2018 has been a year of reckoning. A year for asking questions. A year for insisting on getting answers. A year of rage. Of deep, soul-destroying sadness, of hopelessness and loss. A year for those who have power and privilege to finally start to think seriously about what it means for those without. But also a year for those who have been victimized to reassert their agency, to define new roles and new possibilities.
This was all there in the music, of course. As is always the case, art follows life. Or maybe life follows art. Either way, all the best music these days is being made by women, by people of color, by queer folks and nonbinary folks. You’ll still find a couple white dudes with guitars on this list, but not many. The world of popular music is more diverse than its ever been, and is far better because of it.
As always, this is a list of my favorites. I make no claim that these are objectively the best. They’re just the ones I liked the most.
30. Mogwai – Kin
Mogwai records fall in a pretty narrow band for me. I always enjoy them, but never regard them as truly essential. And Kin is just about the median Mogwai record. That doesn’t mean its boring. Just that it is exactly as good as I expected it would be. Its most immediately striking songs are the louder and more aggressive ones. Flee sounds like a shootout in an industrial factory, for example, while Donuts conveys the sense of scaling a mountain in the middle of a blizzard. The title track also includes an explosive final movement in which the building tension is unleashed. Still, it’s the restrained and introspective moments that ultimately hit the hardest, with Funeral Pyre a notable case. It’s deeply meditative, with a sliver of menace lurking in the shadows, and probably the most affecting track on the record.
Highlights: Funeral Pyre, Eli’s Theme, Donuts, Miscreants
29. Goalkeeper – Bad Times Don’t Last
You could drop this EP into the middle of a late 90s Gap commercial and no one would blink an eye. I mean that as a compliment, though a slightly guarded one. It’s not much of an innovation on the genre, but so what? There world can always use a little more enthusiastic three-chord punk rock.
Highlights: Sunshine, Chances, Nothing At All
28. Rita Ora – Phoenix
The first six songs would make an absolutely killer EP. Pure pop joy, all wrapped up in about 20 minutes. The back half is arguably more interesting musically, experimenting a bit more with tempo, genre, and emotional stakes. But, to my ears, none of it really sticks the landing. I’ll stick with Side A, and just put it on repeat.
Highlights: Your Song, Anywhere, Only Want You, New Look
27. The Beths – Future Me Hates Me
A timeless power pop record, which is full of hints and references to different eras but which is never beholden to any of them. It simply is what it is: a record full of big, joyous guitar rock. For me, they absolutely scratch the itch that came with the dissolution of Allo Darlin. But you’re welcome to fill in any reference—Big Star, Posies, Gin Blossoms, New Pornographers, Badfinger. It’s all here.
Highlights: Future Me Hates Me, Happy Unhappy, Less Than Thou, Whatever
26. opiou – SYZYGY 01
I have only recently learned about the existence of glitch-hop, and would have a difficult time explaining precisely what that even means. All I can really say is that it’s a serious trip. In terms of ambition and structure, this is more or less a drum and bass record, but there is a whole lot more going on than just that. Ginger Lizard is essentially a classic funk track, with about fifty additional elements layered on top. Botrok is, well, it pretty much sounds like what it says on the tin. And Dalmations is an introspective synth soundscape with some swarming horns. I have to be in the right mood to enjoy this album, but when I am, it’s incandescent.
Highlights: Ginger Lizard, Botrok, Boogie Latch
25. Ogikubo Station – We Can Pretend Like
We often look to popular cultures for heroes, when the real heroes are living far more normal lives. That said, if you wanted to identify a hero within the music business, you could do a lot worse than looking to Mike Park. Imagine a kid in the 80s, inspired by seeing people of color on the stage playing punk music and making people happy. And so he starts a record label, because he wants there to be place in the world for bands to go who aren’t ready to sign their lives over to the responsibilities and limitations of a major label. Over all those years, he continues to run this record label out of his mother’s basement, incubating generation after generation of new bands. And still writing music of his own!
Well, Ogikubo Station is one of Park’s many projects these days. A joint venture with Maura Weaver of Mixtapes, which plays very well on both of their strengths. It’s a relentlessly sweet and joyful record—the product of two people with plenty of experience in making music about how to find hope even in the darkest of times. The result is wonderfully simple: no frills, no gimmicks, just some pretty songs that hit you hard and then step aside so you can continue with your day.
If you grew up in the last few decades and enjoyed basically any punk or ska music, you’re probably away of Park’s influence, even if you don’t know him directly. If so, go ahead and check out this record—or one of the dozens of other great albums from Asian Man. If we want music to be a place for kids to find a new home, a new community of love and support, this is the kind of thing we really ought to support.
Highlights: I’ve Been Thinking of St. Louis, Rest Before We Go To War, Take a Piece Of All That’s Good, Drowning At The Watering Hole
24. Mimi Page – Dark Before the Dawn EP
I will never not love a record from Mimi Page. She writes the songs that fill the celestial spheres, the places we visit in our dreams. There’s a gentle longing here, and just a hint of darkness. But not the sort of darkness that threatens to overwhelm you. It’s the darkness that comes when you close your eyes and listen for the breath that flows between you and everything else.
Highlights: Cosmic Hymn of Light, Dark Before the Dawn, Flowing
23. Restorations – LP5000
It evokes the punk side of Springsteen, with rich guitar riffs dancing and weaving between machinegun bursts of percussion. You’ll find the same sheen as a War on Drugs record, the same crisp percussion as a National record, and the same clean and dynamic guitar sound you’d expect from Frightened Rabbit. But it’s not just about its references. This is also very much a record about its own space and its own time. A time of great doubt, great pain, and an almost limitless sense of fear about what might come next.
Because the deep truth here is that these songs are absolutely full of pent-up rage, which is tightly coiled, never really finding any sort of release. In many ways, this makes for a frustrating listening experience. There are movements that promise catharsis and refuse to deliver. It’s agonizing. On the other hand, there is a feeling of deep pathos in the performance of these tight circles. To listen is to edge ourselves around the anger, trying to maintain a grip on your sense of self, insisting on a sort of stability in the face of a world that is completely, relentlessly careless.
Highlights: Nonbeliever, The Red Door, St.
22. Dustings – Somatic Alterations
A little bit dream pop, a little bit shoegaze, and a little bit ambient. It’s a time-tested combination, and while Dustings doesn’t add anything particularly new to the equation, that doesn’t make this album any less affecting. This is not a record that reaches out and shakes you by the shoulders demanding your attention. It’s one that sneaks up quietly, nudging its way toward the edge of your consciousness. Pleasant, but elusive. Friendly, but mysterious. An album of small gestures and whispered missives. And while it does let loose more than a few times, the explosion always feels tightly contained–like a tornado that whips through town and destroys one building while leaving the ones on either side completely untouched.
Highlights: Murmured Hymn for Defocused Eyes, Audrey, Peace in Enduring, Delicate Decay
21. Remember Sports – Slow Buzz
Another great band from the booming Philadelphia music scene, Remember Sports offer the sort of hook-heavy, pop-adjacent punk music that has been the hallmark of 20-something post-college types for decades. But they do a damn fine job of it. And there’s a reason this genre has such enduring appeal. It’s a time of major change, with a lot of big questions and fears, but also a lot of hope. The future is still wide open, and there’s something incredibly cathartic about trying to put it all down into song.
Highlights: Up From Below, The 1 Bad Man, Calling Out, Otherwise
20. Zoe Keating – Snowmelt EP
Snowmelt is a case of real truth in advertising. Not since Here Comes the Sun has a record more perfectly expressed the feeling of that springtime thaw: when the air is still fresh and clean, when you step outside and feel the uncontainable joy of the sun on your cheek and the knowledge that a new year stands ahead of you. When you can still believe that this year really will be the one that everything comes together. There’s plenty of reason for fear, plenty of reason for skepticism, plenty of reason to doubt. But Snowmelt is a reminder that there is also always a glimmer of hope, even in the darkest night.
It’s only a short EP, but even over the course of four songs, Keating reminds us of just how much can be accomplished with a cello and a series of tape loops. I can only hope that this is a sign that she’s returned to a world of musical productivity, and will grace us with a full-length soon.
Highlights: They’re all great, but Forte is the centerpiece
19. Hilary Woods – Colt
The opening two are the strongest start to a record in a very, very long time. A full album that kept pace with them wouldn’t just be one of the best of 2018; it would be one of the best ever made. Eerie, haunting, beautiful beyond words. These are the stuff dreams are made of. And still, even if the rest of the record doesn’t quite match up to the opening, there’s still plenty worth exploring, including the stately Black Rainbow, which feels like an interpellation of the Twin Peaks theme, and the ghostly Kith which would make an excellent addition to the soundtrack for The Mists of Avalon, whenever HBO gets around to turning it into a TV series.
Highlights: Prodigal Dog, Inhaler
18. Phosphorescent – C’est La Vie
Each new Phosphorescent record builds out the atmospherics a bit more than the past. This time around, Matthew Houck has built some truly monumental soundscapes, which feel like they’re unfolding in quite a few more dimensions than just the three we can fully perceive. The stage is held aloft by two supports that bookend the interior songs—wordless jams that end up being some of the most affecting music that Houck has ever created.
But the heart of the record, for better and occasionally for worse, is the middle seven tracks. There’s plenty to love here, though at times you can’t help but wish he might dial everything back one or two degrees so that the underlying themes can reassert themselves. But for the most part, his dusty voice and the delicate application of some pedal steel is enough to keep things on track. And when he does hit the mark, he really nails it. Christmas Down Under is eerie, strange, and extremely compelling. New Birth in New England takes you a jaunty ride through two events: meeting his future wife and the birth of their first child, and the whole thing sounds eerily like a Paul Simon cover.
Highlights: C’est La Vie No.2, Black Waves / Silver Moon, New Birth in New England, Christmas Down Under
17. Jon Hopkins – Singularity
Hopkins is a top-notch sound designer, and he succeeds in building a universe of twisting, turning, glitches and thumping beats. It’s occasionally disconcerting, as notes fail to settle into anticipated grooves, but there’s something deeply satisfying about the disconnect. Your body wants to move, but your mind has trouble following along. In that separation, a kernel of understanding begins to form.
I spent a lot of time with this record over the summer. It was an excellent companion as I was sitting in coffee shops trying to write. I haven’t found myself going back to it much since then, though. It definitely strikes me as a record that will go through ebbs and lulls. But I look forward to the time when I feel the urge to reach back out and see if it might be possible to touch the sky.
Highlights: Luminous Beings, Everything Connected, Feel First Life, Singularity
16. Hayley Kiyoko – Expectations
The album is called Expectations, because those are precisely what it works so hard to subvert. On first glance, this is a relatively straightforward pop record from a former teen star. But there’s just so much nested within it: big boisterous songs with perfect hooks, slinky vocal lines that dance elusively around you, interludes of dreamlike reverie, funk beats, and on and on. And the expectations game is also a deep part of the record’s self-reflection. Kiyoko, after all, is queer, and has spoken powerfully about the importance of pop culture figures to represent that normality of lesbian identity. Which makes this record is a performative interruption of the expectations of heteronormativity. That’s part of what makes it such an interesting and engaging record, despite its tendency to work within some pretty common (maybe even banal) tropes of pop music. Because the personal is always political, and there’s no way to get around that fact.
Highlights: Under the Blue / Take Me In, He’ll Never Love You, What I Need, Curious
15. Jenn Champion – Single Rider
On her last record, Jenn Champion took a major turn toward the pop aesthetic. The former Carissa’s Wierd singer was never going to fully tidy up the ragged edges, but it was striking how smoothly she was able to slide into a different style. On Single Rider, she continues that evolution, offering what is essentially a pure pop record, though one very much informed by the likes of Erasure or M83. It’s a delightful experience, particularly on the opening two tracks which are cool and pure as a fresh mountain stream. Taken as a whole, the record drags a bit if you go straight through, and could perhaps have used a little bit more diversity in sonic range. The simple piano-balled Bleed, for example, feels like a wonderful breath of air when it pops up toward the end of the record. One or two more departures along those lines might have been enough to turn a lovely record into a true show-stopper.
Highlights: O.M.G. (I’m All Over It), You Knew, Bleed, Never Giving In
14. Grouper – Grid of Points
Like all of Liz Harris’s work, this is a work of distance and separation. Discovering meaning in a Grouper song is never easy; the words are muffled, the emotions concealed. For all its sparseness, there’s a deep guardedness about her music—as if it contains a secret that can only be concealed by laying it in plain sight.
Sometimes that means laying a simple melody out, and then playing with its sonic textures to create a sense of unquiet tension. But here, the elusiveness relies on no production elements. These songs are stripped completely bare. It’s simply her and a piano, playing in what sounds like it might be a distant forest clearing. In a pitch-dark night, hundreds of miles removed from civilization, she whispers truths so profound that words cannot possibly contain them. But it’s not important to understand. It’s only important to feel it all wash over you.
Highlights: Driving, Thanksgiving Song, Blouse, Parking Lot
13. Nicki Minaj – Queen
An album that could have used some heavy editing, but which still contains enough pieces of genius to deserve serious attention. Because at the end of the day, Minaj is an exciting artist precisely because she’s willing to take on so many roles, so many perspectives, so many chances. And if the final product is a little overstuffed, it just means every listener is free to construct their own 11 track ‘just the good bits’ version of Queen. For me, that means shying away from a lot of the processed pop stuff, which mostly falls pretty flat to my ears. But my condensed Queen is filled with gems, starting with the opener Ganja Burn – the chillest diss track I’ve heard in a long time – and the gloriously meta Barbie Dreams. The middle is held up by the beautiful Bed, a collaboration with Ariana Grande, the strutting Chun-Li and the compact aggression of Good Form. And it’s all brought together at the end by the blissed out breakup anthem of Nip Tuck and the I’ll-see-my-way-out torch song Come See About Me.
Highlights: Ganja Burn, Nip Tuck, Barbie Dreams, Bed
12. Beach House – 7
Much darker – both in terms of themes and sound – than much of their previous work, 7 feels like an appropriate response to a world that increasingly feels like it’s spinning out of control. This is still very clearly a Beach House record, with their classic sepia-tinged production and Victoria Legrand’s unmistakable voice, but they’re working with a bigger sonic palette. It doesn’t always work—the overlay of choral arrangements and a ticky-tacky percussion in L’Inconnue strikes me as particularly rough—but even on the tracks I don’t quite love, I appreciate the care that went into it. And there are plenty of major successes: the shoegazy propulsiveness of Dark Spring, the way Girl of the Year blends girl group pop of the 60s with a production style right of a Phil Collins record, the rich warmth of the guitar on Pay No Mind.
Highlights: Dark Spring, Last Ride, Girl of the Year, Pay No Mind
11. First Aid Kit – Ruins
The next time this band releases a bad song, it will be the first time. Ruins feels a bit less cohesive than their last album, while also lacking the precocious, jaw-dropping adventurousness of The Lion’s Roar. Still, a modest slump for the Sisters Söderberg is good enough that it would constitute a crowning achievement for virtually anyone else. As always, the harmonies are impossibly pure. But this time around they worked with Tucker Martine, and you can sense his hand in the production: which is cleaner than their past work, with a bit more fluidity in the melding of classic folk and jangle-rock. I don’t know that I’d want them to keep working with Martine, but for this specific record, I think his touch works well.
Because ultimately, this record feels heavier than their other work. And I think that’s intentional. It’s a record about the experience of achieving success beyond your wildest dreams, and what it means to still find a way to move forward. It’s also a breakup record, in the classic sense. And that’s the delicate balance struck across many of the songs here—how to re-learn what it means to be you, when for so long your identity has been wrapped up in other things. In another person, in your desire to achieve success. When it’s all laid bare, what remains, and what does it all mean?
Highlights: It’s A Shame, My Wild Sweet Love, Rebel Heart, Nothing Has to Be True
10. Benoît Pioulard – May / Deck Amber (with Ant’lrd)
I’m cheating a bit here, combining two releases from one of my favorite ambient artists. May is the real star here, for all that it’s only four songs long. But contained within those bare twenty minutes is the sound of galaxies forming, of planets coalescing, of plate tectonics. You feel the weight of time, which stretches far beyond any possibility of comprehension. And yet here, on a blue-green planet lost in the vastness of space, we exist. And if we will never truly comprehend the meaning of distance, perhaps we can still find some peace.
I’ve also included Deck Amber, a collaboration with Portland-based Ant’lrd, which strikes many of the same themes, but which feels a bit more grounded. If May feels like the sound of the entire universe breathing, Deck Amber offers the perspective of someone looking out upon that vast space, watching…and wondering.
Highlights: Moss Detail, Sixth Hour Bloom, Vacant, Docene
9. Rosanne Cash – She Remembers Everything
At some point we’ll run out of superlatives to describe Rosanne Cash, who just keeps putting out fantastic albums, forty years after her first release. This is a darker record than her other recent efforts—both in theme and in production. And that’s saying something, given that she has most recently been struggling with death, and with the legacy of southern identity. But by turning her attention to a narrower range of questions—what it means to continue living, what it means to feel the past slipping away.
There’s nothing showy here. Unlike the last record—which felt to me like an elaborate set built to give proper context to When the Master Calls the Roll—this time Cash is playing everything tight to the vest. Each song offers a glimpse of the truth, but there is no master key. Much like life itself, where the best we can do is take the next step ahead of us, and hope that each day will bring some new wisdom. And maybe, if we’re truly lucky, a sense of belonging.
Highlights: The Parting Glass, Everyone But Me, The Only Thing Worth Fighting For, The Undiscovered Country
8. Hammock – Universalis
Hammock are one of the surest bets in ambient/post-rock music. Every record is good, and each is distinct, though still notably a product of the same artist. I think Universalis is their best work yet. It was only released in the last few days, so I haven’t had enough time to truly dwell with it, but it strikes me as the final synthesis of a decade spent exploring different ways to evoke feelings of loss and belonging. It has the same sparseness of their early work, while also drawing in the warm melodies of their later work. Listening to Universalis is like being wrapped up in a cozy blanket while you stare out the window of a spaceship and watch the sun slowly turn from a glowing orb the dominates the sky into a tiny glimmer of light—just one more star among the vast array of the sky.
Highlights: Scattering Light, Clothed with Sky, Thirst, Universalis, Tremendum
7. Vanessa Peters – Foxhole Prayers
An important record from one of my favorite artists. The melodies are top-notch and the production is high-quality. And the songwriting is amazingly deft. Peters is able to argue without ever coming across as didactic or judgmental. The music is driven sense of dread at the conditions of our world, but also infused with a deep and generous hope. It’s a record that challenges us to stop being careless: to do something, no matter how small, to make the world a kinder place.
All of which is to say: this is a powerfully topical record, one very much centered in 2018. But it’s also a timeless record. Because time is a great wheel and there’s nothing truly new under the sun. So if we want to understand why there is so much pain, we have to look inside, to seek out those parts of ourselves that we keep hidden for fear of what they might reveal. The dark parts, where fear dominates and suspicion reigns. But also the parts that remain hidden because we’ve never truly needed. Reservoirs of hope, compassion, faith, and resolve. We run from all of these pieces, both the dark and the light, because life is so much simpler without them. But in the end, she says in the final track, we are all “what we can’t outrun.” For good and for bad.
This is a dark record, but it’s not a cynical one. Nor is it joyless. It asks big, important questions, but does so with an incredible generosity, and playfulness. It’s a room with a fire and a warm meal for a weary traveler on the road. An offer to listen, in a world full of people all too ready to talk. A restless spirit pacing long into the night. And a challenge to all of us to remember: those who are careless with the hearts of others will often find great success, but they will rarely find satisfaction.
Highlights: Fight, What You Can’t Outrun, Carnival Barker, Just One of Them
6. Snail Mail – Lush
Rock is generally a young person’s game. It takes a certain breathlessness to fully commit to the premise, something that is generally sanded away with time, as life grows more complex, as tensions reveal themselves and gray spaces take over your perception. And still, it’s always shocking when something this good comes from someone this young. At just 18 years old, Lindsey Jordan is living in two worlds. Her songs are immaculately produced—every note is precisely drawn, every beat hits right. But it still has that reckless need of someone with a million things to say, who simply can’t wait for it all to fall into place.
Listening to it the first time through, you’re tempted to categorize it as emo. Certainly it’s implied in the vocal range, which conveys that sense of desperation—the need to find some way of communicating a sense of emotional fragility that could never be contained by simple words on a page. But the more you dig in, the less appropriate that characterization feels. Because at the core, this isn’t a record about getting lost in emotions; it’s a record about precisely documenting them. The driving force here is the limitation of memory, which is always incomplete and often simply false. And so you record the pain, the longing, the false starts and broken promises. Not because you expect it to be a perfect accounting, but because it’s the only way to generate even a little bit of distance.
The result is an album steeped in irony, but all the more filled with pathos because of it. A series of vignettes in which a young woman stares at herself through the camera, picks apart her motives, poses questions, lobs accusations. All in the service of coming to terms with what it means to simply be in a world that seems so inhospitable.
Highlights: Full Control, Pristine, Heat Wave, Stick
5. Pistol Annies – Interstate Gospel
A delightful record, from three titans of the Americana scene: Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Angaleena Presley. Interstate Gospel feels like a careening Thelma & Louise ride through the countryside. Its central theme: the world has done us wrong, and we have kept receipts. But don’t worry, we’re not going to do anything really bad. Probably.
But while they’re polishing their pistols and considering just what sort of story this is going to end up being, they’ll take some time to reflect on how everything got so thoroughly fucked up. The answer isn’t simple. It’s a whole constellation of forces, which convince a woman to settle so often that she never quite realizes every important piece has been eaten way. Until, eventually, you look around and realize: “I’m in the middle of the worst of it / These are the best years of my life.”
There are two columns, which provide the emotional core of the album. First: When I Was His Wife, where they each take a crack at the ways love convinces us to pull the wool over our eyes, and which closes with some of the loveliest “ooooh, ooooohs” you’ll ever hear. Second: Milkman, which forgoes any sort of archness and simply tells a desperately sad story of a daughter trying to see the world through her mother’s eyes.
Highlights: When I Was His Wife, Best Years of My Life, Milkman, Cheyenne, Masterpiece, Commissary
4. Alkaline Trio – Is This Thing Cursed?
The trio bring all the propulsive energy of their early work, without ever sounding like a mere throwback. The melodies are great, the songwriting is top notch, and while it doesn’t have quite the same degree of untrammeled audacity as the songs they were writing in their early 20s – how could it? – it more than makes up the difference with a healthy dose of wisdom. More than anything else, it feels necessary in a way that nothing from this band has ever quite achieved. There’s an emotional heft here, a weightiness of spirit and subject, keenly balanced against the raucous energy of the music.
It’s a heavy album in many ways – dealing with subjects like depression and self-destruction (both personal and political) – but also a joyous one. A record which knows that music can’t release us from the pain that plagues us, but can help keep us afloat while we work on that slow process of self-healing. “I know you’re hurting,” it says. “I’m hurting too. But let’s sing together tonight anyway.”
Highlights: Demon and Division, Heart Attacks, Sweet Vampires, Goodbye Fire Island, Blackbird
3. Now, Now – Saved
When I heard SGL last year, it immediately pierced my heart, and I couldn’t wait to hear what else this band would offer on a full-length. Once it arrived, I was not disappointed. For a pure pop album, the pace is generally pretty stately. So don’t come here looking for bangers. But do come for light stutter-step delivery and the glorious feeling of the sky opening up above while a thousand stars fall all around you. I try to resist the temptation to overuse the word ‘glimmering’ to describe this sort of music, but I just can’t help myself in this case. If ever there was a perfect record to soundtrack a montage of a young couple falling in love, it’s this. Picture them holding hands as they run down the street together, kissing for the first time as the bright lights swirl around them, falling into bed together as the entire world fades away to be replaced by the sense of two bodies moving together.
Highlights: SGL, Set It Free, MJ, Yours, Powder
2. Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour
Kacey Musgraves has done here what very few artists successfully manage: a career pivot toward gentle reflection without the slightest hint of the blandness that such a move so often brings. This record is light as air, soft as velvet, and deceptively simple. The songs wash over you, cool to the touch like ocean waves on a hot summer day. It all feels so effortless that it takes more than a few listens to realize just how perfectly constructed these songs are. Just how precisely Musgraves is deploying her vocal talents to hit precisely the desired note. Just how well orchestrated every movement is.
This is a record with no life-changing things to say, no grand pronouncements on offer, and no major innovations in sound or texture. But for all that, it feels like a revelation. Particularly in the second half, which is defined by an almost preternatural sense of balance between emotional vulnerability and arch distance.
There’s no single song here that winds up and delivers the sort of punch as her earlier highlights. But that never feels like an absence. It’s a steadier record, one that reflects a greater sense of maturity, emotional confidence, and exercise of restraint.
It’s not quite a masterpiece (though I do think Musgraves has an all-time great in her future at some point), but it rather pointedly isn’t trying to be one. It’s simply a document of what it means to give up on trying to understand, categorize, and reflect on every failure.. And then to simply let yourself be, warts and all.
Highlights: Rainbow, Velvet Elvis, Space Cowboy, High Horse, Wonder Woman
1. CAMP COPE – How to Socialise & Make Friends
A bracing record, which details the burdens of living in a world that treats women’s bodies as commodities, to be used and discarded at whim. A world which cares deeply about appearing to be fair and just, but which lashes out with violence when you dare to ask when things are actually ever going to get better. A world in which the simple joys are enough to keep you afloat, no matter how much it all hurts.
I found myself coming back over and over to The Face of God this fall as I watched the Supreme Court confirmation process…thinking of just how much we ask of those who have been victimized. How little we are willing to listen. How certain we are that they must by lying. It fills me with rage, and with an unspeakable sadness, a longing for the world to be as gentle and as kind as my heart insists that it should be.
Wittgenstein famously said “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” CAMP COPE offers an alternative. Where one cannot speak, one must sing. And if you can find a couple friends to pound out a few bass riffs along the way, all the better.
Highlights: The Opener, The Face of God, How to Socialise & Make Friends, UFO Lighter, I’ve Got You
