As is customary for any music person who thinks they know what’s “good”, here is my end of year list. In a somewhat backwards direction time-wise because I went backwards through my library.

Sex Week – Sex Week

Favourite song: Toad Mode

Capturing the sound of twenty-something life is rare these days – traversing relationships, identity, with an oxymoronic empathetic apathy is a complex task, and a task that New York duo Sex Week really capture. Their mumbling guitars at a trudging pace is indicative of the Smashing Pumpkins, but the sound is brought into their own through a more modern / jovial production style.

Weezer’s Blue Album – Trashdog

Favourite song: eels ON Eno

No one does absurdist rock like Trashdog. This album especially deals with Trashdog’s place in the history of indie rock music and their space in the meme-scape. The album itself is genre-hopping, weird, upbeat, and incredibly well produced in the signature Trashdog way that I’ve come to adore.

CHROMAKOPIA – Tyler, The Creator

Favourite song: Sticky (feat. GloRilla, Sexxy Red & Lil Wayne)

As the artists I adore grow with me, I often expect their topics to, and Tyler, the Creator’s latest album grappling with the potential of parenthood and the parallel to his absent father is gut wrenching throughout the project. It hops genres with adoration, speaks earnestly and unafraid, features everyone and their grandchild, and is technically a very well written album from top to bottom.

Gossip – Harmony

Favourite song: No Romeo

One half of the folk duo Girlpool went solo this year with a hyperpop album tackling the social media landscape, and it is a gritty, apathetic, and sexy experience riding off the back of a Brat summer. Gossip’s bone-dry production mixed with outwards sluttiness feels like the perfect soundtrack to your average Twitter timeline. Good to hear straight girls are having a fun time too.

this old house – mary in the junkyard

Favourite song: teeth

mary in the junkyard’s new release is gothic and understated, perfecting the sounds of a cottagecore séance under the summer moon. At times gut wrenching, the vocals feel childish yet filled with an air of something darker, like a haunted porcelain doll. The modern rock instrumentation with a colour of the violin brings the band further into something unique and well-fleshed out.

On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System – The Bug Club

Favourite song: A Bit Like James Bond

The new Bug Club record continues their ever-growing oeuvre of short and silly earworms, adding in a further delve into fuzzy sounds and driving rhythms. This is a collection of songs to move your hips to, and not much further. Not everything needs to be a theoretical concept album, and I appreciate The Bug Club’s attitude to music and dedication to the silly, absurd, and personal stories.

Package, Pt. 2 – Gustaf

Favourite song: Here Hair

Playing in the space between disenfranchisement and dance, the new Gustaf record is at times angry, groovy, and moving. The throughline of repeating riffs underneath faux-spoken word poetry a la the B-52s and the Talking Heads tackles topics of oppression, self-care, and the modern age whilst keeping boogie-inducing instrumentals.

Bright Future – Adrianne Lenker

Favourite song: Fool

You’d be hard-pressed to find an Albums of the Year list without the newest Adrianne Lenker album, and not without reason. It’s somehow ever-present in its beauty, longing and melancholia throughout the entire album, while still keeping a variety in its songs. The careful additions from friends in the studio, the storytelling which feels like a close friend confiding their deepest emotions in you, its all the markings of an album that I both revisit time and time again and have to watch I don’t revisit too much lest I fall into a pit of self-wallowing.

BRAT – Charli xcx

Favourite song: I might say something stupid.

Not much new to say about the lime-green cultural phenomena that is BRAT, but the earnest discussions about fame and self-consciousness in the destruction of self that party / celebrity culture brings is heart wrenching. The story telling especially in the structure of the album is definitely worth congratulating. Close enough, welcome back, 2008.

COWBOY CARTER – Beyonce

Favourite song: BLACKBIIRD

The new Beyonce album is a beautiful love letter / callout post to the American country music industry, which was not taken well by that scene, but I thoroughly enjoyed. Its sexy and bold in that classic Beyonce style, but swings it into a country twang almost effortlessly. Lyrically its really fun and impressive while still having a lot to say about being a woman and a mother in this music industry and what you have to do because of it.