10. Kamasi Washington

Heaven and Earth

(Young Turks)

I often ponder: What would the titans of jazz from years past make of Kamasi Washington? And furthermore, would it be possible for Washington to create such dense, compositionally intricate jazz without those aforementioned forefathers? Possibly not, but how will we ever know? Heaven and Earth, the bandleader’s fourth album, is a breakthrough document of modern jazz that seamlessly incorporates a stunning blend of Afro-futurism with elements of contemporary jazz. And, regardless of influence, Washington proves himself to be one of the finest bandleaders and jazz artists of the 21st century. Every minute of Heaven and Earth sounds like a celebration of the music that came before it and the music that will come thereafter. Long live Kamasi Washington. – Timothy Michalik

9. Sons of Kemet

Your Queen is a Reptile

(Impulse!)

Goddamn, “relentless” is a fucking understatement to describe this album. The flagship band of young London jazz lion Shabaka Hutchings drench their third LP in compositional energy and historical anger. It’s a series of gleefully rude musical gestures directed at imperialism and its spectres of racism, sexism, and classism. His unique lineup—his sax and clarinet backed by tuba and two drummers—pulls performance elements from Afro-Caribbean dance forms and Continental avant-garde ensembles to make jazz with an ecstatic politicized bent lost since Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, and Charlie Haden. Walk away from this music for a few days, I bet it will still ring in your ears. – Adam Blyweiss

8. Nine Inch Nails

Bad Witch

(The Null Corporation)

Bad Witch is carefully crafted for addictive unsettlement: An initial listen to the ninth Nine Inch Nails studio album creates enticement with the scorching apocalypse-rock of the two opening tracks, “Shit Mirror” and “Ahead of Ourselves,” both of which feature barnburning shout-along choruses. But the bottom drops out immediately afterward, and no light returns aside for a few scattered moments of beauty in “Over and Out.” Yet you keep coming back to the record. It’s the gruesome horror-film scene you rewind when no one’s home to question your behavior.

About half of Bad Witch’s 30 minutes are instrumental (two entire songs, plus the lion’s share of “Out”), precisely because the expressiveness Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross create with machines is every bit as communicative as Reznor’s words. The specifics of Bad Witch’s story—the realization that, having grossly failed on a civilization-wide scale, we now exist in a simulated alternate reality, through which signs of our actual wretched world occasionally intrude—are intriguing, paying off hints from ADD VIOLENCE and Not the Actual Events as this thematic trilogy comes to a close. But they’re not essential to appreciate the record’s channeling of industrial, jazz, rock and ambient electronic into a blend unlike any other NIN work.

The conclusions Bad Witch draws about human society are not encouraging, and, in many ways, incisive in a manner that Reznor’s angst hasn’t always been; he’s only improved as a lyricist with time. The more substantive nature of his observations hammers home their ugly truths: we are walking a hideous and ignorant path, horrors beyond our imagining are on the horizon if we continue, and societally, we may well deserve to fail. – Liam Green

7. Emma Ruth Rundle

On Dark Horses

(Sargent House)

Rock music’s on dialysis, waiting for a new liver or wheezing up blood, or so the tired, familiar retorts go. But guitars had a pretty good year, creativity-wise, and nobody’s guitars sounded more stunning than Emma Ruth Rundle’s. The singer/songwriter’s fourth album is at once her heaviest and prettiest, with a wall of sound and traces of unexpected optimism built up since her heartbreaking 2016 album Marked For Death. She knocks out rock anthems (“Dead Set Eyes”). She crafts epic, inspirational shoegaze (“Darkhorse”) and finds a new, impressive foil in life/musical partner Evan Patterson of Jaye Jayle and Young Widows. On Dark Horses is an album that shows its scars and doesn’t sugarcoat the darkness, but it’s also always reaching toward something brighter and bigger. – Jeff Terich

6. Low

Double Negative

(Sub Pop)

A haunted record within a haunted discography. Low have taken their methodic and sparse art-rock and allowed it to disintegrate almost entirely thanks to the integration of ambient synths and loops. Their first foray into this style, Ones and Sixes, was a promising but incomplete sketch of how to incorporate electronics into the core of their sound, a problem they seem to have solved on Double Negative. They are a group that works well on the tender, painful edge between the fleeting brightness of joy and the terrible swallowing darkness that surrounds it, a balance they maintain beautifully here. The songs feel like the wheezing of a hospice patient on through a breathing apparatus, gorgeous and painful, saddening not by explicit sorrow but by juxtaposition, tenderness, fragility. It is this last element, the fragile, that dominates this album, pairing it keenly against other records such as Hospice by The Antlers or the last Sufjan Stevens record, positioning it comfortably within that masterclass of uneasy, unearthly post-gospel mortal beauty. – Langdon Hickman

5. Deafheaven

Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

(Anti-)

Deafheaven simply refuse any attempt at categorization. Melancholy, but not prone to the same depressive annihilation that gripped their prior endeavors, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love feels at ease with itself. Tracks like “Glint” feel exceptionally strong, with George Clarke’s vocals feeling immense while the band writes some of the most affecting melodies in their career. “Night People” breaks new ground entirely as a moody clean-vocals-only duet with Chelsea Wolfe that feels arresting. Vulnerable and transcendent, Deafheaven’s stride toward searing, intimate lyrical revelations encapsulated in demanding and at-times ruthless posturing has reached new heights of expression, and a tempered depression that feels confident, adventurous and free.- Brian Roesler

4. Noname

Room 25

(Self-released)

The self-professed “lullaby rapper” Noname may have sold herself short, and quite a bit at that. Room 25, Noname’s incredible, slick, and complex debut album, is a masterwork of hushed, artsy hip-hop that relies on occasionally jumpy, jazz-influenced compositions. But Chicago’s Noname is a lyricist first, and that is quickly proven on Room 25. Noname’s witty observations and deeply articulated prose is felt within the first bars of Room 25’s opening track, “Self”: “Fucked your rapper homie, now his ass is making better music / My pussy teachin’ ninth-grade English / My pussy wrote a thesis on colonialism / In conversation with a marginal system in love with Jesus.” Noname has nothing to prove, as just about everything she touches turns to absolute gold, but Room 25 reflects an artist in a position that can’t help but constantly prove how much of a wordsmith she really is, slam-poetics matched with dense production. Noname says it best herself: “And y’all still thought a bitch couldn’t rap huh?” – Timothy Michalik

3. Beach House

7

(Sub Pop)

2018 saw Beach House get back on track. After their largely underwhelming double header of LPs in 2015 and their b-sides compilation that followed, it was time for action. For one, they opted not to work with longtime producer Chris Coady, with psych guru Sonic Boom drafted in to assist in his stead. Out too went their customary whirlwind recording process, with the duo choosing to allow time for passions and inspirations to formulate. What results is their most cohesive and enjoyable release since Teen Dream, a suite of shimmering, underwater pop bliss with a delicious aftertaste of experimental freedom to remind us why Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally have been such big movers in 2010s alternative music. They have their mojo back and the 2020s better watch out. – Max Pilley

2. Pusha T

DAYTONA

(Def Jam)

The third studio album by Pusha T—the erstwhile “Grand Wizard of the almighty blizzard”—is a lot like life: “nasty, brutish, and short.” At its core, DAYTONA is just 20 concise minutes of polished rhymes over mean, ugly beat-breaks, and it works because of that simplicity, and because of Pusha’s commitment to concept and character. Pusha’s almost like a great crime novelist at this point, and he’s turned himself into this grand, mythologically bloodthirsty drug dealer just on the strength of vignettes and images: He was there “when Big Meech brought the tigers in,” he’s “the pot calling the kettle black / where there’s no brake pedals at.” Listening to this record is like checking in on a supervillain comic book series to see that they’re still doing supervillain shit. On top of that, DAYTONA is the only musically coherent project that Kanye had a hand in this year, a collection of pseudo-psychedelic samples and hard drums that cohere into a perfectly druggy complement for Pusha’s precision. A month before DAYTONA came out, a fan on Twitter joked that Pusha would still be “rapping about moving kilos” on the new record; Pusha replied, “Indeed I am.” Long may it continue. – Ben Dickerson

1. Mitski

Be the Cowboy

(Dead Oceans)

Be the Cowboy is an intensely disciplined album. There’s not a track on it longer than four minutes, with most hovering between 90 and 150 seconds long. What Mitski is able to accomplish in those short spans of time—the angry spiral of “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?” or the loopy, fading singsong of “Blue Light”—is often stunning, and that’s without getting into her lyrics. It’s a mistake to consider the album as entirely autobiographical (it’s not), but a recurring theme is the cost of such discipline. On “Geyser,” she presents her music career as a priority that makes her “(turn) down / every hand that has beckoned me to come,” and she contends with that sense of loneliness on “Nobody,” an upbeat, catchy track documenting a bout of loneliness brought on by touring life. Her character portraits are similarly compelling, particularly on tracks like “Lonesome Love,” the portrait of someone who can’t bring herself to let go of an emotionally distant partner. “‘Cause nobody butters me up like you / And nobody fucks me like me,” she sings, a wry contender for lyric of the year. That sense of economy extends throughout the entire album. There’s not a wasted word, a note out of place. If such discipline has a high personal cost, at least it can also yield one incredible album. – Sam Prickett