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Top 50 Albums of 2019

Happy New Year! My favourite albums of 2019:

50-41:
Idlewild - Interview Music
Van Morrison - Three Chords and The Truth
Salad - The Salad Way
The Murder Capital - When I Have Fears
Anna Of The North - Dream Girl
Sigrid - Sucker Punch
Joris Voorn - Four
Better Oblivion Community Centre - Better Oblivion Community Centre
W.H.Lung - Incidental Music
Taylor Swift - Lover

40-31:
Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains
Heather Woods Broderick - Invitation
Solange - When I Get Home
The Highwomen - The Highwomen
Woman’s Hour - Ephyra
Sir Babygirl - Crush On Me
Hælos - Any Random Kindness
FONTAINES D.C. - Dogrel
Ariana Grande - thank you, next
Laura Jean Anderson - Lonesome No More

30-21:
Bon Iver - i,i
Mavis Staples - We Get By
Sarah Bethe Nelson - Weird Glow
Stormzy - Heavy Is The Head
Nilüfer Yanya - Miss Universe
Carly Rae Jepsen - Dedicated
Tamaryn - Dreaming In The Dark
Broods - Don’t Feed The Pop Monster
Pom Pom Squad - Ow
Bat for Lashes - Lost Girls

20-11:
MARINA - Love + Fear
Angel Olsen - All Mirrors
Cherry Glazerr - Stuffed & Ready
Desperate Journalist - In Search of The Miraculous
Ride - This Is Not A Safe Place
The Soft Cavalry - The Soft Cavalry
Sleeper - The Modern Age
Clairo - Immunity
Juliana Hatfield - Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police
Juliana Hatfield - Weird

10 MUNA - Saves The World

Stayaway - YouTube

9 Shura - forevher

Religion - YouTube

8 Charly Bliss - Young Enough

Hard To Believe - YouTube

7 Black Belt Eagle Scout - At The Party With My Brown Friends

6 Billie Eilish- WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?

Bad Guy - YouTube

5 Tegan & Sara - Hey, I’m Just Like You

I’ll Be Back Someday - YouTube

4 Bruce Hornsby - Absolute Zero

3 Marika Hackman - Any Human Friend

The One - YouTube

2 Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Norman Fucking Rockwell - YouTube

1 Hatchie - Keepsake

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Top 50 Albums of 2018

The list is back! A lot of my new music listening in 2018 came via Spotify’s Discover Weekly, and probably skewed this list even more towards white / female vocal / guitar than my default taste.

I ran out of time this year so there are no notes about the top ones but it’s very important to get this posted on January 1 in accordance with tradition :)

50 Wax Idols - Happy Ending

49 The Carters - Everything Is Love

48 KT Tunstall - WAX

47 The Orielles - Silver Dollar Moment

46 Martha Ffion - Sunday Best

45 Lucy Dacus - Historian

44 Courtney Marie Andrews - May Your Kindness Remain

43 Roma di Luna - We Were Made To Forgive

42 Dragon Inn 3 - Double Line

41 Skating Polly - The Make It All Show

40 Black Honey - Black Honey

39 She Drew The Gun - Revolution Of The Mind

38 Weakened Friends - Common Blah

37 Belly - Dove

36 Black Belt Eagle Scout - Mother Of My Children

35 Meg Myers - Take Me To The Disco

34 Liza Anne - Fine But Dying

33 Middle Kids - Lost Friends

32 Metric - Art of Doubt

31 Mastersystem - Dance Music

30 Anna Calvi - Hunter

29 Emma Ruth Rundle - On Dark Horses

28 Snail Mail - Lush

27 CHVRCHES - Love Is Dead

26 Jon Hopkins - Singularity

25 Muncie Girls - Fixed Ideals

24 Pale Waves - My Mind Makes Noises

23 Le Galaxie - Pleasure

22 Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel

21 Hinds - I Don’t Run

20 Marie Davidson - Working Class Woman

So Right - YouTube

19 Goat Girl - Goat Girl

The Man - YouTube

18 Lykke Li - so sad so sexy

utopia - YouTube

17 Kate Nash - Yesterday Was Forever

Twisted Up - YouTube

16 Christine and the Queens - Chris

Girlfriend - YouTube

15 Eliza Shaddad - Future

My Body - YouTube

14 Brandi Carlile - By The Way, I Forgive You

The Joke - YouTube

13 She Makes War - Brace For Impact

Devastate Me - YouTube

12 Charlotte Hatherley - True Love

11 Exitmusic - The Recognitions

Iowa - YouTube

10 Our Girl - Stranger Today

Our Girl - YouTube

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9 Juliana Hatfield - Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John

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8 Sophie Hunger - Molecules

7 Mitski - Be The Cowboy

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6 Poliça & s t a r g a z e - Music For The Long Emergency

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5 Buffalo Tom - Quiet and Peace

4 Juanita Stein - Until The Lights Fade

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3 Bryde - Like An Island

2 Dream Wife - Dream Wife

1 Idles - Joy As An Act Of Resistance

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Top 50 Albums of 2017

Lists! They're back.

Marvel at my narrow taste in music with my top 50 albums of 2017. In reverse order of course:

50 Angel Olsen - Phases
49 Lydia Ainsworth - Darling of the Afterglow
48 Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology
47 Torres - Three Futures
46 Jay-Z - 4:44
45 The Charlatans - Different Days
44 Little Dragon - Season High
43 Widowspeak - Expect the Best
42 Diet Cig - Swear I’m Good At This
41 Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.
40 Menace Beach - Lemon Memory
39 Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott - Crooked Calypso
38 Tired Lion - Dumb Days
37 Denai Moore - We Used To Bloom
36 The Hayman Kupa Band - The Hayman Kupa Band
35 Gary Numan - Savage (Songs from a Broken World)
34 Stormzy - Gang Signs & Prayer
33 Lana Del Rey - Lust for Life
32 Bully - Losing
31 The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Echo Of Pleasure
30 Juanita Stein - America
29 This Is The Kit - Moonshine Freeze
28 Public Service Broadcasting - Every Valley
27 Aimee Mann - Mental Illness
26 J Hus - Common Sense
25 Pale Honey - Devotion
24 Sarah Slean - Metaphysics
23 Halsey - hopeless fountain kingdom
22 Miley Cyrus - Younger Now
21 Blondie - Pollinator

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20 Kesha - Rainbow

Given the horrific background, what a comeback song Praying was.

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19 Kalela - Take Me Apart

Taking R&B in an electronic direction will never be wrong. A stunning debut.

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18 Waxahatchee - Out in the Storm

Consistent songwriting here. 10 songs at just over 30 minutes. Like all albums should be.

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17 The Blue Aeroplanes - Welcome, Stranger!

I wrote a review of this back in January for the final edition of Norwegian e-zine Luna Kafé:

...an album full of big noise, big guitars and a new set of songs that are perfect for Wojtek, the band’s legendary dancer, to excel at. 10 songs that will reward multiple listens with magnificent lyrics, outstanding production and musicianship.

A career highlight, Welcome, Stranger! is easily the most enjoyable Blue Aeroplanes record for over 20 years.

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16 Ride - Weather Diaries

Lovely to have them back.

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15 Stars - There Is No Love In Fluorescent Light

Saturdays are lonely
And Sundays you're alone
Still checking for the signal
For the bars on the phone, phone, phone

You can travel for a thousand miles
You can spend a thousand nights alone
You can lose your way so easily and never ever make it home

so come out with me tonight
out with me tonight
no-one falls in love under fluorescent light

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14 Sylvan Esso - What Now

It's taken me a while to get into Sylvan Esso, but this is the one that's drawn me in. Loved their live set at Latitude this year.

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13 Charlotte Gainsbourg - Rest

Her best album yet, by far. Luscious.

I'll forgive her for making Deadly Valentine twice as long as it needs to be. When you hit a sound like this, you've got to milk it I guess.

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12 Wolf Alice - Visions of a Life

In the hands of many other bands, such a wide range of different styles would make for a bit of a mess of an album. Wolf Alice are no ordinary band though. They shine with everything they take on here - from punk to dreampop, taking in some shoegaze (!) too.

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11 Nadine Shah - Holiday Destination

Political yet uplifiting, Nadine Shah restores humanity to the dehumanised.

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10 Marika Hackman - I’m Not Your Man

Moving away from the stripped back folk sound of the her earlier work, this is an album I've been returning to a lot.

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9 Daughter - Music from Before the Storm

A score from a game, mostly instrumentals, with no physical release and little or no publicity might not count officially as Daughter’s 3rd studio album but it should do.

It’s an atmospheric soundtrack based around a 16-year old character in a game - and is a work of beauty.

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8 The Big Moon - Love in the 4th Dimension

Joyful indie guitar pop, reminiscent of Sleeper era Britpop. Marvellous.

Also, this is sort of their second entry in this list - they feature as the band on Marika Hackman’s album.

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7 Japandroids - Near To The Wild Heart of Life

8 tracks. 8 anthemic bangers.

I love the noise these two generate. So exciting live.

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6 MUNA - About U

“I Know A Place” is the standout track. One of many that speak of overcoming pain and fear set to the most joyful of melodies. Defiant and hopeful.

Given added poignance after Manchester and California, this song - oh god this song. Music is everything.

After the album’s release this year, it’s become even more of an LGBTQ anthem, now with added lyrics:

Even if our skin or our gods look different
I believe all human life is significant
I throw my arms open wide in resistance
He’s not my leader even if he’s my president

Watch Katie Gavin sing these extra lines, starting 3:50 in here. It gets to me every time.

There are songs of relationship trauma and other personal pain - yet when they're all delivered through big pop escapism and empowerment, there's such joy to it.

I love this.

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5 Kelly Lee Owens - Kelly Lee Owens

Electronic and dreamy, this is the album that has grown on me most this year. Given another month or two I wonder if I'd have placed this even higher up.

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4 Juliana Hatfield - Pussycat

My favourite musician of all time™ released a remarkable album in 2017.

In April I wrote a track-by-track review describing "Pussycat" as "the most exciting music Juliana has made since 2008's exceptional How To Walk Away" and "her most political since 2005's Made In China".

An outlet for anger unambigously "inspired" by the US Presidential election of 2016, and touching on all related issues of male privilege and abuse of power, the themes would become ever more relevant towards the end of the year as a soundtrack to the #metoo stories of mysogyny, assault, and harassment.

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3 Slowdive - Slowdive

The shoegazer's shoegazers back even better than before. I still can't believe they reformed.

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2 Lorde - Melodrama

Inevitably, all the (brilliant) songs on Melodrama are overshadowed by Green Light. 10 months on, whenever I play this track I still have an urge to play it again immediately.

Oh yeah, Juliana Hatfield loves it too. She wrote a whole article about Green Light for Talkhouse:

I always want music to be a tangible thing that I can wrap my actual arms around (I have hugged my boom box before), but it isn’t. I want what I can’t have. I want to sink my teeth into the sound of that rich, strong, honest voice. I want to drink and drink and gulp it down; that is the magic of a well-built and -performed and -recorded pop song. You get filled up, and sometimes you overflow with cleansing tears and cathartic shouting-along — if only temporarily — until the song is over, and then you play it again. It’s like a drug or a sugar rush. “Green Light” is ear candy.

By some distance my favourite song of the year.

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1 Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger in The Alps

'Smoke Signals' and 'Motion Sickness' draw you in to this album from the start.

These opening two songs highlight the compelling storytelling and beautiful songwriting that continues throughout this record. Then it hits you. Track 3. 'Funeral'

The most perfectly sequenced track on an exceptional album. No other moment in 2017 hit me quite like the first time I heard it.

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The 405 meets Nadine Shah: "These are some of the most vulnerable people in society, and they have been lied to."

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The 405 meets Nadine Shah: "These are some of the most vulnerable people in society, and they have been lied to."

Nadine Shah, interviewed at The 405:

What I intended to do was to humanise the dehumanised. There are a lot of figures and numbers bandied about over the refugee crisis; so I did my research into first-time testimonies, into both economic migrants and refugees. My brother is a documentary maker, so he helped provide some of the material for me. I thought it was important to focus on the really harrowing subjects to write about. I love Billy Bragg, but I don't want to be Billy Bragg political, I didn't want to preach. I think it's also because most people agree about the crisis, so I just wanted to tell stories in a way that's relatable and I didn't want the music to be downbeat or dour, I wanted it to be energetic. So, oddly even though it's the hardest thing I've written about, it's also musically and sonically the most energetic and vibrant.

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