1. A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships / The 1975

Whip-smart, omnivorous, and confessional, The 1975's A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is the year's best album.  At the end of November, this big, audacious, world-beating pop record came along in the nick of time to claim its rightful spot at the top.  In a year that was missing an arena-swelling record that delivered on all fronts, the Manchester band took a giant leap into the zeitgest, burying any notion that less is more.

A Brief Inquiry is the sound of millennials holding a mirror up to millennials, as Matt Healy's songwriting defiantly seeks to avoid crumbling under the weight of their collective anxieties.  In the age of Brexit, Trump, and virulent tribalism, the record is an antidote that encourages you to give yourself a try, give us a try.

The record has everything.  There are buzzy emo anthems ("Give Yourself a Try"), bouncy trop-pop affairs ("TOOTIME"), UK garage workouts ("How To Draw / Petrichor"), arena synth-rockers ("Love It If We Made It"), acoustic love ballads ("Be My Mistake"), jazz-fusion trips ("Sincerity is Scary"), auto-tuned torch jams ("I Like America & America Likes Me"), and '90s R&B joints ("I Couldn't Be More In Love").  Healy and his mates range across genres and find thrilling inspiration in making them their own, timely and accessible.  Had The 1975 chosen just any one of these paths, the band would have made a fantastic record, which is truly remarkable.

Much has been made of Healy quoting Kanye and Trump in "Love It If We Made It" or disclosing his past battles with drugs in "It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)."  While his writing is vulnerable and prescient, the record is more than Healy's private demons or a topical run through headline swipes.  It is ridiculously fun and enjoyable, a heady rush of uplifting melodies and in-the-pocket grooves.  "I'm making pop records," Healy said.  "When I say we're a pop band, what I'm really saying is we're not a rock band.  Please stop calling us a rock band--cause I think that's the only music we don't make."

The pop eclecticism is exhilarating.  It is clear the band is in love with a wide range of influences, unafraid to tackle them with their considerable artistic gifts.  "How to Draw / Petrichor" is "the sound of being young," a homage to the late-night dance records Healy consumed as a kid while listening to the radio at home.  "Love It If We Made It" was influenced by "killing The Blue Nile's Hats before we went on stage, listening to that record until it broke."  Stuffed with lines from Kanye, Trump, and the tabloids, the track is the best arena-rock song of the year, deftly chronicling the can-you-believe-it madness of our day.

"Be My Mistake" channels Nick Drake as Healy goes full-out singer-songwriter.  "Sincerity is Scary," a subtle screed against social media, is avante-garde jazz in the vein of Chance the Rapper.  The superb track features jazz player Roy Hargrove, who laid down the brass section for D'Angelo's Voodoo, and "the greatest musician I've ever been in a room with by a mile," according to Healy.  "I Like America & America Likes Me" apes Bon Iver's auto-tuned synth to glorious, nocturnal realms.  "It's the sound of America to me at the moment," Healy said.  "I was almost going to put it out with just mumble lyrics, to see how far I could take it."

"Mine" is a classic jazz standard inspired by the band's love of Coltrane.  "Surrounded by Heads and Bodies," a sharp retelling of Healy's time in rehab, lifts its title from the opening lines of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which Healy read because it was opened to its first page, "as most copies of Infinite Jest are."  "I Always Wanna Die Sometimes" employs strings by David Campbell, the same guy who glossed them all over the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris."  Healy hoped the cinematic closer might be the band's "I Don't Want to Miss A Thing," which is sort of awesome to admit.

Undoubtedly, The 1975's record is the sound of 2018.  Hugely entertaining, ambitious, maximalist, dizzying, sincere, the record leaves it all out there, haters be damned.

(Bonus points: best video of the year riffing on The Talking Heads' classic live concert Stop Making Sense.)

2. Golden Hour / Kacey Musgraves

On Golden Hour, the world is new and fresh and wildly alive.  We have been snapped awake to its wonders and graces.  Kacey Musgraves opens the blinds and lets light in as if seeing existence shining in things for the very first time.  Rainbows, flowers, butterflies, friends, loyalty, and love--all of it is invigorating.

Encouraged by Shelley during a family road trip to California, The D Man listened to the Nashville outsider's exquisite third album.  The payoff was immediate.  Not that there was anything to unearth--the record's radiance was brilliant enough for even the vapid Grammys to give it a nomination for Best Album of the Year.

Vivid and focused, Musgrave's songwriting is delightfully straightforward.  On "Slow Burn," the record's opening mantra, Musgraves is just fine letting the world turn slow, crackling, and hot.

'Cause I'm alright with a slow burn
Taking my time, let the world turn
I'm gonna do it my way, it'll be alright
If we burn it down and it takes all night
It's a slow burn.

On "Love is a Wild Thing," Musgraves is incapable of seeing anything but life's glorious mystery and love's peculiar magic.

Running like a river trying to find the ocean
Flowers in the concrete
Climbing over fences, blooming in the shadows
Places that you can't see
Coming through the melody when the night bird sings
Love is a wild thing

On "Oh, What a World," Musgraves continues to marvel at the glory of it all.

Northern lights in our skies
Plants that grow and open your mind
Things that swim with a neon glow
How we all got here, nobody knows

These are real things

Oh, what a world, don't wanna leave
All kinds of magic all around us, it's hard to believe
Thank God it's not too good to be true,
Oh, what a world, and then there is you.

And then there is you.  Musgraves, married last year, turns her enraptured attention to the lover by her side on "Butterflies."

Now you're lifting me up, instead of holding me down
Stealing my heart instead of stealing my crown
Untangled all the strings round my wings that were tied
I didn't know him and I didn't know me
Cloud nine was always out of reach
Now I remember what it feels like to fly
You give me butterflies

There are so many other vivid gems: "Lonely Weekend" is grand Rumours-worthy pop that embraces the bittersweet in solitude; "Space Cowboy" winks with the title pun but turns poignant and lovely; and "Happy and Sad" is up-and-down, effervescent emotion.

There is plenty of cheeky fun too: "Velvet Elvis" sings the praises of her stylish man; "Wonder Woman" empowers vulnerability in love; and "High Horse" is a country-disco kiss-off to that dude who kills the buzz every time he opens his mouth.

Musgraves' melodies are buoyant and memorable, displaying a grand sense of optimism.  Where she previously emphasized her edgy bona fides as a way of contrasting her status on the outside of Nashville's mainstream, her only aim here is to write and sing sparkling country-pop songs, which she accomplishes at every turn.  She is supported by the record's vibrant 4K production, which is spacious and delicate, as steel guitars, banjos, and acoustic guitars allow her voice to swoop and soar, unimpeded.

On the title track, Musgraves' sings "you make the world look beautiful / thought I'd seen it all before."  It perfectly sums up the dazzling way Golden Hour lights up listening by virtue of her incandescent songwriting.

3. 7 / Beach House

The D Man played "Woo" on a beachfront deck at the precise moment the summer sun disappeared below the water.  My companions were struck by the track's perfect imprint on the moment--it captured the ineffable feelings we shared at the time.  Such is the blessing and curse of Beach House.

The Baltimore duo's music really does grasp the elusive by soundtracking bliss, heartache, yearning, and wistfulness, often within the same song--it is potent, crystallized nostalgia.  But this magic can be reduced by some to a vibe, a wallpaper, a shorthand, a fleeting fancy.  Such reduction is folly, however.  Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally are masterful songwriters and musicians, and listeners can revisit their aural incantations over and over without tiring of their spells.

Beach House's seventh album confirms what we already knew: the duo is a generational talent and has created one of the defining sounds of the post-indie rock era.   Legrand's glorious voice/organ tones coupled with Scally's rippling guitars foreground a powerful dialogue between mind, body, and spirit.

7 crackles with beautiful intensity as the duo find the serrated edges and rougher textures of their shapely soundscapes.  The push and pull between their lush impulses and sharp elbows add a new dimension to their dreamy tones, wild and ecstatic.  The music roils and reverbs, electronic beats merge seamlessly with fuzzed-out guitars, and otherwordly anthems emerge, buzzy and full of romance.  Incredible tracks like "Lemon Glow," "Dive," and "Black Car" reveal new and exciting contours, resulting in hands down the best headphone listen of the year.

After creating several classics, Beach House certainly has a claim on this year's top spot.  But the more interesting angle is this: bands this far into their careers should not be making such fresh and daring records.  It almost never happens.  The fact that Legrand and Scally continue to inhabit their gorgeous worlds, their organ swirls, their shimmering guitars, and their unmistakably unique allure, well, it is worth celebrating.

4. The Horizon Just Laughed / Damien Jurado

"These things happened a long time ago," Jurado sings on arguably the year's perfect song, but his sentiments seem proximate and poignant.  "We only had ten dollars to our name / It was not enough to get us home / What was I thinking trusting you? / My family was right all along."  As he leaves, "off to Nebraska, off to Maine," he realizes Thomas Wolfe was right: "you can't go home again," wherever and whatever that place may be.

And yet, The Horizon Just Laughed sounds exactly like home.  Though a collection of "goodbye songs," as Jurado calls it, with run-ups, sendoffs, homages, and elegies, the record resounds with the crackling warmth of better days.  Rich and graceful, The Horizon Just Laughed is a fully-realized addition to the American singer-songwriter canon; where Jurado initially toiled as a lo-fi folk troubadour, over the years his arrangements have given way to a lush nostalgia powered by his velvet baritone.

The Seattle musician's 13th studio album may be his best.  He self-produced for the first time, employing a deft use of strings, piano, wurlitzer, and backing choirs.  Everything feels purposeful, nothing out of place, allowing his arrangements to accentuate his crisp lyricism and beautiful timbre.  His vivid '70s AM pop glow is deeply affecting and the perfect backdrop for his allusive storytelling, which incorporates bygone bandleaders, screenwriters, novelists, and cartoonists.

The record opens with sweeping strings on "Allocate," as he chides a former lover: "Ain't it sad to see your life not work out? / What made you think I would live in your frown / As you're waiting around for the witches to drown?  The track sounds like an old revelation discovered after hours of vinyl crate digging, immersive and enchanting.

"Percy Faith" bubbles up like a song from The Band's catalog, its chorus a blend of oohs and aahs, and its defining feature a series of wurlitzer runs.  "Marvin Kaplan" is a thousand old love songs distilled into something sparkling and new; "where the rain once fell / I lost myself / to the one I love."  As she returns, "like she always does," Jurado exults: "Someone to notice me," confirming again that love is just paying close attention.

"The Last Great Washington State" is a gorgeous reverie to his beloved home, as it gently sways into lovely little choral epiphanies.  "Over Rainbows and Rainier" is a different kind of homage, as Jurado imagines himself being carried over that active volcano when this all comes to an end.  A beautiful and forlorn ballad, he is accompanied by his traveling partner the Angel Moroni: 

I was late to the parlor
When the wind it blew forward
And demanded we get out of town
So me and Moroni took the keys to the steeple
And awaited Armageddon to go down.

The horizon might laugh because it knows we can never escape.  We can never quite get there.  We can never just fly over peaks and leave this all behind.  But these songs sure come awfully close.

5. Knock Knock / DJ Koze

Ever since DJ Koze warped my all-time favorite song into something wistful and groovy, The D Man has been paying attention, elusive as the German producer might be.  It took me at least twenty looks at Knock Knock's cover to find Stefan Kozella shapeshifting into the branches of the tree.  Figures.

DJ Koze is a trickster.  Like the wily character in a fairy tale possessing secret knowledge and using it to disobey conventional rules, DJ Koze mashes genres and bends house, garage, hip-hop, soul, and dance music in unexpected and visually-arresting ways.  He weaves strange psychedelia through his tracks, lending his production a distinctly textured and lived-in feel quite unlike anything from his peers.  The fact that he does not churn out a ton of club filler also increases the emotional heft of his material.  Notwithstanding his excellent DJ Kicks series and some worthwhile remix records, DJ Koze has only released three studio albums since 2005, each one impeccably curated.

Like 2013's Amygdala, Knock Knock is brimming with ideas and an utter sense of joy and abandon.  Each track fully inhabits its own musical world, allowing listeners to luxuriate in gloriously disparate headspaces.  Despite endless detours running almost two hours, the record's sense of cohesion is staggering.  Every listen yields up new moments worth exploring, summing to a masterstroke of contemporary electronic music.

Great guest spots include Speech's old-skool bars on the bass-n-guitar bounce of "Colors of Autumn"; Jose Gonzalez's melancholic croon on the sunny "Music On My Teeth"; Sophia Kennedy's lording command on the space-jazz of "This Is My Rock"; Roisin Murphy's down-tempo diva spin on "Scratch That"; and Kurt Wagner's laconic synth-speak to the nocturnal ticking of "Muddy Funster."  An African-American hip-hop artist, a Swedish acoustic hero, a German-based indie vocalist, an Irish singer-songwriter, and a Nashville alt-country iconoclast--DJ Koze can make heady use of them all.

DJ Koze's samples are also thrilling.  Two of the best: Justin Vernon and Gladys Knight.  It's almost cheating by sampling Bon Iver's "Calgary" on the track "Bonfire," as Vernon's falsetto lights up almost any genre.  Here, it hangs over the house like an apparition, as throbbing beats try to dispel it back to the deep of the woods.  On "Pick Up," Gladys Knight's haunting voice breaks your heart: "It's sad to think / I guess neither one of us / Wants to be the first to say / Goodbye."  Propelled by Daft Punk-style beats and filaments of lonely guitar, "Pick Up" touched the skies when DJ Koze played it at this year's Coachella, and it keeps scraping them play after play.

Timely and timeless, Knock Knock contains multitudes.

6. In Transit / The Amazing

Imagine walking down a road, deep in thought.  The weight of questions bearing down on your shoulders.  The weather turning cold and overcast.  What music would soundtrack your contemplation?  There are countless options, no doubt.  But no score is more fitting this year than The Amazing's In Transit, a dreamy and hypnotic collision of voice and guitar that beckons listeners to meditative bliss.

This Stockholm quintet is arguably the most underrated rock band from the past few years.  2016's Ambulance was spectacular.  Sometimes referred to as the Scandinavian version of Red House Painters, The Amazing take deep dives into patient, gorgeous, and mesmerizing post-rock.  The songs conjure up wistfulness almost on demand, and they produce a yearning that teeters between healing and heartache.

The soundscapes reward patience as they slowly draw listeners in with their rolling meditations. Melodic guitars intersect with a throbbing rhythm section--they rise and fall, point and bend, and shimmer through gossamer strands.  Christopher Gunrup's warm but arresting vocals tease out phrases and hold them until he almost breaks.  When the mix washes over his voice, it becomes merely another instrument, lending an air of the inscrutable.

Subtle climaxes emerge on "Pull" as tidal guitars swell, swirl, and recede.  Gunrup sings about entangled lives that can never come undone.  "I heard from others, it's the way you pull / Like a funeral song gone wrong / But anyway, it's better than this sleepwalking."  On "Voices Sound," the band softly employs reverb for sparkling shoegaze passages, while "Rewind" manages to sound spacey and pastoral at the same time. 

The drifting psych-pop is indelible, but there are elements of Laurel Canyon folk-rock hidden just beneath the surface of the band's electricity.  Cases in point: "For No One" starts with lovely Kozelek-style fingerpicking and then finishes amid spectral echoes, while "Leave Us A Light" sounds like a stellar missing track from April.

The Amazing's songs reach for hard-earned majesty--an opening at the end of the trail, a break in the clouds, a light in the distance.  Though In Transit often evokes a strong sense of nostalgia, the music also creates an enveloping sense of the present moment.

7. Honey / Robyn

The D Man is no expert in the European club scene.  But I have a thriving imagination.  So I'm not going out on a limb by stating this: nothing radiated on the dance floor quite like Honey, easily the best pure pop album of 2018.  After an eight-year absence from the Swedish pop star, and her generally private persona lending an additional air of mystery and anticipation, Honey was a welcome respite from the everyday, and a sophisticated response to the current glut of monotonous or overproduced club jams.

Forty minutes long, Honey is a lean pop opus, stripped of filler and packed with desire, heartache, and groove.  Though Robyn's house-influenced synth pop is spacey and understated, it is inclusive, inviting, and ultimately invigorating.  Highlights include the comeback single "Missing U," the ridiculously sensuous "Honey," the synth and string "Because It's in the Music," the nocturnal pleading "Baby Forgive Me," and the redemptive kiss-off "Ever Again."

Robyn taps into human emotion, urgent and primal, and casts a spell with the simple euphoria of pitch-perfect dance music.

8. Bottle It In / Kurt Vile

Kurt Vile's badassery knows no bounds.  "I park for free!" he exults during the chorus of "Loading Zones," the fantastic opener on Bottle It In.  Even when he runs errands, Vile is much cooler than you.

Get my shoppin' done, laundry too
Drop some dead weight, clean my hands of what I need to clean my hands of
And all for free by mayoral decree
All from zone to loading zone of my town, yeah

Like past efforts, Bottle It In is all vibes, a persona, a feeling, a way of living.  Blissed-out, chilled-out, suburban guitar wizardry.

A relentless search for the groove, Vile's run of superb records continues: the chill-inducing warmth of Smoke Ring for My Halo, the sprawling guitar manifestos of Wakin on a Pretty Daze, and the golden nocturnal tones of B'lieve I'm Going Down all filter into his latest effort, though he largely leaves behind any sense of thematic cohesion on his eighth studio album.  Clocking in at one hour and nineteen minutes, the record is easily the Philly native's most meandering to date; the tracks run the gamut from shimmering folk-rock to laid-back country to spacey psych workouts.  Unhurried and relaxed has always been his calling card, but this record finds new territory for his off-beat, non-chalant take on the ups and downs of life, family, and career.

One way of describing a vile record is to try and describe what his guitar is doing on each track.  Here, you have skittering, stop-and-go, joint acoustic/electric Vile ("Yeah Bones"), you have lush and languid Vile ("Hysteria"), you have pretty rolling from sunset to dawn Vile ("Bassackwards"), you have golden country ringing twang Vile ("Rollin with the Flow"), you have 90s alt-rock crunch Vile ("Check Baby"), you have winding, fingerpicking, feedback Vile ("Mutinies"), or reflective, slow-build, simple strum pattern turn into little squalls Vile ("Skinny Mini").  His distinctive but diverse style is still a driving force as he squeezes out disparate moods and finds new ways of communicating with a guitar in his hands.

The first side of the record is packed with the tightest or most accessible cuts, while the second side gives way to the strangest and darkest doodles of his career (see the title track and "Cold Was the Wind").  The album lynchpin may be track number four, "Bassackwards," a glorious, nearly ten-minute ode to the ineffable.  Though he cannot find the words in the moment, his lyrics are transportive and his guitar/keyboard immersive.  It is another Vile totem, beautiful and effortless, his hazy introspection capturing the elusive, another night stretched out until the sun is reborn.

Other highlights include the ebullient "One Trick Ponies" ("Loved them all through many a lifetime / Some are gone but some still strong / Some are weird as hell but we love'em / Some are one trick ponies but we embrace'em"), the Charlie Rich cover "Rollin with the Flow" ("Some might be callin' me a bum / But I'm still out there having fun / And Jesus loves me, yes, I know / So, I keep on rolling with the flow"), and the anthem to anxiety "Mutinies" ("The mutinies in my head keep staying / I take pills and pills to try and make'em go away / Small computer in my hand explodin' / I think things were way easier with a regular telephone").

Finding a unique voice and singular approach to playing the guitar is almost impossible to do.  Taking strains from 80s heartland rock, alt-rock, slacker rock, folk-rock, and country, Vile has long ago reached the status of a true original.  Bottle It In is just the latest example.

9. Souls & All Becomes Okay / Shallou

Buoyant and life affirming, Shallou's two EPs, Souls and All Becomes Okay, found constant spins during my drives and bike rides.  The mid-tempo electro-pop soothed my spirit with its enveloping warmth and aim for the transcendent.  Love, trust, hope, and new beginnings waft over Los Angeles-based Joe Boston's ethereal creations.  His sleight but soulful voice sets him apart from most producers who rarely make personal appearances on their own tracks.

After throwing "Begin" into the middle of my beach side playlist, it proved to be the moment in the mix.  Rizzo popped his head up as the song's glorious groove wound down.  "What is that?" he asked.  "That was nice."  Indeed, it was.  So it begs the question: can music this nice be aesthetically compelling?  Can it be more than feel-good wallpaper?  Can it persist?

As I returned to Shallou over and over, such questions lost relevance because the cinematic optimism continually rendered my doubt obsolete.  Call it ambient, chillwave, EDM-lite, it doesn't really matter.  It seeps into your feels and delivers.  When the gorgeous opening notes of tracks like "Last Day" and "Love" tease into swelling, locked-in rhythms, something special happens, and it is a place you want to visit, repeatedly.

10. In The Rainbow Rain / Okkervil River

On album opener "Famous Tracheotomies," with washes of sunny keyboards and guitars, Will Sheff shares the pain of his childhood procedure with the likes of Gary Coleman, Mary Wells, Dylan Thomas, and Ray Davies.

When I had my tracheotomy
I was blue and had stopped breathing
There was something wrong with me
Doctors cut through the cartilage and skin
At the bottom of my throat
And then they snaked that trach tube in

As the track progresses and each famous person's trach trial is revealed, a peculiar kinship is formed that is strangely touching, culminating in the magic of the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset."  Not the typical way to start an album, but this is Sheff with a pen and mic in his hand, after all, his unique prose finding inspiration in unlikely subjects.

On 2005's phenomenal Black Sheep Boy, the Austin singer-songwriter moved in and out of anger and despondency, as if he had just arrived from driving all night from El Paso.  The music reflected this southwestern trek, replete with border trumpets and picked-over strings, and the songs hung together like strange fairy tales hatched in a desert field or poured in the back of a lonely cantina.

Less ragged and spare than its melancholy predecessor, 2007's The Stage Names was full-bodied roots rock, wildly alive, brooding, and majestic.  After some uneven but never boring records, 2016's Away emerged as Sheff's best record in years, arguably the prettiest collection of songs among his band's roughhewn poetry.

In the Rainbow Rain is Sheff's most joyful record to date.  Lush, warm, and catchy, songs are packed with vibrant choruses, horns, and guitars, allowing Sheff to dispense soul-affirming wisdom with jaunty purpose.  His wry judgment is still intact, but he leaves behind much of the skewering self-doubt from past affairs.  The music courses with wide-eyed empathy.

"Don't Move Back to L.A." is the obvious single as it hops along with Sheff's warning to a friend.  "Those west coast cats / They're going to chew you up and spit you out / They're going to waste your time and watch you drown."  Avoid the concrete jungle, he urges, and stay home and get healthy.  As Sheff played this song in concert during the summer, he sounded like a righteous folk preacher having a whale of a time.

"The Dream and the Light" and "Pulled up the Ribbon" are pulsing roots rock.  Cascading keys, twisting guitars, and backing choirs throttle the songs into heady climaxes, adding two more off-kilter rockers to the band's formidable canon.

But the record's beating heart is its sincerity.  "Love Somebody" is mid-tempo electro-pop with a simple message: if you're going to love somebody, you've got to lose some pride.  Though potentially sappy, Sheff rescues the narrative with his conviction and the music's effervescence.  "Family Song" is a glowing ballad with poignant messages to cousins, sisters, lovers, and enemies.  "You're alive, I'm alive," Sheff sings as the song fades into beauty.  "How It Is" is gospel instruction set to programmed beats and swelling horns:

You can't let yourself be selfish
You can't let yourself be sold
You gotta let your brother in from out the cold

You can't let your heart get tired
You can't let your head get told
You gotta let the outcast back into the fold

You know that's how it is now
You know you know I'm right now
That's how it is

After turning 40, Sheff seems confident, hopeful, and resilient.  Okkervil River has always been his show, especially as band members have come and gone and the indie-rock scene has ebbed and waned.  After more than twenty years in the business, Sheff's songwriting is teeming with life.

The D Man's Top Twenty (er, Ten) Albums of 2018

2018 was a lean year.  Arguably the weakest output of great new music from the past decade.  Vampire Weekend pushed its anticipated release to 2019.  Timberlake tumbled.  Kanye fizzled.  Big-ticket hip-hop releases felt bloated and overrated.  For long stretches, I kept waiting for a record to truly capture my aesthetic imagination.  It happened only a handful of times.

Weighing and considering is always relative.  We work with what we are given.  While I enjoyed records from Wild Nothing, Rhye, Snail Mail, Hater, Let's Eat Grandma and reliable veterans like Josh Rouse, Gorillaz, Arctic Monkeys, and Death Cab, none of them moved me enough to get over my recent writing slumber.

The records on this year's list, though undeniably excellent, would have had a difficult time cracking the top five from the past few years.  There is no Deeper Understanding, A Moon Shaped Pool, or Carrie & Lowell, let alone recent brilliant efforts from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Slowdive, Chance the Rapper, Nick Cave, Bon Iver, Jamie xx, or Tame Impala.

Another note: the oft-peddled idea that hard-hitting or better music is made during GOP administrations is tired and lazy criticism.  There was no truly exciting or polarizing album this year inspired by our soulless regime.  As I've griped before, too much is made of the political landscape in which a certain song or album is created.  Reviews filled with tag-lines such as the Reagan years are all too common and usually misleading or meaningless.  With the usual suspects writing most of the criticism, there is rarely a hard look at the Establishment, and music's reaction to or interplay with it, when their guy is in office.  So they reach and overstate.  They exaggerate influences.  They bend narratives to reach their own conclusions.  They would have us believe that during certain four and eight-year stretches, music with a powerful political bent all but disappears.  Then again, Jimmy Carter did bring us disco, so maybe that is exactly what happens.

The point is this: national politics rarely make for great music.  The local and personal almost always trumps.  And the best musicians flourish under any sitting president--independent, striking, and never driven by special interests.