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Albums of 2018 – long lists (Not the official poll!)

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This year I don’t think there have been any 10/10 albums, as there have been in recent years, but there have been an awful lot of 9/10 and 8/10 ones. Way more than the 20 submitted for the poll. I know others have mentioned this too and a few have indicated that their lists could go on for longer, so here’s the place to put them. I’m hoping it will bring a few albums to the fore that are lesser known, or not well known enough to pop up on umpteen top 20s (unless, of course, someone has Ry Cooder at number 21), so I look forward to having a listen to them and finding a few gems that had passed me by. @sewer-robot, looking forward to seeing your next ten (no need to stop at 30!), particularly as you’re the only other person that seems to like KOD.

Nobody will thank me for writing out all 166 on my list, especially as some of them are rubbish (hello Neil Young), but I reckon there have been 68 albums of note (or 68 that I really like, put it that way), so here they are. I’ve put the Gary Numan live album back in, which I’d removed for the poll, so Lodey, keep my 20 as they are.

1 – J.Cole: KOD [this guy just keeps getting better]
2 – Janelle Monáe: Dirty Computer [Prince fans should like this]
3 – Christine & the Queens: Chris [saw her in Manchester, fab show]
4 – Blocks & Escher: Something Blue [last year’s lists introduced me to drum & bass]
5 – The Internet: Hive Mind [love these – Syd’s solo album last year was excellent]
6 – Gary Numan: Savage (Live at Brixton Academy) [saw him twice and he was fab too]
7 – Pusha T: Daytona [His best album, even if it is very short]
8 – Kendrick Lamar et al: Black Panther OST
9 – Kooley High: Never Come Down
10 – Poppy Ackroyd: Resolve
11 – L-Side: Carnal Mind
12 – Dr. Octogan: Moosebumps: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horripilation
13 – Belly: IMMIGRANT
14 – Johnny Marr: Call the Comet [who needs Morrissey?]
15 – NaS: Nasir
16 – Bugzy Malone: B. Inspired
17 – Czarface & MF DOOM: Czarface Meets MF DOOM
18 – Etherwood: In Stillness
19 – The Necks: Body
20 – Marianne Faithful: Negative Capability [fantastic reworking of As Tears Go By]
21 – DJ Krush: Cosmic Yard
22 – Evidence: Weather Or Not
23 – Kamasi Washington: Heaven Or Earth [took a few listens, but grows on me every time]
24 – Everything is Recorded: Everything is Recorded by Richard Russell
25 – Young Fathers: Cocoa Sugar
26 – Mitski: Be the Cowboy
27 – St. Vincent: Masseducation [better than Masseduction I think]
28 – Mogwai: KIN
29 – Whiney: Waystone
30 – Ian McNabb: Our Future in Space [his best for ages]
31 – Murs: A Strange Journey Into the Unimaginable [NOT Olly!]
32 – Monster Florence: Foul
33 – Anderson .Paak: Oxnard [very good, although a tad disappointing – expected more]
34 – Damien Jurado: The Horizon Just Laughed [his best since Rehearsals For Departure]
35 – Cat Power: Wanderer [and her best since The Greatest]
36 – Amoss: Everything is Temporary
37 – Andy Pawlak: Sasquatches & Synthesizers [a nice surprise comeback]
38 – Beak>: ->>>
39 – Jon Hopkins: Singularity
40 – Travis Scott: AFTERWORLD [another that took its time to grow on me]
41 – GoGo Penguin: A Humdrum Star
42 – Kanye West: Ye [not sure he has any more truly great albums left in him, but this one’s good]
43 – Mark Peters: Innerland
44 – Jay Rock: Redemption
45 – Eminem: Kamikaze
46 – Apollo Brown & Joell Ortiz: Mona Lisa [no matter who he collaborates, with AB always delivers]
47 – epic45: Through Broken Summer
48 – Death Cab For Cutie: Thank You For Today [with a track that sounds just like Pet Shop Boys]
49 – JB Dunckel: H+
50 – Suede: The Blue Hour
51 – Atmosphere: Mi Vida Local
52 – Paul McCartney: Egypt Station
53 – Bill Ryer-Jones: Yawn
54 – Nipsey Hussle: Victory Lap
55 – Wiley: Godfather II
56 – Morcheeba: Blaze Away
57 – Novelist: Novelist Guy
58 – Bodega: Endless Scroll
59 – Khruangbin: Con Todo El Mundo [didn’t know what to make of this initially, but it’s fab]
60 – Kids See Ghosts: Kids See Ghosts
61 – Low: Double Negative [taking its time to click with me, but it’s growing]
62 – Tim Burgess: As I Was Now [best music he’s made in years]
63 – Acid Lab: A Matter of Time
64 – Binary Star: Lighty [good, but a little disappointed with this – still love them though!]
65 – Skee Mask: Compro [again, growing on me after an indifferent first opinion]
66 – Ólafur Arnalds: Re:member
67 – Sleep: The Sciences
68 – Spiritualized: And Nothing Hurt

Poor Ed Harcourt missed the cut at 69! A year ago I had never heard anything by 32 of those 68 artists, although a couple of those 32 had been around for decades. Hope 2019 is as enjoyable, music wise).

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Comments

  1. Well, as you arsked so nicely the next ten would have been:
    21. Supaman – Illuminatives (hip hop looking back to the old skool)
    22. Hayley Kiyoko – Expectations (more gurly dance pop)
    23. Towkio – WWW. (rough and messy but largely fun hip-pop debut)
    24. Gulp – All Good Wishes (electropop from a Super Furry Animal and friends)
    25. The Decemberists – I’ll Be Your Girl
    26. Diplo – California (short but perfectly formed dancey pop)
    27. Teyana Taylor – K.T.S.E. (strong female contemporary r ‘n’ b with Kanye at the desk)
    28. I’m With Her – See You Around (Country/ folky harmonies)
    29. Protoje – A Matter Of Time (21st Century reggae)
    30. Cavern Of Anti-Matter – Hormone Lemonade (Instrumental electro – a bit Krautrock?)
    After that I’d prefer to pick out a few curiosities rather than repeat the familiar CatPowerSueduelized
    so..
    The Herbaliser’s Bring Out The Sound was the best Gorillaz album this year
    The Spook School’s Could It Be Different gave me a Proustian rush as it was exactly the kind of energetic indie I was supping cider to in 1989
    Noname’s Room 25 was the sort of promising debut that says “keep an eye on this one”
    Gaika’s BASIC VOLUME was an intriguing chunk of brood-hop-step
    Two other Irish albums that had their moments were
    Kojaque’s Deli Daydreams (a downbeat Dubliner’s take on hip hop), and
    Slow Skies’ Realign (technically a debut of slow dreamy female perspective ballads).

    And, the thing I forgot to say on the other thread was thanks to The AW posse for so many great tips throughout the year – particularly whoever it was that pointed me towards Theotis Taylor..

  2. Just had a word with The Mods – you are both banned from The Blog for one week. Kids, stay away from these two. Everyone else, stay calm and remember a mere 17 more days to cast your vote in the only poll that matters.

  3. How are you able to decide that e,g, Cat Power is 35, rather than, say, 37? Surely the order becomes arbitrary after a relatively small no. of albums.

      • Filth, nothing but filth. And to think Bri got banned for nothing more then sexist, misogynist banter when stoned one sunny evening thus revealing his gender and racial bias from which for him there is no escape.
        Personally if I had to watch Tiggs perform a “listen off” or sit through Bri playing drums in front of 25 permanently stoned Vancouver Island Reprobates… bugger, let me ponder some more.
        Right then, we’re all off to Tiggs gaff….

    • Ah, beware of asking me about how my mind works, as the answer could go on a bit, whilst I try to work it out myself.

      The easy answer is that, as much as I like Pawlak’s new direction, moving to a sound more akin to the Icelandic modern classical artists, miles away from the sophisti-pop of his fantastic debut album (Shoebox Full of Secrets, my number 8 album of 1989, which is no mean feat, as there are some cracking records at the top end of that list), I like Chan Marshall’s songwriting return to form a tad more.

      The longer answer is don’t underestimate how long I spend on my list! I start at the beginning of the year, or whenever I buy/download the first album and then I place each album as I go along. Throughout the year I listen to them again. The better ones will get a speedier re-play, as will the ones I’m not sure about or the ones where I thought I wasn’t listening to them right, i.e. on the docking station in the kitchen or on my hi-fi when I think it would sound better in headphones, or vice versa. And then periodically I will start at the bottom of the list (usually Ringo, this year Yoko) and go through them again. Throughout the year I’ll stop listening to albums I think are rubbish when I do a full re-run, and I may stop listening to ones where I am comfortable that I know them well enough (by this, I usually mean the albums towards the lower end of my list). I’ll also listen to ones I particularly like more often, when I’m on the bus, etc.

      But when I do the full re-runs I’ll highlight the ones I want to listen again to and start at the lowest, changing the positions as I go along. As I can get through 6-8 per day it doesn’t take long, so I easily remember the record and I do the listen off like Tiggerlion, so to speak. Early on albums can jump or drop dramatically, as the listening conditions may not have been right the previous time, or this next time (i.e. if I listen to a drum and bass or EDM album shortly after taking my tramadol I’d tend to overmark!). A good example is Travis Scott’s new album, that was way down to start with, but gradually rose the chart, like singles used to do in the old days. And Nils Frahm went down with each listen, probably because there were better albums of that type of music that came out after it.

      Genres are the biggest pitfall though. When deciding how high to lift an album it’s much easier to rank it against a similar album. How do you rank Poppy Ackroyd against Pusha T*? So if you’re not careful you could end up clumping albums of certain genres together. The other pitfall is falling for the ‘coolness’ factor, and ranking albums higher because it makes you look cred. This isn’t a problem for me though, because apart from the current year on here, nobody ever sees my lists (I’m ranking all my albums for every year). And I’m glad about that, because I currently have Wham!’s Fantastic at number 3 for 1983. That’s only after the initial batch though, i.e. ranking the ones I know well enough without listening to them again. When I get round to finishing 1983 (currently doing the year 2000 – I choose the years at random) there’s another 36 albums I need to listen again to…[pauses to look through the 36]…mmm, it looks like it will easily stay in the top 10, probably the upper reaches of the top 10, but hey, I like it! The questionable albums in my collection is one of the reasons I declined the offer of blogging my progress on a friend of a friend’s music website. That and the fact that I’m not a good writer, when you look at the quality of some of the reviews on here.

      And I try to rank the album on the album’s merits alone and don’t consider all the other factors that go with it, i.e. what a waste of a man’s talent to knock out half a dozen album’s worth of the great American songbook, when he used to write some of the best songs of his generation. If they are great songs, with great arrangements by a great orchestra, sung by a great singer then it tends to make a great album. They did start getting a bit ghastly towards the end though when they felt the need to start having guest vocalists do syrupy duets. But you get my point. A band want to shake off their chart success and make a more experimental album, unlike any they’ve made before, risking alienating their fanbase…a brave move by proper artists, but is it actually any good? I suppose in U2’s case yes, as Zooropa’s my favourite of theirs, but once again I digress…

      I’ve completed 29 years so far, going back to 1954, although there are very few albums in the 50s lists, with Sinatra, Elvis and Buddy Holly topping two charts each. I’ll finish 2000 by Tuesday and will probably do a 70’s one next, as I can get one of those done by Christmas. A couple of the more recent years have daunting triple figures left to do. Over Christmas I’ll have some time off the project to play with the kids…and finally listen to the Beatles and Dylan boxed sets.

      I have to say though, that I am really enjoying this project. It’s making me listen to albums I haven’t heard in ages or haven’t heard at all, as I have bought/downloaded so much new stuff over the past couple of years (the bonus of coming late to the hip hop & drum and bass party is that you can pick up loads of CDs for pennies), and I am listening to them properly. And I find things like this fun. I even took a step back a few weeks ago and created loads of lists for individual artists, so at the same time of ranking per year, I am ranking per artist. This helped me review my scoring for some years, when I found that I had given a higher score to albums that were clearly inferior to others by the same artist. I find the artist lists harder than the year lists really, as there are plenty of artists whose albums really do start to sound the same.

      So, there you go, I bet you’re glad you asked! I suppose you didn’t need the detail, unless you fancy doing the same yourself? The reason I put Cat Power at 35 rather than 37 is because I genuinely don’t have much else better to do and I take a long time deliberating about it. I do get your point though.

      *To start with it was quite difficult, but because I’ve been at this for over a year now and get through so much music, that I’m listening to with a critical ear, I have developed a very good ear for it and try to dismiss the idea of genres altogether, something you have to do when you have a few Ivor Cutler albums.

  4. I still haven’t completely decided on my top twenty but I’ll show my workings out with my current numbers 21-50. There may be a few changes before December is out.

    21. Sly & Robbie, Nils Petter Molvaer, Elvind Aarset and Vladislav Delay – Nordub
    22. Idles – Joy As An Act Of Resistance
    23. Aketi Ray – From Ever Since
    24. Jupiter & Okwess – Kin Sonic
    25. Fire! – The Hands
    26. Tirzah – Devotion
    27. You Are Wolf – Keld
    28. Tenderlonious – The Shakedown
    29. Lonnie Holley – MITH
    30. Various Artists curated by Kendrick Lamar – Black Panther: The Album
    31. Nils Frahm – All Melody
    32. Ry Cooder – The Prodigal Son
    33. The 1975 – A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships
    34. Neneh Cherry – Broken Politics
    35. E.S.T. – Live In London
    36. The Last Poets – Understand What Black Is
    37. Arp – Zebra
    38. Djrum – Portrait With Firewood
    39. Olivia Chaney – Shelter
    40. Mitsuki – Be The Cowboy
    41. Melody Gardot – Live In Europe
    42. Hollie Cook – Vessel Of Love
    43. Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour
    44. Meshell Ndgeocello – Ventriloquism
    45. Pusha T – Daytona
    46. Calexico – The Thread That Keeps Us
    47. Ólafur Arnalds – Re:member
    48. Madeleine Peyroux – Anthem
    49. The Breeders – All Nerve
    50. Miss Red – K.O.

  5. 1 – Daniel Romano – Finally Free
    2 – Idles – Joy As An Act Of Resistance
    3 – Ron Gallo – Stardust Birthday Party
    4 – Eliza Gilkyson – Secularia
    5 – Sons Of Kemet – Your Queen Is A Reptile
    6 – Josephine Foster – Faithful Fairy Harmony
    7 – Caroline Rose – Loner
    8 – Lonnie Holley – Mith
    9 – Anna & Elizabeth – The Invisible Comes To Us
    10 – Ty Segall & White Fence – Joy
    11 – Alasdair Roberts, Amble Skuse & David McGuinness – What News
    12 – Hadley McCall Thackston – Self-titled
    13 – Alejandro Escovedo – The Crossing
    14 – Rhett Miller – The Messenger
    15 – Rayland Baxter – Wide Awake
    16 – Ned Collette – Old Chesnutt
    17 – Christian Kjellvander – Wild Hxmans
    18 – John Prine – Tree Of Forgiveness
    19 – Haley Heynderickx – I Need to Start a Garden
    20 – Sarah Shook & The Disarmers – Years
    21 – Doug Paisley – Starter Home
    22 – Marc Ribot – Songs of Resistance 1942-2018
    23 – Kristin Hersh – Possible Dust Clouds
    24 – Jeff Rosenstock – Post
    25 – Adam Faucett – It Came In The Shape Of A Bird
    26 – Courtney Marie Andrews – May Your Kindness Remain
    27 – Insecure Men – Insecure Men
    28 – Sunny War – With The Sun
    29 – Brigid Mae Power – The Two Worlds
    30 – Odetta Hartman – Old Rockhounds Never Die
    31 – Ty Segall – Freedom’s Goblin
    32 – Jim James – Uniform Distortion
    33 – Eric Bachman – No Recover
    34 – Hen Ogledd – Magic
    35 – Oh Sees – Smote Reverser
    36 – The Fernweh – The Fernweh
    37 – The Goon Sax – We’re Not Talking
    38 – Adrianne Lenker – Abysskiss
    39 – Danny Paisley & The Southern Grass – That’s Why I’m Lonesome
    40 –Shannon Shaw – Shannon In Nashville
    41 – Superchunk – What A Time To Be Alive
    42 – Saba – Care For Me
    43 – Goatman – Rhythms
    44 – Nap Eyes – I’m Bad Now
    45 – Vincent H.L. – Weird Days
    46 – Jeremy Messersmith – Late Stage Capitalism
    47 – Mien – Mein
    48 – John Calvin Abney – Coyote
    49 – Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs – Clippetty Clop
    50 – Gwenifer Raymond – You Were Never Much Of A Dancer

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