This was a good ass year for music in basically every genre, so I’m glad it’s this year that I write my first ever Best Albums Of The Year List as an editor for a major publication, and not on some web forum. Like a little league player watching the world series or a budding musician deciding to pick up a guitar after going to a show, I’ve been waiting for my rookie year as a Major League Music Blogger. I listened to a fuckload of music this year, and found myself enjoying so much from a ton of different genres and lanes. So writing this list was really fun, and accurately sum up what I listened to. These are the best records of the year, 100%.
TOP 10 ALBUMS
10. Julia Holter – Have You In My Wilderness
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I wonder what it’s like to be Julia Holter, to see how tiny parts in music intersect to create each track, to literally create clouds out of sound.
9. Young Thug – Barter 6
I’ve listened to the pre-chorus to “With That” where Thugger’s voice gets all weird and twisted on repeat for the past six months. I keep thinking about that really thin separation between his modulated vocals and really bassy synths, how the song just turns into a snake of sound. Barter 6 sounds like straight sorcery, turning Young Thug into everything he touches.
8. Dope Body – Kunk
The sounds on this record are incredible. Kunk is filled to the brim with amazing works of noise, tracks like “Old Grey” manage imbue itself with layers and layers of different effects while still being catchy. This is totally a punk record, and totally experimental, and will make you want to wrap your body in barbed wire and wrestle someone.
7. Nicole Dollanganer – Natural Born Losers
How the does someone just release a record this weird and almost-beautiful, almost-disgusting, seemingly out of nowhere? Dollanganger is the future.
6. Bosse-De-Nage – All Fours
Bosse-De-Nage has been making some of the best black metal for the past four records, and they somehow made their craft jump tenfold with this record. It retains all the grit and texture of great black metal, and it feels ultra personal and about real situations without getting corny. Feelings ist krieg, you know?
5. Freddie Gibbs – Shadow Of A Doubt
I wish I had another month with this record, but the time I’ve had with it has been great. Gibbs seems bent on jumping into any scenario he can, building a stunning and affecting arc from beginning to end.
4. Counterparts – Tragedy Will Find Us
Was blown the hell away when I first heard this. Like, holy fuck this is the perfect angry record. Probably the best harsh vocals of the year layered with super smart guitar work that flickers between atmosphere and heaviness, making an album so real and great. Counterparts are going to be the one of biggest hardcore bands ever, and rightfully so.
3. Flesh World – The Wild Animals In My Life
Now that Whirr revealed themselves to be totally shitty, unlikable awful people, I pray that Flesh World takes their place as the shoegaze lords of San Francisco. The album straight up made me homesick; it felt like the late-night journeys of going from dive bars to the beach, across cable cars and into parks. Flesh World have just expounded such beauty and power into a really amazing record.
2. Future – DS2
“Tryna make me a pop star and they made me a monster” will be inscribed in marble one day. It’s a feat to make drugs seem simultaneously enticing and terrifying all in one go, showing just how far excess can go.
1. Oneohtrix Point Never – Garden of Delete
I feel as though I’ve exhausted everything I have to write about this record, so I’ll just say that few records have made me felt as much as this record. My body feels a visceral reaction to the heaviness of “I Bite Through It,” I feel a great sense of peace and affirmation from the vocals on “Animals.” It’s affecting and perfect.
TOP 7 EPs/MIXTAPES
7. Juicy J – 100% Juice
Any time I get a new phone or whatever, the first thing I put on it is Juicy J’s Blue Dream and Lean. It’s pretty much the perfect mixtape, and after a couple of kind of disappointing records, Juicy J came back with something I really want to hear forever.
6. The Devil Wears Prada – Space EP
I really do think people underestimate The Devil Wears Prada, and that they have another (With Roots Above and the Zombie EP are certified metalcore classics) truly great, game-changing record waiting within them. There’s shades of that in their Space EP, especially on the track “An Asteroid Toward Earth.” If there was ever going to be “post-metalcore” (oh god) that song will definitely be a shining example. I hope they really fuck with their sound and structure going into the next record, making something even more challenging and great.
5. The Matches – Life Of A Match/Crucial Comeback
Growing up in the Bay Area makes me hella bias, but The Matches are probably one of the most underrated punk bands ever. “Life of a Match” takes some real heavy Talking Heads influence and instills it into their theatrics.
4. Ty Dolla $ign – Airplane Mode
Everything beautiful and engaging about Ty’s music distilled into under 25 minutes. The perfect mixtape.
3. Great Apes – Grey Tapes
Last year Great Apes wrote the best EP about San Francisco ever, and this year they boxed together a bunch of EPs and unreleased music for your ears to consume. So consume it!
2. Dreamcrusher – Hackers All Of Them Hackers
The fact that I know a bunch of people who have gotten into noise and power electronics because of Dreamcrusher is really awesome. Lord Crush made something both abrasive and fun, and is the person noise music needs right now.
1. Thundercat – The Beyond/Where Giants Roam
I’ve listened to this like a million times, and every time is a different journey and experience. The beating heart of Brainfeeder and To Pimp a Butterfly.
John Hill is going to be way more jaded in a year. Follow him at @JohnXHill
