2018 Keepers

In 2018, instrumental music largely won out. Maybe there were too many words or maybe the need for words evaporated at times. Maybe I just didn't want words most days. If you still read this page, you know I do this list every year, so there's not point in running through the also-rans for 2018. There were many, but in most cases, the words didn't speak to me.

David Byrne, American Utopia
Byrne seems to make this list once a decade, and this positive set showed his lyric-writing chops in top form. Every Day is a Miracle is relentlessly upbeat and even the hardest case will inevitably succumb to its sunniness. Everybody’s Coming to My House is a study of contradictions, as Byrne emphasizes the positive in his lyrics, the inherent sadness in his tone makes the narrator feel as if they don’t quite believe what he/she is saying. Plus, it is hard to beat the line, “We’re only tourists in this life, we’re only tourists but the view is nice.” I can only complain about the sequencing of the album – it closes with the beautiful track Here, a song with which Byrne opens some concerts. Here is pure Byrne – focused and incisive, with an infectious beat attached to every verse.

Dave Grohl, Play
I’ll never put a Foot Fighters record on this list again but I couldn’t escape the gravity of a 23-minute instrumental where Grohl plays all the instruments, including timpani. The last time Grohl played every instrument on a record, it turned out pretty well (see Foo Fighters, self-titled). Play feels like more than an extended jam and while elements of Grohl’s regular band are present, he conjures this music from somewhere else. Several moments on the latter half recall the title track from Metallica’s …. And Justice for All, but Grohl quickly moves in new directions. It might amount to a curiosity, a jam few will ever hear, but it's a curiosity worth many spins.

Helena Hauff, Qualm
I’ve gotten more into electronic music and DJs. I picked this one at random and found myself swept away by its sense of mood and the ability to extract feeling from a minimum of synthesizer notes. By the time Qualm hits its sublime closing track, It was all Fields Around Here When I was a Kid, Hauff uses minimal bleeps and beats to craft a sonic landscape not soon forgotten.

Kim Kashkashian, J.S. Bach: Six Suites for Solo Viola
Admit it, the violist's name threw you - her reinpretation of the greatest series of solo works in classical music will throw you as well. Bach’s cello suits are the 300-year-old music that keep on giving. While I love the warmth and technical accuracy of one of Janos Starker’s later recordings of the cello suites, almost every interpretation finds new life in these magnificent works. Kashkashian takes a new spin by playing all six suites on viola, which some assert is closer to the instrument they would have been played on in Bach’s time. The famous opening to the first suite is almost unrecognizable at the speed Kashkashian plays. But the six suites are freshened as she guides us through them.

Also worth noting, cellist Yo-Yo Ma recorded the six suites again in 2018, the third and final time he plays to commit them to tape.

Khruganbin, Con Todo el Mundo
This Houston band plays instrumental music like no one else and every song on this album is infectious. Elements of surf rock, popular music from half a world a away, jazz and other genres ebb and flow. At moments it's familiar, then the musicians pull away the rug and take a stylistic turn that still feels organic.

Sleep, The Sciences
Leagues Beneath single
While the doom-metal trio has reunited for a series of tours, I never expected new music from Sleep, not with Al Cisneros rumbling away in Om and Matt Pike in High on Fire. But here I am, relishing in a six-song, 53-minute slab of Sleep that fits neatly on the shelf next to Sleep’s Holy Mountain and Dopesmoker (as well as its truncated 1990s version, Jerusalem). If Sleep is not already your thing, The Sciences won’t sway you. But few stoner metal bands can watch their grooves and lengthy riffing. The band’s creative streak continued with Leagues Beneath, part of Adult Swim’s single series. With Sleep, a single is a different animal. Leagues Beneath is another 16-minute slab of slow, mammoth riffs. Just try to find something heavier than The Botanist, which closes The Sciences. But like the best of Sleep’s music, heaviness produces music depths perfect for along road trip.

Moses Sumney, Aromanticism
This came out in September 2017, but I was glad to encounter Sumney's sublime voice in 2018. The music is dreamy, almost magical, perfectly suiting his pristine tones.It's music for the end of a lonely, the biggest compliment I can give.

Colter Wall, Songs of the Plains
Holy hell, does this young man have a voice lower than the deepest canyon. The songs aren’t bad either. The dry, sparse production suits Wall’s voice to a tee. He sounds like he has dredged notes from the bottom of dry canyons, and the music abets him the entire time. I dare you to tell the different between Wall’s original tunes and the cover songs – his song Wild Bill Hickock should have been written 140 years ago.

Best reissues:
The Kinks, Village Green Preservation Society
Finally. How many years have I searched for a used copy of this record? Produced when Kinks had a U.S. boycott, the album that essentially formed Brit-pop (Seriously, show me a British band from the late 90s that doesn’t feel this influence) is one I always wanted in my collection. I might like Arthur and some compilations better, but Village Green has many songs that are beyond reproach.

Bob Dylan, Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks 
Bootleg series followers knew Dylan would arrive here arrive eventually, covering the alternate version of Blood on the Tracks frequently bootlegged as Blood on the Tapes. All the tracks on the LP version are the best in show, with alternate track of non-album cut Up to Me rounding out the selections. The other tracks show an album that branched on two evolutionary paths, while validating the artist’s choice in sticking with the stronger branch.