It’s been a busy year, old 2019. Not sure if it’s been a fantastic year for music or not, that’s one that could go either way because it feels like one where there hasn’t really been any of those instant and enormous classics but there’ve been a whole lot of really good albums in that next tier below. All a matter of perspective. Movies it’s been an incredible year for. I’ve seen so many great movies this year and still have a whole bunch on my list to check out but music’s been a lot harder to separate things from the pack.

Throughout the year there were probably four albums that stuck out to me as being undeniable inclusions on this list as soon as I heard them. Then maybe three or four more which didn’t surge into that classification at first but have settled there comfortably as I reassessed what I’ve listened to. Not gonna say which ones though – the whole point of this list is that it’s unranked and all ten albums sit on an equal pegging. The last couple took some more figuring out as to what deserved to be elevated from a very stacked honourable mentions category (told ya that tier was loaded) but hey that’s the gig. And here they all are, for the sixth year in a row.

Obvious legal disclaimers here, this is a personal list of personal favourite albums and the hurt feelings of yourself or others are not my responsibility. We’re all music fans here. We’ve all got our own lists.

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

The Wildcard’s Top 10 Albums of 2014

The Wildcard’s Top 10 Albums of 2015

The Wildcard’s Top 10 Albums of 2016

The Wildcard’s Top 10 Albums of 2017

The Wildcard’s Top 10 Albums of 2018

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

• Ex Hex – It’s Real

• Sharon van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

• Denzel Curry – ZUU

• Bleached – Do You Think You’ve Had Enough?

• Moon Duo – Stars Are The Light

• Purple Pilgrims – Perfumed Earth

• FEELS – Post Earth

• Earth – Full Upon Her Burning Lips

• The Highwomen – The Highwomen

• JPEGMAFIA – All My Heroes Are Cornballs

• Angel Olsen – All Mirrors

• Vincent Neil Emerson – Fried Chicken & Evil Women

• Jamila Woods – LEGACY! LEGACY!

• black midi – Schlagenheim

• Mermaidens – Look Me In The Eye

Sturgill Simpson – SOUND & FURY

“Mercury’s in retrograde again/But at least it’s not just hanging around pretending to be my friend/Oh the road to hell is paved with cruel intentions/ If it’s not nuclear war it’s gonna be a divine intervention”

Nobody tells Sturgill what to do so if Sturgill says his next record is going to be a scuzzy electric guitar shredding riot about anti-commercialism and music industry madness then you say: yes please. And if he reckons that it needs a Netflix-funded album length anime music video to boot then you just make sure it happens. The anime is great... but the tunes stand on their own too. It’s like Eliminator era ZZ Top got mixed up with a couple generations of Hank Williamses and somebody chucked some tequila and motor oil into the concoction. I’ve been waiting so long to hear Sturgill truly unleash himself on guitar and here it is. Divisive, perhaps. I get that. But for me, personally, there was nothing I listened to more this year.

Garcia Peoples – Natural Facts

“At high noon violence you’ll see who you are/The land is silent, dead to all who knew, all who knew, all who knew, all who knew”

I love me some Grateful Dead, that’s for sure. So a jam band called Garcia Peoples was always gonna be in my wheelhouse. However with their second full length album (they also released a third later in the year – which only had two songs plus a single edit bonus track of one of the others) they grew beyond the easy Deadhead comparisons and into their own unique beast. There’s a natural joy to their music which you get from these dudes just loving what they do, and the telepathic connection that the band has is proof they’ve gotten their licks in. Total Yang has been an earworm ever since I first heard it. High Noon Violence rocks and rolls. Feels So Great. Rolling Tides. I dunno, it might be a niche one but I love this band and I love this record.

Tyler, The Creator – IGOR

“Cause you make my earth quake/Oh you make my earth quake/Riding around, your love is shakin’ me up and it’s making my heart break/(Don’t leave, it’s my fault)”

It’s crazy how far Tyler has come as an artist and I know Flower Boy was the big breakthrough but IGOR is the one I keep going back to. So many of these tunes have been living rent free in my skull, Earfquake most of all but Running Out of Time and A Boy Is A Gun too. What’s incredible here is that it’s completely self-produced and also Tyler hardly even raps on it. That’s how you can tell what a brilliant producer and song-writer thus bloke is because he can’t even hardly sing and yet it’s just jam after jam on this one. And of course it’s all thematically linked, a flowing yet deliberate cycle of songs that rises in its power as you listen to the full thing in its intended state.

Aldous Harding – Designer

“It’s already dead/I know you have the dove/I’m not getting wet/Looks like a date is set/Show the ferret to the egg/I’m not gettin’ led along”

As mystifying and cryptic as ever, Aldous Harding’s latest is full of strange imagery and quirky instrumentation, at times lifting the veil enough to sound like something out of the mid-70s Neil Young/Fleetwood Mac oeuvre but mostly happy to keep it weird. Which is exactly what we want and expect from Aldous Harding. What was surprising was just how immediately catchy basically all of these songs are. There’s no point trying to figure out what the lyrics mean, that’d only lessen the impact. Just chill in that breezy zone where the harmonies sweep across the landscape. There’s a phrase on the song Designer: Visionary Shimmer. That’s as good a description of this album as there is. Truly one of Aotearoa’s finest.

Joan Shelley – Like The River Loves The Sea

“A spring remembered, the taste of gin/An eyelet light upon our skins/Your form it lingers, I trace just where you've been/The songs we sang I'll sing again”

Gorgeous. Just absolutely gorgeous. Joan Shelley makes timeless folk tunes, pastoral and heart-wrenching, sprung straight from the soils of Kentucky. Her voice is like warm honey, her guitar is strung with elven hairs, her lyrics flow like the titular river to the sea. She finds beauty in sorrow and poignancy in the things we’ve left behind. There’s a level of artistic integrity which is so soulful that it makes you want to weep and of everything I heard this year, this Joan Shelley record was the one that most hit that spot.

The Underground Youth – Montages Of Lust & Fear

“Well she’s riding from under in dull candlelight/I ask her for words but she says she’s too shy/Well she’s hiding under and swimming through/Too innocent to be true/Oh what can I do?”

Veterans of lo-fi post-punk grooves, TUY have been getting more and more bold with their recent records and this one starts off sounding a long way from low fidelity, sounding a whole lot more like the grandiose goth rock of Mercy Seat era Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. And if that doesn’t immediately sell you on this record then I’m afraid we’ve got vastly different tastes. As the title kinda suggests, the album dives thematically into the world in which we find ourselves, isolated by instant connectivity and violently fetishised by the white noise all around us. This Anaesthetised World, as the closing track goes. Montages of Lust & Fear takes this great band into new territory but they never lose their ear for a groove.

Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains

“The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind/When the here and the hereafter momentarily align/See the need to speed into the lead suddenly decline/The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind”

A final dispatch from the great David Berman, the Silver Jews maestro coming out of exile to release one last crushingly beautiful and insightful masterpiece before his untimely passing. There’s a heaviness to the record that makes it an incredibly tough relisten considering what happened afterwards but it is what it is, s’pose. Songs like Margaritas at the Mall, All My Happiness is Gone, and Nights That Won’t Happen are incredible and poignant and dark and haunting but as always with a fella so gifted in his perceptions there’s also a song like Snow is Falling in Manhattan which dazzles with its simple wonders. The man really did leave us with a masterpiece.

Stef Chura – Midnight

“They’ll never tear this place apart, no/Sideways from grace, the angle’s lost/The tunnel’s time, your vision’s giving in/They sold you love/This chalk’s just dust/Hurry up, there’s no time to win now”

This is what rock and roll music is supposed to sound like in 2019. Stef Chura’s second full length record is an instant favourite, full of raucous tunes with hooks that leave you with no conceivable choice but to sing along. A song like Scream will have you doing exactly that. There’s an emotional honesty to Chura’s music that cuts through to the bone and with production from Will Toledo of Car-Seat Headrest there’s also a fair bit of that CSH combo of vulnerability and arena readiness going on as well, love hearing indie rockers really get on that ambitiousness scale. I have no idea why this album didn’t dominate year-end lists all over the show but it’s up near the top of mine.

Strange Ranger – Remember the Rockets

“We could be lonely/We could make friends/We can kick my heart around in a ranch style home”

One that came completely out of the blue. This Portland indie band has been around a few years but I’d never heard of them before I stumbled upon this album and what a revelation. Heavily indebted to Pavement for sure but with hints of Frank Ocean in there too at times with a few extra synths in the mix. Probably some Parquet Courts too, I reckon. There’s a summer vibe here, even if some of the songs do have dark undertones. Tracks like Leona and Sunday are just irrepressible power pop though and that’s what really sold me on this band. Oh and Ranch Style Home, that’s an almighty jam right there. Great hooks, great lyrics, great sounds, great album.

Tyler Childers – Country Squire

“Now I’m lit up like a Christmas tree/Check one-two can y’all hear me?/The sights are something’ but they ain’t for free/Lookin’ at ‘em wired for sale”

Another guy called Tyler, another musician from Kentucky... and what’s more is that Sturgill Simpson produced this one too. But Tyler Childers is most definitely his own man. Country Squire is an album with a very defined sense of place and an understanding of the people therein. Kentucky. Appalachia. It’s also about life on the road and the comforts of home. When he sings about saving up for a trailer home to one day settle down in you figure: sure, why not. When he stomps his way through House Fire you wanna kick up some dust yourself. At a time when the phrase ‘country music’ is more about branding than music, here’s a bloke upholding the lineage.

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