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A lot of the types of music that defined the 2010s went missing in 2019. There were definitely event albums from pop icons and its Twitter cult heroes as well as rap egos whose fingerprints helped define the game this decade, but most of it kept on brand and didn't chance changing the shape of their own sound. Similarly, the country music scene will probably always survive for better or for worse even if it doesn't have artists like Kacey Musgraves pushing its borders outward in colorful directions. This, however, was actually the best thing that could happen to independent music as we turn the corner into the 2020s. If there is one takeaway from the artists who put their best work forward in 2019, it's that now is the time to take risks, ignore algorithms, and let your sonic truths fly, as it rendered the most intersting new sounds we've heard outside of the poptimist eyeview in quite some time. Least surprising? Leading the way among the best of them is an artist whose career has been a narrative of constant innovation and reinvention, and has used our culture climate as her canvas. The 30 Best Albums of 2019 were simply put, fascinating exporations in music.

30. Jessica Pratt - Quiet Signs [Mexican Summer]

When so much of today’s music is influenced by a constant need to improve on production methods and recording innovation, an album that comes along like Jessica Pratt’s Quiet Signs feels like the true alien in our sonic spectrum. Pratt, a bonafide Californian singer-songwriter whose voice sounds more wiser and worn than that of the 30-something odd years she’s walked this earth, has a mystical ability in crafting human folktales. When she sings among soft-strummed nylon and gentle arrangements of pianos, synthetic reverb, and flutes, it feels like you’re hearing a memory come through the airwaves at a distance of somewhere between recent history and another life light years away.To hear Pratt share reflections on memory and occurrences anew is to find yourself webbed within her cosmic plane, however, where the enigmatic nature of her voice, sound, and storytelling transcend any timeline.

29. Field Mouse - Meaning [Topshelf Records]

Part of adulting is growing to accept that we don’t have all of the answers as to why life happens as it does.Meaning is an important album that reminds us of that, but also what it represents for Field Mouse as artists and where we stand collectively at this point on the indie rock timeline. Rachel Browne alongside guitarist Andrew Futral, bassist Saysha Heinzman, and keyboardist Zoë Browne deliver what is to date their most consistent collection of subterranean rock at a moment within the independent music scene where it’s value is becoming more and more rooted in what it gives back to us emotionally rather than fleeting style statements. Though these songs are rife with self-doubt, anxiety, and personal wishes to recovery that may not be your own experiences, the album acts as a mirror for them. Channelling every inkling of ensuing emotion into hooks constructed and compressed in both whirlwind and comedowns, earthly life lessons toiled in infectious choruses, and an engaging pace showcases the Brooklyn four-piece’s strongest side at all corners.

28. American Pleasure Club - fucking bliss [Run for Cover Records]

Sam Ray would have either preferred for American Pleasure Club’s latest effort fucking bliss to have never come out at all. It’s technically not even the project’s second APC effort, as it was recorded back in 2015 just as Teen Suicide was dissolving while Ray found himself in the throes of “manic, terrified, paranoid burst of energy.” That’s very much the best way to sum up American Pleasure Club’s long-overdue rough gem of an album, though, and despite its ugly exterior and disturbing background stories referencing French writer Édouard Levé’s final book and death premonition Suicide, it prevails as being one of the most sonically astounding compositions of art Sam Ray has created in his career. Listeners sorely missing the unabashed abrasiveness since the name change have plenty to indulge in here, with ghostly pianos and vocals submerged in fog being rattled by high voltage static bursts. This constant battle between the light and dark is motif throughout the album, with moments of beauty upheld just long enough to admire for their purity before being temporarily mauled away by grizzly impressions from corners unseen.

27. CEREMONY - In the Spirit World Now [Relapse Records]

If it weren’t for change and the audacity to take creative risks, CEREMONY may not have become one of the most interesting and influential punk bands out there of this past decade. With In the Spirit World Now, their sixth studio effort, the five-piece has returned from a break charged up and more certain now than ever as to what kind of band they want to be. The listen is transcendent in both its style and energy, making for arguably one of the most fascinating punk albums released all year. The Rohnert Park band moves through the listen in a way that takes you through doors of an altered dimension without resistance. There, frontman Ross Farrar finds his voice in its digital breakdowns and short jabs of electrocution. This is no mere state of reincarnation either, as In the Spirit World Now has simply found CEREMONY venturing to a time and space where the rest of the punk world has not caught up with their shape-shifting energy yet.

26. SPELLLING - Mazy Fly [Sacred Bones Records]

Mazy Fly, SPELLLING’s sophomore effort, is Tia Cabral’s first effort being positioned toward a wider net of audiences through the dark music tastemakers of Sacred Bones. Where its debut predecessor in 2017′s Pantheon of Me served as an entry point to her supernatural electronic pop-R&B aesthetic crafted with a Berkeley bedroom fixtures, Mazy Fly is the listen where her ideas are being colored in with bolder lines and a bliss of neon to compliment the ambient waves stirring throughout. Cabral’s capacity to take us on an odyssey that passes through a multi-universe where we experience everything from hypnotic enchantment, existential mysticism, and the horrors of our own history with the same thread of magical lift carrying them through makes Mazy Fly altogether transcendental, even if a trip being full of unexpected turns are the intended direction of her sonic space ship.

25. Wicca Phase Springs Eternal - Suffer On [Run for Cover Records]

As Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, Adam McIlwee’s mopish vocals that once emoted their way through bright textures of post-hardcore riffage with an eased shrug, as the former lead singer of Tigers Jaw has discovered a seamless sweet spot in transcending that same sedated energy over 808s and a murky post-trap atmosphere that aligns with the morbid fashion statements of today’s Soundcloud rap scene. Suffer On, his proper debut full-length, finds Wicca Phase Springs Eternal ambitiously setting out to connect scenescapes from his past and the fleeting present. Vapory, synthetic beats and Wicca Phase’s macabre persona have arrived to conjure themselves within while also stirring up self-haunted ruminations using barebones guitar strums and billowing instrumentals accented by synesthesia. The listen ambitiously connects scenescapes from McIlwee’s past and the fleeting present in a way that stylistically shouldn’t add up, but cohesively does.

24. Girlpool - What Chaos Is Imaginary [ANTI-]

There was a time when Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker’s sights were merely set on their world getting bigger, but with Girlpool’s third studio effort, the duo have ventured into an expanded universe of promising new patterns in their continuous evolution as artists and individuals. What Chaos Is Imaginary is the natural progression forward from what their 2017 sophomore effort Powerplant generated in melancholic electricity. Tividad’s songwriting blusters in dreamy swaths of reverb, and although the stories told only become more opaque in their synthetic texture, it’s fitting for the outer body experiences they indulge. Tucker on the other hand is becoming comfortable with their hands, with LP three being the first release since they began transitioning and discovering their own sure footing in brittle indie rock honesty. We’re witnessing both Girlpool members come into their own elements here, and having each other’s backs every step of the way only reinforces that growth.

23. Jamila Woods - LEGACY! LEGACY! [Jagjaguwar Records]

Chicago’s contemporary R&B scene is shimmering thanks to the creative wisdoms being shared by Jamila Woods within her sophomore effort LEGACY! LEGACY! The songwriter, poet and activist, whose breakout debut HEAV scribed a sense of empowerment as both a woman and a member of the black community in a body of art that doubled as her tribute to her Chi-town roots and identity as well its potential, pays it forward in reverse on her masterful sophomore follow-up through songs inspired by the heroes who helped pushed boundaries in the right direction. From their vantage point, Woods acknowledges her own platform she’s been gifted due to their efforts, and fully embraces the moment to shine. Embellished by a sparkling, future-proof production crossing the live energy in its instrumental arrangements, Woods voice is the vessel for a higher power in gratitude and self-love. LEGACY! LEGACY! lifts her every being -- as well as those who came before her -- to a new level up with it.

22. Blanck Mass - Animated Violence Mild [Sacred Bones Records]

If this is the apocalypse, then Animated Violence Mild is the dance party on our way out of existence and into oblivion. The third studio effort from Fuck Buttons’ Benjamin John Power and his experimental electronic moniker Blanck Mass exits the grizzly decay of its predecessor World Eater and opts for celebrating the destruction of humankind by way of its ignorance in gross capitalist agendas, toxic consumer culture, and climate threats with bright, movement-based compositions that usher the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight with anticipation. From Powers’ vantage point, the countdown is akin to a New Year’s ball drop. Stardust confetti and a fully edged energy build their way towards this climactic end. Perhaps the album was intended for the Earth alone, as it rids its surface of humans once and for all, and accordingly gives good reason to rejoice in our defeat.

21. Weeping Icon - Weeping Icon [Fire Talk Records]

The self-titled debut full-length from New York City’s Weeping Icon not only avoids regurgitating past noise – It becomes its own culture-consuming meta monster, and does so in a bout of irony in turning a shattered mirror on so many of the communication errors we hold today that neutralize individuality in the Internet void. Essentially, guitarist and vocalist Sarah Fantry, drummer and vocalist Lani Combier-Kapel, bassist Sarah Reinold and now-former guitarist Sarah Lutkenahaus have weaponized their facetious cynicism in their wash of static to the effect of making the world look as twisted as it really is upon realizing how mindless we’ve become with our modes of communication and self-projection. When we are not part of the problem, Weeping Icon reminds us that we are often complicit to them as well. Solutions are available, but realistically, Weeping Icon accept that the world best lived in is the one we make in the dark.

20. Glitterer - Looking Through the Shades [ANTI-]

Ned Russin is moving on from Title Fight, and yet, even he can’t tell you what the final destination is. On his debut album Looking Through the Shades as Glitterer, the undefinable, experimental hardcore and synth-pop band from the presumed former Title Fight bassist and vocalist, no one idea of his sounds truly etched in stone yet, and often, what you hear can be subjective to the listener’s interpretation of it based around their own individual experiences as much as they’re born out of his. Russin makes it a point to make listeners second guess his intentions with a dichotomy of first person narratives and those that explore the extensions of the self. In his sonic vessel, he stylistically shifts from poppy heartbeats in Casiotone to reverb-drenched melodics that in a very faint way resemble a natural progression of where Title Fight were moving sonically on 2015′s Hyperview. Propping up Glitterer’s weirdness as far up to the surface as possible are Alex Giannascoli, b.n.a. (Sandy) Alex G, and heavy music engineer Nate Rizk (known for his work with Code Orange and Power Trip.)

19. Solange - When I Get Home [Columbia Records]

Solange’s 2017 soul-baring standout A Seat at the Table was a contemporary R&B pop masterpiece that demanded a voice for women of color amid the white noise of a volatile world, and executed within pristine songwriting precision that made her undeniable to ignore. With her fourth studio effort When I Get Home, Solange is setting her soul free, however, as she escapes into an experimental sonic revelation obscured by the pieces of its many Houstonian fingerprints pieced together in mosaic fashion that feel fittingly reactionary to its predecessor. Here, she crosses a 19-song-long universe in just 38 minutes time through production locally sourced and rooted in chopped and screwed samples, cosmic jazz free flows, and futuristic hip-hop. Appearances by the likes of Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler, the Creator, Steve Lacy, and Pharrell are masterfully complimentary, yet barely visible against the backdrop of her black energy. The listen wholly beams even when refracted in the light.

18. Charly Bliss - Young Enough [Barsuk Records]

The charm in Charly Bliss’ 2017 breakout debut Guppy was in how the Brooklyn band catapulted a dizzy of emotions into buoyant, bite-sized, sugar-coated electric riffs. Where those kinetic bursts ultimately landed next was part of the wonder. Young Enough, the band’s sophomore effort, provides that answer in tongue-in-cheek delivery with their sonic palette being decidedly adulted into pristine pop-rock. The blinding radiance and waxed production of alternative maximalist Joe Chiccarelli is Charly Bliss’ defense mechanism to process tough pills to swallow out there in the real world. Where Guppy was sweet even when it had its candy hearts smashed into pieces,Young Enough is a growth spurt not only for Eva Hendrick as a songwriter, but a person as well, as she steps out from behind the character sketches that preceded it, and opts to confront heavy darkness without stumbling over her own two feet. The light is there to thematically guide the LP down rocky paths of healing, and by the end, Charly Bliss find a way to the end of the tunnel using their own unconventional creative wisdom.

17. Great Grandpa - Four of Arrows [Double Double Whammy]

As the tarot attributed in the LP title suggests, a period of rest and relaxation has reinvented the dynamic of Great Grandpa, as Four of Arrows is beyond the basic guitar rock energy of the Pac-Northwest band’s debut album Plastic Cough, and instead spills over with more than enough creative risk in their newly uncovered layers that there’s no way one word can box this listen in. Guitars unspool grief and growing in picks and knots, as co-vocalists Carrie Goodwin and guitarist Alex Menne’s presence sands and softens against one another thhrough a strange teetering of raw emotion on the edge of anthemic post-rock, melancholic harmonies and spry multi-instrumentals filled with country-chorded crackles, and ruminative Sufjanisms expanding the air around them. The album is sonic justification for every human’s need to process, reinvent and evolve not just for the sake of moving forward, but to become the best version of themselves as well.

16. Boy Harsher - Careful [Nude Club]

Boy Harsher vocalist Jae Matthews has likened their sound to that of David Lynch Lost Highway, and with the arrival of their sophomore effort Careful, it’s easy to hear why: The album is the Western Mass duo’s strongest representation of a sonic thrillride through the dark of the night where reality and surrealism merge onto the same lane, each exit along the way, revelling in uncertainty through human vessel form. Boy Harsher’s collective’s strength in embodying a centripetal energy with their sound from Careful’s start to finish acts as their own highway. It was a formula they experimented with on 2017′s Country Girl EP in short story form, and is one that gets an expanded view here as we’re presented through an obscured lens in tales of passion, loss, and escapism that are vaguely autobiographical, and informed by Matthews and Gus Muller’s own personal brushes with death, illness and the decay of their own romantic partnership. Channeled across Careful’s storyboard of 10 tracks using compressed EBM currents, pulsing beats, and the bare minimum of lumens necessary to see through the pitch black and icy pavement which Boy Harsher race,

15. Jenny Lewis - On the Line [Warner Bros. Records]

On the Line confirms what we’ve already know about Jenny Lewis, and that’s how she’s a songwriter treasure beyond just the Los Angeles indie rock diamonds in the rough which her crystal powers originally were unearthed. Four albums into her second chapter as a solo musician following her years fronting Rilo Kiley, Lewis’ songwriting craft only continue to polish itself clearly in the Laurel Canyon breeze and the stony-eyed sunshine glares. As with her past journeys, On the Line is marked with travel stories of poets, romantic vagabonds, boys named Bobby, girls named Caroline, and plenty of drugs. Each comes to life vividly as if they were her own to live (perhaps they even are…) and though backed by an ensemble of rock virtuosos such as Don Was, Benmont Trench, Beck, and Ringo Starr, Lewis holds the spotlight all her own.

14. Russian Baths - Deepfake [Good Eye Records]

To be a noise rock band of today, survival is dependent on separating yourself in the dark. Though Brooklyn duo Russian Baths have breathed in every ounce of oxygen of EVOL era gore, a Loveless gaze, and channeling the unrelentless energy of Drive Like Jehu’s rome plows, their debut album Deepfake turns the page on the grizzled corners of modern “heavy” music toward a polymorphic point singed with synthesizers and elegiac pianos, scattered in a space where no other matter yet exists. Throughout the album, the duo of Jess Rees and Luke Koz toy with the pull of gravity to supply that pressure, with mixing by Ben Greenberg of Uniform incisively making every directional turn razorlike. The band’s multi-faceted approach to personifying in a discordant beauty the most internalized, self-manufactured emotions of modern human terror. Deepfake sees through this disconnect, and uses the fear it births as their instrument to create a new kind of noise.

13. Control Top - Covert Contracts [Get Better Records]

The modern post-punk landscape was in danger of becoming a reductive cliche of itself as it softened its spikes, but Philly trio Control Top are razor-sharp and full of fire in their delivery with their debut full-length Covert Contracts. It’s an extreme case of the personal, political and technologically terrifying converging at the forefront of the conversation as well as attacking your senses, with lead singer and bassist Ali Carter acting as the live wire mouthpiece with a maximalist current from drummer Alex Lichtenauer and guitarist Al Creedon downloading a surge of dark truths from their secret server. In the age of information overload, Control Top are here to tear down capitalist walls and the algorithms set up to pocket millions off of it one piece of the hate machine at a time. When it’s over, Covert Contracts has hopefully hacked a staying power in your brain as well.

12. Knocked Loose - A Different Shade of Blue [Pure Noise Records]

A Different Shade of Blue is landmark album that will define the modern metalcore scene for years to come in the same way Converge’s Jane Doe did nearly two decades ago. With an insatiable hunger to destroy and reconstruct the scene in their own shattered mirror, Knocked Loose’s sophomore breakout aspires to bring a new kind of intensity as well as raw emotion to the forefront of the latest wave of thrashers such as Code Orange and Jesus Piece who are fully feeling the futility of these times in their heaviness. Most noticeably on their greatest leap of faith into themselves is how the Kentucky five-piece are not only refining their rage, but controlling it without coarsing down its knife-like edges either. Every breakdown and growl exorcised from Bryan Garris’ throat is laid down with purpose, making their blackened and blued hues impossible to ignore.

11. FKA twigs - MAGDALENE [XL Recordings]

FKA twigs’ sophomore effort MAGDALENE sees Tahlia Barnett handedly pushing all dalliances in the dark even further out in a recorded document that captures a specifc kind of heartache with shape-shifting formation. Looking back at how far she has come as an aritst over the last half of this decade, twigs’ influence is again heard redesigning today’s experimental pop formula all the way from the underground up into the commercial pop kingdom in a way where every drop of blood, sweat and tears make their way into the canvas despite the artificial assistance. MAGDALENE does not withhold any part of Tahlia Barnett’s emotions spilling their way into its recording, and the way she merges of the most purely devastating human experiences with compounds of electricity, light and sound makes her second and best work to date something the rest of her peers now have the daunting task of aspiring to replicate in their own reflection.

10. Club Night - What Life [Tiny Engines]

These days, pop music has become synonymous with indie music, and being weird not for fashion’s sake in your style of rock couldn’t be any more refreshing. On Club Night’s debut full-length effort What Life, the Oakland experimental five-piece are joyous in that realization without needing to be as obtuse about it as some of those past gen influencers. Frontperson Josh Bertram is deep in his ruminations and uses his position for advocacy in varying degrees despite his band’s far out mix of spastic yelps, fidgeting time sigs, and hints of post-hardcore and Pac Northeast riffage compressed kinetically that could have easily gotten away with leaving an impression through vague imagery. He and Club Night strike with their intentions in lightning bolt striations from the personal to the political (or both at once, in some cases,) and to experience their art is to feel enough of a jolt of electricity moving through you in he same way it does through their music that reminds you of why you’re alive.

9. black midi - Schlagenheim [Rough Trade]

The UK four-piece black midi display a level of perfectionism in the abstract that makes it easy to hear how we could be on the verge of the next chapter of post-punk’s future. With Schlagenheim, their debut album, they give us more than an open-ended conclusion. It questions any labeling of the band whatsoever, and repeatedly challenges the notions even when you think you’ve figured at least part of it out. Their sound is beyond concrete form categorization, as it pieces together a revolving assembly of limbs made up of aforementioned post-punk influence as well as industrial, noise rock, art rock, hardcore, experimental jazz, and even country. Splattering noise across the canvas forces the listener to draw interpretations of the quartet’s merger of sensory induction and intention in gallery form. It’s on the path of the best adventures in avant rock at the turn of the millennium as heard in classics by Boredoms, Black Dice, and Lightning Bolt, and in today’s safer musical landscape, it’s exactly what’s been missing.

8. Elizabeth Colour Wheel - NOCEBO [The Flenser]

There really aren’t any concrete shapes or sounds in the heavy music world to describe what Elizabeth Colour Wheel are creating. Regardless of that, the Boston five-piece’s debut full-length NOCEBO pulls in a whirlwind onslaught of harsher elements from the post-hardcore, black metal, experimental noise, and shoegaze soundscapes, and siphons them through the tour de force that is their frontperson Lane Shi. As the album title – a nod to a medical term to describe a detrimental effect on health produced by psychological or psychosomatic factors – might suggest, Shi and her bandmates master the art of devastation through cataclysmic eruptions and momentary elegies for what’s been lost in their wake. Nothing’s left without ruin in this listen, and that could very well be the key as to why Elizabeth Colour Wheel leave no corner of the heavy music world untouched with their path of destruction.

7. Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell [Interscope Records]

It’s been a long, weird. eyebrow-raising way to the present with Lana Del Rey, but as modern times have only gotten worse, her pop shock has only proven to be a reflection of our reality. On Del Rey’s modern morbid opus Norman Fucking Rockwell, she preaches to her choir of listeners who have accepted that there is no happy ending in this lifetime.This hour-long collection of songs is not only just that, but Lana Del Rey in her most astonishing form as well. Plenty of prose-on-point Lana-ismsare woven throughout that serve to solidify her self-made mythology and give listeners a deadly, vicarious rush in their veins. Its cohesive career-peak of songwriting exists with contemporary shades of blue and fashion-forward cool built into its structure by producer Jack Antonoff as well. Together, the tandem stylistically mediate Del Rey’s elegy noir by mourning a generation who’ve never really had anything to live for, because it’s always been gone before they had a chance to hold onto it.

6. Big Thief - U.F.O.F. [4AD]

Entering the atmosphere like an unidentified flying object is Big Thief’s U.F.O.F. We’re familiar with the four-piece, of course, having given the world two ornately beautiful modern indie-folk offerings in 2016′s debut Masterpiece and their 2016 listmaking breakout Capacity, but with the Brooklyn band’s third studio effort, the four-piece of lyricist and guitarist Adrianne Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek, bassist Max Oleartchik and drummer James Krivchenia have pushed a sound, that at its foundation could be construed as “simple”, into the outer limits where strives in consideration and a risk-born hunger to evolve have redefined not just what they are, but what esoteric rock music made with fundamental instrumentation can be when it lives inside its own universe. Pay attention to the smaller wonders in Big Thief’s songcraft, and it’s really that which is hiding in plain sight that makes U.F.O.F. an awe of a listening experience, throrugh rippled arpeggio, shrill screams, and looped tape samples threading around Lenker’s character sketches. They’ve expanded the sky and widened their eyes beyond what we see before us. Big Thief simply sound like their own adventure.

5. oso oso - basking in the glow [Triple Crown Records]

A positive outlook doesn’t come natural to all people. In a world where the macro and the micro of bad things happening can whelm easily, putting into practice looking at the glass half full eats a lot of energy especially. oso oso mastermind Jade Liliitri is confronting that time in his life where he needs to do just that. With his third studio effort basking in the glow, he’s gracious of the good time while they’re here, and giving them justice just as well in a technically tight outing in emo-pop precision. Truly, there hasn’t been an album as vivid and picturesque in spite of grim realities as this since Saves the Day’s criminally underrated power-punk-pop crossover classic in 2002′s In Reverie with both its form and texture, and go big or go home personality, which in this case also serves the greater good of, er, trying to see the good out there in your life despite. The struggle to get there is real, though, as Lilitri puts it a few times, yet he knows how to twist life’s misfortune in a way that let’s both souls coexist in the same spotlight peacefully.

4. (Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar [Domino Records]

Hodgepodging indie rock, pop, country, electronic and even noise and hardcore in some instances within his music, not knowing where (Sandy) Alex G will veer next on the course of his prolific body of art has been half of the delight of taking a dive into the unknown with the Philly songwriter. With his eighth full-length effort House of Sugar, (Sandy) Alex G formally graduates from wunderkind status to pure songwriting genius, as the collection of tracks abstracted in open barn country, warped post-R&B rhythms and his gussied up version of indie rock formalities is proof positive that there isn’t a style that doesn’t fit Giannascoli’s world of whimsical and terrifying wonder. Though his 2018′s critical breakout Rocket had no faulty parts attached to it, House of Sugar is as if you took all its best ones and decided to double down on its bittersweet and stickiness, and use that to construction what amounts to (Sandy) Alex’s most inviting collection of songs intricately designed on his vast sonic map yet.

3. Empath - Active Listening Night On Earth [Get Better Records / Fat Possum]

Empath softly wink back to a bygone noise pop era in a way that rekindles it with a different kind of magic for these times. For those who’ve no prior relationship with it, then their debut album Active Listening: Night On Earth will sound spectacularly refreshing compared to modern day standards of what indie rock and pop music has devolved into since. The Philly punk four-piece would probably reject any notion that might compare them to the past, but what makes Active Listening: NIght On Earth its own true sonic marvel is in how Empath move their version of noise pop into one that travels beyond its compressed indoor limits. Emily Shanahan and Randall Coon’s zoom through dense air with woozy keys as vocalist and guitarist Catherine Elicson and drummer Garrett Koloski batter impressionistic detail into the canvas. It’s as if the four have found a secret door to escape the natural plane altogether for some kind of after hours unknown. It’s reprieve from time’s hands in that regard where the only constant is motion and Empath’s ability to turn every physical sense inside out.

2. Angel Olsen - All Mirrors [Jagjaguwar]

Across this past decade, Angel Olsen has taken us on one of the most adventurous songwriter journeys of any kind, her nomadic origins rustling in lo-fidelity kindling in her early work before her storytelling began to flourish almost into a spiritual experience as she adorned prose and her vocal power with intricate details of synth-pop and string symphonies beyond the traditional finger-picking and electrical currents on 2017′s My Woman. Now that she’s achieved cloud status, she controls the forces of nature on a greater scale with her fifth studio effort All Mirrors. With this effort, Olsen challenges her creative being to become something greater than it already has proven of itself to be. It’s the arguably the first album for that reason where both sound and her composed fury are equally capable of pushing one another into directions far beyond where she’s been rather than the focal point of her voice being the sole bearer of carrying that weight along her travels. In short, this is the place where Angel Olsen has at least found her truest sense of self in sound.

1. Kim Gordon - No Home Record [Matador Records]

Though her influence can be heard within the work of practically every artist on this list, Kim Gordon has managed to elude putting out any music under her own name throughout her iconic career as the co-founder of Sonic Youth as well as her other projects like Body/Head, her noise-drone duo with Bill Nace, or her psychedelic freakout Free Kitten alongside Pussy Galore’s Julie Cafritz. What’s most impressive about how she finally has done so after all of these years with her debut solo effort No Home Record is through her continuous immersion of culture and feeding it back to us in a raw and conflicted form, Gordon’s timing of doing so could not have been any better. As the presentation of our current times by her hands as well as that of producer Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Angel Olsen), Gordon captures the decay of modern pop culture in all of its prematurely decaying parts. Across the listen, the corrosion of culture is evident as each track crumbles from gloss until it is eventually left spread as particles between a growing voids of disconnect. Consumerism, technology and social conditions, for better or for worse, are fodder for Gordon’s avant pop analysis. This is not a self-portrait of Kim Gordon, but it’s very much an accurate depiction of her world as our world – That strange place that resides between chaos and complacent comfort, with her art being the disrupter in each of their patterns to reveal their intersect.

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