musicOMH's Top 50 Albums of 2018

musicOMH's Top 50 Albums of 2018

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49.

The Longcut - Arrows
April 6, 2018
Critic Score
77
3 reviews

48.

May 4, 2018
Critic Score
85
3 reviews

47.

March 9, 2018
Critic Score
75
14 reviews

46.

June 8, 2018
Critic Score
83
19 reviews

There is a case to be made for soil, the debut album by serpentwithfeet, to be sensibly understood as seminal before even being granted the benefit of hindsight. It’s incredibly rare that a creative talent of this magnitude arrives at all. It‘s astounding that they would also succeed in presenting a vision of such striking lucidity across their first major work.

45.

May 4, 2018
Critic Score
82
34 reviews

Building on the innovations of previous album Immunity, it invests more emotionally and retains the primal physical stimulus behind Hopkins’ best music. He remains a wholly individual voice in a congested field, a single phrase played from his piano speaking volumes. And Singularity is his best album yet.

44.

March 2, 2018
Critic Score
80
34 reviews

The ’90s were cool, but that was then. This is now, and The Breeders are sounding just as vital now (and cool, whatever that might mean) as they did when Last Splash made a splash.

43.

October 5, 2018
Critic Score
77
37 reviews

Throughout, Marshall feels in total command, stripped back but self-assured, singing about everything from Trumpian dysfunction (In Your Face) and family relationships (Horizon) to corporate greed (Robbin Hood).

42.

October 26, 2018
Critic Score
86
13 reviews
Records like this suggest rock has a long and illustrious future ahead of it, and that in some instances the creative well is far from dry. With Halloween on the horizon, Daughters have provided a soundtrack to satisfy our ghoulish intrigue with a rare beast that is both thrilling and wholly singular.

41.

September 7, 2018
Critic Score
68
9 reviews

By the end of the heartfelt Touched By You MNEK has truly made his mark with this ambitious masterwork of an album. After years in the background, he’s proved that he’s the full package.

39.

Matthew Dear - Bunny
October 12, 2018
Critic Score
71
16 reviews

Bunny is a worthwhile return for Matthew Dear, showcasing the production chops that have made him a familiar name for 15 years now. It sags in places, but this isn’t such a crime when the album also contains highlights like Electricity, Horses, Modafinil Blues and Bunny’s Dream, which are highly recommended for any electronic music fan.

38.

February 16, 2018
Critic Score
79
27 reviews
It’s still as exhilarating and deftly executed as you’d expect from Darcy and company, but they’re exploring new avenues this time around. Yet, as with the band’s previous work, it grabs you by the scruff of the neck from the beginning and almost demands that you keep listening.

37.

July 13, 2018
Critic Score
74
35 reviews

Lamp Lit Prose may have arrived quickly, but it sounds as though Longstreth has made leaps and bounds from the self-titled album’s more solipsistic, self-piteous moments. Towards the end, positivity and simplicity win out, along with a surprising – given the baroquely knotted musical strands – lyrical clarity.

36.

June 1, 2018
Critic Score
80
26 reviews
This album could easily be written off as being derivative and stale, but when you spend more than 30 seconds thinking about it, you realise just how rare and unique this sound actually is in 2018. And as Natalie Prass clearly has a great love for the music that inspires her and has done a great job of making her new music sound like it, her dedication to nostalgia should be applauded – even if there’s just too much of it on this record.

32.

October 19, 2018
Critic Score
78
22 reviews

Anyone looking for party bangers may be disappointed ... but Broken Politics is the sound of an artist growing and maturing very nicely.

31.

March 30, 2018
Critic Score
81
10 reviews

A highly listenable album with an audibly beating heart, which deserves to be played so loudly that the neighbours complain.

30.

April 6, 2018
Critic Score
79
20 reviews
With a whole 19 tracks packed into 40 minutes, this album could not be accused of being overlong or padded out. But six of those tracks are sketches or interludes that add little to the album, other than a presumably deliberate mood of disorientation, perhaps reflecting a world in which things don’t always fit together nicely or start and finish when you expect them to. That’s fine as an artistic rationale, but it doesn’t translate neatly to the album.

29.

March 2, 2018
Critic Score
78
15 reviews

Dead Magic is a brilliant artistic statement, Anna von Hausswolff’s best self-definition to date.

28.

January 26, 2018
Critic Score
80
25 reviews
If the point of a debut album is to capture a moment, to provide a snapshot of a new, hungry band bursting at the seams with hope and abandon, then this must already be one of the debut albums of the year.

27.

January 26, 2018
Critic Score
80
21 reviews
Overall it proves a worthy addition to his catalogue and sees him subtly move his sound on once again, without maybe being the great leap it could have been.

25.

April 13, 2018
Critic Score
79
24 reviews

In The Lookout, Veirs has done what she does best. Instantly recognisable and comforting, she opens her personal world up as safe haven in these strange and noisy times, whilst still keeping you at arm’s length, listening for secrets.

24.

September 28, 2018
Critic Score
77
10 reviews

They’ve turned everything up beyond 11 this time, opting to throw more skull crushing riffs into the mix. The songs might be shorter, but they lack none of the innate need to pummel that infuses most of their work. 

23.

May 11, 2018
Critic Score
72
44 reviews
When the Arctic Monkeys’ career comes to be reappraised, this album could be seen as an outlier, or the start of their next phase. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but sometimes, dividing an audience is exactly what you need to do.

22.

October 12, 2018
Critic Score
75
33 reviews
As it stands it’s not Vile’s most accessible album, but it rewards patience.

21.

June 15, 2018
Critic Score
79
21 reviews

Call The Comet has Marr’s personality stamped on it all the way through. Recorded with his band and self-produced at his Crazy Face Studios in Manchester, it’s a substantial album lasting almost an hour.  

19.

June 29, 2018
Critic Score
82
35 reviews

It’s a thrill to listen to their experiments, their tinkering with sounds and ideas.

18.

May 25, 2018
Critic Score
85
24 reviews
This is not the King Push we were led to expect, but it is a quality record in its own right.

17.

May 18, 2018
Critic Score
84
35 reviews

Wide Awake is certainly not their best, but it is their most wide ranging and as such, it could just be one that splits the hardcore fanbase right down the middle.

16.

October 26, 2018
Critic Score
79
28 reviews

Aviary is not a great album – it’s too much of an ordeal for that accolade, requiring multiple listens to even start to engage with meaningfully. But it is, in its own idiosyncratic way, a towering artistic accomplishment. Just be prepared for a hard slog scaling the summit.

15.

February 2, 2018
Critic Score
80
24 reviews

14.

August 31, 2018
Critic Score
80
27 reviews

13.

January 12, 2018
Critic Score
83
25 reviews

Songs Of Praise distils the best features of classic British alternative music into a vital band passionate to enervate, communicate and entertain.

12.

February 23, 2018
Critic Score
80
12 reviews
There’s not one dud track on it, and each listen unveils something new to hear. Most pleasingly though, in these dark times, is that it’s a whole heap of fun. 2018 may be only a few months old, but we may have its album of the year already.

11.

May 18, 2018
Critic Score
80
41 reviews

Tell Me How You Really Feel is a wonderfully curated record, which manages to be both cynical and whimsical at the same time. The depth of musical ambition and of poetic expression deserve a suitably large audience’s attention.

10.

February 9, 2018
Critic Score
85
27 reviews
Everything about this album shows Furman pushing forward and fighting for change, musically, socially and politically. He’s taken a musical colouring book and just gone wild, experimenting, colouring outside the lines. The shapes are there, recognisable, comforting, but the finished picture is uniquely Ezra Furman.

9.

September 21, 2018
Critic Score
84
10 reviews

There is absolutely no doubting that Pastoral is a phenomenal piece of work. It’s a brilliantly informed artistic statement and a state of the nation address that cuts right through.

8.

August 17, 2018
Critic Score
85
40 reviews

Be The Cowboy showcases over 14 tracks an artist who – along with producer and chief collaborator Patrick Hyland – rarely takes an obvious route to anything.

7.

August 31, 2018
Critic Score
88
34 reviews

Much like their last album, Joy As An Act Of Resistance suggests Idles aren’t a particularly progressive band musically, but their sound is one with the absolute sincerity of their exploration of our culture and politics.

6.

June 15, 2018
Critic Score
82
23 reviews

Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides does not remove all mystery, but is a powerful statement of identity, a shattering of traditional genre boundaries and nuanced, moving expressions of emotion where there once was an inscrutable deadpan. The fact that it all sounds so irresistibly good is the icing on the cake.

5.

September 21, 2018
Critic Score
78
20 reviews

While there are other occasions ... where it all feels just a bit much, all in all The Blue Hour is a bold, accomplished effort from a band who still have plenty of ideas more than a quarter of century after they first emerged.

4.

September 21, 2018
Critic Score
86
36 reviews

One of the year’s most intelligent, enjoyable albums, and cements her position as one of our most intriguing, interesting pop stars.

3.

April 27, 2018
Critic Score
87
41 reviews
This album is possibly her least musically adventurous, but thematically it’s defiantly bold and generous.

2.

October 26, 2018
Critic Score
88
29 reviews

Honey is heart-on-sleeve, open-book emotional without being draining, like a Disintegration or a Blackstar: it’s heavy on the mind but light on the ears. It seems perfectly handmade for each listener, but never makes you feel isolated. It’s like your pass into a world of shining surfaces, neon lights and heartbreak.

1.

September 14, 2018
Critic Score
85
26 reviews

Double Negative is an album that will endure for a long time. It’s a thrilling development that proves how Low continue to release music of extremely high standards, restlessly creative and never content to stand still.

Original Source: https://www.musicomh.com/features/lists/musicomhs-top-50-albums-of-2018
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