Loud and Quiet's 40 Best Albums of 2018

Loud and Quiet's 40 Best Albums of 2018

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40.

April 27, 2018
Critic Score
78
13 reviews

‘Lavender’ is Half Waif on defiant form and using the full breadth of her songwriting talents. Versatile and precisely put together it’s both a funeral song for life before the chaos that seems to plague the world today and an attempt to inspire life within it.

39.

Phantastic Ferniture - Phantastic Ferniture
July 27, 2018
Critic Score
71
10 reviews
Indeed, Phantastic Ferniture ... here present a self-titled debut album that comes close to garage-rock perfection.

38.

May 11, 2018
Critic Score
75
11 reviews

Inspired by the physical and psychological landscape of dreams, they create a world that’s as surreal as their Dali-meets-Little-Shop-Of-Horrors sleeve design.

37.

March 30, 2018
Critic Score
72
19 reviews
For all the ferocious deviation and chastening of order going on here, what’s attracted and repelled, sliced open and infected us with Casablancas has been his louche, drunk vocal delivery, bag full of father issues, neat way with arpeggios and a sentimental fondness for parallel minor 6ths. Throughout its XtraLarge-n-sprawlin 15 tracks, these remain a satisfying core on ‘Virtue’.

35.

March 16, 2018
Critic Score
83
20 reviews
Elverum has prolonged his wife’s echo with a universal collection of songs, powerful as any literature on the human experience.

34.

September 14, 2018
Critic Score
79
15 reviews
‘We’re Not Talking’ manages to further embellish the adolescent brilliance of their debut.

33.

April 6, 2018
Critic Score
80
21 reviews
Right now, no-one else is colouring in-between the lines quite like Daniel Avery and these tracks are to invade your thoughts and dreams.

32.

September 21, 2018
Critic Score
80
10 reviews

A staggering work of unbridled ambition, intelligent improvisation and, above all, profound soul.

31.

January 26, 2018
Critic Score
80
21 reviews

Whether Frahm admits it or not, when it comes to playing with people’s feelings or trying to make sense of his own, he rarely gets it wrong.

30.

February 23, 2018
Critic Score
80
12 reviews

Despite the heavy subject matters this is an unashamedly pop record, taking on the attitude of Le Tigre and the pop-dance of Katy Perry.

29.

August 31, 2018
Critic Score
81
7 reviews

These six tracks are complex compositions, but Szun Waves write and perform with the freshness that could trick you into thinking it poured right out of their heads.

28.

June 15, 2018
Critic Score
81
25 reviews
The result is at once unique and familiar – different, without being too alien.

26.

June 15, 2018
Critic Score
82
23 reviews
The sleek, hyperreal pop bangers that she became known for are certainly present here, but clever sequencing and memorable lyrical mantras form together to create something utterly cathartic.

25.

January 12, 2018
Critic Score
83
25 reviews
For all their exuberant diving into the furrows of British rock history, Shame feel like a band searching rather than one that’s lost. They’re a young bunch, but a politically engaged, angry, wise lot, smart enough to not overthink something as instinctive and fun as your first album. It works because they’re so convincing in each of their furious explorations.

22.

June 8, 2018
Critic Score
72
30 reviews
In its ebb and flow ‘No Shame’ has the honesty of an artist emerging from beneath the weight of carrying other’s opinions and starting to rediscover her own identity; an artist sharpening her songwriting and bringing some much-needed punch to our pop.

21.

September 21, 2018
Critic Score
84
10 reviews
The darkness of the album is inescapable and in places oppressive ... However, for every burst of noise or gothic wail there’s a hook of equal potency.

20.

September 21, 2018
Critic Score
76
13 reviews
Beak> have shrugged off the slight whiff of three blokes messing about in a recording studio largely for their own amusement, and quietly written a modern classic: in its attitude, delivery, and feel, ‘>>>’ has nothing of the side-project to it. Instead, it’s brimming with urgency and snarl, paranoia and exhaustion, and a delicious sense of modern-day relevance.

19.

April 20, 2018
Critic Score
75
1 review

18.

September 5, 2018
Critic Score
83
13 reviews

The album feels uneven, the result of too many sonic ideas with none taking precedence.

17.

March 2, 2018
Critic Score
78
15 reviews

Anna Von Hausswolff has fashioned a truly immersive beast, where folklore runs free and where open fissures are as common as wild flowers growing. But you are invited in, and with such goodwill that to criticise the album is simply to criticise your place within it.

15.

March 2, 2018
Critic Score
80
21 reviews

Gwenno effortlessly glides between styles on ‘Le Kov’ – the seamless transitions between forlorn piano and frosted beats (Aphex Twin was an inspiration) to pristine drums and discordant brass evoke a Cornwall that’s as easily accessible as it is steeped in tradition and folklore.

14.

September 28, 2018
Critic Score
79
7 reviews

Following two EPs of promising if not revelatory garage-punk, Viagra Boys’ ‘Street Worms’ offers few surprises but comes armed with lashings of charisma and character.

13.

June 29, 2018
Critic Score
82
35 reviews

Through all the eccentricities and quirks, it should be said that ‘I’m All Ears’ manages to be a gloriously readable pop album on first listen. For a band hailed as cult heroes one album in, this is the boldest statement they’ve made so far.

11.

Sink Ya Teeth - Sink Ya Teeth
June 22, 2018
Critic Score
75
2 reviews

10.

September 7, 2018
Critic Score
78
10 reviews

9.

August 31, 2018
Critic Score
88
34 reviews
‘Joy…’ is a self-confessed parade. It’s a punch-up and it’s a bear hug. It’s a less chic release than ‘Brutalism’, but the curse-of-the-second-album is not even a consideration.

8.

August 3, 2018
Critic Score
74
8 reviews

Gurnsey’s focus on capturing the moments of a night out gives ‘Physical’ a sense of menace and excitement, and his softer touch diminishes nothing.

6.

SHIRT - Pure Beauty
February 9, 2018
Critic Score
70
7 reviews
His debut album ‘Pure Beauty’ is triumphant. Over neo-boom bap beats and immaculate samples, he spits Kanye-esque braggadocio, Nas-like street knowledge and even flirts with being Jay Z for a track (the epic ‘Palace Intrigue’). Whichever rap-hat he tries on, he rocks.

5.

June 1, 2018
Critic Score
79
26 reviews
The result, what the pair are calling a “cyclical drone journey album”, is an intoxicating listen, a record that baffles as much as delights and revels in its weirder moments.

4.

August 10, 2018
Critic Score
79
17 reviews

‘Devotion’ is a bold statement of intent from a young artist who already sounds as if she’s carved out her own niche.

3.

September 14, 2018
Critic Score
85
26 reviews
As if galvanised by a world that’s once again collapsing, they’ve pushed their sound even closer to the edge of disintegration.

1.

June 8, 2018
Critic Score
83
8 reviews
The ambient tug of last year’s release has been replaced with the Krautrock aesthetic of Stereolab, raised on a careful diet of leftfield jazz and the New Romantics. The result is one of the year’s most original and exciting records. ‘Ecstatic Arrow’ is defiantly the Manchester-based duo’s most sentient and direct album to date.
Original Source: https://www.loudandquiet.com/short/the-loud-and-quiet-best-40-albums-of-2018/
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