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User
Reviews 26
Approval 99%
Soundoffs 237
News Articles 5
Band Edits + Tags 10
Album Edits 153
Album Ratings 2350
Objectivity 71%
Last Active 12-19-18 7:20 pm
Joined 06-11-12
Review Comments 2,737
| 25 for 2019
top twenny five.... | | 25 |  | Slayyyter
Slayyyter
Tattoo, UR Man, Alone | | 24 |  | Caroline Polachek
Pang
Hit Me Where It Hurts, So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings, Ocean of Tears | | 23 |  | Lingua Ignota
Caligula
Faithful Servant Friend Of Christ, May Failure Be Your Noose, If The Poison Won’t take you my dogs will | | 22 |  | Saor
Forgotten Paths
Forgotten Paths, Monadh | | 21 |  | Editors
The Blanck Mass Recordings
Barricades, Magazine, VIolence | | 20 |  | Full of Hell
Weeping Choir
Thundering Hammers, Silmaril, Angels Gather Here | | 19 |  | Cherry Glazerr
Stuffed and Ready
Daddi, Wasted Nun, Stupid Fish | | 18 |  | Glass Beach
The First Glass Beach Album
Neon Glow, Classic j dies and goes to hell pt. 1, yoshi's island | | 17 |  | Injury Reserve
Injury Reserve
Jailbreak The Tesla, Rap Song Tutorial, Best Spot In The House | | 16 |  | Kevin Abstract
ARIZONA BABY
Joyride, Peach, Crumble | | 15 |  | The Haxan Cloak
Midsommar (Original Score)
Fire Temple, Ritual In Transfigured Time [pretty sure this was the cliff scene which cemented my intrigue in this slow burn nightmare break-up movie] | | 14 |  | Yeule
Serotonin II
Veil of Darkness, Pixel Affection, Poison Arrow | | 13 |  | The Chemical Brothers
No Geography
Got To Keep On, We've Got To Try, No Geography | | 12 |  | Green Lung
Woodland Rites
Woodland Rites, Let The Devil In, Call Of The Coven | | 11 |  | Flying Lotus
Flamagra
Yellow Belly, Black Balloons Reprise, Fire Is Coming [honestly that whole stretch starting with Yellow Belly and ending with The Climb has gotta be the most sublime and funky set of tracks all year] | | 10 |  | Maxo Kream
Brandon Banks
Swings from straight bangers to harrowing, gritty storytelling to braggadocio tracks with ease.
3AM, 8 Figures, Meet Again | | 9 |  | Andrew Bird
My Finest Work Yet
Epic-sounding folk with violin and rock-n-roll flourishes scattered about. Effectively simple lyricism and dynamic instrumentation provides entertaining and gripping listens every time, keeping this bad boy in the top ten.
Sisyphus, Olympains, Fallorun | | 8 |  | Malibu Ken
Malibu Ken
Tobacco and his sweaty, grimey, psychedelic beats are back and they’re accompanied by previous collaborator Aesop Rock for an entire album. Malibu Ken is a labyrinth of often sinister lyrical prowess and sparse, trippy rhythms that intertwine from front to back.
Tuesday, Acid King, Churro | | 7 |  | Cokie The Clown
You're Welcome
this the most depressing album i ever heard | | 6 |  | PUP
Morbid Stuff
With lyrics that dip into self-deprecation and cruel reality in equal measure, PUP’s heavy instrumentation hits pretty hard.
Kids, Full Blown Meltdown, Free At Last | | 4 |  | Holly Herndon
PROTO
Choirs twisted by bits and bytes make up a majority of PROTO, a true marriage of the natural and the synthesized. In no small part is this due to the inclusion of an A.I. designed, to put it bluntly, make the music. Spawn was created by Herndon and her boyfriend, fed vocal line upon vocal line until it had a voice of its own to be added to the choir. As artificial intelligence is prone to do, it merely acts as guidance for the record for the most part. And Herndon is hard at work, creating tracks impressively bombastic and haunting. Extreme Love is a prime example of the latter, reimagining The Last Question to offer an alternative to human evolution that I’m almost convinced is a metaphor for artificial intelligence. The AI baby gets its own official feature on the record in “Godmother”, a disgusting little track that reminds us that AI on its own is a messy beast, one that needs sufficient taming and work.On Proto, I think Herndon has done just that.
Frontier, Crawler, Extreme Love | | 3 |  | Glen Hansard
This Wild Willing
I found myself surprised at how often This Wild Willing threatens to overturn its status as quiet, easy listening folk record. Hansard rarely delivers vocals above a whisper here, but that doesn’t stop some tracks from exploding instrumentally - “Fool’s Game” in particular absolutely took me aback the first time I heard it. Those fleeting moments of grandeur work in tandem with the rest of the album, which is decidedly more easygoing, though not necessarily any lighter subject wise. All in all, This Wild Willing is a quality record on all fronts, and definitely one to not miss from 2019.
Race To The Bottom, Fool’s Game, Good Life Of Song | | 2 |  | Charli XCX
Charli
Somehow, Charli XCX managed to make the pop album of the decade with just three months to spare. She straddles a fine line, leaning into PC music sensibilities without completely alienating the average pop listener. She wrangles a dozen or so features that work great with each track that they’re given. Meanwhile, A.G. Cook wrangles in a dozen or so producers to create some of the craziest hooks and moments pop music has seen in a long time. Gone’s final minute is a brilliant cool-down moment of vocal glitches and a low-key repetition of the chorus. Click, co-produced by Umru (who I saw do a set at a furry convention once) and Dylan Brady (100 gecs) sends off its vocalists with a brain-melting electronic breakdown. And on and on, Charli delivers from front to back. Her vision fully realized, I can only imagine where she goes from here.
Gone, Silver Cross, Shake It, Next Level Charli | | 1 |  | Prince Daddy and The Hyena
Cosmic Thrill Seekers
Kory Gregory sounds like he’s dying all the time. It’s not quite the easiest voice to get used to, to be honest. Nails on a chalkboard isn’t far from the truth. But he’s the one that took the life-changing acid trip and decided to take his Weezer-ass sounding band to write a loose concept album about The Wizard of Oz and its parallels to his life. And if I’m being quite honest? It’s kinda relatable. Kory is a nervous man prone to panic attacks, getting by with a little help from his friends and also maybe drugs sometimes. And isn’t that what we all need now and then?
If you were here, I know you'd comment on the stars and how / They're not this clear From where you typically are / But I still hope you know No matter where you go / Even if they don't show You're never really alone!
Slip, Prototype of the Ultimate Life Form, Breather, C'mon and Smoke Me Up, Trying Times, Wacky Misadventures of the Passenger | |
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