Here are 20 albums released in 2019 that should find their way onto your turntable or onto your playlist. Unranked and grouped by category.
ROCK & SOUL
The Black Pumas — The Black Pumas
This album is a hell of a debut. Musicians from all over Austin, TX got together to produce some of the sweetest soul south of Detroit. Eric Burton’s vocals are timeless and Brownout’s Adrian Quesada’s riffs were created entirely for you to nod your head to. The throwback soul genre has had quite a resurgence in the last few years but The Black Pumas may very well be the genre’s first truly breakout stars.
Elbow — Giants of All Sizes
When Richard Jupp, long time drummer for the band, left in 2016 there was immediate concern that Elbow would never be the same and on 2017’s Little Fictions, these fears seemed to be true. The album is missing a spark with the drum machine loops and never reaches any legitimate heights. However, in 2019, Elbow, drummerless still, decided to go a little crazy and release a prog album — or at least as proggy as middle aged dad rock Britons can get. The grooves are back, the choruses are back, and whatever magick they conjured to do a prog record without a drummer is working. It’s the sound of a bunch of men reinvigorated, and, nearly twenty years into a career, trying something a little different.
Twin Temple — Bring You Their Signature Sound… Satanic Doo-Wop
Okay, this one is a little bit of a cheat since this record was self released in 2018 but since the band signed with Riding Easy records and re-issued the record to every major record store in the US and UK in 2019, I’m counting it. The record is pretty much what it says on the tin. This is a collection of straight-forward earnest 1950s and 60s doo-wop and swing tunes that are absolutely 100% about Satan and Devil Worship. Alexandra James sings the songs with the passion of someone who genuinely has an affinity for this type of music and it’s catchy as all hell, pun intended. Fabulously funky and fiercely feminist, Twin Temple is a glorious grand guignol of guts and glitter. If you get a chance to see this band live, take it. Hail Satan and Long Live Women!
The National — I Am Easy To Find
I love my sadboy music and the Kings of Sad Boys continue to put out banger after banger (Note: This may be the first time a The National song has ever been referred to as “a banger”). Originally conceived as a companion piece/score to a Mike Mills (not the REM guy) film of the same name, I Am Easy to Find easily exists outside of those constraints. Like most The National albums, it deals primarily with memories of lost love and the pains of existing with a beating heart and an active mind. This time, however, Matt Berninger turns a significant amount of the vocal duties to a rotating cast of female singers and his deep, deep baritone drawl provides a stark contrast to the gentle harmonies these ladies bring. It overstays its welcome just a little bit at over an hour but songs like Not in Kansas and Where Is Her Head are some of the most audaciously arranged songs that The National have ever written and its easy to forgive a small indulgence into indulgence. It hurts to be human, and The National capture it better than anyone.
Karen O and Danger Mouse — Lux Prima
Maestro producer Danger Mouse and frontwoman extraordinare Karen O made a cinematic rock record that went largely unnoticed this year and it’s a shame. It’s ridiculously catchy while being characteristically dense with production. There’s whiffs of 60’s girl power and extended instrumental meditations and airy, breathy songs that capture a time and a place that doesn’t exist anymore. This album cradles you and carries you to a different dimension and it’s a shame we can’t stay there just a little while longer.
PUNK & METAL
Baroness — Gold and Grey
2015’s Purple was a nearly perfect album of pop-hook metal from Atlanta’s chromatically-obsessed quartet. A lineup change and an excessive tour schedule kept these dudes (and now a lady!) out of the studio for nearly four years and it was a wonder if they would be able to top their previous masterpiece. Well, somehow Baroness returned with a double album (Their first since Yellow and Green) that evolved and improved on everything they were trying with Purple. There are hooks for days on this record, and the playing alternates from ferocious to docile just like the bipolar mood shifts depicted in the music, wildly swinging from mania to retreat and seclusion. John Baizley has been on a personal songwriting kick since his near-fatal bus accident in 2014 and this record is the most self-reflective piece of writing he’s ever done. The songs are among the best of the band’s career and its refreshing to hear a metal band utilize male + female harmonies in their music. Gold and Grey presents a world well worth wandering in.
IDLES — A Beautiful Thing: Live at Le Bataclan
OK so this album doesn’t technically come out for another month, but as someone who has seen Self Love Thrash Punks IDLES perform live several times, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend one of the most uplifting, angry, thrashing, hopeful live performances I’ve ever heard. This album was recorded in the same venue where a terrorist attack claimed the lives of several people during an Eagles of Death Metal concert in 2015 and the sense of hope and peace that IDLES is able to capture with the LOUDEST SOUNDS IMAGINABLE is indescribable. Acceptance comes through understanding and understanding comes through pain and catharsis and that is what a live show by IDLES is. It’s a shared pain and a shared hope in a shared room with a shared voice, screaming out as loud as it can — all of us as one humanity, made of bones, made of blood, made of hope, made of love.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard — Infest The Rat’s Nest
Leave it to the world’s most prolific Australians to stop noodling around for five god damn minutes and make the Metallica album Metallica hasn’t made in thirty years. It’s thrashy as fuck, chunky as cottage cheese and aggressive as any stoner jam band has ever managed to get. This band put out five — FIVE — records in 2017 and took a year long break before putting out TWO albums in 2019. I guess that year off really made them realize that metal fucking rules and I am THANKFUL FOR IT. Come on Metallica, a bunch of pothead Aussies just threw down the gauntlet. Pick it up and show us that thrash never died.
Astronoid — Astronoid
Wait hold on. Metal in a major key? With harmonies? With uplifting lyrics? That’s right, y’all. Boston’s best kept prog rock secret followed up their previous record, 2016’s Air, with another helping of lightning quick fret work and punishing drums all while making the shoegaziest metal of 2019. Astronoid is Deafheaven without the self-hate and the Nazi memorabilia. It’s wonderful to hear someone take a genre almost exclusively used for channeling rage and spite and use it to channel positivity. Maybe it’s metal for people that hate metal but really its metal for people who love people.
Otoboke Beaver — Itekoma Hits
This 2019 compilation is 27 minutes of Japanese girls with guitars snarling their way through start and stop slabs of staccato punk and if that doesn’t get you excited IN YOUR SOUL, I can’t really help you. It’s loud, it’s weird, it’s aggressive, it’s everything a punk needs. This band keeps it short and so will I.
RAP & HIP HOP
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib — Piñata
On paper, this pairing makes no sense. It’s one of Hip Hop’s most esoteric, obscure sample-obsessed producers paired with maybe one of the most straightforward MCs in the game. Freddie Gibbs has nothing to say that’s profound. He just raps about life, the streets and the culture while Madlib fucks around with weird soul samples and insane japanese computer voice interludes. Of course, 2014’s Bandana was a banger so it shouldn’t be a huge shock that five years later, “MadGibbs” is back bangin’ like they never stopped. I hope this odd couple stays together forever.
Clipping. — There Existed An Addiction to Blood
Clipping. have made something of a rarity: a horror rap record that is legit scary. Between real life tales of the constant dread of being a black person in America and stories of bloodthirsty monsters hitting up clubs for their next meal, this album is both invigorating and horrfying. John Carpenter synths dominate the soundscapes as well as ragged breaths and screams. Daveed effortlessly spits mile-a-minute verses about all sorts of horrors into your ear. It’s no coincidence this album was released so close to Halloween. It’s relentless and terrifying, like a masked murder who will never, ever, ever stop chasing you until he gets the blood he’s been craving. Sleep tight, If you can.
Lizzo — Because I Love You
Body Positive Queen and Flutist extraordinaire Lizzo is a god damn blessing. Although this record is solidly for the ladies, Lizzo is teaching a generation of people of all races, genders and sizes that they are worth it, damn it. And she’s doing it by making all sorts of bops and by belting out her truth at 120 decibels. She knows that we all aren’t perfect but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t love ourselves. It’s just hard to accept that when our brains tell us we are unlovable failures. That’s a lie though, and Lizzo is the truth. Go on and shake your whole ass to Juice because that’s why it exists. Go on and love yourself as much as you can and as often as you can, and if you falter, that’s okay. Lizzo got your back. Because she loves you.
Brother Ali — Secrets & Escapes
Hip Hop Evangelist and Thought Leader Brother Ali shocked everyone this month when he dropped a new record out of nowhere, recorded entirely in producer Evidence’s home studio in California. It’s been a minute since the relentless hope of All The Beaty In This Whole Life, and Secrets & Escapes is a little more ugly in its production and its lyrics but no less full of light and guidance from the good Brother. He tackles his faith in a way that Kanye could never, as a constant struggle to attain personal and community enlightenment, not as the way to riches and fame. He documents this journey to help us tackle the darkness and I’m so glad he exists.
COUNTRY & WESTERN
Sturgill Simpson — Sound and Fury
It’s almost impossible to categorize Sound and Fury as a country album, even though it’s the latest by country music renegade Sturgill Simpson. This time he pushes the boundaries of Americana as far as it will possibly go, channelling Tomoyasu Hotei, Sly and the Family Stone and Tom Petty during this absolute freakshow of a record. Simpson has never sounded more assured, even though he’s as experimental as a country artist ever has been. Sound and Fury is the soundtrack to a Netflix anime of the same name that Sturgill created and produced and its absolutely wild. Mainstream country has been in a stranglehold of sameness for a decade and Sturgill Simpson is happy to drive his 1968 Impala straight through its saloon doors and fuck up the joint. Let’s hope this is the start of a re-imagining of what “country” can be. Because that’s all it takes. Imagination. And Sturgill Simpson’s is inspiring.
Paul Cauthen — Room 41
What do you get when you give hook Johnny Cash up with Isaac Hayes’ backing band and then lock them in a hotel room after a nervous breakdown and sustain them on vodka, cocaine and pussy? Well, you get Paul Cauthen’s Room 41. Cauthen’s velvety baritone spills all over funky ass Dallas, Texas grooves like spilt champagne. Room 41 is an autobiographical tale of existential crisis decked out in rhinestone suits and stingray boots. Being a complete mess of a person hasn’t sounded this good since James Brown and Ike Turner, and country music hasn’t sounded this god damn funky since… maybe ever? Make sure you worship at the altar of Big Velvet Paul Cauthen. Just, you know, maybe make better life choices.
Jenny Lewis — On The Line
It might be a stretch to call this album country, but the twangs and the emotional honesty coupled with Jenny’s Straight Out Of Dolly Parton’s Closet jumpsuits make it hard to call it anything else. Devastatingly personal, On the Line is a look at a middle aged woman who is still figuring this whole damn life thing out and reflecting on the people who have broken her heart, including herself. It’s honest, painfully so. The stories she tells on the surface seem lighthearted and casual but they betray a very dark history of bad coping mechanisms. Drugs, hook ups and true love lost are all part of the story of Jenny Diane Lewis and it’s all here its not-so-pretty rawness. The album is beautiful and sad, just like the girls that fuck me up every single time. Fuck me up, Jenny. Let’s drink until our hearts stop.
ELECTRONIC & EXPERIMENTAL
Bring Me The Horizon — Amo
Before this record, there’s no way I’d ever be a Bring Me The Horizon fan. But then, like, they got weird as fuck. Is it pop music? Is it EDM? Is it metal? is it emo? It’s like… it’s like all of it and I love it? It’s uncommon for bands with a proven formula to deviate from it too much and it’s downright unnatural for a band to take as hard of a left turn as Bring Me The Horizon did on this record. They’ve traded their screams and thrashing for… choruses and beats? And somehow they got Dani Filth to sing a hook? And somehow a duet with Grimes makes sense? And somehow bleeps and bloops are in metal now? But It’s not really metal. It’s just… fuck it I have no idea what it is but I want more of it. Keep getting weird, you weirdos.
Desert Sessions — 11 & 12
Josh Homme’s tripped out secret weirdo desert experiment returned this year after a nearly 11 year hiatus. This time the lineup includes folks like Billy Gibbons, Les Claypool, Carla Azar, Mike Kerr and even What We Do In The Shadows’ Matt Berry. Experimentation has always been the name of the game in The Desert Sessions and this collection of 8 songs over 2 EPs ranges from psychedelic freakouts to bombastic riffs to complete farces like the track “Chic Tweets” which finds imaginary singer Töôrnst Hülpft seemingly riffing pickup limes over what he affectionately calls “chunky jams.”
Billie Eilish — When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
I’m certainly not ready to go all out with the Fiona Apple comparisons, but Billie Eilish certainly has some profound things to say about life and love that a seventeen-year-old should not be capable of articulating. The record is simple, and dark, and lonely without coming across as marketably emo. This is the dankest of dank dance music and it’s an artist who is just getting started at changing the game. She wears super baggy clothes, she sings about being an asshole and she’s effortlessly catchy. If this is what the future of pop sounds like, sign me the hell up.