ILM’s Top 77 Albums of 2018

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#37: Mewithoutyou - untitled - 328 points – 9 votes - 3 first place votes

https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=107911

Brad Nelson: "The Philadelphia band’s seventh album draws from fiction, the history of international warfare, and their own internal rosary of images to create a dense, literary tangle of post-hardcore."

Will Richards: "Not consolidating or scaling back their ambition in the slightest, mewithoutYou continue to be one of indie-rock’s most consistently fascinating voices, and on ‘[Untitled]’ they’re as weird and wonderful as ever."

hi

I loved "Light Up Gold" and assumed "Wide Awake!" would grow on me but it just never did. Can't fault them for trying something different.

Good album that I forgot to vote for

i don't hear anything in this record but i guess i'll give it another shot

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, February 5, 2019 1:24 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

does anyone agree with me that it is really lacking lead guitar lines or any kind of variation in its vocal melodies

i enjoy the slacker kinda indie sound of snail mail, and i don't usually pay much attention to lyrics, so i was kind of surprised at how much the lyrics repelled me. it's not just that it's relationship and friends drama stuff - that's the topic of half of all songs, scientifically speaking - it's something about the the subgenre of relationship stuff that it focuses on, it's very high schooly and it's just not the kind of thing i want to be thinking about for an entire album. i'm really looking forward to her next album, though

I can't shake the feeling of admiring this lot more than actually loving them but it's still nice to see a band this idiosyncratic place this high

9:27 a.m.
7/29!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rly do like what i've heard of this

Glad to see some albums I voted for today! I had the Laurel Halo EP in the lower end of my ballot, it's by far the best thing I've heard from her, I really like how the sounds of "real" instruments are treated to create the moods. And Neneh Cherry was my #3 or #4, I don't really understand people who say it's worse than her previous album (even though the previous one was very good too). In her middle age she has grown to a voice few others in pop music have, she sounds angry and fragile and powerful and handsome at the same time, and Four Tet's production backs up all those facets impeccably. Broken Politics is just a deeply subverting trip for an album.

i figure the fact she's only 19 comes into play with a lot of the lyrical content, she was i guess 18 when it was written and recorded? It's just a great work, I hope she continues the upward trajectory. xxxxp

i liked Broken Politics much more than Blank Project, just for being so pretty

excellent Pfork review, Brad

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#36: Meshell Ndegeocello - Ventriloquism - 329 points – 13 votes

Meshell Ndegeocello Ventriloquism Originals Poll

Will Layman: "Ventriloquism is a thrill and a surprise, a set of 11 hits from the ‘80s and ‘90s that have been reimagined and turned inside out without losing the joy of the originals."

Josh Hurst: "
Wide Awake! is a letter-perfect musical contemplation of modern times, where social uprisings are actually affecting positive change. It's urgent and potent music that's thought-provoking and danceable, and whose rage is measured by a pointed optimism."

lower than I expected!

i wrote an excellent pitchfork review of this one too

I'll look it up!

(btw thank you morrisp)

here we go: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/meshell-ndegeocello-ventriloquism/

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#35: DJ Koze - Knock Knock- 330 points – 13 votes

Ben Murphy: "Knock, Knock is without doubt DJ Koze’s most accessible record, with a sheen that will certainly appeal to listeners outside the dance sphere. It’s also a definitive statement, combining his many influences into something that’s hugely enjoyable and emotionally resonant. Most important of all, it’s still very weird."

Matt Unicomb: "The genius of Stefan Kozalla is that he can sound euphoric one minute and heartbroken the next. Moods across Knock Knock shift quickly, from melancholy to blissful and back again, sometimes within the same track. The emotional range is remarkable, but that's nothing new for the German artist."

there was a lot to love on this but i usually was a little tired of its approach by the end of its rather long running time

Koze's stuff is nice but becomes a bit snoozy over the course of his long-ass albums imho

(xp!)

Great roll-out so far. I would have liked Ashley to place higher b/c it was one of my favourite albums of the year even though before this week I would have just said I'd Love It If She Made It. Gang Gang Dance, Burna Boy, Meshell (great review Brad as per), Wye Oak, Mariah and Wednesday Campanella all made my ballot, but I was sad not to be able to vote for mewithoutYou, Natalie Prass and Foxing too.

Saba I couldn't get into for some reason, and I'm resigning myself to the fact that it seems like everyone chose to vibe with that album rather than with Roy Kinsey.

DJ Koze I should have loved but I agree with the previous comments - it sort of slides out of your attention by the end of the album.

I guess the Gurrumul album is highly unlikely to show up at this point :-( (maybe only Nourry and I listened to it???)

oh yeah and I like the eiko ishibashi album too!

i loved the gurrumul album but i didn't vote

Roy Kinsey just missed my ballot and i enjoyed his album a fair bit more than Saba and Noname. Noname's was solid but i missed the sort of clean focus of Telefone that Room 25 abandoned for its jazzier and more complex live band-oriented production

It wasn't as striking as Amygdala for me but he still is one of my favorite producers this decade... I think he needs stronger songwriting skills as evidenced by several cuts on this one but I he is on another level, I can't think of any electronic producers doing what he does.

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#34: Tirzah - Devotion - 334 points – 10 votes

Tirzah

Kevin Lozano: "Tirzah Mastin’s debut album Devotion is a compelling vision of what imperfect pop music can be—joyful in both sound and feeling precisely because both seem so out-of-step and asymmetrical."

Owen Torrey: "In the sparseness of its haze, Devotion feels ephemeral, like a photo taken at golden hour that's just starting to fade."

I confess I didn't get this one at all

Same here. I thought I would love it based on everything I'd read beforehand.

Last one for the day I think? I thought this was my numero uno vote... seems like it wasn't... not sure what my first place vote is then.

wanted to like this but couldn't find a way in at all and it just ended up feeling fairly clunky

I think I voted for Ventriloquism? It was definitely a better covers album than the Nina Simone one, where Ndegeocello's limited vocal range made her versions often pale in comparison to the originals. Here, I think both the fact that she was mostly covering less singular singers and that the arrangements were more varied and innovative made it something a good cover album should be, in that it made me appreciate both the original songwriting as well as her approach to interpreting it.

Btw, the image for Ventriloquism seems to be broken?

less singular singers

like prince

but yeah ventriloquism was awesome and it voted it in my top 10

Btw, the image for Ventriloquism seems to be broken?

― Tuomas

I can see it just fine, anyone else has this problem? here's the direct link https://imgur.com/zJ3dPCk

it's broken for me too, the direct link works though

doesn't work on my phone!

Ah yes I can see the problem now... I deleted it as there was an error in the scores and I can still see it because it's saved in my cache.

updated the album playlist.
https://open.spotify.com/user/forksclovetofu/playlist/4DzRiNP3gnIu4icC69zypd?si=x8wLH-X3TsqaZZANnIRuOQ

perhaps worth noting: this is the first year on ILX that all 77 tracks and (I think? Didn't check the top 33 yet so as to not spoil but it seems a safe bet) 77 albums are on spotify. world-eating company has eaten the world.

(to get that album playlist in the proper descending order, click the calendar icon)

ty forks, was hoping for this update

oooh just seeing this all now! glad Sleep, Gang Gang, Noname and Mewithoutyou all got love on here.

Voted for tThe Armed too. Easily my favorite live show of the year. It's like a performance art hardcore show and it's so much damn fun. Definately go. However, i voted for Deafheaven ahead of the Armed, not as good of a live show but I loved that album so much too.

seeing The Armed in 2 weeks, so hyped

Catching up:

Foxing = I could not get into this at all. 100% not my thing.

The Armed = So stoked this got in; I thought it had no chance after yesterday. My #2. This year's Fetch, except that I personally think it's way better than Fetch

The Breeders = my #24. I uh emphatically did not think this was a vast improvement on the previous two albums, and for a while couldn't really find my way in, apart from the great Side 2 run of "Summit"/"Archangels Thunderbird"/"Dawn" but songs kept opening up to me:. "Blues at the Acropolis", the title track, "Spacewoman". I still think "Wait in the Car" is ham-handed and would make the 11th best song off Pacer

Deafheaven, Sleep = I haven't listened to either one of these albums but there's plenty of discussion to be had over here:

The 2018 ILX Metal n' Heavy Rock Poll VOTING + CAMPAIGNING thread! Ballots due Saturday, Feb. 9th!

Gang Gang Dance = a late cut. "J-Tree" is meh, "Lotus" is better (real Japan vibes there), but it's the title track that sold me, fusing together the gnomic abstruse electronica of the first OOIOO album with the high cheese of the last Ozric Tentacles one

Meshell Ndegeocello = my #19. I really love Meshell's unique sense of musicality and it really makes this sound more personal than a covers album should, not so much songs performed as portraits painted of certain perhaps-crucial pop moments in her life

i relistened to the snail mail record and there are a few diverting tracks in the second half

it is still largely an indistinguishable mass to me, i don't even like "heatwave"

I saw her live and really soured on the record after that

Not that great live i have to admit

great list so far, some rad stuff i hadnt encountered before and that brad review is an awesome read as an example for something ive just discovered!