Dec 23 - Top 10 Albums 2018

Overall, I'd say the year was alright for music. Or maybe I just wasn't able to pay as much attention as I normally would since my life got flip turned upside down about halfway through and I had to (haaaaaad to) move to Australia and 6 months later I'm still trying to get settled into a new life. But hey! Life was good this year. And music was good this year, too. Especially from new artists making debuts. Just maybe not in as copious amounts as it was in 2017. Which made it much easier for me to make this list this year. Even if it probably took me longer. But again - life got flip turned upside down. But now, here we go, with my 10 favorite albums of the year!

10. Middle Kids - Lost Friends

This is the only band I haven't put on the blog this year, so I'll just write a quick little something. They are very good. And I've just learned last week they are Australian. And I'm a middle kid. And my favorite songs off the album are probably On My Knees and Never Start. So those are going into the blog. But everyone else already has songs on the blog, and I've written about them before, so you just get links for them.

9. Young Fathers - Cocoa Sugar

8. Leon Bridges - Good Thing

7. Dirty Projectors - Lamp Lit Prose

6. Loma - Loma

5. Maribou State - Kingdoms in Colour

4. Jungle - Forever

3. Florence + The Machine - High As Hope

2. Rosalía - El Mal Querer

1. Haley Heynderickx - I Need To Start A Garden

Dec 12 - My Brightest Diamond / Ex:Re

I've just spent the last few days in Wellington, doing pretty much nothing. It's been kind of great. I decided to stop in a for a few days on my way home, because my friend Beth invited me to a Hannukah dinner that her chef friend was having. And I'm so glad I came. It meant a very stressful 72 hours back in Sydney, trying to get unpacked and whatnot, but since I got here, it's been total relaxation.

I've actually been working practically every day, but only for an hour or so. Other than that I've just been out and about, wandering the city, sitting outside reading, eating delicious food, and going to that Hannukah dinner I mentioned. Which was fantastic. I've done pretty much all the touristy stuff there is to do here already, but I did go back to a couple of museums. And part of me feels a bit guilty about not doing more, but I really think I needed this break and I'm very glad I had it. I've also managed to make it half way through the second season of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which I will hopefully finish on the flight home. That and maybe a bit of work. We'll see. I have 12 hours, so it would be a good time to do it.

For now, I've only got a few more hours in Wellington and I need to pack up before Beth gets home, so I'll go ahead and give you a couple more final music recs for the year. Both of today's are favorites of mine who have made new music.

I've already written about My Brightest Diamond this year, but then she actually dropped an album out of nowhere, called A Million and One. This is a weird one for me. I was not as immediately smitten with it as past albums, and somewhere in the back of my mind I have this idea of it being corny. But then every time I actually listen to it, I'm surprised at how good it is. I think it comes from the fact that a couple of the singles she put out before the album were quite poppy and dancy, which is not what I expected from her. I expected something more... dramatic? I don't think that's the right word. But I think of her music as being very orchestral and operatic and something you would expect to see performed on stage. This did not immediately strike me as that. But the more I listen, the more I hear it in there, and it's just these sort of dancy parts that stick in your head and make you forget about it. So yeah, good album, but I still need a few more listens. The best track on the album is definitely You Wanna See My Teeth. I actually remember her playing this in Paris back in April and I couldn't wait for it to be released, and it does not disappoint at all. Fantastic song. Lots of drama. Lots of good noises.

I think the other song I'll share is Supernova. This one is pretty dancy, but also really great. Kind of gives you an idea of what I'm thinking of when I listen to the album. But overall, it's a great one.





And then we have Ex:Re (pronounced ex ray), which is the solo project of Elena Tonra from Daughter, one of my favorite bands. And she is just as melancholy and beautiful in this project as she is in Daughter. The eponymous debut also came out of nowhere, and I only found out about it because it was announced on the Daughter Instagram and Facebook like a week before coming out, when they released the first single, Romance. Which just so happens to be the best song on the album. and don't let the title fool you. It's a pretty heartbreaking song. I think it's the only one I'm going to share from the album actually. It's a great album, but needs a few more listens to find out which songs I really love. These songs are slow burns. They definitely take time to get into the details and really listen to. But it is worth taking the time.

Dec 7 - Low Leaf / Tirzah

The last month has been insane. I took my last trip back to China, where I planned that big trade show, and now I'm back in Australia. But I'm back for less than 72 hours, and they have been non-stop hours. I landed Wednesday at noon, came home, and my delivery of all my stuff from China was waiting for me. So I spent the day unpacking that. Then I went to work Thursday, and came home to keep unpacking. And this morning I flew to Melbourne for a meeting in the morning, flew back, kept unpacking and organizing and cleaning (I've done like 10 loads of laundry in the last 72 hours) and then had my work Holiday Dinner. And then came home and packed. But I want to put some music on, because I have 2 more blogs I want to share music on before I do my top 10, which I'm working on. But it's midnight and I'm getting up at 6:30, so I'll jump right in.

Today's music is 2 new (to me) artists. The first is Low Leaf. She's a Filipino American hippy who makes insane music. Good insane. Influenced-from-all-over-the-world-and-blended-perfectly insane. I've just found out about her via her new EP PRiMiTiVA, which is fantastic. I mean, just listen to this song, Yah Yah.





Right from the start, it's all like "what?" And then the beat comes in, and it's like "what???" And it just keeps going from there. Then follow that up with the closing track on the EP Journey to GiGA GAiA. She has older stuff, only one album of which I've listened to and it was just ok, but I will be going back and listening to everything she has done based on this EP.





And the next artist is Tirzah, and she really is new. Well, first album new, but not first EP new. And I learned that apparently she started doing her thing at the same time and in the same place as FKA Twigs and Jai Paul. And her bff is Micachu (whose first album was fantastic and weird, and then the subsequent stuff was not as fantastic). And now Micachu has helped produce Devotion, Tirzah's debut album. It is also really weird. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I think I need to listen to it many times more and may just come to love it. Or not. I don't know. But I do know that the song Guilty I immediately loved.




And then there's the song Go Now, which was the other stand out track to me. And which is not as pop-vocally as Guilty. Not that Guilty is pop at all. This is weird music. Today's music is all super weird.

Also, I think both Micachu and Tirzah are Jewish. Just saying.