2018 was such a diverse year of great music. So many genres are experiencing creativity and progression. It’s resulted in what I think will become some of the best albums of the decade upon reflection. There’s so much music out there that I’m sure I could make a Top 50 out of all of the “#1s” out there from other people and publications’ lists that are completely missing from this list. The year was stolen by no particular artist or genre. It was won by everyone, artists and listeners alike. I’ve ranted in past years about the developments of listening technologies, music sharing, random developments in particular sub-genres, etc. But this year, I felt like everyone was free to explore and create, confident in what our generation has to offer from a technological and artistic perspective. So instead of a multi-paragraph rant that I doubt anyone reads, I’ll jump right into the list and the music.

50. Gabby’s World – Beast on Beast

49. Winter – Ethereality

48. Kurt Vile – Bottle It In

47. Pinkshinyultrablast – Miserable Miracles

46. Jon Hopkins – Singularity

45. Vince Staples – FM!

44. Bas Jan – Yes I Jan

43. Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel

42. illuminiati hotties – Kiss Your Frenemies

41. Earl Sweatshirt – Some Rap Songs

40. Mitski – Be The Cowboy

39. Iceage – Beyondless

38. Johnny Jewel – Digital Rain

37. Neko Case – Hell-On

36. Superorganism – Superorganism

35. Hermit and the Recluse – Orpheus vs. The Sirens

34. Janelle Monáe – Dirty Computer

33. Snail Mail – Lush

 32. Benny The Butcher – Tana Talk 3

31. Frankie Cosmos – Vessel

30. KIDS SEE GHOSTS – KIDS SEE GHOSTS

29. Andrew W.K. – You’re Not Alone

28. Pusha T – DAYTONA

27. Deafheaven – Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

26. First Aid Kit – Ruins

25. Objekt – Cocoon Crush

24. The Go! Team – SEMICIRCLE

23. Eleanor Friedberger – Rebound

22. Yo La Tengo – There’s A Riot Going On

21. Melody’s Echo Chamber – Bon Voyage

20. Gang Gang Dance – Kazuashita

19.IDLES – Joy as an Act of Resistance

18. ******** [The Drink] – The Drink [********]

17. Aisha Devi – DNA Feelings

16. Let’s Eat Grandma – I’m All Ears

15. The Voidz – Virtue

14. Skee Mask – Compro

13. Jean Grae X Quelle Chris – Everything’s Fine

12. Beach House – 7

11. Hop Along – Bark Your Head Off, Dog

10. MGMT – Little Dark Age

This was a surprise comeback album that I didn’t expect. By now in MGMT’s career, I’d expected them to fade into obscurity or fallen apart. I actually think they’ve lost most of their core followers that liked them for “Kids” and “Electric Feel.” But there were people like me who really liked their debut album for its more prog and alternative rock cuts, which weren’t as popular but just as plentiful on the record. With their next few albums, they didn’t explore selling pop records; they explored making the kind of music they love. So, I’ve always given them respect for that.

Little Dark Age’s forthcoming release teased early on with a single from the album’s namesake. It was a gothy synthpop dream. I loved it, but still didn’t know entirely what to expect for their next full length. I’m still surprised. It’s a strange, melodic alternative pop album. “She Works Out Too Much” is one of the most weirdly fun opening songs on an album this year. But not too far after that, we’re met with “When You Die” which is a morbid and bitingly honest song about accepting mortality. The song features Ariel Pink, who MGMT clearly were influenced by on this record. “Me and Michael” is a song that seems inspired by Pink as well, but sonically it makes a lot of sense. Perhaps I’d call it post-chillwave, but I’m sure some Internet hipster already coined that word. Maybe some college kid 20 years from now will cite my review in an essay and use my words as evidence in an analysis of the changing of alternative music during the late 10s or whatever the fuck this decade is.

Oh, right, I’m reviewing an album. Yeah, it’s good. “TSLAMP” is a great song and it stands for Time Spent Looking At My Phone. This topic is played out on the Internet as being too glued to your phone is the new boogeyman. But I haven’t heard a lot of music explore this topic from a more personal and introspective viewpoint, and I think it’s done in a way that is sadly beautiful. The rest of the album isn’t quite as snappy as the first half, but it’s still highly listenable, accessible, and sparkling with life. The song “One Thing Left to Try” has the repeated refrain “Do you want to keep us alive?” in its outro, and in response to that, I say: yeah. If listening to your music keeps you guys alive, MGMT, I’ll keep on listening and enjoying. Because you still guys still have something good going.

9. JPEGMAFIA – Veteran

Holy fuck. Veteran is experimental, uncompromising, and throws a punch at any thing in its way. That includes–most importantly–your expectations about hip-hop. While it’s not the first album to deconstruct rap (clipping. has been doing this recently, as well as older artists like Dälek, Company Flow, and cLOUDDEAD), it’s one of the more thematically focused and charged records in the space of experimental rap. “Baby I’m Bleeding” has some of the most caustic raps of the year. Peggy spits hard on this track, and it’s all over this weird as fuck beat of a cut up lo-fi vocal sample repeated ad infinitum.  “My Thoughts on Neogaf Dying” expresses its thoughts in the economy of the phrase “I don’t care” along with a long list of other things that Peggy doesn’t really give a shit about.

“Macaulay Culkin” is a bit slower in tempo but not lower in heat. “I Cannot Fucking Wait Til Morrissey Dies” seems like Peggy is trying to outdo Don Caballero for long, non-sequitur song names, but the song is actually quite a delightful synth rap journey only interrupted sonically by a gunshot in its last moments. All in all, Veteran is not a rap album you can throw on in the background for something to bob your head to (although there are some good moments for that, scattered around on the album). It’s an album that demands your attention. Well, it got my attention, and it also got my appreciation.

8. Julia Holter – Aviary

After Have You In My Wilderness, Julia Holter could have gone in a lot of different directions. She was showing signs of making her music more compact and accessible on her last record, and she could have explored this more on Aviary. But as soon as I saw the tracklisting for Aviary (including their respective song lengths), I knew this wouldn’t be a case. Julia’s breakthrough album Loud City Song which was strange and experimental had an average song length of 4:57. Her last album, Have You In My Wilderness, was a bit shorter with 4:36 as average. With Aviary, she’s jolted up to 5:58 at the average. With nearly 6 minutes as an average song length, I knew pop accessibility probably wouldn’t be the goal.

Well, that expectation was spot on. The album starts with “Turn the Light On” which is a cacophony of strings and synths and drums and pianos and countless other instruments thrown into a chaotic blender. My immediate thought was: “this is where the album is starting? This is where an album like this typically ends. Where the is it going to go from here?”

The answer to that question, of course, was wherever Julia damn pleases. The album’s chamber and baroque pop roots are elevated in a heavenly ascension. The first half of the album is extraordinarily experimental in structure and sound. The second leg of the album, perhaps starting around “I Shall Love 2” is still on the experimental side but starts becoming a bit approachable (or, perhaps I’d just gotten more used to what to expect). “Colligere” strikes me as one of the most incredible songs on the record. It’s a slow, meandering interlude that sounds like a quartet drifting off into space. What begins as a mostly instrumental song encounters delicate, spacey synthesizers. Then, finally, we are greeted by Julia’s voice, but it remains no more less spaced-out than everything else on the song. How she commands her voice on this song to sing over it without interrupting its mood or style is something almost alien.

There’s just so much on this record. I’m still processing it, still exploring it. It’s a record that I don’t think will fully click with me until many years later. It might be the best record on this list. It might be one of the worst. It’s really hard to know, because either way it’s her most intricate and lengthy piece of work. I look forward to the journey, but I don’t know what I’ll find at the end.

7. SOPHIE – OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES

Though I’ve placed this relatively high on my list, it’s not something I listened to extensively this year. I think it’s because ultimately it’s one of the more dissonant and unapproachable albums. A lot of my time listening to music lately is at work, and this tends to influence the type of music I choose to listen to (less distracting). But the music nerd in me can’t help but be utterly wowed by this album at every corner. The Knife brought experimental and pop music weirdly close together, but SOPHIE has made them overlap and cross uncomfortably into one another’s territory. This album is one of the most creative, most inventive, most bold records to be released this year. It will make your tinnitus worse if you listen loudly with headphones, but it will probably be worth it just to be alive and listen to something as crazy as fuck like this. This is deconstructed experimental/electronic/pop music that is exploding with life and character and soul.

“Immaterial” is one of the best songs of the year. I’m not sure how intentional or obvious the connection to Madonna’s “Material Girls” is, but it’s a perfect parallel 33 years later. It feels like we’re on the other side of the looking glass now. All of our cultural norms have been scrutinized under the microscope and decades later we’re still not sure what to make of this mess of our society. But here, somehow, it makes a little more sense through all of the weirdness.

6. Against All Logic – 2012 – 2017

Nicolas Jaar has become a bit of a modern Richard D. James (Aphex Twin). Rocking multiple monikers, casually switching up disparate electronic music styles, shrouding himself a bit in anonymity, and releasing projects seemingly on a whim composed of copious amounts of long term work without a blip of announcement or media buzz. His work speaks for itself, and he’s accused a core following of listeners that follow his cutting edge talent.

On this release, I assume he’d been working on these tracks during the 2012 – 2017 time period, through which he’d been working on multiple other projects. On the surface, it’s closer to traditional house music than his other experiments (such as his microhouse work under his birth name, or his psychedelic work under the Darkside moniker). The bones of the beats have a house music core, and the sampling involved brings in a lot of R&B and funk elements. All pretty standard affair so far, and there’s a slew of artists over the last decade that could fit that bill. But what impresses here on 2012 – 2017 is where he takes these sounds. It’s far more cerebral than your typical house DJ, and structurally falls closer to something like IDM.

I’m going to be honest – I’m not even a big fan of house music, and EDM rarely catches my attention. What draws me to any electronic artist (which there are a few on this list and typically are year-to-year) is penchant for style and structure. Give me a repetition that slowly builds itself and adds more complex elements as it progresses and has a strong, immersive atmosphere. This is what we have here, and it equals some of the best in the genre space like Jon Hopkins (whose album Singularity I enjoyed this year quite a lot – but not nearly as much as this).

Jaar’s use of R&B, disco, and various other retro samples are carefully selected to create rich atmosphere. Stylistically it shares a lot of similarity with future garage projects but it doesn’t feel tied down to this because the atmosphere is not its only draw. The layering and mixing is peerless, showing the hard work put in over the time period through which he worked on these tracks. There’s a love for traditional dance music throughout this album, but it’s brought into a strange and dark place. These songs have length, typically reaching over the 5 minute mark, but they never overstay their welcome. This is an album to throw on and get lost in. There’s gorgeous detail and interesting song structures to keep you along for the ride. The long hard work paid off because it’s one of the best collections of electronic music to be assembled this decade.

5. Haru Nemuri – Haru to Shura

A powerful genre clashing of noise rock, hip-hop, and jpop is found on Haru to Shura. Despite my full enjoyment of the album being limited by the language barrier, I still feel drawn and moved by this music. There are direct translations out there, but I imagine the poetics and metaphor are lost. Still, this is one of the most impassioned albums of the year.

The album kicks off unlike any other. “MAKE MORE NOISE OF YOU” is caught between jpop, noise rock, sound, and fury. “Narashite” continues the energy with one of the most hard hitting and tightly produced rock that’s up there with the best rock albums of the year. No sooner does it shift over to the more hip-hop influenced “Underground” where Haru flexes her rap poetics, which through translation I can only understand as deeply symbolic and emotional.

The rest of the album uses this general palette to create a world that spins in pain and passion. “Sekaiwotorikaeshiteokure” offers a chanting, catchy chorus that serves as some kind of cacophonic anthem. “Yoruwooyoideta” and “Nineteen” bring synthesizers up to the forefront of the mix, touching closer to its jpop roots but reaching for something deeper and further. I think the thing I’m dancing around in this is that while this album is strongly influenced by Western music, it doesn’t fall to its trappings. It retains its own shape and personality, and rather than try to duplicate genre offerings it transforms them into something unique and clear. This is somewhat thanks to the sharp production, but probably more due to the inspired songwriting and incredibly raw performances. I found myself being quickly drawn to this album and never tired of going back for more despite a huge helping of great music this year.

4. Denzel Curry – TA13OO

It’s the sign of a great artist when I encounter a lot of people on the Internet asking “What else out there is similar to X?” and the answers are hard to come up with because nothing else scratches the itch quite right. This is what I’ve realized with Denzel Curry. He’s got an energy and passion that’s nearly peerless in rap right now. Sure, I can think of some similar artists out there, and certainly some similar songs out there with similar levels of heat (like Danny Brown rapping over Rustie’s “Attak”). But I don’t know many artists that keep up this level of energy for an entire album without going too far down the trap (ha ha) of repetition. Aggression might be Denzel Curry’s signature, but he’s by no means a one trick pony as he’s proved on TA13OO.

Hip-hop’s been in a weird place the last few years. With mumble rap getting traction outside of Soundcloud, we’re setting a lot of independent, homegrown artists come out seemingly nowhere who’ve blown up overnight. And on the surface, Denzel Curry seems like he could have fit this bill. But while many of his peers in this space have are one-hit-wonders or catering to an apathetic demographic of headbobbers, Denzel Curry is going in his own direction. Similar to JPEGMAFIA (who is featured on this album), Denzel Curry has crafted a cohesive aesthetic on TA13OO. It’s a fast maturation of his style after his first several mixtapes and albums, which had strong rap prowess but lacked in cohesiveness and creative direction.

While it’s not the tightest concept album ever conceived, TA13OO has three distinct passages of light, gray, and dark. Through this, there’s a crescendo of power that rises through beginning with the album’s soft opening tracks and bass heavy bumpers “SUMO,” “SUPER SAIYAN,” and “SWITCH IT UP.” The album has some reflective and moderate tempo midsection with “MAD I GOT IT” and “SIRENS.” The album starts to get progressively darker this point, and then progressively heavier. “PERCS” and “VENGEANCE” are an incredible one-two punch that leave you in a daze by the time you get hit by “BLACK METAL TERRORIST.”

I enjoy this album because it stands strongly as an album listened to from start to finish, but I can also randomize through some of my favorite stand-out tracks if I want immediate payoff. The concept falls a little short, but it’s not the primary draw for me. For me, the strength of this album comes down to its production and its delivery. The tracks on this album each stand out as so distinct from a sonic perspective, and Denzel switches up his rapping style multiple times throughout the album to fit the mood of each respective track. He runs the gamut from slower R&B-inspired raps, to repetitive trap inspired raps, and finally to his signature style of punk-inspired aggressive hype rapping.

It’s a perfect length album at 13 songs, 43 minutes without any dead weight in the track listing. The album also used several different producers along the way, yet managed to sound consistent through its variety. That’s the sign of good creative planning and a strong vision. I’m so happy to see a young artist like Denzel from humble upbringings in Miami come up and find success through nothing but hard work and dedication to his craft. He expresses that pride on this album, but he also expresses a lot of hardship, personal tragedy, and adversity. All in all, it’s an incredible album.

3. Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!

Women in indie rock and punk have taken over the last few years. Mitski, Courtney Barnett, Alvvays, Hop Along, Diet Cig, Japanese Breakfast, and Jay Som are just a few of the names that have been dominating the indie sphere. It makes sense that some of the most charged and vocal albums have been from women, as they rightfully have a lot to be angry with in society. And so I don’t mean to suggest that this needs to turn around — the indie genre has clearly been dominated by men since its inception, and it’s about time the genre’s started to become more diverse.

However, indie rock and specifically punk has left men in sort of a strange place. The times of passionate men “mansplaining” the troubles of the world assertively as if their problems is beyond passé, it’s out of touch. So I think men have turned to lyrics that are more personal or abstract and less political in the meantime.

Enter: Wide Awake! This is a indie rock album by men who are not impressed with the world today. It’s aggressive, and it’s passionate. But what sets it apart and keeps it from being too preachy is that beyond all of the aggression is vulnerability and a self-admitted need for tenderness.

Over the last decade, men have not had positive social platforms for growth and change that women have had. And while they were absolutely necessary for the empowerment of women, many men have felt left behind. I know, boo-hoo. But it’s part of why “toxic masculinity” exists – that men have few positive role models or representations of what it is to be a ‘strong’ man today. That is: one that recognizes that courage isn’t represented by being stone cold and indifferent but confronting your own emotions. It means standing up for what you believe while empowering all other voices around you. It means admitting to flaws rather than trying to conceal them. Too many men still don’t understand this, and it took me way too long to understand it myself.

Back to Wide Awake! I’ve been a mild fan of Parquet Courts for some time, and their prior album Human Performance, was one of my favorites of 2016. They’ve always been an interesting band as a liberal group of guys from Texas. And while they’ve always been charged and opinionated, they’ve never been as political as they are here on Wide Awake! They never call out the specific institutions that meet their anger, but by the end of the album you can pretty sure figure it out. “Total Football” kicks this off with the lines: “Collectivism and autonomy are not mutually exclusive. Those who find discomfort in your goals of liberation will be issued no apology. And fuck Tom Brady!” They’ve confidently expressed their Texan independence and passionate progressive leanings in a single swipe.

“Violence” is one of the most heated tracks on the entire album. A passionate and conflicted take on the gun violence problem that has been sweeping the nation. It’s a big topic in media today but rarely is addressed in music. Well, they went straight in with the despondent and morbid chorus “Violence is daily life.” They also throw in some keen perspectives like “Riot is an unfinished grave that was dug to deposit undepleted anger. Like barrels of uranium leaking into something sacred. It is a word to use to de-legitimize your unrest – and to make your resistance into an overreaction.” It’s been a common tactic of the right to cast the left as “overreacting” or acting too quickly out of emotion whenever a gun tragedy (or many of the other outrages of the last couple years). They will do anything they can to sweep unrest under the rug and wait for it all to blow over so that nothing will change. Parquet Courts are calling this out, and they call a lot out over the course of the album.

Sonically, their use of Danger Mouse’s production was an interesting change up. Their sound is cleaner here and less lo-fi than before. I think it was a change that worked well on this particular album, but I’m curious if they’ll stick with it or return to form on their next release. Ultimately, I think the mix could have hit a little harder, but I enjoyed the layering and how clear the vocals come through on this album, because understanding the lyrics is a pretty key part of my enjoyment of this release.

In-between the album’s most passionate songs like “Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience,” and “Normalisation” are surprisingly a lot of catchy, reflective songs. “Before the Water Gets Too High” strangely got stuck in my head a lot this year, and the danceable title track “Wide Awake!” wound up being performed on Ellen somehow in one of the stranger daytime television music performances I’ve ever seen. There are a couple slight missteps like the awkward “Back to Earth” and meandering “Mardi Gras Beads,” but for the most part this is a consistently solid album from start to finish.

The album ends on a slightly positive note with “Tenderness” and it shows the band in another light. It’s one of the many moments on the album that reminds you that this isn’t a bunch of guys trying to tell you how it is. They have their opinions, but they come from a place of restless uncertainty. These are guys with both internal and external conflict. They are anxious, skeptical, and yearning for change. And they’re trying to figure out how they will fit into all this change as well. This is an album that reminds men that it’s OK to yell when you’re angry about something – what’s important is what you’re yelling about, and what kind of person are you when it comes to identifying your own weaknesses? These concepts  make the album passionate, courageous, and heartfelt.

2. Daughters – You Won’t Get What You Want

This album makes me feel like a scared animal being chased in the woods. I startled some beast in the distance – it slowly rises out of the bushes, alerted of my presence. I’m stopped dead in my tracks, hoping it hasn’t seen me. It charges toward me, and while I run with panicked fervor, I can’t help but look back to get a look at the creature. But the thing that is chasing me isn’t a predator or monster. The thing I’m running from is some deeply seeded part of myself.

I’ve thrown around the terms primal and visceral while describing previous albums, and I thought they applied well. Now I’m not so sure. This album has destroyed any previous notion of what those could be. It’s strange that an album so dark and disturbing can make me so happy to be alive just to witness its creation. On one hand, there are clear influences at work including noise rock, hardcore punk, and perhaps a dash of gothic rock and sludge metal.  But on the other hand, the album seems free from the chains of tradition and comparison. It feels like these genres all grown up – and they’re horrified with the world they’ve found. This is an instance where screaming on an album rarely feels like anger – it feels like terror.

A comeback after an 8-year album hiatus, You Won’t Get What You Want is a bit of an oddity in terms of expectations. These are song lengths you’d expect from something like a Swans album, but the band’s traditions come from extremely short length (~2 minute) hardcore punk songs (particularly their first two albums, Canada Songs and Hell Songs). 2010’s Daughters saw them exploring short to mid length songs around the 2-4 minute ranges. You Won’t Get What You Want consistently pushes over the 4 minute mark, and occasionally stretching over 7 minutes.

It’s a development that’s paid off. Some people’s attention span doesn’t handle long songs, but for this kind of music, I almost feel the opposite. Songs too short in this space frequently feel like they end too quickly before I’m able to feel satisfied. Here, I’m able to wallow in the repetition and angst. This album’s sound and lyrics are synchronized in their fright and horror. It’s the void that when you stare into it, it stares back, and you can’t turn away. It’s an album that I’m not always in the mood for, but when I am, nothing else sounds good and only it will do. It’s incredibly urgent and demanding of attention.

The lyrics on this album are some of the most bizarre and darkly inviting. Some of the choruses don’t look like much on paper, but hearing them being screamed by their vocalist is haunting. “This world is opening up” on “Satan in the Wait” is cryptic and apocalyptic. But “Guest House” that takes to another level. “I’ve been knocking and knocking. Let me in. Let me in!”  (Quick hot tip: I wouldn’t let this person in).

This album does things that not many other albums have in music, and regardless of its warring listenability, it deserves high recognition and praise. And most of all, from a personal level, I found it one of the most affecting and impressive albums I listened to this year.

1. Kero Kero Bonito – Time ‘n’ Place

Some years it’s hard to pick a number one, and some years it’s easy. This year, it was easy again. It’s strange because it’s not like I even had much of a choice. I listened to this thing so damn much. It didn’t matter the time nor place. It didn’t matter my mood or disposition. I could listen to this album on the happiest of days and the saddest of days.

For someone who isn’t much into mainstream, I really like pop music. But more specifically, I like music with great hooks and infectious songwriting. That’s the immediate draw here with Time ‘n’ Place, and it’s what made it so easily ubiquitous in my year. But the album wouldn’t have staying power if it didn’t offer more, and being catchy certainly isn’t enough to warrant a #1 spot on my list (however hard I tow the line between personal taste and critical observation). And the album *does* offer more than your typical pop album. Actually, it packs quite a crazy punch.

Kero Kero Bonito’s debut album, Bonito Generation, was one of my favorite albums of 2016. The album was similarly catchy and indulgently saccharine. Its sweetness neared being a fault, but it barely stayed above that by being slightly tongue-in-cheek and intelligent along the way. While seeming to be j-pop on the surface (though they are UK-based), they brought in ample influences of 90s hip-hop and electronic music.

I’m not sure what I expected for a follow-up, but the teaser tracks did exactly that. Their TOTEP EP released early in the year included the first single, “Only Acting,” and holy shit did it catch me by surprise. The song flirted with indie rock, punk, noise rock, and straight up noise toward its end. I’m not sure how long they worked to perfect the sound, but I was surprised with how natural and confident they seemed with the genres. The Internet mused regarding whether the track held some secret: was their debut album, Bonito Generation, some kind of ruse? Was their forthcoming album to divulge their true identity? Or was it the opposite: was this track a one-off experiment, and they’d return to their sweet pop roots for their next LP?

I forgot about the question, but every once and a while I’d return to “Only Acting” because the song was so damn good. The rest of the EP was only so-so, though, and it didn’t seem to have quite as much power. I had no expectations about the forthcoming full album. It eventually dropped on the first of October, and I remember throwing it on with an open mind. “Outside” kicks the album off with sudden return to the indie and noise rock influences present on Only Acting. Good start, good track albeit a bit short. “Time Today” returned to a feel more similar to Bonito Generation – soft, sweet pop with quirky samples.

“Only Acting” fit perfectly into the tracklisting, and the noisy chaos of its final moments blurs into the next track, Flyway. This is another indie rock jammer with impeccable melodies and a layering of random nostalgic 8-bit sounding effects. “Dump” would follow, and while it didn’t jump out at me immediately an incredible track, it’s not a song I ever skipped on future listens.

The album then makes one of its interesting turns into “Make Believe.” I think out of all the tracks present on the album, this one does the best job of bridging their first album with their follow-up. Its verses are soft, melodic, and j-pop influenced. The initial choruses builds into light indie/twee pop. Then, halfway through the track, it crashes into guitar-driven indie rock. But it quickly regains its footing on familiar ground with some really cute synthesizer work as it fades out into wonder. It’s amazing how they fit almost all aspects of the album’s diverse influences on this song(save noise, perhaps).

This is where the album could potentially enter dangerous territory. The album–like many others out there–might been front-loaded with all its best songs at the first half, and then faded into subpar for the second half. The song “Dear Future Self” certainly is a moment of pause of reflection for the album. The song grew on me over time, and I swear there is a sample in there that sounds like it’s from the Konami logo intro in Metal Gear Solid. There are lot of quirky retro sounds on this album that have a certain nostalgic familiarity that I just can’t quite place, but I think most of the sounds are original rather than sampled.

“Visiting Hours” takes actually quite an interesting synth pop detour that has delightful, hazy dream pop quality to it that makes perfect sense in their palette. “If I’d Known” is a strange indie pop jam that isn’t their catchiest song but is quite neatly layered and detailed, contains a noise rock spasm in its middle, and concludes with some low tempo rapping. This is the thing that gets me about the album – it’s so rich in detail at every corner. The songwriting never falters, and they are constantly layering so much flavor into their music while cohesively tying it into a consistent aesthetic. I listen to a lot of music, and when I encounter this much love and care put into an album, I fall in love with it myself.

“Sometimes” once again surprises. The first time it came on, I thought Spotify messed up and played a song from a different artist. I was not expecting an heartfelt acoustic singalong song to be thrown into this zany album. As the song progresses, it throws in enough familiar sounds to make it sound cohesive with the rest of the album, but it still stands out as unique in the tracklist. “Swimming” proves that the second leg of this album is just as strong as the second as it’s a stellar synth pop song from start to finish. The album concludes with “Rest Stop,” and I’ll admit I had no idea or expectations on how this all would end.  It begins much like many other Kero Kero Bonito songs, and I figured that’s what would be in store for me. But it couldn’t be that simple – it fades into so many strange things. A bizarre psychedelic ditty that twists into lo-fi indie pop before finally devolving into an incoherent mess that sounds like cartoon machinery falling apart. The album ends suddenly in medias res with words “So when we walk among the clouds, hold your neighbor close, as the trumpets echo round, You don’t wanna be—”

This album came from a much different place, personally and artistically, than its predecessor album. Reading interviews from the band regarding their inspirations, they drew from a lot of personal loss in the last couple years. Old homes demolished, grandparents lost, pets lost, and growing older through all of this change. Through this lens, the album makes sense from every standpoint. It made me re-think the meaning of “Only Acting” as it clearly contains a lot of metaphor far beyond the intentions of the band’s sound. The song “Time Today” appears like such a pleasant pop song, but if you watch the song’s video, you can feel that it can have dual meaning as you realize it’s a respite in the midst of tragedy, change, loss, and personal crisis. This is one of the album’s most primarily fixations, and it’s a strong and powerful enough experience to carry it solidly without losing purpose or meaning.

The band members’ personal change also made way for stylistic change-ups alongside their change of lyrical tone. The strands of this album’s style and tone are so tightly woven and intimate. The album grips you with pop melodies but has such rich detail and depth hidden within it to reward future listens. I love this album, and it should be far well explained why Time ‘n’ Place is my favorite of the year.