Books of 2018 Part 1: 50-41

Brief preamble: As I do every year, I will do the bulk of my books write-up in countdown form, beginning with number 50 in this case. Before I post my top ten books of the year, I'll take a step back to count up my bottom n books of the year. In 2018 I only managed to read a grand total of 57 books (shameful, I know) so it will only be a bottom 7 this year. But oh boy, there are some stinkers in there so fear not, bitter reader, you'll get your fill of hateful bile.

To my delight as well I discovered that my favourite place to link to books, the QBD online book store, is back up and running this year after being down for - I think - the previous two years of write-ups. So please click on some links and give them some web traffic. Maybe even buy shit from them, if you're so inclined.

(Edit: not all the books are available on QBD so in those cases you'll get linked to the Goodreads page. But QBD is otherwise my first port of call)

50) Dancing in the Dark (My Struggle 4) - Karl Ove Knausgaard

#ContinuingSeries

Ooh, what a way to start, with part four of Knausgaard's lengthy memoir and to me the most problematic, for a couple of main reasons. It's mostly the problems that put this down in this lowly position, whereas parts 1-3 have been mainstays of my top 20s for the past few years. My first issue with this lies in the inevitable comparison with Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. I find the premises of both are similar in that they are searching for the profound in the mundane, but the difference is that this search, for Proust, is quite explicit and extroverted in that he seeks to share this search with us, whereas for Knausgaard it's incidental and quite egocentric in that he seeks to find his own meaning purely for his own purposes and some form of catharsis. His focus on developing his writing as a young man reveals that he has less wish to share what he has to say with the world and more seeks to show off his own brilliance and have people love him for it. But oh, they do: the rapturous reviews that festoon this book are little short of god worship, in fact one even calls him "a living hero". One thing you will notice about these reviews is the names to which they are credited: Jeffrey Eugenides is one, Jonathan Lerner is another. There's probably one floating around from someone called Chad "Brick" Lundgren. They're all men, is what I'm getting at, and that leads into my main issue with this book: it is very blokey, to the point of heavy misogyny. Not to spoil too much but the final moment in the book is a pure and simple rape, that he doesn't acknowledge or deal with but leaves us with almost as an amusing passing anecdote. But throughout the book, which is basically a coming-of-age story with Knausgaard between 16 and 19 years old, trying to write and trying to lose his virginity while dealing with a self-induced cock-block of his own premature ejaculation issues. Therefore all the women - including the pubescent girls he teaches at a northern Norwegian school - are all objects of desire and beauty, and are all defined by his own lust for them or lack thereof. It just feels like a very boyish romp that has little self-awareness or empathy. That's not to say he's not self-aware: no, the warts-and-all style certainly continues in this volume, but I feel that that plays very much into the rapturous phallocentric reception of this book, in that men can read this and immediately identify with the problems and the struggle with trying to get women to fuck you and get your own enjoyment out of them. But the most problematic thing about the book is that, as a man myself, it was easy to buy into that despite my reservations: it is an eminently, powerfully readable book, full of interesting and relatable anecdotes. Knausgaard as a selfish and arrogant youth trying to forge an identity for himself is a figure who transcends geographic and cultural boundaries, but the Norwegian settings are also evocative and somewhat magical. I just feel that there's an unapologetic chauvinism that he doesn't seem conscious of, whereas by contrast, the second book in the series, A Man in Love, dealt with the breakdown of his first marriage in what I felt was a far more mature and sympathetic way reflecting after many years have past, despite him including his ex-wife in the warts-and-all portrayal and giving her no right of reply. He just felt like a wiser and more reasonable person there, whereas here he delights in revisiting and perpetuating his youthful toxic masculinity, and comes across as an arrested adolescent in the process.

49) The Noise of Time - Julian Barnes

#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed #AtLeastSomewhat

Barnes definitely has this way of writing certain narratives. So of the previous two works of his I've read: one, the Booker-winning Sense of an Ending, was pure fiction; the other, Arthur and George, a fictional imagining of an actual historical event. This is similar to the latter, in that we're introduced to a noteworthy but ordinary fellow called Dimitri in post-revolutionary Russia, and by and by discover that he's not simply noteworthy but is Shostakovich; similarly to the casual way that the upper-class socialite Arthur in Arthur and George is off-handedly identified a third of the way through as Conan Doyle of the Arthur variety. He just introduces us to these characters as people before outlining the reason why we should be interested and make us reevaluate both his narrative and any previous narratives we may have had about the person. Anyway, this is an interesting little diatribe and monologue in many ways about the forces of power, the power of art and the ambivalent nature of courage under various guises of a communist regime. Barnes' Shostakovich is a coward, but a coward who feels both deeply ashamed of his cowardice and also stoically self-conscious of the value of his cowardice, while wrestling with the measure of his music and its legacy. It is quite a dogmatic narrative as Barnes' usually are, philosophically interesting and raising a lot of questions but also rather didactic to a fault, where it makes you think, but largely instructs you on what to think about. Worth reading but not amazing.

48) Saturday - Ian McEwan

#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed

I feel a little uncomfortable about this one in the final analysis, because it's kind of awkwardly uplifting and optimistic. Throughout the story, set over the course of one Saturday in the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, I kept feeling like it was building to a McEwanean tragic climax where his entire life would come crashing down in an inferno of wasted dreams. The narrative gives this kind of impression as Perowne's thoughts ramble on in this self-important and incredibly loquacious, professionally detached kind of way. He feels like someone who sets himself so far apart that he's bound to be cut down. And indeed it almost works out that way as the events of this day all converge into a crucible of fatalistic vengeance precipitated by Perowne's naivety. The fact that McEwan then delivers Perowne into a bright, optimistic future feels really quite disingenuous and takes on a sense of middle-aged fantasy. The backdrop of London in the days of Hans Blix's inspection tours of Iraq and the anti-war protesting serves to give this a kind of utilitarian humanism: that the choices we make will either be for the benefit of all humanity or have echoing repercussions for generations. So the kind of manly take-charge aphorisms of Perowne as he steers the steady course of least resistance just feels quite glib and saccharine to me. McEwan is a competent enough writer not to put the boot into his own cynicism here but leave his reputation for unapologetic bitterness in tact, but he feels like a man wanting to ameliorate his own legacy a bit as he ages and possibly confronts his impending mortality. And I'm not sure how I feel about it.

47) The Bloody Chamber (and other stories) - Angela Carter

#AuthorsIShouldReadMore

I felt I should read to get a better handle on Angela Carter, or more specifically why I don't like her as much as other people do, having read only one (The Magic Toyshop). And this neatly answers a fair bit of it. Firstly her prose is extremely dense. There's a density from ye olden folk tales that she's subverting, but a further density in that she is subverting the style; exaggerating it at times and undermining it at others, so it's quite slow-going to get through the layers of narrative artifice. The other thing is not a criticism but just a personal shortcoming for me, in that I never really grew up on fairytales, so the imagery evoked, recharged and even satirised here doesn't stir up any feelings and it ultimately feels quite academic. Some of the trope subversions I enjoyed - like the first take on Red Riding Hood, The Werewolf - while others like The Courting of Mr Lyon, a take on Beauty and the Beast, felt almost like a retelling of the original story but with an injection of female sexual agency. Some of them almost feel like "fairytale with sex" and I'm not close enough to source material or inspirations to get much more than that. And isolated bit of prose that struck me as extremely clumsy was in the title  story, our narrator has just discovered something - let's say - mildly troubling about her new husband so she goes to phone her mother and writes "of course, the lines were dead" why "of course"? Because you're aware that you're in a gothic horror story? And fully conscious of its tropes? There's no reason for her to find the lines being dead anything less than mildly surprising except if making a self-conscious nod to the omniscient reader. It just served as a warning sign to me that the style and spirit of this book was going to be a bit heavy-handed and that was how I ultimately found it.

46) Lust, Caution - Eileen Chang

#ClassicsIShouldRead

Another set of short stories. The title story here is a good, intriguing read; it invokes a strong sense of place and time and involves a compelling espionage narrative where personal feelings interfere with broader sociopolitical movements. The remainder of the stories invoke the same sense of place and time but lack direction (almost consciously, like they seem like reflective snapshots of life rather than "here's what happened from X to Y"). While they are interesting as portraits of life in wartime Shanghai, with its political uncertainty and the uncomfortable intersection of eastern and multiple western cultures, I fear they will be unmemorable to me except as a general aesthetic and a cultural artifact. I didn't get a strong sense of the characters or psychology or any great conflict except insofar as it's a commentary on the state of Shanghai society.

45) Orlando - Virginia Woolf

#AuthorsIShouldReadMore

Picking up a Virginia Woolf for me feels like the definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results. But I also feel like I need to keep giving her chances to impress me; or rather to engage me. She's obviously a talented writer but her diversions into directionless asides and descriptions just lose their grip on me. This is, I feel, a somehow more enjoyable read than To the Lighthouse and possibly Mrs Dalloway (hence it lifting Woolf out of the customary position of the bottom n of the year) just because the philosophical and allegorical scope of this feels larger because its universe is so much larger. It and its protagonist span several centuries, take on different forms and explore interesting questions about art and gender politics throughout history. I'd be lying if I said I was really absorbed at any point, but it is an interesting exercise in 'biography' that allows Woolf to delve into some of her pet topics like female agency and the freedom of expression. Ultimately I will just dismiss this and consign her again to my "if I have nothing better to read" pile, but there was some substance here beyond the modernist fuck yous to formalism and narrative structure, and that deserves some credit from this anti-modernist curmudgeon.

44) Mr Kafka and Other Tales From the Time of the Cult - Bohumil Hrabal

#AuthorsIShouldReadMore

Yes, the 50-41 sequence is definitely the spot for short story collections apparently. I'm not especially familiar with arguably the former Czechoslovakia's foremost writer, although I watched the film adaptation of his novel Closely Watched Trains many years ago so that was the key draw here. Hrabal takes some getting used to in this form, and even in individual stories. These stories all exist in the same universe and even it would feel in the same neighbourhood or even the same block within an industrial milieu in Prague. There's kind of three types of stories here: bizarre, surreal dreamscapes; interweaving diptychs; and 'day in the life' skits, and the latter two are both the most effective and the most digestible. It has a very grimey industrial feel that is fairly intriguing and enjoyable but in a short story way is kind of cinematic and also fairly fragmented. Worth discovering and Hrabal is worth delving more into. Perhaps.

43) All my goodbyes - Mariana Dimópulos

#BooksIReadForNoReason

Curiously I picked this one up along with See You at Breakfast? by Guillermo Fadanelli (more on that to come) and discovered after reading this that they're both from the same translator and likely both part of a push to unearth some more Latin American literature for an English-speaking audience. This is an intriguing, but kind of baffling book. In content it's very similar to a "youth travelling aimlessly, and through Europe" cliché but it's all told retrospectively whereas those narratives are often in-the-moment who-am-I-going-to-fuck-tonight type narratives. The timeline is the baffling part here because it's all fractured as it leaps from one timeline to the next. The whole narrative is kind of fractured as well, from Berlin to Madrid to Argentina to other parts of Europe and other unspecified parts of South America/Argentina. It's got a good meditation on trauma and the resultant psychology, and there's a nice yearning to this throughout. Takes some getting used to and probably demands closer attention because it just feels a bit piecemeal on first visit.

42) Couples - John Updike

#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed

The immediate thing that struck me on reading this book was that it felt like Updike doing Iris Murdoch: we're quickly introduced, via the setting of a party, to a large cast of characters who are all intertwined with each other in ways we know will tangle further as the story unfolds. The whole conceit of the story is it's a group of married couples in a small town who intercouple with each other and who each feed off the gossip and intermingling in order to sustain their interest in life. It's a very Murdochean premise but in Updike's hands, it's handled with far less subtlety, and far more self-indulgently. Beyond his long stream of consciousness descriptive passages, which add little besides length to the reading, his characters are generally more cardboard cut-out where Murdoch would bring even the most incidental characters to life with psychology and history of their own. Here the focus is a little all over the place as well. It's primarily the story of Piet, who becomes the town's unfortunate philanderer through a series of liaisons, but there's also lip service paid to a couple of other romantic trysts that are sidenotes and become ultimately pointless subplots, that again could be dispensed with to make the story shorter, and more efficient. It's not that the story is ineffectual or dull; it's engaging in the way a complex soap opera plot can always be, with an Updikean perversity and voyeurism to it, depicting this small town with his characteristic cynicism and misanthropy. But it's kind of ham-fisted and excessively long-winded a lot of the time, with everything being spelled out in great detail rather than just letting the defining actions reveal its themes and philosophy - again the way Murdoch would do, deftly. It ends up just feeling bloated and schlocky when a trimmed, more focused narrative could effectively deal out an impactful drama giving pause for reflections on human nature and sexuality. Yes, it's unfair to compare any writer to Murdoch (who, incidentally, I seem to have bypassed entirely this year so maybe I'm in withdrawal) but if you're going to play in her court, be prepared to be thrashed.

41) Stories - Susan Sontag

#AuthorsIShouldReadMore

It's interesting that the first story in this haphazard collection of Sontag's prosaic writings, about a high school visit to meet Thomas Mann and discuss his work, is called Pilgrimage while the second, about planning a trip to China where the narrator was conceived and where her father died, is called Project for a trip to China. I feel it really speaks to Sontag's academic soul, that the famous writer conversation is something very personal and spiritual while the personal family trip is something detached and emotionless. I think there's a distinct academic strain running through all of these; they're all very Sontag, from the surreal analogy of sexual politics American Figures to the reimagining of Jekyll and Hyde in Dr Jekyll as two separate entities who have been discharged from a mental deprogramming clinic. She plays a lot with style, and I would argue a bit too much, since being Sontag she seems to be less interested in telling a story as she is in making a point, so some of the form malleability here seems more of the academic exercises in using a curious intellectual vehicle to arrive at her point. In fact Dr Jekyll as the penultimate story in this collection actually felt like the first, and indeed only, conventionally-written narrative. The rest felt like a towering intellect deigning to exercise different formal muscles, and the whole thing felt very elusive. The final story was quite moving, and it was probably the only one that had any real effect beyond making me think. And yes, of course I love, in fact actively seek out writing that makes me think, I just feel like this goes about it the wrong way. Sontag is just most effective in academic form.

2018 Music: Albums of the Year

This year's a bit better than last year, because last year's top albums was kind of a rehash of my top 20 songs. There's obviously some crossover still but it won't feel as redundant as "of course, here's the War on Drugs and Will Joseph Cook right at the top, both of whom had two songs in my top twenty". Yes, Phosphorescent is in here, but maybe not where you think. Anyway, you're probably not even reading this CONGRATULATIONS READER YOU HAVE WON AN IPAD so let's get to this...

25) Flow State - Tash Sultana (Australio Reggae Rock)

Kicking off my albums of the year with an album that shouldn’t need any introduction to any other Aussies. I was really blown away by the talents of young Ms Sultana from her 2016 EP, and this full-length debut really solidifies what I already knew about her musical intuition and unique sensibility. It's a little long, possibly a bit samey, but it's interesting and curious music from a very talented musician.

24) Dirt - Yamantaka // Sonic Titan (Experimental Rock)

This is the first of a few really quite weird picks on this top 25, but possibly also the weirdest. Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, an ‘experimental music and performance art collective’ from Canada, dabbles in fairly schizoid sounds that swing erratically from heavy driving industrial rock to twee J-pop vocals and pretty much everything in between. It’s one of those albums where individual songs made me question my original esteem for this, but revisiting the full thing is an impressive experience and I highly recommend doing so.

23) Evo - Skerryvore (Celtic Rock)

This is not a weird pick at all. If anything it’s a dull predictable pick. Ever since Jamie Smith’s Mabon wowed both me and Jez with their 2016 album “The Space Between”, we’ve been loving every bit of folk-infused rock music released. This, while not being quite as idiosyncratic and exploratory as JSM, delivers all the right elements of traditional Celtic instrumentation, driving and entertaining rock songs with catchy hooks, and just a good fusion party vibe.

22) Nearer My God - Foxing (Art Rock)

Another album, like Yamantaka // Sonic Titan that I liked a lot initially then steadily cooled towards as the songs in isolation didn’t quite stack up. This album is a unique experience, delivering strange and unsettling sounds that cut their way through an overall gloomy, murky undercurrent to create a baroque and almost cabaret-esque set of noir rock music. I feel like it demands quite a lot of attention while listening, but it rewards close attention and rewards revisitation. I can imagine this one growing even more on me as time goes on.

21) Night Time People - The Bamboos (Australio Soul Funk)

Yes I’m continuing the ping-pong style flitting between a weird pick and an obvious pick. This album from Melbourne-based funk band the Bamboos is not obviously in my wheelhouse given what I openly profess to liking, but it is very apparent why someone would like it. Kylie Auldist’s vocals bring a striking soulful gravitas to all the music on here, and beyond that it’s just big-band fun with loads of dynamic party rhythms to enjoy.

20) The Radio Winners - Madisen Ward & the Mama Bear (Indie Folk Rock)

This one should have been obvious, and maybe it’s a little bit low on the rankings given it yielded my song of the year, as well as a second top 100 track. But it’s obvious why it’s down this low, which is that, at six songs, it’s just too damn short to really drive home the potential it built up. Sure, one third of this album consists of masterpieces, another sixth (“Everybody’s Got Problems”) is another great track that made my 250-odd song of the year longlist, and the other three are well-written and –performed folk rock, but the main thing it left me with was a desire for more. I really hope there’s more in the works from this mother-and-son duo.

19) re:member - Ólafur Arnalds (Neoclassical)

This definitely falls more into my wheelhouse than most other people’s so I don’t expect it to light any other fires among my readership (even though my readership – Hi, Mother! – does enjoy classical music). This album ticks all the requisite boxes of being based around nice, mellow, dreamy piano music but also having a good structure to it, including some judicious swells of strings and some electronica elements including beats thrown in for good measure. This stops it from being dreary or monotonous but is instead an engaging and enlivening instrumental sojourn.

18) Prequelle - Ghost (Heavy Metal)

I know from the number of tracks from this album – most often my highest-ranked, “Rats” – that have been shared on Reddit this year that I’m not alone in enjoying it. The strange fact is it’s the only metal of any description on my top albums of the year, and that’s not to say it’s been a bad year for metal (though 2017 was definitely better). This album of fairly traditional metal interspersed with little flourishes of their supernatural personas, and occasional synth ornamentation, is very charismatic music within an otherwise conventional framework that doesn’t necessarily hide any sonic idiosyncracies. Mostly it delivers a large number of dark-yet-glossy bangers that hit the right balance between the metal drive and a populist accessibility.

17) Semicircle - The Go! Team (Eclectic Electrofunk Pop)

While an album from the Go! Team being on my top albums of the year is the least surprising thing ever to happen, this is actually a big surprise even to me. When this album came out very early in 2018 I couldn’t have been more excited for it, having discovered and fallen in love with this group at the very start of 2015 when their previous album “The Scene Between” came out. I went back and devoured their entire back-catalogue (I remember listening to a lot of it on the train between Grenada and Seville in 2015), so for a new album to get proper music project scrutiny, expectations were sky-high. Too high, as it happened, and I was really rather underwhelmed by this. I still gave it a tokenistic, Steven Bradbury-esque album of the week win because it’s generally stuff I like, but I basically put it on the shelf for the rest of the year. And that was the best thing I could have done for it, because when I put it on again for reconsideration at the end of the year, with lower expectations of course, what I got was all the fun, quirky idiosyncracies that I’d come to love from these folks – weird sonic experimentation in chirpy pop fashion, some in-your-face funk attitude and some cool, interesting songwriting lampooning modern life in the way they always have. I’m really glad that I let my excitement simmer down and then gave this a second chance, and I’m really happy The Go! Team is back where they belong, on the winners’ podium (albeit only 17th – “The Scene Between” and “Rolling Blackouts” are still better albums)

16) Full Circle Nightmare - Kyle Craft (Glam Rock)

This feels like another one that’s no surprise at all being on here, but the surprise may be that it’s so low. I feel like Jez potentially likes this album a lot more than me so he may be the one surprised at seeing it only at #16. After discovering Señor Craft as part of the 2016 music project, this sophomore effort was highly anticipated by both of us (his 2016 track “Jane Beat the Reaper” earned the honour of my-and-Jez’s combined song of the year, as his #1 and my #11 track of the year respectively) and lived up to expectations, taking out both of our album of the week awards. While it continued to live high in my estimation on the strength of my favourite tracks from it, when I revisited at the end of the year, it dropped a bit mainly due to the fact that it does have a sameyness to his schtick – which isn’t apparent when he’s delivering bangers like “Heartbreak Junky” and “Bridge City Rose” but some of the less successful tracks like the ballad “The Rager” here just don’t keep the hits ticking along. As such I feel the album ends really strongly but actually takes a while to get going. And for that reason I’d rank it below his 2016 effort “Dolls of Highland” and also below 15 other albums released this year.

15) Kazuashita - Gang Gang Dance (Experimental Dreampop)

This is definitely another weird album but it's absolutely my kind of weird. It’s got a very distinctive mix of Oriental-style mysticism on top of ambient dreamy electronica that’s a really compelling combination. The vocal work delivers the very necessary ethereal quality on top of the well-structured, driving dreampop music that makes this sound unique. I think some of the filler tracks that are just pure experimentation do drag this down, but when it's in its stride this is really fantastic - as evidenced mainly by my #12 song of the year "Lotus", but the title track and "Young Boy (Marika in America)" are also great. Basically without the noodling experimental wank (which is still certainly part of Gang Gang Dance’s musical brand) this could have been a top 10 album, but as it is it falls a bit short.

14) No Tourists - The Prodigy (Soiltronica)

Interestingly you wouldn’t have known that the Prodigy released a new album in 2018 from reading any of my posts so far, because no individual song from this album cracked my top 100. The fact is I don’t think any of these songs or even mixes is intrinsically amazing – there’s no “Break & Enter”, “Diesel Power” or “No Good (Start the Dance)” on here – but by the same token, not one of these misses the mark, either. Liam Howlett is the pioneer and remains the master of this type of down and dirty breakbeat electronica (that Jez calls ‘soiltronica’ in some kind of joke that I’ve never understood and never asked him to explain)  and every beat, every sample here is perfectly kickass in its own way. Because of the lack of hooks, this ends up being another really good working album rather than any eclectic mix of musical statements, but it’s as good as it gets for damn fun, big-sounding dance energy.

13) Vide Noir - Lord Huron (Prog Rock)

This album is definitely  driven on the strength of a handful of completely kickass rock songs, the most noteworthy of which have already been spoken about as my #5 song of the year (parts I and II). Beyond those highlight tracks though, this is a very strong concept album of sorts featuring a consistent through-line of a certain set of chord progressions that rise and swell progressively as needed. Ben Schneider’s vocals drive a lot of the intrigue and movement of the story through the album with an almost ethereal folksy quality that evokes a particular mood and time and place for the songs. It doesn’t hit the bullseye every time, but it’s a very solid rock album with some innovative songwriting flourishes that make it more interesting than the kicking rock music it would be anyway.

12) Living in Extraordinary Times - James (Indie Rock)

When I first listened to this album, and it danced its way into my album of the week award pretty easily, there were two things I felt a bit reserved about. The first was that, despite my fondness for a lot of the songs, it did just sound like pretty generic Indie Rock music. The other reservation was that I felt I couldn’t call myself a fan of a band called “James”. No, I’d never heard of them during their apparently illustrious career through the 80s and 90s, although it’s quite possible someone has played me a great song by James and I’ve just dismissed it because it’s such an incredibly stupid name for a band. Anyway. This is generic Indie Rock, for sure. But despite it feeling a little boxy at times, it’s consistently very well produced and interesting music, and some of the experimental variegation across the album like the driving clashes of the track “Heads” and the slower introspective vibes of “How Hard the Day” make it a really rich and rewarding experience. I’m certainly intrigued enough to seek out more of their earlier more formative stuff on the strength of this very enjoyable album. While I’m not sure if I’d profess myself a fan of James, that’s only because, if I haven’t mentioned already, James is an incredibly stupid name for a band. It’s not because I don’t very much enjoy their music.

11) What Never Was Will Always Be - Kristoffer Bolander (Indie Singer-Songwriter)

This one was a huge surprise for me. Not upon first listen; my enjoyment was based around Bolander’s gentle, unassuming style and some of his beautiful melodies and guitar-and-string arrangements. But I put this into consideration for album of the year purely because it just had a lot of songs that I liked and I really didn’t expect it to soar this high. But this is actually a really great album. Some of the songs I liked on initial listen have seriously grown on me, most notably “To Come Back” and “Animals” but the fact is, upon relistening, I couldn’t find a bad song in here. Bolander has a great voice that can carry the soft ballad songs that populate much of this album but can deliver more upbeat and still thoughtful rock tracks as well. Some of the folksy guitar work on this album is terrific as well, and as such it comes out as the highest-ranked outside pick and just outside my top ten albums of the year.

10) Take Me to the Disco - Meg Myers (Noir Pop)

Definitely shouldn’t be a surprise to see Meg Myers in the mix and even this high up. For one thing, she holds the mantle of the second-most songs on my now-public ‘song of the year’ playlist, with five from this album making the cut. Two of those also took out my #8 and #28 spots on my song of the year countdown, so of course it’s up here. More than just being a collection of excellent songs, this is a great collection of song themes and sounds, varying between driving rock and dark-toned synthpop. It suffers a little bit from inconsistency with some songs just having less impact for me, and because of the variegation this isn’t necessarily a coherent whole, but the tracks that do work are fantastic, and are many.

9) Know. - Jason Mraz (Pop)

Yes, despite my weary exasperation at having to defend my love of this album to Jez ever since its release, my love hasn’t deteriorated that much. Although I think this album is front-loaded a bit with the three biggest bangers, “Let’s See What the Night Can Do” (my #19 song of the year), “Have It All” (my #69 song of the year) and “Unlonely” coming one after the other to kick it off, the whole album is full of sweet, unassuming and uplifting pop music that just gives me a good feeling about the world. I think I mostly just love Jason Mraz as a wholesome guy (through his music; I did have to look up whether he’s secretly a wife-beating puppy-kicking Nazi sympathiser, and no he seems genuinely sweet) but the music here fills me with nothing but positive vibes.

8) In Your Own Sweet Time - The Fratellis (Indie Pop Rock)

This one didn’t quite come out as high as I’d thought, because it’s quite densely packed with banging pop rock tunes (see my #100, #55 and #10 songs of the year), each one with their own great hook and own musical identity. There’s no song here that seems to be repeating the same idea, musically or lyrically with another, so it’s a real grand tour of the catchy rock music universe. I’d say the only reason this isn’t higher (it has many of the same things going for it that Mrs Yéyé’s Cabaret Noir, my #1 album of 2016, did for instance) is that the ultimate sound of The Fratellis, on relistening, comes across as quite familiar without that much that’s really distinctive beyond being pretty bloody good.

7) How to Solve Our Human Problems - Belle and Sebastian (Indie Pop)

As much as I complained about Lord Huron splitting my #5 song of the year, Ancient Names, into two parts, I don’t have the same qualms about Belle and Sebastian releasing this 15-track album as three separate 5-track EPs. I think they did harm themselves somewhat because Part 1 was by far and away the best of them if only by virtue of having my #3 song of the year, “The Girl Doesn’t Get It” on it (although the other top 100 entry, “We Were Beautiful” at #59, also came from Part 1). When I finally listened to all three together when sorting my final rankings, I reached the conclusion that the whole really holds up well. There’s a lot of character and talent involved with these Scottish popsters (note: two Scottish artists in a row, with the Fratellis also hailing from the land of Groundskeeper Willie) with another array of different pop sounds being presented here along with at times savagely witty and at others, sweet and profound, lyrics. It has a lot of moods and it sends me through a lot of moods.

6) C'est La Vie - Phosphorescent (Indie Folk)

Well, I can hear you say, this is unexpectedly low. After landing four songs in my top 50, and the only artist to feature twice in my top 20, why is Phosphorescent missing out on my top 5 albums? Last year the same feat was achieved by my #1 album of the year from the War on Drugs, but the sad truth is this. I love, very very dearly, those four songs - but ONLY those four songs on this album. There’s nothing wrong with the other half of this album, hence why it’s still #6, but the other tracks here feel quite like box-ticking exercises to me. They’ve got Matthew Houck’s voice, the same kind of songwriting and instrumentation but they somehow feel a bit samey, and a bit tired, within that same aesthetic. The four songs that I love (My #48, #25, #11 and #9 songs of the year) take that aesthetic into beautiful new dimensions and really excite my brain - and my soul, for that matter. Relistening to this really developed a clear chasm of difference between the brilliant (or could we even say, phosphorescent? No, no we couldn’t) songs on here and the just-fine (or could we even say, not-phosphorescent?) songs on here. But it’s definitely worth a listen for all the music he has to create.

5) Pareidolia - PreCog (Dark Wave)

From something that seems unexpectedly low to something that I feel I’ll need to defend, for some reason, if only to Jez who I know doesn’t care that much for this. From very early in the year, this ‘dark wave’ (it’s not really a great genre classification but it’s fine as a descriptor of the music) album really blew my socks off. It’s an hour long, the tracks all follow a similar kind of aesthetic path, but it never really loses steam and never lost my interest. PreCog is two guys from the home of the shittiest music on earth, Nashville TN, and they deliver this dark, brooding electronica that’s dynamic as well as smooth and mellow: the influences of Massive Attack and Depeche Mode are obvious. What really elevates this to a level beyond being enjoyable electronic music is Jason Thomas’ gorgeous voice, as he uses it to let the music and its emotional heft soar, and delivers some really interesting suspensions and even discordances with the synth tones underneath at times that reminds me at times of Bowie. Beyond delivering my #42 and #7 songs of the year, there are loads of killer bits of music on here, with “EMMR” the only real misstep that costs this album being even higher, than, say…

4) Denizen - Funke & the Two Tone Baby (Electro Blues Pop)

Number 4 song of the year, and now number 4 album of the year as well. There’s not a great deal to say about the full album from Funke and the Two Tone Baby than I already said in my commentary on “The Signal is Cut”. His whole musical persona is at once wildly bizarre and erratic, charismatic and infectious, yet weirdly tenuous like it’s hard to believe he holds all the songs together. Yet that’s exactly what he does: he delivers a full album of catchy, interesting bluesy funk on an absolute shoestring: beatboxing, looped samples, frantically strummed guitars and then he just yells and rails over the top of it. It’s unique, it’s entertaining, and it’s very very cool.

3) Yolk in the Fur - Wild Pink (Indie Folk)

It’s probably time for one spoiler, this late in the game and since Phosphorescent’s out of the bag: my top three albums of the year were not represented at all in my top twenty songs of the year, starting with this one. This though did, of course, yield three top fifty tracks and I love those three songs very dearly. But this album is far more than a collection of gorgeous folk tracks: it’s a genuinely beautiful progressive concept album, like the gentle folk rock answer to Dark Side of the Moon. It takes you through different flavours and variations on the same theme of epic Americana folk, probing deeply into expansive themes of love of people, of community and landscape. It’s sentimental but also artistic and interesting, and it builds and grows and swells at all the right time, and feels like you’re completing a very long train journey or something in really pleasant company with this album. It’s easy to lose sight of how good this is when you listen to individual songs in isolation because they’re all very good but this album and the way it’s put together is on another level.

2) A Humdrum Star - GoGo Penguin (Jazz)

I mentioned in the write-up of my #21 song of the year, “Bardo” from this album, that you’d see more of this trio in my albums write-up, so here it is, my runner-up album of the year. The fact is that it’s kind of hard to isolate highlight songs from this album (although two, the afore-mentioned and “Window” did crack my top 100) because it’s all of one glorious piece. This is a superb album. At the end of the day, it is mostly background working music, but I respond very well to background working music, especially when it offers something complex and interesting rather than just building on the same repeated motif (which, at its core, is what this and jazz generally does anyway). But when you really pay attention to this it becomes far more than just repeated motifs or background droney jazz: it is fantastically complex, dynamic, fascinating jazz music. The foundations of the songs are great and the layering on top of that just keeps building levels of musical meaning. Rob Turner’s drumwork is other-worldly good, when some of the syncopation from Chris Illingworth’s piano moves his beats erratically from one phrase to the next, while the movements of those two with Nick Blacka’s thrumming bass are so intricately dynamic, it creates this miasma of controlled chaos that astounds me how well the music comes out sounding on the other side. Like some others on this list it’s not got profound, affecting messages in here, it’s just pure entertainment but it's so rich and dense and chewy and chocolatey.

And that leaves us with...

1) Please Don't Be Dead - Fantastic Negrito (Contemporary Blues)

There was rarely any question about the album that would take the top spot for me this year, but it’s sort of a funny winner too just because of the circuitous route it took to get there. We listened to Fantastic Negrito’s 2016 album during that year’s music project, and it made so little impact on me that I didn’t even remember his name coming up. But I picked this one due to the fact that it was a new release from a former NPR Tiny Desk Contest winner (again not linking it with his 2016 album), and I went into my initial listen fairly sceptical of it all. One of the reasons is that, individually the songs don't immediately jump out at me (hence, perhaps, why none made it into my top 20), but the fact is that this album really demands but richly rewards closer attention. And on that first listen, the run of songs in the middle of the album starting with “A Boy Named Andrew” followed by “Transgender Biscuits” and finishing with "The Duffler" just gripped me from left field and literally had me edging to the front of my seat as it dawned on me what an exciting album this was. Revisiting it, it was clear that this was still the album to beat. While the songs don’t always have that immediate wow factor, there isn't a duff song in the lot, and all of them below the superficial layers are interesting, creative and thoughtful blues music. The themes vacillate between righteous anger, lamentation and personal confession and is full of poetic observations on societal pressures and cultural cringe. It's really a masterpiece. But more than just being masterfully done, the way it plays in a familiar blues milieu but innovates and twists the limits of those familiar conventions really excites me about the possibilities of modern music. In the end there was no other choice for me.

Other highly recommended albums from this year (in order of length of text when written out including genre description):
Ivory - Gin Wigmore (Soul Pop)
Next Time - Greg Laswell (Indie Folk)
Art of Doubt - Metric (Indie Pop Rock)
Even Though - Ben Browning (Synthpop)
We Sleep Again - Dream System 8 (Dreampop)
Eat the Elephant - A Perfect Circle (Heavy Metal)
Off to the Races - Jukebox the Ghost (Power Pop)
A Partner to Lean On - Trace Mountains (Dreamrock)
The Deep & the Dark - Visions of Atlantis (Symphonic Metal)

And that's it, I'm wrapping up the music project for another year. 1000+ albums, many more songs. Next year, we're of course doing it all again.

Also for my regular readers (Hi, Mother!) look out for my write-up of the books I read in 2018, probably coming in the new year.

Songs of 2018 Part 3: Top Twenty

20) Dear Maro - Frequency Drift (Symphonic Rock)
First track to crack my top 20 and this one was a bit of a surprise after my sorting at how high it was. It's ultimately not hard to see why it's there though, firmly in my sweet spot of driving rock with a more symphonic epic vocal layer and a heavy string presence. It's a great bit of storytelling through music and lyrics.

19) Let's See What the Night Can Do - Jason Mraz (Pop)
Not the first mention of Jason Mraz but the first writeup, this track ran away with song of the week while two further tracks from his album cracked my top five that week. My opinion of this album and this song may have waned a little due to the fact that I'm constantly having to argue with Jez about its merits, but ultimately I don't have any objective measurement of Jason Mraz's merits. He just makes simple, sweet, charismatic pop music that delivers feel-good vibes, so if you don't respond well to it, then there's actually something wrong with you, not with it.

18) $GNMS - Arc Iris (Experimental Pop Rock)
I made a lot of jokes when this took out my song of the week about the trainwreck that is the title. And it's one of three songs in my top 20 whose titles I would completely renovate if given the choice. This is, to explain, a reimagining of an earlier Arc Iris song called "Money Gnomes" (which original version I listened to after this) and this new version just amps up the curious progressive parts of the songwriting and delivers a strange and sometimes unsettling, but ultimately very engaging bit of pop rock.

17) No Ordinary Life - Matt Corby (Contemporary RnB)
Matt Corby was another artist who we listened to in 2016 to no effect, but delivered a cracker of an album in 2018. This song that incorporates a heavy string presence including some harp vibes just has a beautiful arc and a beautiful sound to it.

16) Yr Love - Roosevelt (Synthpop)
Exhibit no 2 in "top 20 song titles I'd completely renovate", this track is a very daggy entry to my top 20, but I love a bit of dancepop, and I love a bit of dancepop that's thoughtfully constructed. This song (for which there is NO reason to call it Yr Love rather than Your Love except to be hip and down with the kids, which Roosevelt probably isn't anyway) kicks off with a good driving beat and growling synth track but then transitions to more upbeat 90s-esque house vibes and really goes to another level. Shame about the stupid title.

15) The Space Between - Auri (Progressive Synthrock)
This is another sort of sweet-spot pick for me: it's interesting electronic music but with a folk influence and that kind of symphonic metal vocal character over the top. Yes, this song sounds quite remarkably similar to the theme to "The Neverending Story", but that's actually a big point in its favour rather than a caveat. Some really great chord progressions in here as well.

14) Inferno Galore - Carpenter Brut (Extreme Retrowave)
Man, this song and its ranking is likely to get a few noses out of joint if people hear it, but man I love it. It sounds like if a jukebox from the 1980s developed sentience and produced a noisy song agglomerating sounds from all of its most popular songs. It's wicked-paced chaotic energy, is incredibly camp and silly and over-the-top and a prime candidate for my top 20.

13) Evermore - Leftover Salmon (Bluegrass Jam)
This is potentially an even weirder choice than the previous one, mainly because I openly and violently dislike bluegrass music generally. This track sneaks in by virtue of the fact that it leans more on the 'jam rock' side of things, and while I'm mixed on the opening verses and chorus, the solo section in this song is absolutely phenomenal and just drives this into amazing musical territories. It contains both the best mandolin and the best banjo solos you're likely to hear all year.

12) Lotus - Gang Gang Dance (Experimental Dreampop)
I definitely feel like I'm stepping over some strange-shaped stepping stones en route to my top 10, from Carpenter Brut to Leftover Salmon and now this. This is a very trippy bit of dreampop music, drawing influences from classic Oriental folk music but delivered through heavily layered and produced synth. Ultimately it's a unique soundscape with a very cool psychedelic vibe and some amazing electronic production to create it.

11) C'est La Vie No. 2 - Phosphorescent (Electrofolk)
Just missing out on the top ten is song number three from Phosphorescent (given I've already mentioned there are four on the top 50, you'd be thinking his album's likely to feature on my top albums list - and you'd be right, but that's tomorrow's post). I said when I first heard this that it would either be my song of the week, or my enthusiasm would disappear and I'd dislike it. But neither was right because I still loved it, and continue to love it, but I also loved a subsequent song better (still to come, naturally). This track feels kind of boxy and repetitive, founded on a repeated sequence of synth chords and following a simple verse-chorus structure which also feature a kind of antimetabole motif of "I did this... to do that... I don't do this... to do that no more" so it feels formulaic and could ultimately become tiresome. Simply put though, it doesn't, and it just cuts through to me in really meaningful ways from the sparse and expansive synth swirls to the nostalgic and bittersweet tone of the lyrics. Oh and also, this is exhibit 3 in the "song titles I'd renovate" - unless of course there was also No. 1 on the album, which there isn't.

10) Starcrossed Losers - The Fratellis (Indie Pop Rock)
Jez and I have talked about this particular song likely to be our combined number 1 of the year as it's a prime suspect to be even higher on his list than it is on mine. The Fratellis' album "In Your Own Sweet Time" was basically an incessant sequence of banging pop rock songs, any one of which could emerge as a big highlight and a hit single. This track is, however, a clear standout, just building this immediately catchy pop tune around a slightly country-infused rock foundation. I would say that it's ultimately just a likeable type of song that may not stand up to deep analysis but is just magnetic for what it is.

9) Christmas Down Under - Phosphorescent (Electrofolk)
One thing I tend to hate is electronically-rendered vocal lines, but given that this - Phosphorescent song number 4 (and final), and a song still to come - both heavily feature these, apparently I'm softening on it, or this is just delivered extremely well. This track lays down a gorgeous earthy folk foundation and delivers this slightly psychedelic, echoey vocal line over the top that explores both the sunny themes of a Summer Christmas (I'm unsure of the salience of this for Athens, Georgia-based Phosphorescent) and some wider philosophical questions about what Christmas means. It's simply a beautiful song in spite of the slightly artificial overtones of the sound.

8) Numb - Meg Myers (Indie Rock)
I mentioned there was more Meg Myers to come. This was absolutely the standout of that album (and it beat out all the Wild Pink tracks previously mentioned the week it was released), delivering this quirky but angry message over a surprisingly effective raucous rock backing. I don't have a punk song on my top twenty this year (I have the previous two years) so this one feels like the stand-in because it's full of an in-your-face and quirky attitude and noisy energy and has a great drive to it.

7) Compete - Precog (Dark Wave)
I also mentioned - or implied, at least - that there was more PreCog to come in my top 50. This song also takes the yearly "song that starts slow and builds layers" spot for 2018. It's quite a depressing and slow-burn listen, but with Jason Thomas' gorgeous falsetto and glissandoes it really extracts a lot of haunting beauty out of a soft retrowave tune. And the way it builds towards the very last strains and brings in the synth pipes, it really earns every minute of its runtime.

6) Minotaur Forgiving Theseus - Moonface (Neo-Psychedelia)
Oh what a strange song this is. Taken from an even stranger album (that includes many songs about the Minotaur forgiving various figures involved in his downfall), this is just an excellent piece of really trippy psychedelia. Based around steel pans and involving a complex melange of other tuned percussive layers, it's also the second track in my top 10 to be built on heavily rendered vocals. It's a really inventive concept in the first place for the album and this track, but it also sounds like nothing else I've heard. Psychedelic calypso, or something, it's a bizarre but extraordinary experience that starts impressively and goes into strange, unsettling places that ends up being quite poignant. This also features possibly my lyric of the year in the description of Theseus as "the hound that takes a piss upon the ground where he stands and says "I claim this land, and I claim this tiny sea".

5) Ancient Names (Part I and II) - Lord Huron (Prog Rock)
Alright, so now we're getting into controversy. This is the highest-ranked song to have originally only taken runner-up song of the week (it was second to my #20 song of the year "Dear Maro" by Frequency Drift) and the only reason that I gave it second, despite liking it a lot better (and it's only grown on me since then) is that it's actually two separate songs on the album - part I and II but running one after the other. So I felt it was a cheat at the time to consider them as one, but I'm now officially embracing the cheat, for the simple reason that it only works as a single piece of music. Individually, part I and part II are both amazing bits of music, but together they're phenomenal. What's more, individually they don't make sense because Part I finishes with a build-up to an explosive climax that then never comes (because that climax IS part II) and part II just starts big and loud and fast-paced and lacks the build-up that part I earns. I recently learned that Tool don't allow their music onto streaming platforms because Maynard James Keenan strongly believes they need to be listened to in toto rather than split by individual songs as would happen on streaming platforms, and I just can't understand the reasoning behind splitting this song into two parts in this way. Anyway, I've explained why I'm considering this song as one piece (and why my 'top 20 of 2018' playlist has 21 songs on it) but let's talk about why it's my #5 song of the year. I've touched upon how fucking great the build-up to the explosive finale of Part II is, and it's one of the most foot-tapping cathartic bits of music I've heard all year, but more than just being a great build, it's really interesting, thoughtful but driving rock music throughout it. The instrumentation, vocal work, is all spot-on and the only reason this isn't higher (now that I've embraced the cheat) is that I love the four songs still to come even more.

4) The Signal is Cut - Funke and the Two Tone Baby (Electrofunk)
Yes, I love this very, very strange song even more than "Ancient Names", and I feel like this one would get more noses up than any other based on how high it's landed, if anybody were to read this post except my mother and brother, and I know my brother happens to like this song as well (although probably not this much). Funke and the Two Tone Baby is a very strange musician, based around a furious guitar style, a whole lot of looped samples including his own beatboxing and a really unhinged shouty style of singing. This track is the perfect embodiment of his sound and style - I haven't really deconstructed the lyrics but it appears from my limited perspective to be touching on the themes of being a bit psychologically unhinged and unstable - as it features this very homemade amateurish musical line but then it's so crammed full of his explosive personality that it's just thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. It's definitely a strange song but I find it completely compelling.

3) The Girl Doesn't Get It - Belle and Sebastian (Indie Pop)
It feels weird that I haven't mentioned Belle and Sebastian yet (except low down in my top 100) but here they are right near the top. This track came up on part I of their series of three EPs (which I've considered together as one album for tomorrow's post) very, very early on this year - I think in fact the second week of the music project - and while it was a runaway song of the week winner, of course it was because hardly anything is released in those first few weeks. But this song has in fact spent all year being considered right at the top of my rankings because it's a really sunny-toned pop song with a lovely synth backing that belies the searing cynicism of Belle and Sebastian's lyrics and message. It's catchy, progressively interesting and dynamic and perfectly showcases the group's trademark wit and sense of irony as well as their melodious voices - all things I've been a sort of pseudofan of for years when I've caught their other songs, but this year I was able to fully embrace.

2) Tonya Harding (In D Major) - Sufjan Stevens (Folktronica)
Taking out the runner-up song of the year spot is an artist who really shouldn't be any stranger to this echelon when it comes to my personal preferences, but this is really an extraordinary song even by Sufjan's standards. Released as a standalone single in December last year to kind of coincide-but-otherwise-not-be-affilliated-at-all with the release of the film I, Tonya, this elegy of sorts to Tonya Harding features a very thoughtful and interesting depiction of Harding, covering all facets of the mythology surrounding her and the Nancy Kerrigan attack with pathos and the right level of ambivalence. But where this song really shines is in the soundscape Sufjan produces: it's a perfect musical depiction of a figure skating milieu, embodying this cold but magical fairytale kind of aesthetic but paradoxically so full of warmth and depth as well. It's an immensely well constructed and produced bit of music fraught with conflicted sympathies and it really delivers a knockout punch for the mythology and ethos surrounding this figure. According to an article I read when this was released, Tonya herself has not heard the song and doesn't care to, and I don't blame her as I can actually imagine it cutting quite deep. It cuts me pretty deep and I've never had my rival kneecapped to try and cheat my way to a figure skating win.

And if I'm not mistaken, that leaves us with...

1) Hell and Back - Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear (Indie Folk Rock)
And my song of the year… well it will seem like a very unassuming, even underwhelming pick at first. I played this song for Bec telling her that it was almost certainly my song of the year and, in true Bec fashion, her response was "Really??". Firstly, it's a song that really needs to build to its maximum effect, and this has a beautiful trajectory from its humble beginnings to its quite intense finale. The instrumentation throughout is note-perfect with the guitar, strings, and Ruth "Mama Bear" Ward's backing vocals all used to their full potential to further the song. The other element that I isolate here is Madisen Ward's voice, because it's so deep and rich and full of feeling and I adore the way he hits the key words in the chorus (listen to it and you'll know what I mean). At the end of the day though, the reason this song is in the number 1 spot is I can just listen to it over and over - this has about double the number of plays in my play history as its nearest competitor for the year. I have it on repeat sometimes really to get to the bottom of what makes this song so strikingly beautiful. I haven't quite gotten there yet, but it's here in the top mantle for that reason above all others.

And that's my songs of 2018. The longlist of 255 songs that were considered for the top 100 is publicly available here if you have a Google Play Music subscription. I'm not sure how it works (i.e. if my mother can play excerpts from the songs or not) if you don't have a subscription. So, just get a subscription.

Songs of 2018 Part 2: 50-21

Yes, it's Christmas Day, and instead of enjoying a Christmas ham with the family, I'm posting a bunch of song write-ups on the internet. Here is the first bit of my top 50 songs of the year, with a bit of commentary on why I enjoy each one. Tomorrow around the same time I'll post my top twenty songs of the year. Who will take home the rampy?

50) Arrivée à Destination - Millimetrik feat. Les Deuxluxes (Old Westronica)
Weird one to start with; I enjoy a bit of old west desperado type music especially when set to a progressive electronica beat and mixed well. It surprised me that this cracked the top 50 though.

49) Not Warriors - Waterparks (Pop Punk)
This was less of a surprise; a song of the week winner with a very infectious pop melody over good dynamic punk.

48) My Beautiful Boy - Phosphorescent (Indie Folk)
One of four Phosphorescent songs to crack the top 50 (obviously the lowest) this is a very sweet folk tune that I've started to sing to Dylan or at least get in my head a lot around Dylan.

47) Apollo - St Paul & the Broken Bones (Soul Funk)
Another song of the week winner, this is just a great bit of blue-eyed soul that has a big party vibe to it.

46) Sure - Hatchie (Pop)
I love this song mainly because it sounds like it's a pop song from the 90s, which is undeniably when music hit its peak (well, when Amber released "This is Your Night" specifically). Nothing overly complex, just good melody and production.

45) Here's Looking at you Kid - Brett Dennen (Retro Rock)
Love a bit of oldskool retro rock, and Brett Dennen has really delivered a lot of it this year across two EPs. This is the best of his songs.

44) Run It Away - Nik Freitas (Indie Pop Rock)
Another song of the week winner that was a bit of a surprise as it was only a substitute pick (i.e. I originally rejected the idea of listening to the album, but picked it because Jez and I had crossover picks so subbed this one in to get the overall album quota up). Just well-produced and well-written pop rock, this, with a thoughtful instrumentation to it.

43) Bridge City Rose - Kyle Craft (Glam Rock)
Surprisingly this is the only Kyle Craft song to crack the top 50, but it is also the best track from his excellent album. More flamboyant folk-infused rock from the master of the same.

42) Paler Still - Precog (Dark Wave)
One of two PreCog songs to crack the top 50, I mainly love the inflections and tone of Jason Thomas' voice here driven by the darker undertones of the synthwave underneath.

41) I Have Arrived - Murder by Death (Country Rock)
I'm a bit mixed on Adam Turla's vocals for Murder by Death - he seems like a grizzled country musician and it doesn't always sit right with me. But this song is dynamic fun with a big brass influence so it's grown on me a lot.

40) Milk & Coffee - NoMBe (RnB)
NoMBe was very much this year's answer to So Much Light (maker of my #4 song of 2017) - curious and inventive RnB with a good driving beat. This was his best track.

39) Marble Skies - Django Django (Synthpop)
From very early in the year, this great driving synthpop piece took out runner-up song of the week and has been a mainstay on my playlists since.

38) Lake Erie - Wild Pink (Indie Folk)
The first of a few Wild Pink songs on the top 50, this very introspective country folk tune is heavy on the pedal-steel guitar (which all country music, and all music, should feature in some way) and just delivers some beautiful tunes.

37) The Boy - Shannon and the Clams (Retro Rock)
More exciting retro rock, this one invokes a very 50s rockabilly vibe which I think is ultimately just something I really go for. This is a great example of it.

36) Dance Until You Drop - Funke and the Two Tone Baby (Electrofunk)
There will be more to come from this strange one-man band. This is a fun bit of funk with great looping and guitar work.

35) Come On Get Up - The Hip Abduction (Reggae Pop)
I've dubbed The Hip Abduction "the best band in the world" after Jez picked their 2016 album as a throwback this year - technically we could have listened to it as part of the 2016 music project but it passed us by. In short, when we listened to it I decided that, had it not passed us by, it very well could have won my album of the year. This new track from them delivers the same upbeat feel-good vibes that I loved on that album with a good reggae influence to the beat. I sincerely hope this is a teaser for an upcoming album - in which case, look out 2019.

34) Look Left - The Damned (Glam Punk)
A bit of a surprise song of the week when this was released, this progressive glam punk track from washed-up has-beens The Damned cracks the top 50 largely on the strength of its excellent organ-heavy solo section which is superb.

33) Nica Libres at Dusk - Ben Howard (Indie Singer-Songwriter)
This song, like the previous entry from the Damned, makes it onto the top 50 due to one element which is the expansive unidentified string sequence that rounds out the chorus as it's completely beautiful. It's otherwise a little bit mumbly and soft at times but when it builds, it's magic.

32) Yolk in the Fur - Wild Pink (Indie Folk)
More quite simply beautiful folk music from Wild Pink, this one continues the progressive run of optimistic Americana vibes that transitions directly from the end of "Lake Erie" (see #38, above) and takes the album in a lighter and interesting direction.

31) Super Moon - Greg Laswell (Indie Singer-Songwriter)
Greg Laswell was one of many artists we discovered in the 2016 music project who actually performed better with their 2018 effort. This gorgeous bit of songwriting has his trademark mumbly cynicism but has an excellent build to it as well.

30) Transgender Biscuits - Fantastic Negrito (Contemporary Blues)
You'll be hearing more about Fantastic Negrito when it comes to my albums write-up. This one took out song of the week when the album was released, a really fascinating and unconventional bit of angry social commentary set to a strange but fascinating blues backing.

29) inconsist - Ólafur Arnalds (Neoclassical)
I love background working music generally, particularly when it has a good structure and a motif to it. This bit of sort of neoclassical-electronica fusion combines some dreamy ambient piano with a shuffling triphop beat and liberal string swells. It's also got enough composition behind it to avoid feeling repetitive despite just building on the same themes as per a typical electronica piece.

28) The Death of Me - Meg Myers (Indie Pop)
The first mention of Meg Myers as well; this album had to play second fiddle to Wild Pink's "Yolk in the Fur" due to being released on the same day, but this album really blew me away with Myers' plaintive noirish vocals over a blend of pop and quite driving rock tunes. This is one of the poppier and more catchy tracks. There'll be more to come from her.

27) Bigger - St Lucia (Indie Pop)
Interestingly, this track originally won runner-up song of the week only, second to Greg Laswell's "Super Moon" so it's apparently overtaken the latter since. This is just a big (one might even say 'bigger') good-hearted pop track with a huge dynamic sound to it. I can see why I sort of rebelled against it at first because it so obviously ticks all my boxes, with its dynamic keyboard-based instrumentation and big woodwind-esque interjections and lively melody, but it just kept obviously ticking my boxes (and tickling my boxers) until it became a more preferred track.

26) The Duffler - Fantastic Negrito (Contemporary Blues)
This track from the same excellent album as "Transgender Biscuits" has done the same thing, overtaking the latter in my final estimation after settling for runner-up song of the week originally. I feel like this song is more immediately accessible as a bit of driving blues, so even though the two tracks are very close in my high estimation, this one pipped it in the end just due to immediate likeability but exactly the same level of intrigue and innovation in the music.

25) New Birth in New England - Phosphorescent (Pop Folk)
Ah, feels like a while since we heard from Phosphorescent at the beginning of the top 50 countdown. This is quite different from "My Beautiful Boy" in just being upbeat, perky kind of folk-infused pop that just delivers a lot of fun vibes in the midst of a very serious, introspective album. You'll obviously be hearing about the album in my top albums writeup.

24) Beatnik Trip - Gin Wigmore (Blues Rock)
This track falls just outside the top 20 but hits the heights it does on the strength of Gin Wigmore's powerful, slightly Joplin-esque unhinged vocal style, and the fact that there's just some very cool blues vibes infused into this driving pop rock song.

23) Jewels Drossed in the Runoff - Wild Pink (Indie Folk)
Ah, more Wild Pink, and curiously the three songs making the top 50 are counting down in the same order as they appear on the album - "Lake Erie" followed by "Yolk in the Fur" then a 1-minute interlude before this bit of expansive synthfolk that delivers more really uplifting and thoughtful harmonies.

22) Swing Balboa (Down on Riverside) - The Manhattan Transfer (Electroswing) 
A silly, fun track to nearly round out my first proper set of write-ups. This is a very entertaining song, driven by some precise and expert dynamic vocal harmonies and a curious fusion of electronica beats and oldskool swing vibes.

21) Bardo - GoGo Penguin (Jazz) 
Just missing out on my top twenty is my highlight song from one of my favourite albums of the year (more to come on that) from Manchester-based jazz trio GoGo Penguin. While the album doesn't deliver obvious highlight songs, this one stands above the pack just because of its clever repeated riff foundation, but as with the rest of the album, the ultimate highlight is the superb dynamism of the three guys delivering swirling, complex piano, bass and drumwork.