The 31 Best Albums of 2018 So Far

Pusha T – DAYTONA

(G.O.O.D./Def Jam)

The best way to admire DAYTONA is to think of it as a weapon. Over the span of 21 diamond-sharp minutes with not a second wasted, Pusha T delivers virtuoso MCing on the high level of anything from his much-celebrated work as one half of Clipse—and quite possibly his best work ever. It’ll please your ears one second and then cut you by surprise with an uncomfortable but apt insight the next. (IMO, it is his best work ever, but I included that caveat as a sop to the late-30s purists who often have supremely myopic shit to say about such things.) But I digress. Over sample-heavy production often distinguished by high-treble guitar licks and ghostly distorted voices, Terrence Thornton raps like the 41-year-old impeccable success he is, acknowledging his place near the top of the hip-hop pyramid and noting—happily, unlike past records where he’d romanticize and (at least slightly) exaggerate—that his dope-dealing days are long behind him.

What isn’t behind him, and won’t be anytime soon the way this country’s going, is the distinct terror of being Black and wealthy in America. Push knows you can lose everything at any time in a way White Americans will never have to worry about. The shit-talking on “If You Know You Know” eventually gives way to the horror and paranoia of “Santeria” (easily Push’s best song since “Nosetalgia” and his Clipse classics), and as confident in his success as he is in many ways on DAYTONA, he hasn’t in any way lost the fire and drive that got him here in the first place. This is unquestionably one of the best albums of the year, and may, at 2018’s end, be its finest. – Liam Green

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs

(Sub Pop)

Australian quintet Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever aren’t guitar heroes in the Freedom Rock sense, but considering there are three guitarists in the band, it’s a pretty big part of what they do. And on their debut album Hope Downs—which follows a series of promising EPs—the group uses those guitars to brilliant effect, underscoring songs of quiet angst by fleshing out the influence of Aussie post-punks like The Go-Betweens into even lusher, almost shoegaze-like layers of strings and effects. Hope Downs is a confident, mature and thoroughly gorgeous hybrid of disaffection and intricate jangle-pop arrangements—a perfect summer album for an existential crisis. – Jeff Terich

Saba – Care for Me

(Saba Pivot)

“Jesus got killed for our sins, Walter got killed for a coat.” That’s Saba on “Busy” sketching his second studio album in miniature. Over ten tracks, the 23-year-old Chicago rapper mourns and remembers his friend, John Walter, and struggles to balance the confusion and anger of mourning with the recognition of the necessity for hope. Saba does deeply empathetic work here, taking on different perspectives as a manner of recalling his fraught youth: on “Sirens,” he pushes his voice to the top of his register to embody his teenage self; on “Prom / King,” he recounts his friend’s life, lost too early, ending mid-sentence and ceding the mic to Walter himself. As a rapper, Saba is given to rolling, twisting cadences, often gently melodic and always acutely emotive, a perfect match for this record’s sonic palette of warm, analog tones and stuttering hi-hats; as a writer, he’s sharp, evocative, and self-aware. In centering this record on his loss and on its aftermath, Saba comes away with his best, most affecting work to date. – Ben Dickerson

Shame – Songs of Praise

(Dead Oceans)

UK quintet Shame have built a reputation on their incendiary live shows, which usually result in frontman Charlie Steen stripping off layers of clothing and getting sweaty and familiar with the first few rows of the audience. And those live shows are a hell of a lot of fun—this much is not in dispute. But they’ve got a great batch of songs to work with, which make up their debut Songs of Praise. The band’s post-punk anthems range from the searing (“Tasteless”) to the groove-heavy (“Concrete”) to the unexpectedly pretty (“One Rizla”), all while embracing a defiance and humanism in the face of post-Brexit Britain. They might sound snotty, but this is what giving a shit sounds like. – Jeff Terich

Sleep – The Sciences

(Third Man)

Thank the stoned gods for surprises like this. While there’s no shortage of unexpected disasters making headlines in this new dumpster-fire age, Sleep gave us some temporary reprieve in the form of their first new release in 15 years. The Sciences isn’t merely noteworthy for simply existing, though that’s something worth celebrating regardless. Its colossal dirges, massive doom-metal riffs and stoner-metal heroism are among the best and brawniest sounds the Bay Area metal trio have ever created. I can think of no better way to celebrate California making recreational marijuana legal than firing up this behemoth. – Jeff Terich

The Soft Moon – Criminal

(Sacred Bones)

Luis Vasquez says his latest album as The Soft Moon is an “act of desperation.” That’s not hard to pick up on in the music; this is intense, damaged, tortured music. Criminal is a harsh listen by Soft Moon standards. Vasquez has always leaned toward the dark and the gloomy, even the abrasive, but with singles such as “Burn” and “It Kills,” he’s transformed a brood into a primal scream. It’s perhaps not the first of his albums to qualify as industrial, but definitely the most fully realized. It’s not too surprising that The Soft Moon have been added to the latest batch of Nine Inch Nails tour dates—they’re building their own considerably-less-pretty hate machine. – Jeff Terich

Sons of Kemet – Your Queen Is A Reptile

(Impulse!)

From the intense clatter of the opening soca rhythms on Your Queen Is A Reptile, Sons of Kemet send the signal that they’re not fucking around. Though it’s a mostly instrumental record, poet Joshua Idehen sets the tone with his furious words of scorn for Britain’s ruling elite: “Fuck the Tories/Fuck the fascists/End of story/Fuck them all, and fuck ‘em truly.” So anyway, this is a jazz album, one that carries both the heavy grooves and protest spirit of Afrobeat and the leadership of saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, who’s quickly building up one of the best discographies in contemporary jazz. Your Queen is at times pretty, at times furious, and never lets up in its relentlessly joyous protest. These rhythms kill fascism. – Jeff Terich

Tribulation – Down Below

(Century Media)

Sweden’s Tribulation could have very well kept on making the kind of thrashy death metal that made up their 2009 debut album The Horror, and they still probably would have been a lot of fun. But with each album since, they’ve added new layers of stylistic experimentation, progression and songwriting versatility. They’re no longer a death metal band, really, instead something more like a heavy goth-rock band with guttural growls and the dramatic flourishes of vintage Mercyful Fate. This is a band, after all, that nailed a cover of The Cure’s “One Hundred Years” back in 2015. Down Below is both a refinement of what they do best and an embrace of their pop songwriting strengths, all in the name of making the best gothic metal of the year, regardless of what year it is. – Jeff Terich

Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois – Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois

(Timesig/Planet Mu)

Canadian producer Aaron Funk uses his Venetian Snares stage name to make ultra-aggressive drill’n’bass and acid techno, not quite fucking up electronica for everyone else but damn sure challenging listeners for challenge’s sake. I believe some of his best releases have been some of his most accessible, and those have featured well-curated work from other musicians. This collaborative LP continues that trend, with Daniel Lanois’ presence not looming but definitely large. His name grabs eyeballs; his contributions on pedal steel and soundboard—both softening and fitting into Funk’s generated atmospheres—grab ears. – Adam Blyweiss

Kamasi Washington – Heaven and Earth

(Young Turks)

If the last three years have proven anything, it’s that Kamasi Washington doesn’t do anything on a small scale. His Brainfeeder debut The Epic was a triple album, last year’s Harmony of Difference EP was an album-length conceptual piece, and his latest, Heaven and Earth, is a double album that fits somewhere between the two. It’s accessible yet sprawling, able to be interpreted as a sweeping statement on existence or simply enjoyable on the strength of its grooves alone. It’s a lot of things, but it’s above all a fantastic jazz record, proving once again the innovation and importance of Washington as a figure in jazz and pop music alike. – Jeff Terich

Yob – Our Raw Heart

(Relapse)

In their earliest incarnation, Yob had all of the mysticism and power that they do now, but what’s changed over time is their songwriting sensibility. While few trios (outside of Sleep) can boast a doom metal soundscape as colossal as Yob’s, even fewer can claim to write music as affecting and spacious as theirs. Building on the more gorgeously melodic compositions of 2014’s Clearing the Path to Ascend, Yob reached a new peak with Our Raw Heart, with seven songs that summarize the entirety of their sound from the guttural (“The Screen”) to their most soaring and transcendent (“Our Raw Heart,” “Beauty in Falling Leaves”). In Mike Scheidt’s own words, “It’s a foot in where we’ve been, and there has to be a foot into where we’re pushing ourselves.” Our Raw Heart is a massive and complex album that’s as emotionally affecting as it is crushing. There are plenty of great doom metal bands, but there’s only one Yob. – Jeff Terich