The Wildcard’s Top 10 Albums of 2018
It’s getting harder and harder to narrow down a list of albums to ten favourites each year. There are just so many records out there, all so accessible, so many creative people doing amazing things, all making their way onto the internet’s hype train until they’re replaced by the next big thing before you’ve hardly had a chance to listen.
No different over here, mate. I’m constantly driven by the possibility that the next thing I listen to might be the next revelatory discovery but it usually isn’t and it’s always a grind trying to keep up. Folks like my boy Ty Segall don’t help with six different album projects released in 2018 – although I bloody love him for it, keep up the fine work Ty. So how do I differentiate between great albums? That’s the trickiest part. There are albums I listen to and immediately know that they’re excellent pieces of art… and then they’re back on the proverbial shelf and I never touch them again. Others I immerse myself in over and over and that’s been what I’ve tried to stick to. If it gets me on that visceral level than that’s the good stuff.
Nothing much else to it. The top ten is in no particular order, just ten great albums that I’ve loved the most this year. And it’s all my singular opinion so don’t even worry about it. Honestly, it’s taken enough work to settle on the ten that I’d probably change it drastically tomorrow but that’s what the long list of Honourable Mentions is there for. Also, crack into the archives here for previous years of jams and bangers.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Kurt Vile – Bottle It In
Earl Sweatshirt – Some Rap Songs
Itasca – Morning Flower
Kikagaku Moyo – Masana Temples
Anna von Hausswolff – Dead Magic
Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel
Vince Staples – FM!
Phosphorescent – C’est La Vie
Marissa Nadler – For My Crimes
Saba – Care For Me
Tash Sultana – Flow State
J.I.D – DiCaprio 2
Kamasi Washington – Heaven and Earth
CAMP COPE – How To Socialise & Make Friends
Snail Mail - Lush
The Beths – Future Me Hates Me
“Future heart-break, future headaches, wide-eyed nights late lying awake, with future cold shakes, from stupid mistakes, future me hates me for, hates me for”
Vibrant and contagious, The Beths’ debut is everything you need from a pop-rock album. Ten tracks of outrageously catchy tunes which speak poignantly to modern anxiety and relationships in a way which balances propulsive rhythms and churning guitars. The songwriting is impeccable, Future Me Hates Me, Little Death and Whatever are all nothing short of genuine jam status while Not Running is one of the most brilliantly intense tunes you’ll hear anytime soon. When they really go to that next level is when the harmonies kick in, out of time, taking this thing to outer space and back. Did I mention they’re a kiwi band too?
Parquet Courts – Wide Awaaaaake!
“We are conduits of clear electricity, now you’re back on the pitch to take the apparatus apart”
At a time when political albums are so common that even Taylor Swift is having to declare which side of the fence she sits on, nobody’s doing it better than Parquet Courts. Their latest is another in a long list of excellent releases (it’s only that one Monastic Living EP that spoils their perfect strike-rate), as the band engages in funkier experiments and intense lyrical philosophy. Dutch football tactics mixed with radical left-wing political ideology… I mean, dunno about you but that’s enough to sell me in a second. But amidst the empowering and roaring calls to revolution we’ve also got some of their most tender and human tracks yet, songs like Freebird II (amazing title), Death Will Bring Change, Mardi Gras Beads and, obviously, the closer Tenderness. Down with unhinged capitalism and up Parquet Courts, that’s what I reckon.
Amen Dunes – Freedom
“Here and then you’re gone, yeah Houston love song. Used to run around with the vampires uptown”
I don’t really know how to describe this album, I just know it’s incredible. In that way I guess it lives up to its title. This is Damon McMahon fully tuned into the creative forces, letting it all spill out with a simmering tension that spills into personal emotional exorcism – and you know it’s a personal set of songs by the pensive close up of the dude on the front cover. But there’s also a grandeur to Freedom. A kind of… wide-lensed wisdom of experience. And for sure it grooves too. Miki Dora finally has the ode his (very) complicated legacy deserves. (Also, I now know who Miki Dora was, cheers Amen Dunes).
La Luz – Floating Features
“A creature stepped out of the wall and then in the blackness it amassed above my head”
Jangly guitar pop with harmonised vocals, with a hint of menace lurking beneath the warmth of it. You know, a lot like the city of Los Angeles where it was recorded. La Luz are a band I’ve dug for a while and this, I believe, is their best work yet. With tracks like The Creature and California Finally there’s a legit cinematic bend to things too, which reminds me a lot of Inherent Vice, The Big Lebowski… those kinds of movies. A real classic vibe album. Twangy and smooth. Sweet and groovy. Definitely one of the albums I return to the most. At first I had to convince myself it was worthy of a place in the top tenskees because it plays so easy like a summer breeze… but then I realised that was the whole beauty of it.
IDLES – Joy As An Act Of Resistance
“If someone talked to you, the way you do to you, I’d put their teeth through… LOVE YOURSELF”
Earworms from start to finish. I was a little late on this beauty of a record at first but I soon caught up, it really is an undeniable force. Lead man Joe Talbot brings that old fashioned punk energy to the table all the way down to the geezer elocution but those stomping boots are the boots of the proletariat demanding society reassess its priorities. We’re talking pro-immigration, gender equality, the whole lot… which in this current climate might come dangerously close to preaching to the choir were it not for the absolute belter tracks and the outstanding vocal delivery. They’re all quality songs but three stand out above the rest for sheer infectiousness: Danny Nedelko, which is basically the perfect punk song; Television, which if you ain’t screaming LOVE YOURSELF at the top of your lungs to then you’re doing it wrong; and Never Fight A Man With A Perm, which is so good it even does justice to its amazing title. Pronouncing the word ‘cocaine’ to rhyme with ‘Charlie Sheen’… a touch of genius if I do say so myself. And like all great punk albums, the louder you listen the better it gets. Keep on stomping.
JPEGMAFIA – Veteran
“I got my hands on my face like Macauley Culkin, gave her the cig but I let the smoke in”
Best hip hop album of the year. A year in which there were heaps of great hip hop albums but not very many legendary ones. Travis Scott finally got his deserved mainstream success. Vince Staples and Earl Sweatshirt had brilliant albums but each was barely twenty minutes long. Jay Rock, J.I.D and Denzel Curry also had great ones. But JPEGMAFIA leads the way, damn peggy. It’s the beats that get you most of all. It’s almost like an audio collage, switching tempos and sounds at the drop of a whim as J spits out cleverly sardonic and scathing bars all over the show. This is what DIY rap sounds like at its best. Art on that empowering level. And with complete creative control he’s got no reason to hold back which results is some immensely unfiltered attitude – the dude’s an actual military veteran and he’s got a master’s in journalism so why not? This ain’t a record likely to crack the mainstream but I bet we’ll be hearing its influence for years to come.
Ty Segall – Freedom’s Goblin
“Fanny knows what her name is, she knows just how to come. Fanny knows what her name is, she knows just who will call”
The irrepressible Mr Segall, who put out six different albums this year but with all due respect to his covers album Fudge Sandwich, and there’s a lot of it due, the first was the best. A sprawling double album that runs a proper old 75 minutes picking up all sorts of varying sounds, ideas and experiments. Usually Ty keeps it cohesive with his album sounds but this one chucked it all out there with rebellious abandon. From straight up rock and roll churners to glammy moments, to funk chuggers, to Sabbath-esque jams, to jazzy explorations, to acoustic glitter, to whatever else he felt like. There’s a cover of Every 1’s a Winner which mops the goddamn floor with its triumphant excellence. I’d be here all day going through the individual tracks though – there are 19 of them after all. Suffice to say that when Ty Segall lets loose there’s still nobody can touch him.
Brockhampton – Iridescence
“I want more out of life than this. I want more. I want more”
The Brockhampton collective had a magical 2017 with their Saturation trilogy but they suffered the flipside of fame when allegations about a member’s misconduct spread and things had to be reckoned with. Good thing about a collective is that you can just kick people out, so off went Ameer Vann and Brockhampton recalibrated for their fourth album, a really powerful statement about getting back to the heart of their music, about coping with the betrayal they’d suffered, about being young and in the spotlight, about all of that and more. It’s remarkably honest and reflective, with superb beats and even better hooks. As sweet as it is stomping. Kevin Abstract is the sun at the centre of the Brockhampton galaxy anyway and the sun’s shining brightly. Plus they debuted the album live while in New Zealand, which was nice of them.
Emma Ruth Rundle – On Dark Horses
“Don’t lift up your hands, it’s only a warning. Like blood in the sand, a kiss is a bruise is endurance”
EMR has always done things with more than a hint of darkness but she’s also had this tendency for huge, grand, expansive anthems too – my first introduction to her was the 2014 track Run Forever and it was so good that the rest of the album never had a chance. Now here we are four years later and Rundle’s managed to orchestrate an entire album that soars with that same cathartic enormity of that one track. The rhythm section is pure grunge while the guitars roar like those dark horses themselves. This is a very heavy listen in more ways than one. It’s also one of those albums that leaves me feeling drained and refreshed again by the end of it.
Marlon Williams – Make Way For Love
“What am I going to do when you're in trouble and you don't call out for me? What am I going to do when I can see that you've been crying and you don't want no help from me? Baby, I can't separate us out anymore”
Closing it out with the most emotionally moving album of the year. Marlon Williams’ second album was a departure, evolving from the straight folk-country of his self-titled debut to involve a larger sound as he polished off a heart-breaking, poignant, reflective and ultimately redemptive breakup album that shimmers with transcendence. Song writing of this quality is a craft akin to fine carpentry or sculpture. The lyrical payoff of I Know A Jeweller. The sweeping bridge in Come To Me. The moment the drums kick in on I Didn’t Make A Plan. But most of all it’s that voice which dominates the show. A voice which is sometimes recorded so tight you can hear the click of his tongue. When re-listening for top ten preparation my entire body shivered as he sang the line: “And I'm left alone to tremble like an adolescent king”. Probably the twentieth time I’ve heard that line and it still gets me to the very depth of my soul. That right there is the absolute definition of duende.
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