My 2018 in music


I’ve been using last.fm for many years now. I love how it aggregates all of my listening habits in the background - I don’t really have to do anything.

It’s useful for posts like this - my top 10 most listened to bands of 2018:

  1. Radiohead
  2. Nick Drake
  3. Beach House
  4. Wye Oak
  5. Villagers
  6. Beck
  7. Ava Luna
  8. Deerhunter
  9. Doves
  10. Elbow

No real surprises here - if you know me, that is. Villagers released my favorite album of 2018 - The Art of Pretending to Swim (listen here), but the other bands on this list are reliable favorites of mine.

You might be wondering - what about only looking at music that was released in 2018? Well, I’m not sure you can do that on last.fm, but I do try to rate/track what I listen to on Rate Your Music (RYM), the loveable review community with a perpetually terrible UI and an ongoing failed attempt to crowdsource enough money for an upgrade.

Here is an ordered list, from best to worst, of albums I listened to (and remembered to rate). Villagers released the only album I felt deserved higher than a 4. Mid-Air Thief came out of nowhere (in my listening world, anyway) with an incredible set of music that is best described as Grizzly Bear on a lot of acid. Failure came out of nowhere with a surprise release that was pretty satisfying. Spiritualized’s And Nothing Hurt comes really strong out of the gate, but didn’t quite sustain the excellence throughout. Ava Luna’s Moon 2 is a trip and a journey and well worth the listen.

On the flip side, I was pretty disappointed with releases from The Dodos and Jacco Gardner, both artists whom have released music in the past that I’ve quite enjoyed. The Low album has been getting a lot of love, but it’s not my favorite of theirs.

Overall, I found 2018 to be a decent year for new releases, but certainly not one of my personal favorites. Looking forward to 2019.