The best indie and rock albums of 2018

By The A.V. Club, Clayton Purdom, Katie Rife, Alex McLevy, David Anthony  |  December 17, 2018 | 4:00pm

Image: Photo: MitskiPhoto: Amen DunesPhoto: Anna Calvi Graphic: Libby McGuire Music Features Best Of 2018

Julia Holter, Aviary

Where was there for Julia Holter to go after the majestically intimate Cali songcraft of 2015’s Have You In My Wilderness? Well, everywhere. Aviary is a 90-minute high-fantasy epic, each song functioning as a self-contained cosmos of twittering woodwinds, dog-eared books of unknown provenance, ambient bagpipes, celestial sighs. Start at the beginning and it’ll pry open your third eye by the halfway mark, or just drop in midstream and observe; there’s little else like it. [Clayton Purdom]

Low, Double Negative

Twelve albums and 25 years into their career together, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk cracked Low open, letting molten drones and screaming dissonance burble like lava through their finely honed slowcore. On “Tempest,” their famously transcendent melodies are barely discernible, processed into a digital scream. The band’s famous sense of quiet always conveyed urgency; on Double Negative, it sounds furious. [Clayton Purdom]

Mitski, Be The Cowboy

Madonna. Prince. Mitski? That may sound outrageous, but if Mitski Miyawaki’s star continues to rise as dramatically as it has over the past couple of years, her place in the canon of mononymous musical icons seems all but assured. It helps, of course, that she’s released two absolute knockout albums, 2016’s Puberty 2 and 2018’s Be The Cowboy, back-to-back. And Be The Cowboy points toward exciting developments to come: Mitski challenges herself both musically and lyrically on the record, exploring her novelistic side through satirical dispatches from a character she describes as “a very controlled, icy, repressed woman who is starting to unravel.” [Katie Rife]

Jeff Rosenstock, Post-

If there were any concerns that Jeff Rosenstock would lighten up after the outsize success of 2016’s Worry, Post-’s opening track, “USA”—with its endless, ragged, fuck-it-all coda of “We’re tired! We’re bored!”—put them to rest. Worry’s fears and anxieties have metastasized, giving birth to an angrier, more frustrated, but also more ambitious collection of songs, teeming with boundary-testing moments for the band, but always ready with a complicated, cathartic sing-along to provide some hope in dark times. [Alex McLevy]

Snail Mail, Lush

The dream of the ’90s is alive on Lush, the debut album from Lindsey Jordan, a.k.a. Snail Mail, who turned 19 eight days after her first full-length was released on Matador Records. With a generation of women singer-songwriters at her back, Jordan’s guitar-driven indie anthems are uncommonly confident and preternaturally polished. Take “Pristine,” a flawlessly written ode to unrequited love anchored by the achingly vulnerable chorus, “And I know myself / And I’ll never love anyone else.” [Katie Rife]

Spiritualized, And Nothing Hurt

Jason Pierce has spent a career burnishing his swooning, orchestral pop to a perfect, heartbreaking sheen, and his latest wrings it into arguably the truest form yet, all ethereal beauty and pure sentiment. And Nothing Hurt feels like a thesis summary of Spiritualized’s fusion of bombast and simplicity, keeping the focus on the primal emotions and statements of emotional purpose, while still allowing room for hard-charging fuzzed-out rockers like “On The Sunshine.” By the time all the swirling instrumentation and spare lyrical evocations of love, loss, and beauty have come to a close, the record has attained something great. [Alex McLevy]

Honorable mentions

Ezra Furman, Transangelic Exodus
As if queering the all-American rock ’n’ roll masculinity of Meat Loaf and Bruce Springsteen weren’t brilliant enough, Ezra Furman takes things even further on Transangelic Exodus, a concept album about lovers on the run from the law—one of whom is a literal angel. [Katie Rife]

No Thank You, All It Takes To Ruin It All
And all it takes to make one of the most affecting lo-fi indie-rock albums of the year is guitar, bass, drums—and a searingly powerful collection of songs about loss and life. [Alex McLevy]

Screaming Females, All At Once
Marissa Paternoster and her Screaming Females bandmates continue to expand their sonic palette on All At Once, adding surf-rock and space-wizard prog to their muscular guitar sound while staying true to their punk roots. [Katie Rife]

Soccer Mommy, Clean
It’s not all quiet, restrained beauty on Soccer Mommy’s debut—there’s the odd uptempo number (“Last Girl”) or cathartic release (“Scorpio Rising”)—but it’s mostly a series of subtly fierce songs, the understated melodicism of Sophie Allison’s guitar and voice belying the bite of her lyrics. [Alex McLevy]

Slow Mass, On Watch
Slow Mass is a band that consistently punches above its weight class: On Watch is the successor to records like Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You and Fugazi’s The Argument, suggesting a future for indie that’s heavy, heady, and without boundaries. [David Anthony]