2019 was one of the years in music of this decade. Here are my 40 favorite albums of the year, ranked:
((author’s note: Each album brings its own unique strength to the table that I feel urgently justifies your listen: this is the “X factor” point.))
40. Body Meat – Truck Music
X Factor: simultaneously glossy and rough; the sensation of looking directly at the sun, or sticking your hand into a tank full of underfed eels
Favorite Tracks: “Combo,” “Metal Gear,” “Nairobi Flex”
39. Joyero – Release the Dogs
X Factor: the loneliest reaches of lushness; a torn paper bag trying desperately to fill itself with air (read more)
Favorite Tracks: “Alight,” “Steepest Stairs,” “Salt Mine”
38. Angel Olsen – All Mirrors
X Factor: the world’s most appropriate soundtrack for standing on a mountaintop whilst wrapped in a duvet; able to make the dullest of moments feel like a Cinematic Event; my dad’s personal favorite of ’19 (love u dad)
Favorite Tracks: “Lark,” “All Mirrors,” “New Love Cassette”
37. MIKE – Tears of Joy
X Factor: low-fidelity isolation; relentless creative energy that strains to breathe beyond the walls it has erected around itself
Favorite Tracks: “Goin’ Truuu,” “It’s Like Basketball,” “Stargazer, Pt. 3”
36. Caroline Polachek – Pang
X Factor: somehow makes cheesy slide guitar-core glissando twang sound cool as SHIT; some of the best vocal performances of the year
Favorite Tracks: “Pang,” “Ocean of Tears,” “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings,” “Door”
35. Mavi – Let the Sun Talk
X Factor: thrillingly dense and poetic; contains multitudes; never fails to be rewarding on relistens
Favorite Tracks: “Daylight Savings,” “Self Love,” “Sense”
34. Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe
X Factor: charmingly useless skits; the very poppiest and rockiest pop-rock you ever did hear
Favorite Tracks: “In Your Head,” “Angels,” “Baby Blu”
33. Duster – Duster
LP + Digital download available through Mudd Guts
X Factor: the true buzzer-beater record of 2019; deliciously fuzzed and distressed slowcore; a thousand times better than a post-19-year-hiatus project has any right to be
Favorite Tracks: “Chocolate and Mint,” “Damaged,” “Ghost World”
32. Big Thief – U.F.O.F.
X Factor: the distilled essence of a light breeze; startling, potent lyricism
Favorite Tracks: “Contact,” “Orange,” “Terminal Paradise”
31. Jesca Hoop – Stonechild
X Factor: simultaneous discomfiting blends of nurturing and haunting; some of the most beautifully and tastefully restrained production choices of the year
Favorite Tracks: “Footfall to the Path,” “All Time Low”
30. (Sandy) Alex G – House of Sugar
X Factor: Real Tender Folk Banger Hours; a swell soundtrack for crushing autumn leaves beneath the heel of your boot (read more)
Favorite Tracks: “Hope,” “Southern Sky,” “Gretel”
29. DJ Haram – Grace
X Factor: inspiringly sparse; quietly revolutionary
Favorite Tracks: “Interlude,” “Body Count”
28. Aleksi Perälä – Sunshine 3
LP + Digital download available via Bleep
X Factor: inventive microtonality; impossible-to-remember track names; somehow made me care about IDM again
Favorite Tracks: “NI-L56-18-07447,” “NI-L56-18-07450”
27. Ayankoko — Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ
X Factor: pleasantly off-the-wall; consistently surprising; above-average quantity of BWOMP sounds
Favorite Tracks: “Pambuko Reakt,” “Downsides”
26. Topdown Dialectic – Vol. 2
X Factor: improves & expands upon the ideas of its predecessor to frequently awe-inspiring effect; the future soundtrack of How It’s Made, Cyberpunk Edition
Favorite Tracks: “A1,” “B4”
25. Aldous Harding – Designer
X Factor: wait did she just sing about making out with a stork
Favorite Tracks: “The Barrel,” “Weight of the Planets”
24. Empath – Active Listening: Night on Earth
X Factor: summons forth inexplicable urge to rent out a barn in the countryside, kick the shit out of some haybales, and flop around in the mud
Favorite Tracks: “Pure Intent,” “Roses That Cry”
23. Vanishing Twin – The Age of Immunology
X Factor: psychedelic swirly-whirly loveliness transmissions from Planet Stereolab-Adjacent
Favorite Tracks: “You Are Not an Island,” “Magician’s Success,” “Backstroke”
22. Joni Void – Mise en Abyme
X Factor: threadbare digital scrapbooks collaged from dial tones and loose analog matter; possibly the best text-to-speech monologue ever recorded
Favorite Tracks: “Safe House,” “Deep Impression”
21. Dax Pierson – Live From Oakland
X Factor: intensely chilly idiosyncratic genre-blends; pleasingly warped and abstract, yet deeply personal
Favorite Tracks: “Macrobid,” “Treading Water”
20. Special Request – Vortex
X Factor: ballbusting throwback club tracks; pounds and throbs like violent hearts; stays crunchy in milk
Favorite Tracks: “Sp4nn3r3d,” “Fahrenheit 451”
19. Sudan Archives – Athena
X Factor: malleable, ductile, symphonic; springs back when pressed down (read more)
Favorite Tracks: “Confessions,” “Black Vivaldi Sonata,” “Iceland Moss,” “House of Open Tuning II”
18. Cherushii & Maria Minerva – Cherushii & Maria Minerva
X Factor: bubbly, unhurried exuberance; makes me feel like a waifish young ingenue dancing through the dawn at a European nightclub
Favorite Tracks: “This Must Be the Place,” “Nobody’s Fool [Vocal Version]”
17. Sault – 5
X Factor: deftly straddles line between “hip, soulful funktronica” and “iPhone commercial music”
Favorite Tracks: “Up All Night,” “Masterpiece”
16. Danny Brown – uknowhatimsayin¿
Multiformat purchase available through Warp Records
X Factor: has forced hundreds of English-speaking music journalists to hunt through the Microsoft Word Symbols tab for the upside-down question mark; 1hr30min Comedy Central standup special successfully condensed into a cool half-hour of confident, easygoing verse
Favorite Tracks: “Dirty Laundry,” “Belly of the Beast (feat. Obongjayar),” “Best Life,” “Negro Spiritual (feat. JPEGMAFIA),” “Combat”
15. Carla dal Forno – Look Up Sharp
X Factor: essence of quiet post-teatime nap under shady tree with bluish tint
Favorite Tracks: “I’m Conscious,” “Took a Long Time,” “Push On”
14. Kilo Kish – Redux
Available through all streaming services
X Factor: freakpop for bank heists, cliff diving and fist fights
Favorite Tracks: “Bite Me,” “Spark”
13. Tony Njoku – Your Psyche’s Rainbow Panorama
X Factor: disorienting, kaleidoscopic aural haze; prismatic roller-coasters of tumult, beauty and light
Favorite Tracks: “Disconnected,” “Furious”
12. Nivhek – After Its Own Death / Walking in a Spiral Towards the House
X Factor: enough reverb to drown a man; noises that warp and stretch themselves in your ears according to your mood; willowlike, bending but not breaking; cute doggy on album cover
Favorite Track: “After its own death: Side B”
11. ODAE – Ataraxic
X Factor: heartrending, interstitial, and sharply textural; journeys without destination; rivers that toss tumbling shards of gravel from mountain top to ocean’s edge; made by my partner, ODAE, whom I love more than anything in the world.
Favorite Tracks: “Patienec,” “Cascade,” “Passion”
10. Dorian Electra – Flamboyant
X Factor: LGBTQ+ empowerment; whip sound effects; the singular pleasure of singing along to the lyrics on a Saturday night alone in your bedroom and having a very good time being every part of yourself
Favorite Tracks: “Daddy Like,” “Emasculate,” “Man to Man,” “Flamboyant”
9. Xuxa Santamaria – Chancletas D’Oro
X Factor: glittery, ebullient club abandon x deep, rewarding lyrical concepts; danceable, huggable, lovable, washable (read more)
Favorite Tracks: “White Pine,” “Color Of The Dark,” “River Neva”
8. Telefon Tel Aviv – Dreams Are Not Enough
X Factor: crystallized dream-states; laden with feeling; drips like honey onto the ears; pleasant track-titles-as-poetry gimmick
Favorite Tracks: “i dream of it often:,” “a younger version of myself,,” “arms aloft,”
7. Boreal Massif – We All Have an Impact
X Factor: dark, monumental; trip-hop odysseys through climatological wastelands
Favorite Tracks: “Low Forties,” “Angel of Dub,” “The Brink of Extinction”
6. Loraine James – For You and I
X Factor: sprawling and chaotic, yet not overthought
Favorite Tracks: “London Ting // Dark as F**k,” “So Scared,” “My Future”
5. Yakui – Imni
X Factor: inimitability; idiosyncrasy; life-source; like licking old sparkplugs or chewing on aluminum foil (read more)
Favorite Tracks: “Esky,” “Radial Hardcore,” “Beltgate,” “Interface”
4. Girl Band – The Talkies
Multiformat purchase available through Rough Trade Records
X Factor: will yell at you loudly enough to leave you devoid of all feeling; excellent background noise for staring at the wall and being upset about something
Favorite Tracks: “Going Norway,” “Laggard”
3. Jenny Hval – The Practice of Love
X Factor: breathing in residual clouds of ground-up, arpeggiated stars; love is not the only answer, but it is the final answer (read more)
Favorite Tracks: “Lions (feat. Vivian Wang),” “The Practice of Love,” “Ashes to Ashes”
2. Kim Gordon – No Home Record
Multiformat purchase available through Matador Records
X Factor: audacity; variety; strength (read more)
Favorite Tracks: “Paprika Pony,” “Cookie Butter,” “Hungry Baby”
1. default genders – main pop girl 2019
X Factor: painfully evocative nostalgia; feeling, breathing, thinking, saying; buoyancy; self-sustaining rave-pop ecosystems; the redemptive, enduring power of kitsch
Favorite Tracks: “when it’s over [ft. no rome],” “pharmacoma (for ben dietz),” “black pill skyline,” “heart emoji xo,” “sophie (emphasis mine) [ft. beth sawlts]”
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Girlpool – What Chaos is Imaginary
Nonlocal Forecast – Bubble Universe!
Sofia Kourtesis – Sofia Kourtesis
Xosar – The Possessor Possesses Nothing
See ya in the new year, goobers!
Counterzine 