest genre to place Crumbling in. Maybe it’s that this record sits outside of context and narrative for me, in a year full of albums infuriatingly secondary to the press narratives they were trying to carry: Kanye’s nothing of a record, “Thank You, Next,” The 1975 and their “this generation’s OK Computer,” and so on. 2018 was just so overstuffed with music that obsessed over telling you why it was important; I’m thankful for albums that show, instead of telling. Maybe it was all of those things at once. I don’t know. But I do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was the best album I heard in 2018.
Honorable Mentions
- Earl Sweatshirt – Some Rap Songs
- Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!
- SOPHIE – Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides
- Aphex Twin – Collapse EP
- Julia Holter – Aviary
RILEY URBANO | I love all these albums equally | KXSU Music Reporter