Time: The 10 Best Albums of 2019 4. Among all the record’s big themes—the brush with death recounted on the album’s opener, the closing letter to her child—it’s the little details that stick out, like a line of dialogue that gives “Comeback Kid” the feel of a finely turned short story. Perhaps that’s why slowthai, a grime MC from the nowheresville dead-center of England, often feels so punk. Robyn — Body Talk. Stories of depression and despair are easier to take with full knowledge of the happy ending. –Eric Torres, With each record, Angel Olsen’s music grows grander and darker, and on All Mirrors, she spreads her leathery wings and nearly blots out the sky. The music world didn’t know how to respond to the New Zealand singer-songwriter’s unpredictable 2017 album Party; its follow-up, Designer, is even more opaque. But each mountainous track is also filled with small details, be it a high-pitched squall, a grainy click, or a distant rumble. As he laments the overdose and subsequent death of a good friend, he reaches a humble conclusion: “Why write about it now?/Gotta honor him somehow.” This quiet tribute to the darkest of realities crystalizes what makes Giannascoli’s songwriting so poignant: a resounding humanity. 4.23 22 votes: 02 : Cult of Luna A Dawn to Fear. FKA twigs — Magdalene; Big Thief — U.F.O.F. Moving beyond the haunted Americana of 2017’s Rocket, these 13 songs offer meticulous portraits of addiction, greed, and obsession. Naira Marley & Zlatan. Pitchfork's Best Metal Albums of 2019. At the same time, the album is almost unbearably self-aware. They throw a light on the refugee crisis in “Unfound Manifest,” rail against fat-shaming on “The Right Stuff,” and put a name to widespread government corruption with “The Killer.” –Eric Torres. She’s still calling out irritating shit, but with a cool-headed poise. View reviews, ratings, news & more regarding your favorite band. 4.03 35 votes: 05 : The Caretaker Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 6. And of course, when the surface dressings fall away, Ezra Koenig is writing as searchingly as ever about lasting happiness, low-grade fear, and the certainty that if bad times are here, worse times are on the way. There are powerhouse, splashy pop numbers here—“NASA,” “bad idea,” “7 rings”—but the quieter tracks, especially the title song, showcase a stunning maturity. What value is conforming in a world where norms have ruined us? Norman F*****g Rockwell! –Sam Sodomsky, Was 2019 the year Thom Yorke finally got funky? –Jayson Greene, Like white light refracted through a prism to reveal an array of colors, ordinary words and phrases—wrinkled hands, silver hair, clear water—take on new meanings when sung by Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker. Norwegian art-pop philosopher Jenny Hval floats between these logical dots throughout The Practice of Love, an album of festering generational unease set to the twilit synths and entrancing pulses of ’90s raves. Skip to content . –Philip Sherburne, Sheer Mag crashed into the indie consciousness five years ago with surly abandon, thanks to their Thin Lizzy-style anthems and their true punk heart. June 21, 2019 1:25PM ET The 50 Best Albums of 2019 So Far Including Lizzo, Vampire Weekend, Billie Eilish, Tyler the Creator and more. You can see the full top 50 below, and read commentary on each pick here . Purple Mountains, the final album of new music from David Berman, released 26 days before he took his own life at age 52, offers no such luxury. The records that made the decade, starring Kendrick Lamar, Grimes, Bon Iver, Solange, Lana Del Rey, and many more . Led by a majestic vocal melody, opening track “At the Party” celebrates the strength inherent to Indigenous peoples while still mourning the marginalization that makes it so. He’s evolved, in his own way, and Deerhunter have too. Amid all this wonder, what stays with you most is Roberto Carlos Lange’s comforting voice: It’s resonant and entrancing in both Spanish and English as he narrates meditations on resilience and the Latinx experience. –Stacey Anderson. 41. –Amy Phillips. By Pitchfor k Ghosteen abounds with stark moments like this that reveal the raw heart of grief. Seasoned experts at locating the expanding borders of “cool” and then working just outside them, here Vampire Weekend decide that they are a jam band, with all of the fretless bass and weightless Jerry Garcia guitar solos this implies. A list of Pitchfork's best music of 2019. Del Rey’s attitude towards destructive relationships take a refreshing turn, giving her more agency than ever before: “You’re fun and you’re wild/But you don’t know the half of the shit that you put me through/Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news,” she sings wearily on the title track. Offering nine tracks in 18 minutes, the project burns quick and bright: Mostly, Rico jumps in, commands a raucous beat, and dips before the three-minute mark. Floating Points - Crush. –Mike Powell. –Mark Richardson. By Pitchfor k. Lists & Guides. It’s the type of record that seems destined to be rediscovered long after its release and heralded as ahead of its time. "The kid drops his bucket and spade/And climbs into the sun," he murmurs before the track’s steady bassline suddenly glitches, as if the needle of a turntable has hit a bad groove, and Cave begins to keen in falsetto. Purple Mountains, the final album of new music from David Berman, released 26 days before he took his own life at age 52, offers no such luxury. She finds solace in the frequent repetition of phrases and calls on powerful forebears for guidance, be they Alice Coltrane, Steve Reich, or DJ Screw. And on the exquisite centerpiece “cellophane,” she is as exposed, fallen, and overwhelmed as the album’s namesake. Thrillist: The Best Albums of 2019 4. Do you feel like Gang Gang Dance were never the same after Tim DeWitt left the band? Nérija’s Blume is the latest proof that London just may be the most fertile environment for modern jazz in the world. They spend their time wrestling with quandaries small and large, from a confusing kind of romantic attraction to feeling crushed by the relentless pace of the world, all the while exploring similar leaps of scale sonically. Even at its gauziest, however, Olsen’s music still thrums with anxiety; her version of dream-pop is unsettled by existential terror, which prickles to the surface of “Too Easy” and “What It Is” like fever sweat. Throughout the record, the quartet subtly distort their sugar-pie group vocals, whisking them into frenzied disco-grrl guitars, hectic brass bleats, and fluorescent electro blips. Part the waves of distortion on “home with you,” and she is wailing, gorgeously, at the injustice of emotional abandonment. –Philip Sherburne, Brittany Howard named her debut solo album after her older sister, who died when Brittany was eight years old. Tightly-knit slowcore reveries swell into post-punk explosions, barely-there melodies tangle to the point of dissonance. But it’s important to remember what Berman’s friends at Drag City said following his death: His music didn’t predict his death; it was written despite his depression. –Jayson Greene, After rewriting rock’s rulebook with Sonic Youth, establishing herself as a star in the art world, and writing a memoir, Kim Gordon finally got around to making her first solo album. Though co-producer Cate Le Bon’s dramatic hallmarks are present in the horn flourishes of “No One’s Sleeping” or the pointed marimba on “Tarnung,” they never overpower the band’s long-simmering chemistry. SONG ALBUM TIME Norman f*****g Rockwell. Critic Score. At every point, you hear a band going somewhere new, hurtling towards a forever-receding spot in the consciousness. But what happens when that hope is suddenly dashed? Pitchfork's Best Experimental Albums of 2019. Like the water Sprague often sings about, and by which she is so evidently moved, the music here is rippling and continuous, bedroom folk rendered with the meditative heart of new age. Fuzzy guitar, looped strings, and expansive guest spots from fellow vets Blood Orange and Run the Jewels underscore a new phase of Brown’s work without blotting out the high-pitched urgency that made him a compelling figure in the first place. Amidst the neverending whirlwind of 2020, it was tempting to crawl into a cocoon of nostalgic favorites and never come out. Chicago’s latest star is Polo G, whose debut album Die a Legend contains some of the best hip-hop ballads in recent memory. That immediacy pervades the sound of Howard’s solo debut, which is less wedded to genre than her work with Alabama Shakes and Thunderbitch. U.F.O.F, the first of two stellar albums the band released this year, sounds at once exploratory and wise, as if they are both seeing the world with fresh wonder while explaining the way things have always been. ), drawing on the subject’s specific history as a spiritual guide for locating her own truth. –Noah Yoo, On What Chaos Is Imaginary, Girlpool’s Avery Tucker and Harmony Tividad push past any lingering codependent habits from their teenage years of writing together. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz, In Solange’s vision of Houston, the streetlights are hazy, the liquor is dark, and the air is humming with dreams. The 40 best-reviewed albums of 2019 (min. In 2019, the musical landscape was as fractured and multifarious as the world around it. Solange — When I Get Home. A year after releasing 2016’s beloved Is the Is Are, Smith re-entered treatment for heroin addiction. His 2017 album Flower Boy was a disarming journey into self-discovery, but Igor is even more revealing, as Tyler wrestles with the fact that maybe he doesn’t have everything figured out. Am I a Yahoo Boy - Single . You become a parent with the wish that your kids outlive you. As a whole, Utility is an expression of what techno can be when the most obvious percussive elements go away. Stacker compiled data on the top 100 albums from 2020, according to Best Ever Albums, which ranks albums according to their appearance and performance on editorial and data-based charts, e.g., Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Billboard, and so on. Read on for Pitchfork's top 25 songs of 2019. Her eagle-eyed observations about her hapless relationships can be as funny as they are heartbreaking, like on the swooning “Jonny,” where she laments how her dog is her best friend even though, she sings, “He doesn't even know what my name is.” –Sheldon Pearce. All rights reserved. The thundering “Frontier” builds a battle anthem for the climate emergency against anxious AI wails, while “Godmother” interpolates the fragmented rhythms of Herndon’s friend Jlin, chopping and scattering Spawn’s voice as if it were being fed through fan blades. It's an experience that can offer shelter from the noise—or it can offer better noise, if that's what … Over the album’s inky expanse, Olsen tries out an entirely new, gothic corner of her record collection: The Cure’s Disintegration, Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas, Siouxsie and the Banshees. –Quinn Moreland. “Priority Change” swaggers with shy pride in its chord changes, while Lilitri complains of “being trapped in binary code.” “Dig” gets the balance just about right, with a gloriously smeared chorus in which he’s “still reeling from the mess I made.” Gems like “Impossible Game” find drama in the effort to invest meaning in well-worn metaphors of open roads and unknowable partners. December 5, 2019 9:00AM ET The 50 Best Albums of 2019 From ‘Lover’ to ‘Cuz I Love You,’ ‘Death Race to Love,’ and beyond, here are the records that defined the year The 50 Best Albums of 2019 Pitchfork Preview Editors’ Notes The artists who ruled the year, starring FKA twigs, Bon Iver, Kim Gordon, DaBaby, and more. Death Metal. 100 gecs - 1000 gecs. 1 in October, he put in the work to make his big talk a reality. Boy Scouts’ Taylor Vick called her latest album Free Company because she thought of its songs as her company during a rough patch after a breakup. But Remind Me Tomorrow cracks her style open like a geode: The roadhouse soul of “You Shadow” is halfway between Motown and Massive Attack; “Seventeen” arrives decades too late for the John Hughes closing credits it deserves; “Jupiter 4,” titled after a vintage Roland synthesizer, sounds like a gothic take on slowcore. The magnetic scrappiness doubles as a bracing alert. See which albums are sitting at the top of this year's charts. A stretch of radio silence followed, before more and more tour dates gave way to this summer’s announcement of Deceiver. But it’s important to remember what Berman’s friends at Drag City said following his death: His music didn’t predict his death; it was written despite his depression. Out came Crush, a record that vibrates with sadness and anger, buoyed by squelching melodies that flutter and pop. –Quinn Moreland, After rewriting rock’s rulebook with Sonic Youth, establishing herself as a star in the art world, and writing a memoir, Kim Gordon finally got around to making her first solo album. He searched for the perfectly turned phrase to articulate pain because it helped him feel less of it; he added jokes because the absurdity of life is funny. –Jillian Mapes, The magic of Christian Fennesz’s work comes in the way he turns the minimal into the maximal, expanding tiny moments into huge sonic environments. The 25 Best Metal Albums of 2019 by Jeff Terich. “Sh’diah”—which Vernon began writing the morning after the 2016 election, with a title that stands for “shittiest day in American history”—fights the ugliness of modern politics with an understated call for rationality. In form and function, Bon Iver’s fourth album is an act of protest. –Anna Gaca, Following their mosh-worthy 2018 collaboration “Smack a Bitch,” Maryland rapper Rico Nasty and producer Kenny Beats doubled down on their reckless chemistry with Anger Management. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission. Ad Choices. Plenty of people come to Bill Callahan’s music just to hear him string sentences together as he explores an absurd, beautiful world one song at a time. Eventually he leaves words behind entirely, sinking into cascading acoustic guitars and the soft tinkle of chimes. The following list, sorted alphabetically, includes rock albums found on Pitchfork’s main year-end tally as well as an additional 14 LPs that did not make that list but are just as worthy of your time. A number of lines and song titles—“The dead know what they are doing when they leave this world behind,” from “Nights That Won’t Happen,” or “No way to last out here like this for long” from “All My Happiness Is Gone”—seem to point at what was to come, and to hear them in a certain mood is to be emotionally overwhelmed. FKA twigs — Magdalene. Music reviews, ratings, news and more. But the best albums of 2020 proved that incredible new music will always make their way to our ears, even … Her third album, Quiet Signs, sounds a little further away—perhaps through an open stained-glass window as Pratt, alone in a church, hums as if she’s just going through soundcheck. 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