Afternoon all! List month races on! 2018 had a whole lot of great music, some pretty bad stuff too. But more than anything, I felt like this year was absolutely brimming with surprises, here's the 10 biggest for me! As always, this is all opinion folks. Enjoy!
10. Smashing Pumpkins - Shiny And Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun
I’m not going to sit here and make any excuses. No, this album really isn’t perfect or epic or brilliant. Hell, you can argue that James and Jimmy’s presences are barely felt, and at the end of the day, this is still the Billy Corgan show. But this album is like, 18 years in the making, and there are a few tracks here that are actually not bad at all. With all of the drama, backstabbing, and ridiculousness surrounding this album, I expected much much worse.
9. SOPHIE - Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides
This one is a little different for me! I saw SOPHIE perform live years ago and her performance blew my mind. Then, I obsessed over the “PRODUCT” compilation. But we haven’t heard from SOPHIE in years, and when we did hear from her, what would she even sound like. And going into this, the album’s singles seemed to be all over the damn place. But the resulting album we finally got is every bit as exciting and mind-melting as I could have ever hoped for. It’s a deeply personal album filled with chilling performances and indescribable beats. It’s everything I ever hoped to hear from SOPHIE.
8. Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
So let’s just start off with a cold hard fact that people don’t want to admit. This album, it’s not a bad album. And leading up to this, I have no idea how anyone in their right mind could have expected what we eventually got. I mean, last time we heard from Alex and company, they were mastering dark and moody Alternative and writing songs alongside Josh Homme. So when Alex Turner revealed that this album wasn’t going to have any singles released beforehand. And listening to it in full for its first time, it’s obvious why. This album is a spacey Lounge Rock album filled with ghoulish imagery and Glam Rock influence. AKA, something that isn’t easy to swallow at all, especially for longtime fans. But do yourself a favor, give it another listen or two, you’ll find some of Alex Turner’s most intriguing lyrics in years, as well as some genuinely interesting instrumentals that I can’t wait to see Alex expand on.
7. Kimbra - Primal Heart
This was an album that I was so worried about from a distance. Time after time, album after album I’ve been so let down by Kimbra’s work. She has such an awesome voice and an incredible range of influences. But with “Primal Heart”, Kimbra made the album I’ve been waiting to hear for years. Kimbra here busts out into classy Baroque Pop, mammoth Pop-Bangers, all while bringing in elements of World Music as well as some awesome production. It’s the album that I wish she wrote 6 years ago honestly and a colorful and adventurous one at that.
6. Beach House - 7
Since the beginning of Beach House’s career, I worried about them. As much as I’ve always enjoyed their music, I knew a day would come where the Dream pop legends would try to embrace a more instrumentally heavy sound. You see, there was always a sort of simplicity to their music, and I feared that would eventually leave. And with their last two albums, it seemed like my fears were coming true. But with “7”, Victoria and Alex have made the leap to a more dense sound with such a beauty and recapturing the band’s original mysterious edge. It’s an album that I thought I would never hear, and certainly, never enjoy as much as I love this album. It’s colorful, psychedelic, haunting and most importantly beautiful.
5. Post Malone - Beerbongs & Bentleys
I mean, shit. Like, compare this to “Stoney” and that other genuinely trash Mixtape he dropped a few years ago and this is genuinely a gigantic step in the right direction. No, it’s not perfect. But friend of the world Posty has come a LONG way from muddling up classic Fleetwood Mac tracks.
4. Andrew W.K. - You’re Not Alone
As a gigantic, old school fan of Andrew W.K., this album made me simply put, Happy. Once again, this isn’t exactly reinventing any wheels for Andy, and it’s certainly is far from his best work. But compared to album’s like “Close Calls With Brick Walls” and “The Wolf”, it is absolutely heartwarming to hear Andrew having some legitimate fun again. There may be one too many cheesy spoken word pieces on here, which is why this album didn’t get a higher scoring review from me. But there’s a sense of positivity here that is simply put, missing from Rock music these days. It’s personal, bombastic, and loud, everything we’ve always loved from Andrew.
3. MGMT - Little Dark Age - Warning! Alert! Lend me your ears! Hey, so uh, this album is legitimately fantastic from start to finish. But what makes this album such a pleasant surprise is quite frankly where the band has been the last few years. They went from Synth-Pop anthems to literally creating one of the worst album’s I’ve heard with their last album. No, it wasn’t good at all. But with “Little Dark Age” MGMT return with a fresh new Psych Pop sound with a healthy dose of Goth tendencies and some of their strongest songs since their debut. I had no idea what to expect going into this album, but this is STRONG.
2. Twenty-One Pilots - Trench
So has the hate for this album died down at all? No? Oh ok. Well hey, look, this album really isn’t bad at all. Let’s start out with the obvious. The songwriting here compared to years of “Alternative” bullshit and Reggae-infused looks are a breath of fresh air, and Tyler’s rapping has risen absolutely ten-fold. It’s dark and so much more aggressive in parts, and every aspect to Twenty-One Pilots just seems so less cheesy. So yes, this album is far from a mind-blowing experience. But the massive shift in gears, genuinely compelling songwriting and all around more darker and heavier tone, this album was a big surprise.
Kids See Ghosts - Kids See Ghosts
Who the hell in their right mind could have foreseen that two of Rap’s most polarizing figures, who by the way weren’t even talking two years ago, could come through with one of this year’s most compelling and adventurous Rap albums? Kanye West and Kid Cudi came together here with just under 24 minutes of all killer, no filler Psychedelic Rap diving deep into new waters for both men. When this album it’s Dark, its practically satanic, grooving on Classic Rock riffs and two of the biggest personalities in modern music. However, Kids See Ghosts come full circle completely and end up rounding this album out with these unreal moments of clarity and hope. Cudi sounds mentally stable, as does Kanye if you can imagine that. The singing is top notch, the raps are wildly creative, and this ends up being one of the most colorful albums of the entire year of any genre.
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