So why do I start at 2018? (chronologically, but not in terms of pages writing….). It just happened to be the time I started to open up again a little more (2017 Christmas seemed better etc. riding a wave, felt being myself again more), and one day I checked the NME website for music reviews, listened to The Aces’ Stuck, and I thought ‘this is cool, I like this’. So after years in the musical wilderness/shunning new music, I started buying music again, based on reviews and previews. Sometimes getting it wrong, but I just enjoyed things, and maybe different things. Progressively got into more pop vibes and ethereal sounds. I was always eclectic in taste, but yeah kind of less rock/indie rock though I like some of it. And I missed pop, stuff that made me dance. All the years reviews will hopefully tell you, through album and tunes, that I just like something that touches me, either my soul or physically makes me want to dance. I may also repeat some stuff. Sure it’s kind of blog-ish in every page as in some kind of journal/autobiographic pieces without it being a book. Maybe it’s the lazy way, right now I’m starting to get ideas of a lot of things/themes to write about….which kind of feels like writing small bits of a book. And I always liked writing……….(but I don’t want it to be my life…I need and love people….I used to be shy and not trusting myself with people, but I’ve grown more and more into that, despite some setbacks and now I only truly like real-life communication, people I can see/talk to and feel, and I find online communication to be mostly frustration….used to be good at it, maybe I can still be….but now I’ve seen the range of manipulation….as I told someone….it’s not my thing….and losing some people annoys me….). Anyway. Back to 2018.
I think 2018 was mostly about going to see my Dad, I took the train and that was around that time I started with the music listening again, new tunes, and that train trip (also on the way back my first 2h Bordeaux-Paris (from Carcassonne), amazingly quick….my enduring memory of a train trip from Bordeaux in my youth was a crowded train and I was near a door and spent the whole journey opening the door for people and observing their reactions from the grumpy, to the pleasantly surprised and the positively grateful….guess I’ve always been an observer of human nature…but now I feel I just want to live that life, more than ever). See, I dither, but yes that trip I will always associate with music. So it was a positive year, though I don’t remember any marking event. What? Oh yeah, the Cure at Hyde Park. Some proper shit happened that day in terms of attempted manipulation to try and set me up perhaps for a fall? Very odd end to the evening…but I don’t think I can’t write about it here, maybe it was the start of the end, when I realised something was very very wrong….not just with me.
Riiight, so, to the music released in 2018 (remember I use year of release for this page, but some tracks as I was getting back into it were from before, and also some 2018 music mentioned below might be stuff I encountered a little later actually). Although…hmmm because of the year it was, I might include the older tracks here, especially as I think I don’t have that many from 2018 and I was catching up a bit on things from the previous years. I think my mistake was to make my first ‘best of year’ playlists grouped by two years so there’s a blur about what was listened to in 2018 or in 2019. Not that it matters that much, at the end of the day, I’m sharing tunes I really love and played the most those years.
Also reminder: in general, for the philosophy/selection criteria/order of play, refer to the 2021 page because it was the first…and I shouldn’t repeat myself, though sometimes I do.
The Aces: Stuck. I can really only start here, because this was the new beginning. The story is above really, so I won’t repeat how I came across it. Haven’t had a chance to see them live as the concert in 2022 got not just postponed but cancelled. Maybe next tour as I think they’ve got a third album out in 2023. That first album was great by the way, not just that tune, there’s a few other very good ones.
Middle Kids: Mistake. Another one associated with that time/train trip. But I listened to it many other times later too. And another good album there too.
Everything Everything: Breadwinner. Something a little different and from an EP. I like the delivery on this. They’re a bit hit and miss but I liked and listened to that song a fair bit.
Metric: The Art of Doubt. Probably not their best album, but still a good one from one of my favourite bands. Was a toss up for selection between this song or Now or Never Now (which has a video, but I’ll let you go to it, I can’t do ALL the work for you :-)). Also, while you’re at it, check 2015’s excellent Pagan in Vegas that I revisited when Art of Doubt was released, so it’s 2018 too for me :-). Plenty of great tunes there, check out Celebrate for instance. Or For Kicks, even better (has a little Cure-ish guitar lick in there, I just like that particular guitar sound an enormous lot, just a little echo/reverb on a simple guitar motif).
The Raveonettes: Ghost. A one-off single from another one of my favourite bands, this haunting tracks stayed with me a lot of times. Just the kind of atmospheres I like. This shot straight to being one of my favourite songs of theirs. In the same vein, from 2016 Atomized (released in 2017), check PENDEJO, which I listened to a lot around that time too.
Say Lou Lou: Phantoms. Same kind of vibes (possibly not, but closely associated for me, that kind of dreamy music that makes me want to float in space and dream away…or maybe it’s just the Ghost/Phantoms obvious link :-)). Nice little album and this song I just truly love. Also made me check their previous work, so again a case of ‘2018’, check Everything We Touch and Glitter from 2015’s Lucid Dreaming, both superb tunes.
CHVRCHES: Get Out. Not sure if I’m lowering the standards here, this tune was probably less present in my year. Not associated with anything special, but kind of fits with the atmosphere and possibly the only standout from that year’s album. Listening to it, yes I still love it.
Ash : Confessions in the Pool. An Ash album is always anticipated, but it’s fair to say this isn’t the best and their creative peak is probably in the past. Still, there’s always a few good tunes in there. This swinging tune is good, check also Is It True? I was actually going to select this one, but a) it doesn’t have a video (though the video slightly disrupts the music in here, an audio YT is also available for CITP), b) I am trying to sometimes remember the focus of this page (sure as usual for me, I drift away….stream of consciousness etc.), and Confessions in the Pool I more immediately hit on, in a kind of dancing mood it made me feel, so it feels a little more personal.
Johnny Marr: Hey Angel. I started investigating Johnny Marr as a solo artist only with this, oddly. Very good song/guitar work off an excellent album. Check also Rise.
You Me At Six: Straight to my head. First encounter with them (quite a few years into their career as it turned out), I liked the album that year, with a couple of favourite songs. Check also Danger.
Now for the ‘cheating’ bits. First, some 2018 tracks I discovered only later (meaning they could be included in later lists, but as these are longer…I think….not counting….and does it matter, it’s still great music I want to share):
Blood Red Shoes: God Complex. Found this following the gig in 2022. Great little one-off single. Check also their album Get Tragic from that year, couple of good ones there (notably the opener Eye To Eye), I got that one in 2022 too, though on release, before the gig.
AURORA: Churchyard. Another one from a 2022 concert. From her ‘Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1)’ album. Somehow I remember the blue lighting in the gig and that it was the first song I’d not heard before that I really liked.
Liela Moss : Moon. Now this is from a special album, I’ll put the 5 albums tweet at the end, I’m pretty sure I selected this as number one, though I only discovered it a couple of years later in 2020, so really it belongs to the 2020 list. My perfect sort of music, ethereal, dreamy, haunting. So many good songs to select there (check Wild as Fire, Salutation…), hope you are still reading/listening. Yeah, who am I talking to? Anyone really if you’re still with me, but I actually think of one person who I suspect could love this, so I hope they get to hear it (and as I am listening, the piano motif kicks in, I’ve mentioned somewhere else how much I love a little piano phrase with echo/sustain on it (and yes I was always a bit too keen on using that third pedal on the piano in my playing days), it so much enhances so many songs….).
Now for the second kind of cheating, but was more in tune with the initial idea of my ‘year in music’ anyway: tracks I listened to around then (maybe some in 2019, see above about the initial playlist creation confusing issues, though my music excel file might help retrace things a bit) but released earlier.
Lust for Youth: Better Looking Brother. Monumental track from 2016’s Compassion. So glad I heard them play it live in 2022 in one of my favourite gigs of that year (and it was free!).
Hurts: Wonderful Life. From 2010’s Happiness. Another one to go with that train trip and listening to music again. I listened to that song very very very many times.
Broken Bells: It’s That Talk Again. I enjoyed the album I had from them, and in 2018 I came across this single from 2015, and I like the bassline in that song a lot.
Amanda Mair: Hopes. I caught up with some Labrador releases that had escaped me, also some artists previously heard on that label. Like the supremely talented Amanda Mair (again, I think she topped the relevant year’s albums lists). I wondered what had happened to her and it looks like one EP was all that she had released since her fantastic debut. Still waiting for another release as I type. A voice I am truly missing. Here’s the best, sublime track from that EP.
Club 8: Movement. Still on Labrador, Club 8’s album from 2015, Pleasure, finally made it to my iPod. A few good tracks, including this one, that induces exactly what its title suggests. Beautiful and one of my favourite tunes from their entire discography.
Dum Dum Girls: Bedroom Eyes. I used to keep an excel files of albums I meant to buy, but somehow the list always grew more than stuff I bought after a while. I started to do some catching up in 2018. And so I got Only in Dreams from 2011 in 2018, it’s pretty good, and I like this song most.
Charli XCX: Break the Rules. Something completely different from that same catch-up list, a cool pulsating single from her 2014 album, Sucker.
Sleaford Mods: BHS. Not such an old catch up. From just a year before but 2018 is when Jez introduced me to Sleaford Mods. So this track became a soundtrack to any new meet-up with Jez and Lee.
Chromatics: Shadow. Twin Peaks third series was released in 2017, so I watched it then, and I liked some of the music David Lynched introduced me to through it a lot. So the year after, when I got back into buying music, I finally got to actually own this tune. And in the end about three versions of it as I investigated Chromatics’ discography a little deeper. But this is the song that made me appreciate them, and still one of the best. Or maybe it’s just because I’m a big Twin Peaks fan. I’m putting this slightly different version though I’m not even sure it’s exactly the one that aired on Twin Peaks.
Lissie : Wild West. Another one from Twin Peaks S3. From her 2016 album My Wild West (another top or top 5 album in my yearly lists, so many tunes to point you towards, from the instrumental opener My Wild West Overture to Daughters, via Sun Keeps Risin’ and another personal favourite Don’t You Give up on Me, which is very very close to having me renege on my rule of one YT video per album here, it’s just one of my happy go-to songs, and both this and WW were staples of my 2018). Also on Lissie, she did actually get an album out in 2018, Castles, but I’m keeping it for 2019 as it is when I got it and to not have two Lissie entries. See, I have to make some of my own rules, but then I guess this is my site, so I’m not constrained by anyone else’s rules and self-discipline and restraint is not very much needed when you want to share so much music. Anyway, here’s the Twin Peaks version of Wild West, but do check the whole album. Also, if someone could petition for her to play in Paris….please do.
Actually, and on reflection, and as I posted ‘Break the Rules’ earlier, here’s an exception and Don’t You Give Up on Me… 😛
Kent: 747 (We Ran Out of Time). One last song of catching up. Kent’s Hagnesta Hill is one of my favourite albums (granted, that’s a long list but still….) and I was always considering getting their other English language album, Isola. This harks back from 1998 so much older than anything else in these pages, but I like the album closer very much and listened to it a fair bit at the end of 2018, the outro is just great (and yes, the song lasts 7min 47s).
And to finish, two songs that hark back to 2013 for me, but actually I got different (live) versions at the time and got the regular versions in 2018. Kind of closing a loop but as the future proved, I was on a wrong track and wasted a few more years….in some respect.
All About Eve: The Dreamer. This was once possibly posted about me by someone. Or an image of me, I’m not sure. But sometimes I wish I were less like the elusive dreamer. Still, I like the song.
Dougie Maclean: Ready for the Storm. Different story then, when sharing songs about storms and again this one the one I was given. I liked it then and I like it now. One of the many things that if you know, shows you I can’t reject good things from troubled people. I can turn a page but don’t have to tear it off. It’s just a beautiful and touching song, what if it came from a love that maybe could never truly exist? I didn’t freak out in 2021, and maybe that is my strength despite the attempts. Because in the end someone else’s illness maybe could not quite destroy me. Yeah, I talk too much here, but this brings back memories.
What’s left? Back to 2018, albums worth mentions but, same caveat as 2021 (again, check there for (flexible) ‘rules’:
Lykke Li : So Sad So Sexy.
Sunflower Bean: Twentytwo in Blue.
Let’s Eat Grandma : I’m All Ears.
And the #5albums18 verdict (note that I’m conflicted about which year to do next as the 2020 selection hasn’t taken place, and 2019 just finished…so my choice is 2019 or 2022 which was an extroardinary year and may take forever to write…). Note that this one had two albums I didn’t own in 2018.