Jeff Rosenstock, Hop Along, The Sidekicks And All My Favorite Music Of 2018

The criteria for this list is simple: The music had to knock me on my ass. Guitars tend to do that the quickest, so most of the below music is rock-based. Please note that I also liked the Big Ones this year — Kacey Musgraves and Snail Mail and Janelle Monae and The 1975 and Ariana Grande and Camila Cabello in particular — but I didn’t listen to those ones as much as I listened to what’s on this list. Below are 10 albums that, if you asked me what I actually listened to the most in 2018, I could choose from and not be a liar. See you in 2019.

Jeff Rosenstock: POST-

On New Year’s Day 2018, the Long Island punk legend gave us something to think about as we rocked our faces off: a sprawling, yet neatly compact, 40-minute processing of November 2016 and all its after-effects. Come for the sweaty catharsis of “USA.” Stay for the “me too, bud, and it’s OK” warm embrace of “9/10.” Then get the hell up and shout your way into 2019 (and beyond) with “Let Them Win.”

Hop Along: Bark Your Head Off, Dog

Frances Quinlan’s voice can crumble mountains. But only when she wants it to. If she’d rather lilt along to a frolic in the woods or narrate a drug trip with breathy blasts—as she does on Bark—it fits those settings too. With an expanded sound and songs about nuke attacks as a result of the male ego, Hop Along continue to play with their own sound and what fans (like me) expect out of them. Two things I wasn’t expecting? Back-to-back six minute opuses to close out the album: a swooning, Soft Bulletin-recalling space odyssey and a bouncing panacea of gorgeous strings. That’s enough to crumble a mountain or two.

The Sidekicks: Happiness Hours

I hear Band Of Horses in The Sidekicks’ twangy yelps and swiveling guitars. Some hear The Shins. Jeff Rosenstock hears Thin Lizzy. On “Weed Tent” (not to be confused with “Weed Party”), I hear the Grateful Dead, though maybe that’s just the talk of St. Stephen. Most importantly, all across Happiness Hours, I hear a lot to cling onto. Shout-outs to Jimmy Eat World and Joni Mitchell right before a reprise of Mitchell’s own song “California.” Lyrics referencing songs and melodies that appear later on the album. And simple declarations like “I just don’t feel like dancing without you” rendered lethal by how singer Steve Ciolek sells them. Together, they total the most underrated album of the year.

The Aces: When My Heart Felt Volcanic

In the post-E·MO·TION, after-After Laughter landscape of dance pop, The Aces’ fully formed debut is, well, aces. As I learned when I profiled them earlier this year, they’ve been honing their craft for a decade now, a fact made astonishing by the fact that they’re all roughly 22 years old. Not as itchy as Haim and not as punky as Paramore, The Aces crystallize their own strain of rhythmic pop with heavenly harmonies, disco drums, and glossy guitar lines packed with their own hooks. I thought “Volcanic Love” was my favorite song. But then I heard the relentless “Last One.” And then I gave myself over to the “Modern Love” swing of “Stay.” They even make time for a piano ballad, too. But you’ll remember the pure euphoria of the first time you heard “Stuck” more than anything else.

Now, Now: Saved

Now, Now are a hard band to Google and an even harder band to pin down stylistically. They’ve got emo roots. They still essentially follow that playbook. But with Saved, their first new album since 2012, Cacie Dalager and Brad Hale went panoramic, adding sweeter textures that gloss up an already twinkly sound. They’re lifers, and they know how to write songs that can level you with a quick harmony switch-up or a passing reference to Michael Jackson. I wrote a whole essay in May about how their song “AZ” allowed me some desert-life escapism amid an interminable winter. But “Set It Free” is the one I’d put on in the actual desert as I waited for whatever’s next. It makes me feel like I’m floating, like that incredibly cosmic scene in First Reformed. (The clip’s not on YouTube, so just go stream the full movie instead.)

Wild Pink: Yolk In The Fur

In late 2017, I went to see a friend’s band on a freezing night in Brooklyn. They played a tiny bar for about 30 people. Then Wild Pink took the stage and frontman John Ross’s gooey vocals and pensive, wonderfully melancholic songs warmed the place up in a hurry. I can’t be sure, but I’m almost positive they played “Lake Erie,” which quickly became one of my favorite songs when released six months later. “I wonder how different some days go,” he sings, breaking my heart with his soft voice. And that’s just one of 10—just wait ’til you dig into the splendor of the title track and “The Seance On St. Augustine St.” They felt right, too, when Wild Pink played again in July, this time in a much bigger room.

boygenius: boygenius EP

Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are three of the most talented working songwriters right now. That they’d team up for even one song is a tremendous gift. But we got six—I’d call that a miracle. Every song here is the best song. Of course, my language suggests something divine and holy, when this is just a really fucking good collection of music. “Me & My Dog” is the breakout, “Stay Down” makes me cry every time, and “Salt In The Wound” is the barnburner. But “Ketchum, ID” is… something else, man.

IDLES: Joy As An Act Of Resistance

“I’m like Stone Cold Steve Austin! I put homophobes in coffins!” IDLES’ Joe Talbot growls near the end of his band’s song “Colossus.” That shit fucking rules, first of all, and second, it’s only the beginning. The next one is called “Never Fight A Man With A Perm.” Later, in a romantic ode, he snarls, “I fuckin’ love ya/I really love you/Look at the card I bought/It says ‘I love you.’” And between those lies a masterful celebration of immigration called “Danny Nedelko” that plays more like the aggressive case to abolish all borders immediately. And then at the end, they cover Solomon Burke’s soul classic “Cry To Me.” I mean, come on.

Neko Case: Hell-On

She doesn’t have to keep being this good, nearly 25 years into her career. But she knows no other way. She duets a clever mouthful of syllables with Mark Lanegan as “Curse Of The I-5 Corridor” extends seemingly forever, an endless highway stretching over seven minutes. It’s pure poetry: “Reverb leaking out of tavern doors and not knowing how the sounds were made” and, later, “Sorry stained my mouth gumball blue.” There are ship captains and loving portraits and elegies for regal cats. Oh, and she recorded the album’s best song, “Bad Luck,” after learning her house had caught fire and would soon be rendered ash. And then she began again.

Joyce Manor: Million Dollars To Kill Me

It’s been cool to watch this band grow from scrappy California punks who burn through a 10-song album in 18 minutes to slightly less scrappy California punks who burn through a 10-song album in 22 minutes. And yet, each of their four LPs has felt like a quantum leap. Their latest, Million Dollars To Kill Me, is their most sophisticated yet and features one of the strongest songs they’ve ever penned. It’s called “I’m Not The One,” and it feels really soothing to sing its chorus: “Baby when we die, yeah we’re all gonna burn in hell.” Better than the Kanye West/Phil Hartman line on 2016’s “Fake ID.” Better than a lot of things, actually. This is one I can’t wait to listen to for the rest of my life.