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| The interior of America's greatest record store -- Reverberation Vinyl in Bloomington, IL. If any of these albums are as good as I say, chance are John has them in the store. Photo Credit: Reverberation Vinyl |
Late December, the time of the year-end list, is full upon us. In this first in a series of posts I'll be making ahead of New Year's Eve, I wanted to talk about some of my favorite albums that were released in 2018. I'm not sharing anything ranked (last year's list was ordered by a random number generator; going a little simpler this year and just writing about albums in the order they were released). I'm not necessarily claiming these are the "best" albums that came out this year. This isn't an exhaustive list of albums I enjoyed. These are just the albums that, sitting at this moment at the end of December, define 2018 in new releases for me. Below, I've included brief notes on each album, as well as links for where you can stream or buy them. Enjoy, and, if you've created a similar list, please share it with me!
Knickerbocker Glory - John Moore
Bandcamp
Former Jesus and Mary Chain-er and once & future Black Box Recorder co-pilot John Moore, the best dressed man in kicks off our list for this year. Beginning with the initialing twinkling and subsequently rocking "Rabbit Hole," Knickerbocker Glory takes us on a funny, eccentric walk through John's psyche, particularly the edges dedicated to romance. Alternating between heady rock (with some of the guitar tones, particularly those in album closer "South of Heaven," recalling JAMC) and Spector-era pop, Moore's album is a great reminder that, contrary to detractors, rock is alive and well (and living in somewhere in England). Moore released a number of great tracks through his Soundcloud pages this year, too, which have yet to make it to an album. I especially adored the four-track Excerpts from a Blind Beggar's Opera and the 1996 demo for Black Box Recorder track "England Made Me."
Favorite Tracks: "Rabbit Hole," "Philosophical Man," "South of Heaven"
Spotify
Since I was very young, my dreams have revolved more around place than around people or narratives. One of the places that have appeared in my dreams as long as I can remember is a large shopping mall. When I was a kid, this place was booming and we could spend hours shopping at various stores. Now (and I do mean now -- my most recent mall dream was within the past week), my Dream Mall has gone the way of real malls. Most stores are closed (though, lucky for me, a used bookseller moved into the old Waldenbooks location), the atrium is always nearly deserted, and only a lone restaurant (which seems to alternate between pizza and Chinese) inhabits the otherwise destitute food court. I can't recall there being music piped through the mall anymore, but, if there was, it'd be MGMT's Little Dark Age. Finally taking a full leap into the hypnagogic pop that their classic single "Kids" emotionally alluded to, MGMT have made my favorite album of their so-far-very-solid career. Album opener "She Works Out Too Much" takes me back to early mornings with my mom's Redbook exercise videos, though I have no idea if those tapes actually had synthpop soundtracks. The only reason I don't feel confident saying that the third track, "When You Die," is the greatest retro pop single of the 2010s is that another serious contender comes immediately after with "Me and Michael." There's more here than nostalgia, though. Check out, for instance, the very really engagement with the idea of ego death in "When You're Small." This album's a must for anyone who thinks back on their childhood and senses a real hidden meaning beyond the warm fuzzies.
Favorite Tracks: "Little Dark Age," "When You Die," "Me and Michael," "When You're Small"
Not Streaming -- Download/Purchase at Head Heritage
The Arch Drude returns with another worthy addition to the Skellington series. If the first Skellington album, released in 1989, felt like having the deepest truths you could handle delivered alongside a flagging campfire at the latest, darkest moment of night, Skellington 3 is a reminder that things can always get deeper and later. Opening track Times Change contains the spoken line "The road kills, the road destroys, but how else do we travel?" It changed my life. This isn't hyperbole. Ask me.
Favorite Tracks: "Times Change," "Stop Harping On About the Way Life Used to Be," "Catch Your Dream Before They Slip Away"
Bandcamp
It looks like we'll be saying our goodbyes to the Bells for the time being. The rock world will be much poorer for it. However, their finest album, Dungeness, leaves us a lot to chew on in the long years to come. The tightest musicianship and best vocals the band have ever delivered (Lavinia Blackwall on the outro to album highlight "I'm Coming" is easily one of the greatest vocal showcases recorded this decade) intertwine with their best songwriting. Again harping on "I'm Coming," the erotically, philosophically, and spiritually charged lyrics to this one are still ringing in my head
Favorite Tracks: "My Father Was a Collapsing Star," "Christ's Entry into Govan," "I'm Coming"
Bandcamp
Damien Jurado's 2018 album is the first following his Maraqopa trilogy with late producer Richard Swift. While Swift certainly added something incredibly special to the three Maraqopa albums, Jurado reminds us he can fend for himself with his own (fair, Swift-inspired) production. The album begins with a delicate swirl of Hammond B3, acoustic guitar, and strings ("Mr. Percy Faith..."), setting the mood appropriately for this album of "goodbye" songs. This past year, Jurado left his long-time home in Washington to resettle in California, but whispers (and lyrics on the album) suggest that more permanent goodbyes may have been considered. I, for one, am incredibly thankful that it seems like Damien will be around for a long time to come. (As an aside, one of my all-time greatest concert memories is of Damien playing a truly acoustic [i.e., no amplifications or microphones whatsoever] set in the candlelit apse of an old church in Coralville, Iowa, on an absolutely frozen winter's night.) The whole album is well worth a listen, but the three tracks that end the first half (included in the "Favorite Tracks" note below), particularly "The Last Great Washington State" are sufficient to declare this album one of Jurado's biggest triumphs.
Favorite Tracks: "Percy Faith," "Over Rainbows and Rainier," "The Last Great Washington State"
Spotify
Luke Haines, who originally came to prominence in the 1990s with his bands The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder (who had one of the most unlikely sex-ed lessons of a UK chart-topper -- linked in the band name -- of the turn of the century), has easily been my most-listened-to artist since I moved to California. He's spent his career telling stories of the famous, the infamous, outsiders, and fever-dream memories. The first three discs of his solo-career-so-far-anthology, Luke Haines is Alive and Well and Living in Buenos Aires (Heavy, Frenz -- The Solo Anthology 2001-2017) which Cherry Red released early this year (at risk of making this the longest sentence so far committed to this blog, his first box set, which covered the band years, was called Luke Haines Is Dead), are called "Professional Rock 'n' Roll," "No Mans Land," and "Unprofessional Rock and Roll." (I'd love to go on and on about Haines's career -- for example, the man's first solo album was a concept album about the militant East German Red Army Faction, considered by most to be terrorists, under the moniker Baader Meinhof, thus inventing and, so far, making the sole contribution to a genre I call terror-funk -- but I'll save that for a future post and focus on the album in question from here on out.) We're still in this third phase, and, since it's "unprofessional," Haines is allowed to do gloriously non-commercial things like write a song cycle about Glue Town and its residents. who, due to a solvent spilled "in the war," don't grow to more than 2.5 inches in height. On the surface, it sounds like the residents of Glue Town spend their time mainly engaging in joyfully amorous pastimes ("At It with the Tree Surgeon's Wife," "Everybody's Coming Together for the Summer") or playing soccer ("The Subbuteo Lads"). But, as always, there's more going on here. Rather than turning this "short note" on the album into a feature-length report, I'll just encourage you to listen to the album if you like Robyn Hitchcock, The Incredible String Band, and their ilk (or if you like short, bizarre stories that might just manage to teach you something in 30 minutes). Before wrapping, though, I want to address two songs in particular. Opener "Angry Man on a Small Train," and its titular refrain, has become my mantra whenever I'm getting fumed about something minor. At this point, I just about consider it my theme song. On the far other end of the album, half an hour down the line, comes finale "We Could Do It," another tale of a horny Glue Town resident. But something's different here. The accompaniment, just acoustic guitar and droning melodeon, underscores the title character telling his partner all the different places they could "do it" ("on that hillside," "down in the valley," "in the field next to the car park" to name a few). Mixed in here, though, are a couple of lines that really gripped me emotionally, and they mark Haines grappling, in a really new way for him, with morality. "We could bring a hip flask. And my dad's ashes, we can scatter on the way. And my dad's ashes are really heavy, because size matters, despite what they say." I recall reading that Luke lost his dad in the recent past (career highlight 9 and 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early 80s was a reaction, in part, to his father's battle with Alzheimer's -- more on music and neurodegeneration in our next post!), and this feels like a real, concrete, peaceful confrontation with that. The album ends with the line "And the sun rose, and we live for a few more hours." Some pretty profound stuff for an album ostensibly just about Polly Pocket-sized horndogs.
Favorite Tracks: "Angry Man on a Small Train," "At It With The Tree Surgeon's Wife," "Oh Michael," "We Could Do It"
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for Part 2 & 3 of this list, coming within the week!
[Update: Part 2 is available here and Part 3 is available here.]
Excellent example of music journalism! I'm eager to read more.
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