Albums Of The Year 2018

Kacey Musgraves has gone from the rebel of Nashville to its rising star to its Country Queen in just three records, quite an accomplishment for the 30-year-old. And third record Golden Hour isn’t more of the same from Musgraves its predecessor Pageant Material was seen as by many, but rather the record we’ve been waiting to hear from the Golden, Texas native.

It’s rich lushness washes over you like a summer evening while many of the themes that have resonated with her fan base and made her stand out from the crowd are still there – closer Rainbow is her ode to the LGBTQ+ community. Yes this is a Country record, but it’s appeal is far-reaching without trying to be a crossover record. 

New York lo-fi soundtracks to your everyday world. This third album, Vessel, in the musical career of Greta Kline (daughter of actor Kevin) continues with that stripped back sound and makes it sound intentionally like a DIY affair recorded in the park, bathroom or on the top deck of a bus.

The songs are totally engaging and the performers vulnerability and hesitations in life are bought to the fore. Frankie Cosmos came to my attention because of the association with the Sub Pop label and the result is not quite what you would expect.

Sometimes music takes you on a powerful journey. Sometimes, it delivers a powerful message.

Sometimes, it’s simply deliciously nice to relax and escape in.

The reverb drenched, instrumental music of Texan three-piece Khruangbin consistently delivers on the third of these and their 2018 sophomore album Con Todo El Mundo, delivers in spades.

Shame have been around for about 4 years but for the last 18 months their rise has been meteoric. A proper gigging band who have learnt their stage craft and developed their huge sound by playing small festival stages to headlining a sell out Kentish Town Forum in December 2018.

Their album Songs Of Praise brings a mix of styles from prog to punk with epic guitar riffs and irreverent vocals. I don’t like saying this band sound like this or that…but imagine Magazine crossed with Rush and you might have an idea…but with a lot more swearing.

Jorja Smith, Lost & Found is an R’n’B revelation, sensation and any other over the top term you wish to use to describe her. I’ve been waiting with baited breath for this body of work for a while and it didn’t disappoint. Jorja talks about her first crush in Teenage Fantasy and the internal battle to maintain a healthy relationship, The One, with a dash of advice, Blue Lights, for good measure.

She does this with a maturity in her voice that belies her 21 years. This album is contemplative, soulful,  emotionally expressive and playful. Comparative to Sade and encouraging reflection, I love Lost & Found, its hope in a jar that is immediately soothing. For me, it conjures relaxation and calm. 

It might have been a long time in coming and it might still only be available to a select number of people who helped fund it through a PledgeMusic campaign, but the debut full length album from Welsh ‘rock ‘n’ soul’ quartet Buck & Evans was certainly worth the wait.

Chris Buck is a virtuoso guitarist who whilst never derivative has the spirit of Knopfler, Gilmour and Hendrix in his fingers. Meanwhile Sally Ann Evans’s soaring vocals take ten beautifully crafted songs and elevate them to another level. If the full release falls in 2019, expect to find this paragraph around this time next year too.

Thumping, stomping, shouty excellence from the Bristolians, a worthy narrative of our modern times. Plus, extra kudos for the cover image, doing Solomon Burke their way and for writing a track entitled Never Fight A Man with A Perm.

A masterpiece from start to finish, that will build you up before breaking you down when you hear June. One of the most heartbreaking songs ever. 

With a sound oxymoronically described as ‘tough pop/soft punk’, Hope Downs began as my heatwave summer soundtrack and became one for all seasons.

Surfy-punk, wistful lyrics and passionate guitar pop with a little country thrown in makes for infectious listening.

Four decades and 15 albums into their career, James have no right to sound so vital. They bring classic pop melodies and age-old themes (love, war, religion, sex, family) bang up to date with cutting-edge production, pointed lyrics, and impassioned performances from the entire band. Tim Booth, especially, sounds like he has something to prove (he doesn’t) and something to say (he does).

Whether he’s tackling US politics head on in the vitriolic Hank or coming to terms with the heartache of being a father on the road in the tender Coming Home (Pt. 2), the singer’s all-in. And, judging by the bonus songs on the deluxe edition (every bit as good as those on the standard album), the well’s far from dry.

After two albums that saw them compared (usually unfavourably) to Joy Division, Editors hit back with an exceptional retro-synth reinvention, 2009’s In This Light And On This Evening. After two listless follow ups, they’ve done it again. Blending dark, pulsing electronica (courtesy of producer Blanck Mass), angular guitars, and singer Tom Smith’sminor piano chords, this is the most alive the band have sounded in a decade.

Highlights? Magazine stands back for nobody. The imposing Counting Spooks updates icy 80s synth ballads (sidestepping the cheesiness dripping off Muse’s latest). And the title track is disco despair: throbbing beats colliding with emotional trauma.

Their live shows are incredible, and the high energy performances are put across perfectly on this album.

Black Peaks’ second album had been a long time coming and it certainly didn’t disappoint. 

 A superb mix of Country and Western music, yes they are separate genres, with a handful of rock n’ roll thrown in.

Not home on the range, these are songs with a dark edge, conjouring up images of an avenging woman sharpshooter in a spaghetti western.

The frontman of  the legendary Shack Shakers steps out of the band to cherry pick guest performers for his songs. A potent mix of Cajun, blues and Southern gothic, a DIY feel to the production that makes it intimate and powerful.

This is the Shack Shakers without the rockabilly drive and bombast, which allows JD Wilkes’ strange and melancholic charm to be explored.

On Remain In Light, Talking Heads experimented with African polyrhythms and this album became one of Angelique Kidjo’s biggest musical influences. She took the album full circle with a track-by-track re-imagination incorporating authentic African music.

 Even if you are not a fan of World music, or even of Talking Heads’, you cannot fail but to appreciate this re-aligning of one of the most iconic albums of the 80s.

In many ways this reworking is more authentic and dare I say, better than the one that Angelique was so taken by in Paris, back in 1983. 

The covers album of the year!

2016s I’m Not Well was an astonishing debut from Exeter three-piece Black Foxxes and the follow up Reiði continues the momentum. Conceived by front man Mark Holley amid the incredible vistas of Icelend, Reiði (the Norse word for ‘rage’) is every bit as dramatic as the landscape that inspired it.

Some of the finest crafted indie art rock you’ll ever hear, this is what might have happened if James Dean Bradfield, Eddie Vedder and Thom Yorke had met at primary school. If Black Foxxes continue the current trajectory; the names of Holley, Tristan Jane (bass) and Ant Thornton (drums) should be considered alongside same exalted company in years to come.

Fickle Friends’ massive debut album You Are Someone Else finally quenches the thirst followers of the Brightonian five-piece have been feeling for many years. Just the right blend of 80’s retro synthpop, indie guitars, and catchy lyrics make this the 2018 pop record you really need to get your hooks into. Natassja Shiner’s distinctive vocals let you know Fickle Friends are a British band without overdoing it across a 16 absolute indie-pop bangers.

From album opener Wake Me Up and total earworm chaser Glue this is a record of hits. Slow-burn, vocoder-infused In My Head serves as a welcome breather from the beats before the likes of Rotation, Paris and Brooklyn bring back the pace. You Are Someone Else cements the sentiment that “pop is not a dirty word”.

Los Angeles-based indie rockers Lo Moon’seponymous debut effort is a wonder to behold. It’s slow-drive, synth-led guitar-based sound may be on the more chilled side, but is so incredibly atmospheric, it’s hard not to be caught up listening to this record start to finish.

The Matt Lowell-led four-piece deliver song after song of perfectly balanced indie-rock, from mind-blowing This Is It, sweeping debut single Loveless and soaring highs of The Right Thing to the chill sparseness felt in My Money, the Talk Talk influence is felt (and often referenced) but here is a record that stands completely on its own merits.

Tim Whelan of Transglobal Underground has taken a group of performers to re-imagine a string of Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs and given them a lo-fi punk edge.

The songs are by turns both funny and surprisingly relevant to these troubled times. One for reflection and drunken bawdy sing along.

Spellbound are Dublin’s very own psychobilly legends. They’ve been around since 1986 and never disappoint. A new album this year titled New Blood sees them be faithful to themselves. Spellbound are back with gritty psychobilly sounds, infused with rock’n’roll and punk.

They know how to make us shake, and we get the proof as soon as the album starts playing Then, we get the psychobilly with some darker tracks, and I bet those will be amazing to sing along to at their next gigs! 

Tom Misch, Geography feels like it’s been around for awhile and yet still sounds fresh when the trippy nuggets we’ve been fed by Tom are brought together in this beat-laden delight. 

The originators of world and dance music fusion released a compilation album this year with some new and refreshed tracks to celebrate 25 years in the business.

Vide Noir marks the L.A. via Michigan band’s major label debut following the release of two well-received independent albums including the record they need to break away from, the possible pigeonhole of hit background music single The Night We Met.

This time around, quirky Ben Schneider and his merry (read melancholy) men embark on a “an epic odyssey through the city [L.A.], across dimensions, and out into the cosmos” – as described by the frontman.

And so Vide Noir takes us through the astral plane via The Balancer’s Eye while sorrowful songs that evoke deep emotions such as doo-wopper Wait By The River are mixed with the likes of oddly upbeat Moonbeam and surging rockers Ancient Names (Parts I & II) to make this an eclectic collection of songs indeed.

It’s easy to pigeonhole Muse into the category of electronic rock and now eight albums in, it might even seem unlikely for them to innovate. But that is just what they seem to be able to do, record after record. And their eighth effort Simulation Theory is no different in that respect but equally different from what has come before.

Perhaps a contradiction, the record is so classically Muse but yet removed a step further from the early days of Showbiz or Absolution. It’s 1980’s-themed album cover might be late to the party in the current era of Stranger Things and Drive (not surprising as the man behind the former’s design – Kyle Lambert – was recruited for this sleeve), but is a prelude to the synth throwback the record communicates in.

This is, by frontman Matt Bellamy’s own admission, a 50/50 blend of programming and live instrumentation. But it shines in all of its nostalgic glory with Bellamy giving his best Prince-styled falsetto on Propaganda while the likes of Pressure, Thought Contagion and Get up And Fight glow in a pink neon hue.