Albums of The Year 2019: Part 2
The Top 20
As promised I have returned, and I’m ready to finish off my list of my favorite albums of 2019. I reserve the right to refer back to the first part of this piece at will, so if you missed Part 1, feel free to take a gander at it right here:
If you still haven’t checked out Merry-Go-Round Magazine, a very cool culture publication for which I write music reviews, then you definitely should do so! Merry-Go-Round boasts a team of really incredible writers who regularly put my jaw on the floor and make me intensely jealous of their work so you should definitely give them a follow for all the coverage of music, film, TV, video games, and more that you could ever need.
Now that we’ve got the prerequisite plugs out of the way, let’s not waste any more time. Here are my 20 favorite LP’s of the year 2019!
20. Miami Memory - Alex Cameron
Anybody who has had any length of conversation with me about music in the last few years should know that I absolutely adore Alex Cameron. A product of Sydney, Australia, Cameron is a purveyor of classic-sounding synth pop and Heartland rock, borrowing stylistically from the worlds of artists like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. Cameron has an innate charisma and an ear for melody that results in just plain fantastic songs, merciless earworms that simply beg for repeat listens. However, what truly sets Cameron apart is his pen. An incredibly clever lyricist, Cameron trafficks heavily in social satire, regularly attacking issues of toxic masculinity, abusive relationships, Internet culture, and much more in his songs. His commentary is trenchant and often extremely funny, and things are no different on his third record Miami Memory. This record is stacked with memorable tunes, from the pro-sex worker anthem “Far From Born Again”, to the sauntering parade of creeps on “Bad For The Boys”, to the hilariously pathetic defiance of “Divorce”. Like Forced Witness before it, Miami Memory is a record that only gets better with repeat listens, a new song clicking with each run until you fall in love with each and every one of them.
Best Tracks: “Miami Memory”, “Far From Born Again”, “Bad For The Boys”, “Divorce”
19. Heavy Handed - Pixel Grip
Goth disco is alive and well. If you need proof, look no further than the debut album of Chicago synth-pop trio Pixel Grip. Heavy Handed is an intoxicating record, sleek and seductive but with enough bite to rip your arm clean off if you aren’t careful. The songs on this album lie somewhere between Depeche Mode, LCD Soundsystem, and Lorde, with some touches of European house thrown in for good measure. Every track is groovy and danceable, almost compelling the listener to move their feet. They also pack one hell of an attitude, largely provided by frontwoman Rita Lukea, who proves an incredibly adept and charismatic vocalist. Drifting between vocal timbres as needed, Lukea matches and enhances every mood the band chooses to strike, a complete package performer with a ton of personality. Highlighted by its immaculate, punchy sound design, and a Song of the Year contender in the explosive, polyrhythmic “Diamonds”, Heavy Handed is a criminally slept on gem of 2019.
Best Tracks: “Can’t Compete”, “Diamonds”, “Golden Moses”, “Right Side”
18. Charli - Charli XCX
In a banner year for PC Music, Charli was the headliner. British pop star Charli XCX is probably the biggest name associated with A.G. Cook’s boundary-pushing cohort, making it absolutely paramount that her first full-length LP with Cook manning the boards brought the top shelf pop music we all knew she was capable of. Charli has proven herself more than up to the task, delivering a record of trail-blazing bangers and ballads that stand among the year’s most memorable of any genre. Just about every song on this album finds Charli in top form, magnetic, singular, just a little bit uncanny. It’s difficult to get far at any point in this record without stumbling over a highlight track. The tone-setting and instantly iconic “Gone”, the shamelessly hooky “1999”, “the heartfelt “White Mercedes”, the anthemic “Silver Cross”; the hits are seemingly endless. Little more can be said in praise of A.G. Cook’s production than what has already been said, but each track is remarkably crafted, bold and forward-thinking without sacrificing too much of its mainstream appeal. Take a listen to Charli, and then take a look at its list of features, and it’s hard to imagine that pop in the 2020’s won’t be seeing some major artistic ripple effects from this record.
Best Tracks: “Gone (ft. Christine and the Queens)”, “1999 (ft. Troye Sivan)”, “White Mercedes”, “Silver Cross”
17. Nothing Great About Britain - Slowthai
One of the most promising musical trends of the last few years, led by names like Denzel Curry, City Morgue, and, of course, Death Grips, has been an increasing infusion of metal and punk into hip-hop. One more name you can add to that list is Northampton rapper Slowthai, whose debut album Nothing Great About Britain is one of the year’s freshest rap projects. It’s difficult to find an MC with as much raw charisma and bravado as Slowthai. Bringing the spirit of classic British punk to gritty, grime-inspired rap, he’s unafraid to say just exactly what it is that’s on his mind. As you may have been able to figure out from the title, Nothing Great About Britain is a starkly political record, unconcerned with who it may distress or offend. The production on this album, mostly handled by Kwes Darko, is unsparing, an appropriately threatening and occasionally eyebrow-raising backdrop for Slowthai’s brash, smash mouth style. Between his debut album and lifting a fake severed head of Boris Johnson during his performance at the 2019 Mercury Prize show, Slowthai has established himself as a fearless performer with a mischievous wit, and as an artist who speaks to the deep anxiety of the UK’s lower class better than almost anyone.
Best Tracks: “Inglorious (ft. Skepta)”, “Missing”, “Drug Dealer”, “Rainbow”
16. Legacy! Legacy! - Jamila Woods
The city of Chicago has had quite a lot to offer to the music world over the last few years, more notably through its new wave of gospel and soul-infused hip-hop from names like Chance the Rapper, Noname, and Saba. If you’ve listened to the records of those artists, chances are you’ve heard Jamila Woods before, an ascendant voice in neo-soul who has collaborated with all three in the past. After turning heads with her awesome debut album Heavn in 2016, Woods ups the ante with her sophomore record Legacy! Legacy!, a collection of richly composed and empowering R&B that closely studies black femininity and identity in the modern world. Kicking things off with the triumphant “BETTY”, the album establishes itself immediately and never relents, hitting the listener with a deluge of inspired and uplifting tracks celebrating a number of different historical black icons. Through 13 colorful and memorable tracks, Woods is always firmly in control, an artist with a clear and direct vision who knows exactly how to execute it; she, above all else, is what makes Legacy! Legacy! such a purposeful and enriching listen.
Best Tracks: “BETTY”, “ZORA”, “EARTHA”, “BASQUIAT (ft. Saba)”
15. Dedicated - Carly Rae Jepsen
Few artists brought me as much joy in the year 2019 as Canadian pop star Carly Rae Jepsen. Yes, the same Carly Rae Jepsen who broke out in a major way with “Call Me Maybe” all those years ago has been on quite a tear through the latter half of this decade, and Dedicated may just be her crowning achievement so far. The follow-up to her instantly iconic 2015 record Emotion, Jepsen’s fourth album expands upon the sounds and ideas of her past records to create her most fully realized and mature project to date. I’m still coming to terms with the idea that somehow, someway, Queen Carly may have topped her masterpiece, but it has to be said: Dedicated features the best crop of songs Jepsen has ever released. By incorporating a wider range of influences and sounds than ever before, Jepsen takes her songwriting to another level, showing off a variety of styles both fresh and familiar. She embraces wonkier and more elastic synthesizers on “Julien”, “Happy Not Knowing” and “The Sound”; she channels classic solo McCartney records on “Everything He Needs” and “I’ll Be Your Girl”; she reaches revelatory emotional heights on “Now That I Found You” and “Real Love”; this album is the complete package. Utterly infectious and richly layered, Dedicated was worth the wait, further confirmation of Carly Rae Jepsen as one of the premier talents in pop music today.
Best Tracks: “Now That I Found You”, “Everything He Needs”, “Happy Not Knowing”, “I’ll Be Your Girl”, “Real Love”
14. Bandana - Freddie Gibbs and Madlib
The moment any of us heard Piñata for the first time, it was clear that the partnership between Gary, IN rapper Freddie Gibbs and legendary SoCal rap producer Madlib was a match made in hip-hop heaven. Fast forward 5 years, and the much-anticipated sequel to their 2014 debut is here, and in no way does it disappoint. The grimy neo-gangsta style of Gibbs and the chopped up soul and R&B samples of Madlib are as natural a match as they’ve ever been, smooth and luxurious beats providing the perfect backdrop for Gibbs’ hard-nosed, no-nonsense flow. Piñata was a shining moment for Madlib, but on Bandana it’s Freddie’s turn for the spotlight, throwing down some of his best verses to date and thoroughly dominating the entire record with his immense mic presence. The record is littered with highlights: songs like “Crime Pays” and the two-headed monster of “Fake Names” and “Flat Tummy Tea” will go down as some of the best tracks in the discography of either man. As if that weren’t enough, Bandana also comes complete with top-notch features, like Anderson .Paak on “Giannis” and the duo of Black Thought and Yasiin Bey on “Education”, not to mention what may be one of the best verses of Pusha T’s entire career on “Palmolive”. This veritable all-star team of hip-hop veterans helps make Bandana one of the year’s best rap records, a demonstration of meticulously honed skill by two of the game’s top talents.
Best Tracks: “Crime Pays”, “Palmolive (ft. Killer Mike and Pusha T)”, “Fake Names”, “Flat Tummy Tea”, “Cataracts”
13. Hiding Places - Billy Woods and Kenny Segal
The award for 2019 Album Art That Most Accurately Reflects What The Album Sounds Like has to go to Hiding Places, the first (and hopefully not last) collab album between NYC underground hip-hop veteran Billy Woods and ace beatmaker Kenny Segal. The songs on Hiding Places strangely resemble the condemned home on the album’s cover: twisted, lopsided, on the brink of collapse. Segal’s sample-heavy beats provide a thoroughly foreboding, almost haunted backdrop for Woods to inflict maximum lyrical carnage on, and as usual Woods holds nothing back. After throwing down a series of head-turning verses on last year’s Armand Hammer record Paraffin (which cracked my top 20 of 2018), Woods is even better here, dropping track after track of brutally honest and harrowing commentary on race relations, city life, and poverty in the 21st century. Despite having released his first record all the way back in 2003, Billy Woods seems to only be getting better with age, his bars now imbued with a razor-sharp wisdom and clarity that can only come from experience. Among the year’s most thought-provoking releases, Hiding Places might be the best record yet by a longtime practitioner of the style, and easily ranks among the year’s top rap albums.
Best Tracks: “Spongebob”, “Checkpoints”, “Spider Hole”, “Crawlspace”
12. Pang - Caroline Polachek
As I’ve mentioned at length on some previous list entries, 2019 was a huge year for the UK pop pioneers at PC Music. The minimalistic, sometimes abrasive, near-robotic stylings of producers A.G. Cook, Danny L. Harle, and others made its way onto many projects this past year, but perhaps none shine as brightly as Pang. Co-founder of the indie pop group Chairlift, Caroline Polachek is among the first indie and alt songwriters to make the jump to the new wave of pop music, a bold decision that immediately pays off in a major way on her solo debut album. Polachek is a uniquely talented pop artist, well-versed in a number of musical styles and having many years of formal vocal training under her belt going into her first record. The result is an album that can’t help but stand out from the crowd, a fusion of futuristic production ideas with timeless pop songwriting and breathtaking vocal performances (it may be hard to believe at times, but there’s no Auto-Tune to be found on this record). With all of this in hand, not to mention one of my most played songs of the entire year (the irresistible “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings”) and there’s no doubting that Pang is one of the year’s top releases not just in pop, but in any style of music.
Best Tracks: “New Normal”, “Look At Me Now”, “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings”, “Door”
11. Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains
As a dedicated music enthusiast, and even moreso as a huge fan of the run of great indie rock albums released by the band Silver Jews through the 90’s and 2000’s, it brought me great excitement to hear that David Berman would be releasing new music for the first time in over 10 years. Operating under the name Purple Mountains, Berman assembled a new band and recorded one of his best albums yet, 10 tracks of Americana and country-tinged indie fare that released in July to great acclaim from fans and critics alike. A month later, Berman was dead. An album whose songs initially read as stubborn persistence in the face of at times crushing internal conflict, Purple Mountains was tragically and grimly recontextualized by Berman’s suicide, but certainly was not robbed of any of its emotional impact or depth. Set to expertly written and tastefully arranged instrumentals, Berman’s lyrics are the star of the show. This album features some of the most starkly honest yet elegantly framed portrayals of mental illness there are to be found, damn near every other lyric ranking somewhere among the year’s most memorable lines. This is an album I’ve spent many hours with and could go on about for an inordinate length of time, but for the sake of your time and my own sanity, we’ll simply leave it with this: David Berman was an immensely talented man with a generous soul, and this world is a better place for him having been in it. Rest easy.
Best Tracks: “That’s Just The Way That I Feel”, “All My Happiness Is Gone”, “Darkness and Cold”, “Storyline Fever”
10. uknowhatimsayin¿ - Danny Brown
It’s time for me to reveal what some people may think of as a hot take, but one that I absolutely stand by: With the release of uknowhatimsayin¿, Detroit rapper Danny Brown has cemented himself as the top musical artist of the 2010’s. After an unbelievably strong run of records over the last ten years, including some of the decade’s best albums with XXX, Old, and Atrocity Exhibition, Brown had nothing left to prove. Still, just in case there was any question of who the man really is, he set out to return to the roots of rap by enlisting hip-hop legend Q-Tip to executive produce his latest album. With Tip at the boards along with frequent collaborator Paul White and a smattering of featured producers like JPEGMAFIA and Flying Lotus, Brown has no lack of top-notch beats upon which he can throw down some of the best lyrical content of his entire career. Brown has said during the press cycle for uknowhatimsayin¿ that he felt like he was re-learning how to rap while working on it, and his effort shows. It’s hard to find rappers today whose flows sound as effortless as Brown’s do on this album, and whose rhyme schemes and wordplay are as clever or engaging. From a strange and troubled outsider with addiction problems and missing teeth to one of the most respected veterans in hip-hop, Danny Brown’s ascent over the course of the 2010’s has been incredible to watch, the rise of an unknown to the highest heights as the King of Rap. uknowhatimsayin¿ is simply the coronation.
Best Tracks: “Savage Nomad”, “Best Life”, “Negro Spiritual (ft. JPEGMAFIA)”, “Combat”
9. Girl with Basket of Fruit - Xiu Xiu
Warning: The following record contains exceedingly strange and experimental content. Listener discretion is advised. After leaning in a more accessible direction with their previous few albums, San Jose experimental music collective Xiu Xiu pivoted all the way back in the other direction and then some in 2019. Girl with Basket of Fruit is among the most evocative listening experiences of the year, a barrage of sonic detritus that often seems to be more interested in attacking the listener than sounding like what one would typically call a song. Xiu Xiu’s music has always been powered by a sort of primal sadness and rage, but never has this been more plainly apparent than on their newest record. Backed by either frenetic and crazed percussion or deep, swirling cesspools of bass, frontman Jamie Stewart reaches both fevered highs and despondent lows, alternating between demented or forlorn depending on the mood. The album also features one of the year’s most devastating songs, “Mary Turner Mary Turner”, a track that all but forces the listener to directly confront their own humanity. Girl with Basket of Fruit shines not just in its progressive and groundbreaking attitude towards sound, nor just in its complex and layered emotional palette, but in the way that it turns these tools inward, and sometimes against some of the deepest wounds in the collective human psyche.
Best Tracks: “Girl with Basket of Fruit”, “It Comes Out as a Joke”, “Mary Turner Mary Turner”, “Normal Love”
8. Flamboyant - Dorian Electra
One of the biggest plot twists of 2019 has to be that the year’s most trailblazing bubblegum bass didn’t come from PC Music. Houston pop provocateur Dorian Electra is a totally singular personality in the pop landscape, and surely one of the new faces set to lead it into the new decade. Flamboyant is Electra’s debut album, a bold and daring exploration of gender, sexuality, romance, and more that isn’t afraid to kick some ass along the way. Electra is genderfluid, and as such their vocals are almost aggressively androgynous, switching registers and timbres to fit a wide variety of different moods. There’s no questioning their charisma, as Electra wields their outsize personality as a weapon of both wanton machismo and shameless kink, effectively blurring the line between aggression and flirtation until neither are recognizable. To describe this record as “unapologetic” would be a gross understatement: it’s punk rock as fuck. It’s easy to draw the comparison to PC Music, but Electra’s production at times feels even more fearless, more willing to bring in elements of rock, punk, metal, and noise. Despite these elements being present, it’s still distinctly a pop album, densely populated with sharp choruses and sticky melodies. Flamboyant is a deafening opening statement for an emerging artist, a boundary-pushing record with a style and attitude entirely its own and a harbinger of great things to come.
Best Tracks: “Career Boy”, “Man To Man”, “Flamboyant”, “Adam & Steve”
7. 2020 - Richard Dawson
Among the most enigmatic folk singer-songwriters around has to be Newcastle’s Richard Dawson. A product of his home, Dawson’s music has a distinctly North English flair to it, rooted in centuries old anglo folk music. It’s the same type of almost medieval songwriting affectation found in classic English prog bands like Jethro Tull and Genesis, which ultimately puts his music firmly and undeniably into my lane. Dawson’s 6th album, 2020 is a spiritual sequel to his 2017 record Peasant, an album that attacked modern issues through the lens of 13th century England in order to highlight their universality across hundreds of years. 2020 operates as a successor in that it tackles many of the same universal issues, such as dehumanization, isolation, and trauma, but in an updated musical context. Replete with much more modern instrumentation, the songs on this record are sharp and fully fleshed out, often presenting arrangements that rank among the most interesting rock songs of the year; The lurching but triumphant “Civil Servant”, the multi-segmented “Black Triangle”, the Zappa-like “Fulfilment Centre”, to name a few. However, where 2020 really shines lies simply in Dawson himself. An incredibly dynamic vocal performer, Dawson sells every song, and not only through his voice but also with his lyrics. Each song functions as a vignette into the life of a different person in present-day England, highlighting a variety of sad truths, injustices, and absurdities along the way. The way Dawson fuses these stories into his music often paints an incredibly evocative picture of the world today and its incredibly twisted ironies, a look in the mirror that isn’t always comfortable, but feels essential.
Best Tracks: “Civil Servant”, “Two Halves”, “Jogging”, “Black Triangle”
6. All Mirrors - Angel Olsen
My admiration for Angel Olsen runs long and deep; after catching my attention with Burn Your Fire For No Witness in 2014 and landing on my 2016 list with the remarkable My Woman, it’s safe to say that All Mirrors was easily among my most anticipated releases of 2019. It delivered and then some, not only matching her last two records but perhaps surpassing them. Olsen has one of the best voices in contemporary music, and I’ve taken to calling her the female Roy Orbison due to her rich, distinct vibrato and sheer vocal power. All Mirrors is her most vocally focused album yet, and by playing into one of her greatest strengths she creates the most breathtaking material of her career thus far. The portrait Olsen paints of herself on this record is complex and multi-faceted, a journal of self-discovery and all the messy contradictions that come with it. Her very compelling and confessional songs are set to downright cinematic arrangements, powered by a muscular string section that lends these songs a rare grandiosity. The instrumentation is touched with just enough electronic tampering and distortion to make the songs feel as though they’re literally bursting at the seams with the emotion they contain, a feeling only amplified by Olsen’s titanic vocal performances on every song. All Mirrors is simply an incredible record from an incredibly talented artist in the prime of their career, further establishing Angel Olsen as one of the top talents in rock music today and someone whose next album will jump immediately to the top of my list whenever it comes.
Best Tracks: “Lark”, “All Mirrors”, “New Love Cassette”, “What It Is”
5. There Existed An Addiction To Blood - clipping.
One of the most conceptually realized and meticulously detailed records of the year, There Existed An Addiction To Blood is the third album by California experimental hip-hop trio clipping., and their most cohesive project to date. Known for drawing inspiration from harsh noise, musique concrete, ambient music, and more, clipping.’s production is as boundary-annihilating as ever, providing a harrowing horrorcore-inspired backdrop for the violent and bloody vignettes of their incomparable frontman, Daveed Diggs. Diggs ranks among the most technically skilled MC’s in all of rap right now, capable of flowing over rapidly fluctuating rhythms and sometimes no rhythm at all. His flows are absolutely blistering, his rhyme schemes complex, and his bars potent and incisive. Operating largely through allegory, There Existed An Addiction To Blood paints an inflammatory political and philosophical picture; it’s a thought-provoking and challenging record, possessing an almost literary depth of metaphor in its storytelling.
Earlier this year I reviewed this very album for Merry-Go-Round Magazine, and struggled mightily to keep my thoughts under 3500 words, so suffice it to say that I cannot possibly do this album justice with the very limited length I’ll be using here. I’m going to link my MGRM review of this album below, which I realize may be construed as lazy, but I could’ve done this for a lot of other albums on this list too, and I’m keeping it to just this one. Plus, to be honest, I’m genuinely just really proud of this review and think it’s one of the better things I’ve written, so consider giving it a read if you haven’t already.
Best Tracks: “Nothing Is Safe”, “La Mala Ordina (ft. Elcamino and Benny The Butcher)”, “Run For Your Life (ft. La Chat)”, “Blood of the Fang”
4. Infest The Rats’ Nest - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Oh yeah, it’s Giz time. After 5 consecutive appearances on my year-end Best Albums lists, you shouldn’t need to be told that I am a massive fan of Melbourne, Australia psych rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, for my money one of the most creative acts in rock music today. For many years, ever since the release of the band’s throttling 2016 record Nonagon Infinity, I have been salivating over the idea of King Giz throwing pretense to the wind and making a full-blown out and out thrash metal record. Finally, with their second record of 2019 and the 15th of their career, that’s exactly what they’ve done. There’s no delicate way to put this: This shit rips, HARD. Infest The Rats’ Nest finds the band putting their own instrumental chops to the test, with a full LP’s worth of some of the most blistering, scorched earth thrash metal this side of the millennium. All the greats are channeled through this record at one time or another: Black Sabbath, Motörhead, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, Overkill. The riffs are technical, fiery, punishing, and expertly played; if you can believe it, this material is usually played even faster live, which on some songs is difficult to fathom. Not only does this album hit hard instrumentally, but also conceptually. On this album, King Giz pull no punches, painting a bleak picture of a hellish dystopia in which the human race is essentially destroyed by the impending climate crisis. It’s a commentary that only feels more vital now as the band’s home country is being ravaged by wildfires, and with the band putting out two live albums for purchase only with all proceeds going towards fire relief. The boys of King Gizzard are good at just about everything they attempt, but by unleashing their heaviest and most aggressive material to date, they just may have made their best album yet.
Best Tracks: “Planet B”, “Venusian 1”, “Self-Immolate”, “Hell”
3. All My Heroes Are Cornballs - JPEGMAFIA
Fresh off the #3 spot on this same list just one year ago, Peggy is back to claim it again. Baltimore experimental rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA is one of the most creative minds in the game today, and after turning heads in 2018 with his second album Veteran, he’s followed it up with another all-timer with All My Heroes Are Cornballs. Music has become increasingly informed by Internet culture as the 2010’s have gone on, and perhaps nobody encapsulates that trend quite like Peggy. His records sound like what it often feels like to “be online”, at times sublime, at times enraged, almost always disorienting and lacking cohesive structure. Like Veteran, All My Heroes Are Cornballs is best consumed in its full album form, as its songs often run into each other and rarely make a point of being distinct from the other musical ideas across the record. It’s a record that flows very freely, and just about every place it flows to is awesome. There was no questioning coming in that Peggy is capable of throwing down some incredibly bracing material; his beats can be hard and abrasive, and he has a knack for throwing out verses like they’re punches. His delivery is often aggressive and in your face, with raw and completely unfiltered lyrics that touch on a significant range of topical issues, like white supremacy, social media, and race relations. This new album also shows a new side of Peggy, a more psychedelic and melodic side that leads to some of the album’s most memorable moments on songs like the title track and “Free The Frail”. At all times, JPEGMAFIA is unabashedly himself, and All My Heroes Are Cornballs may be the most honest release yet from one of music’s most exciting and forward-thinking talents.
Best Tracks: “Jesus Forgive Me, I Am A Thot”, “All My Heroes Are Cornballs”, “Thot Tactics”, “Free The Frail”, “Papi I Missed U”
2. Titanic Rising - Weyes Blood
When I first heard that Weyes Blood’s next album would be produced by, who else, Jonathan Rado, I was elated. Fresh off a string of successful projects with Foxygen, Alex Cameron, Matt Maltese, Whitney, Father John Misty, and others, it seemed to me that Rado’s fleshed-out, analog approach to production and arrangement would be a perfect match for the celestial balladry of Natalie Mering. Titanic Rising is far better than I had dared to hope. Lush and rich with detail, Mering channels legendary songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and The Carpenters, producing a collection of both languid, affecting slow burners and mid-tempo chamber pop earworms. The instrumentation is undeniably but delightfully retro, informed primarily by 70’s soft rock but with just enough sparse synthesizer usage and modern production touches to keep the album grounded in the present day. Mering is a fully realized and self-assured songwriter, effortlessly tackling topics ranging from young love to contemporary politics to the tragic suicide of a friend with grace and presence. Her vocals are breathtaking, soaring, nearly operatic at times, and layered into impactful harmonies at just the right times. Expertly composed, expertly performed, and expertly made, Titanic Rising is the best Weyes Blood album yet, and stands tall as one of the year’s most achingly beautiful and cinematic releases.
Best Tracks: “Andromeda”, “Everyday”, “Movies”, “Wild Time”
1. Schlagenheim - Black Midi
For anyone who listened to my Top 20 Albums of the Decade radio show, or read my glowing review of this album for MGRM back in August, or basically has talked to me about music at all in 2019, this may not come as a surprise. But no matter, because Schlagenheim is my Album of the Year. When I call 2019 the year of the debut album, this is the first record I have in mind. The arrival of UK experimental rock band Black Midi, Schlagenheim is a musical tour de force, a brazen display of face-melting technicality and genre-bending creativity. The brand of rock to be found on this album is physical, oblique, and chaotic, seemingly gleeful in its complete defiance of convention. Their songs strike a delicate but crucial balance, sounding meticulously hammered out and labored over in practice rooms, but without losing the energy and electricity of a loose improvisation. The list of influences felt on this record is extensive. They summon the sonic palates of post-hardcore groups like Slint and The Dismemberment Plan, the heaviness and conviction of thrash bands like Megadeth and Pantera, the rhythmic and technical complexity of prog pioneers like Frank Zappa or Rush (RIP Neil Peart), the cryptic and eccentric personality of Talking Heads, the righteous anger and experimental fury of Death Grips… the list goes on. Schlagenheim is the perfect cohesive rock LP, nine tracks with a clear and consistent sound across all nine that also showcases a different sound, a different style, a different idea with each individual song. The boys in Black Midi are an exceptionally talented bunch, but the craziest plot twist of all is that they’re all just 19–20 years of age. The most exciting thing about Schlagenheim isn’t in how great it is, or how fresh, or how bold, though it is assuredly all three; nay, it’s the dangerously tantalizing thought that the best may be yet to come. By releasing one of the best debut albums I’ve heard in years, Black Midi have immediately established themselves as one of the premier must-watch names in rock, and look poised and ready to help lead the genre into the next decade.
Best Tracks: “953”, “Near DT, MI”, “Western”, “Of Schlagenheim”, “Ducter”
If you’ve gotten all the way down here, thanks for reading! I hope you find at least one album (but hopefully more) that you enjoy from either of the two parts of this list, because that’s really why I do this every year. If you’ve got thoughts, complaints, or feedback of any kind, you know where to find me. As I did last year, I’ve made a Spotify playlist of all the songs I named as “best tracks” for all 60 albums that I covered in both parts of this piece, so if you want to get as close as you can to the Commodore Jones 2019 Listening Experience, put this baby on shuffle and let ‘er rip. I quite enjoy it myself. See you again next year!
