ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2019

booooooo

set this bad album on fire

hehe

here i'm gonna say something nice about it: "stranger" is one of my absolute favorite vampire weekend songs. unfortunate it takes forever to get to it

a better album cover with mokas addition!

I'm also going to say something nice about the Vampire Weekend album:

It has not and will never harm as many people as Rush Limbaugh

at least it was first out today

I didn't mind about 2 or 3 songs. But I did mind the others, which isn't a good ratio

wampire veekend

umpire weak end

I still can't get over the ethnomusicological journey that led them to make the opening track sound like a pastiche of Green Day's "Time Of Your Life"

their worst album and it shamelessly strays into MOR territory at times but its still a great album that i feel ive underrated

i didnt vote for it but i really should have. im listening to it a lot again lately again

An amazing album. Feels more like a solo album than a band album, though. Every song uses whatever tools it needs to get the point across. So many details I love.

again again again

I love this album. I genuinely believe it's their best.

we got our Something/Anything

BTW I saw someone invoke In Sides in the context of CFCF so I immediately jumped on that album and... this first track sounds like bad Omni Trio

idgi

Everything before was okay but used to irk me a bit. They sounded like a more straight-forward Animal Collective with a Paul Simon obsession. This sounds like their own thing.

this album is great, not at the mvotc or contra level, but still. seeing em live really upped my appreciation for some of the weirder songs on this one (tho, strangely, the show also solidified my opinion that contra is their best)

i'd argue there's way more paul simon pastiche on this record than on their last two, and they never ever resembled animal collective xp

Yeah I gave the In Sides comparison the full interrobang treatment too xxxp

Next please.

Don't understand the MOR critique? It's not like it sounds like Journey. This is by far their weirdest record.

https://i.imgur.com/S0036Qi.jpg
#19 - These New Puritans - Inside the Rose (462 points, 15 votes)
These New Puritans
https://www.musicomh.com/reviews/albums/these-new-puritans-inside-the-rose

harmony hall is the basis for the MOR critique, i think

i'd argue there's way more paul simon pastiche on this record than on their last two, and they never ever resembled animal collective xp

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, February 6, 2020 3:39 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Really? First time I heard their first album that was the first parallel I heard - a more palatable Animal Collective with the edges shaved off and some highlife guitars added.
Obvious Bicycle also sounds like something they'd do.

also, whoa

This felt like a step back from FOR to me but the opening track is good and I remember thinking that I didn't hate it in the end - could easily be a grower. There's no V (Island Song) style heroism here but I guess they weren't going for that

Good album, aided by more capable singing than on Field of Reeds.

TNP, otoh, fucking pwns

I highly recommend the Bad Mood Guy-era Severed Heads pastiche "Beyond Black Suns"

I loved field of reeds, but couldn't get into this one at all. It's necessarily bad, just kind of boring.

Yes TNP! What an amazingly rich and beautiful album.

it's not necessarily bad, I meant

Also it’s better than field of reeds

I loved field of reeds, but couldn't get into this one at all. It's not necessarily bad, just kind of boring.

― silverfish, Thursday, February 6, 2020 10:49 AM (eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

kinda agree with this assessment, but i only listened to the new one once

i listened to inside the rose last night and, as usual, thought "wow this need to be way higher on my list." incredible achievement, their best, a glacier of a goth pop album with visions of the end of the world refracting through its contours

I loved Field Of Reeds and was excited to hear ITR but I still haven't checked it beyond a few surface-level listens. I still can't work out if they're genius savants or just flukey hacks who've managed to create the illusion of something more!

I'm somewhere in the middle on the Vampire Weekend album. It doesn't deserve to be this high (shocked to see it has two number one votes) but it really isn't as terrible as some of you are making out. It's half a good album and I enjoy the shortened version that I made just fine. Contra is still their weirdest album though.

I didn't fully connect with Inside The Rose. Nothing else matches the quality of the first song. I definitely appreciated that the singer's voice seems to have improved a lot. I should probably revisit it at some point.

What an impressive illusion if so

Was expecting something just like Field of Reeds, so recoiled on first hearing this, then returned months later and found it much more pleasant. And they got David Tibet to work on it, so it can't be that bad! <3

xpost

"nothing matches the quality of the first song" baffles me when "beyond black suns" and "into the fire" exist

Before clipping. came out, this was my favorite/most-played album of the year.

I felt the album hit the exact median point between Hidden and Field of Reeds; it captures the meditative ramble of Field of Reeds while marrying it to the tighter, more structured songwriting approach of Hidden. And yes, the singing isn't GREAT per se but much, much improved over previous outings; Jack Barnett has grown much more comfortable as a vocalist and, while his vocals always worked in his music, this album makes them feel like much more of an intentional choice than a happy accident.

Many xps but this is my first listen to Iowa Dream and jesus if the title track isn't a fully-formed Belle and Sebastian song.

I nommed the Night Bus 4 mix (CFCF) - it's transcendent.

"nothing matches the quality of the first song" baffles me when "beyond black suns" and "into the fire" exist

Also "Where the Trees Are on Fire", "Inside the Rose", "Anti-Gravity", and basically the entire album is great

if anything i love it more and more as it goes

i thought TNP was some bland psyche-lite indie pablum but i think my vague impression of tame impala was being unfairly transferred to them. the severed heads comparison and 'glacier of goth pop' has me interested

I hadn't heard this one before. First song reminds me of Depeche Mode but more artsy. It sounds really good. I had heard Field of Reeds before but this sounds very different to that one.

Onward to our next MOR winner:

There's a lot of dull stuff of Field of Reeds but also higher highs, this one is more consistent and focused.

https://i.imgur.com/uk7RdyV.jpg
#18 - 100 Gecs - 1000 Gecs (479 points, 15 votes, 1 number 1 vote)
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=109230
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/12/no-album-left-behind-100-gecs-1000-gecs.html