1. James Bay - Electric Light
Electric Light opens with an awkward scripted interlude where James Bay breaks up with a girl, and ends with a reading of an Allen Ginsberg poem. But in between those slightly pretentious bookends is one of the best pop records of the year, beautifully sung and deeply felt but a lot more varied and ambitious than I would've expected from the good but slightly anonymous hit from his debut, "Let It Go." I've enjoyed plenty of Paul Epworth productions before, but the sound of this record is really unique and surprising, with all these cluttered and fuzzed textures jumping in and out of the mix at just the right moments, these unruly songs like "Sugar Drunk High" and "I Found You" that tumble and swirl around in unexpected directions, I feel like it picks up a bit where The 1975's last album left off. All the albums I've been listening to this year are in this 2018 albums playlist. 

2. Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois - Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois
This is the kind of inspired pairing that I instantly pulled up the album and started listening to it as soon as I heard about it, even though there's a lot of Daniel Lanois solo records I haven't heard and I just have a faintly positive impression of Venetian Snares from hearing a little of his stuff in the early 2000s. But the idea of an intergenerational collaboration like this, of the distinctive and beautiful pedal steel guitar of Lanois over the spastic and unpredictable electronics of Venetian Snares, it really makes for a great combination.

3. Rae Sremmurd - SR3MM
The idea of Rae Sremmurd bundling their third album together with solo albums by both members was a clever way to appease the rising demand for a Swae Lee solo record while still benefiting the whole group and keeping Slim Jxmmi on equal footing. But I feel like Swae Lee's disc of the album falls short of both its potential and the rest of the project, it just feels underproduced and underwritten (incidentally, Mike Will Made It worked on just one track out of 9 on Swaecation versus 6 each on the group disc and Jxmtro -- never underestimate Rae Sremmurd's chemistry with Mike Will as a key to their success). Taken as one big 27-song album, though, the whole thing hangs together really well, even as a triple album it's actually shorter and more consistent than the overlong Migos record from earlier this year.

4. Parliament - Medicaid Fraud Dogg
The Parliament and Funkadelic discographies are incredible and though it's been decades since they did much of note besides influence and get sampled by more great records, it's great to see George Clinton get in the studio and turn out the longest album of his career, 107 minutes of cantakerous and opinionated funk that tackle the problems of American healthcare as ambitiously and lucidly as any of his political records of the past. P-Funk's peak is 40 years in the rearview, and whoever's in the group right now can't capture the sound of the late Bernie Worrell, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good and subtly contemporary this sounds for most of its sprawl.

5. Tee Grizzley - Activated
It's easy to position Tee Grizzley in contrast to other new rap stars in terms of him being the relatively grizzled (no pun intended) midwesterner with a heavy bay area influence who writes a little differently than the many colored dreads southerners in his peer group. But he established some chemistry with Lil Yachty on last year's "From the D to the A" that's repeated on two new collaborations on Activated, which also has a goofy Lil Pump feature and a pair of Chris Brown features to help Tee Grizzley seem more accessible. For the most part, though, Activated plays to his strengths, with "First Day Out" producer Helluva handling a lot of the tracks, so it's a good balance.

6. Gaz Coombes - World's Strongest Man
I have a lot of affection for Supergrass's In It For Money and even though I haven't really kept up with much of the band's output since then or the subsequent solo career of Gaz Coombes, I generally assumed he kept making excellent music, which judging from this album, he has. Maybe it only occurs to me because I've listened to a lot of Sloan lately, but what both they and Coombes have in common is that they are among the few contemporary acts really overtly influenced by The Beatles that I like, perhaps because they seem to get that elusive balance of craft and whimsy.

7. Charlie Puth - Voicenotes
I often congratulate myself for being open-minded enough to admit when an artist I haven't liked and don't particularly want to like has made a good record, and Charlie Puth's "Attention" was a strong example of that. The companion album released over a year later doesn't feel exactly like a revelation because "Attention" is still the best song on it, but I appreciate that Puth is proud of his mild Top 40 lineage and collaborates with Boyz II Men and James Taylor.

8. Lil Baby - Harder Than Ever
There's an interesting moment on Lil Baby's new album where his most obvious influence, Young Thug, shows up on "Right Now" and says something kind of frank about his recent output: "My last two years were the worst ones in my career but I'm still as rich as you." Now that it feels like Thug has already peaked creatively, a lot of fans are already angling to replace him with his suddenly numerous prominent acolytes, including Lil Baby, Gunna, and SahBabii. I think that's a little misguided, though; these guys are all their own men to varying degrees, and Lil Baby has his own more punchline-driven style and also has a bit of a YFN Lucci sound to his whiny melodic flow, and Harder Than Ever is really solid, better than I expected it to be, good production from front to back. 

9. Styles P - G-Host 
There are a lot of grizzled east coast rappers still making hard music, but one of the guys I've found it the most rewarding to actually continue paying attention to is Styles P, who is now vegan and runs a juice bar and still makes ice cold bangers. This record is good, "Wait Your Turn B" and "Different Shit" are early standouts for me. 

10. DJ Jazzy Jeff - M3
Rhymefest has kind of been in the news for things that don't have a lot to do with music lately, but I feel like he's always deserved more respect. Blue Collar was one of the best albums to come from any of the guys in Kanye's orbit, and Rhymefest probably had more to do with Kanye's early records than any of them. So I was happy to see that Rhymefest raps on nearly every track on DJ Jazzy Jeff's new album, which is kind of appropriate since Jeff is another talented guy who's kind of lived his life in the shadow of the superstar he came up with. This is a really enjoyable, relaxed record, lot of variety in the production, although I'm not too into the other MCs who are on it a lot besides Rhymefest. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

I never took Arctic Monkeys too seriously when they were a big deal in the UK and kind of a niche concern in the US, but their last album that belatedly broke them in the states had some jams, I don't begrudge them their success. I was surprised that they were willing to toy with the formula enough at this point in their career, but I can't respect the risk that much when the results are this bad. The combination of the weird loungey music and the more overtly audible influence in Alex Turner's new vocal style makes this sound less like a David Bowie record and more like 'if Vegas had Bowie impersonators instead of Elvis impersonators. 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 01, 2018 at 11:47 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.