Artists list their top albums of 2018

For the past few weeks, we’ve been posting Best of 2018 lists by artists, including from Kurt Vile, Kevin Morby, Ryley Walker, and members of The Mountain Goats, Swervedriver, Parquet Courts, Converge, Hop Along, Taking Back Sunday, Motion City Soundtrack, Anti-Flag, SAVAK, The Goon Sax, The Get Up Kids, Luna, Monster Magnet, Uniform, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Bodega, Life of Agony, Touche Amore, The Dandy Warhols, Foxing, Circa Survive, The Lawrence Arms, The Twilight Sad, Good Riddance, Western Addiction, Night Birds, Direct Hit, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Slaughter Beach, Dog, Steady Hands, The Natvral, Integrity, Stars, Pig Destroyer, Sick Of It All, Against Me!, and American Nightmare.

If you haven’t checked out any of those yet, click the above links to see each one. We’ve also got even more artist year-end lists, including lists from Say Hi, God Is An Astronaut, Thin Lips, Mike Krol, Lala Lala, and Beach Goons. Checkk those out below.

SAY HI’S FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2018

Top Eleven 2018 (in no particular order & 10/10 for each and every record):

Soccer Mommy – Clean
Pairs Well With: Three parts hot cocoa / one part Tabasco, chamber reverb setting, forest mushrooms.

CHVRCHES – Love Is Dead
Pairs Well With: Snow cones, Big League Chew, grenadine in a shot glass, the rainbow of bvttons on the Roland Jvpiter-8 synthesizer.

MGMT – Little Dark Age
Pairs Well With: The entirety of my (actual) eighties youth … but perpetually on cough syrup (swervy), processed turkey on three-day-old rye with French’s yellow mustard and nothing else, anything with hints of creepy clowns.

Advance Base – Animal Companionship
Pairs Well With: Green eggs and ham, Peppermint Schnapps, the smell of pilling thrift store holiday sweaters.

Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!
Pairs Well With: A pint glass of fresh hardware-store nails (to the last drop, you’re a hero), ballgame peanuts in the shell.

Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers & Lucy Dacus – Boygenius EP
Pairs Well With: Pho, anything in a growler, juicy Fender drip rails pushed into the brown (but not red), an ice cream sandwich.

Tokyo Police Club – TPC
Pairs Well With: Billy Corgan’s tears, a grapefruit IPA, drink while wearing velvet.

Aphex Twin – Collapse EP
Pairs Well With: Absinthe, Cheetos covered in pop rocks, ROLO, anything with hints of random arpeggiation.

Broncho — Bad Behavior
Pairs Well With: Pickled eggs from a dive bar, a tight-fitting denim jacket, Budweiser with era-specific labels from the Rolling Stones’ fulfilled rider on the Some Girls tour.

Oh Sees – Smote Reverser
Pairs Well With: A blue and fizzy witches tincture, roasted duck, 90% dark chocolate s’mores.

Richard Swift – The Hex
Doesn’t need a thing.

TORSTEN KINSELLA’S (GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT) FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2018

1: Bad Witch – NIN
2: Singularity – Jon Hopkins
3: Annihilation – Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow
4: 7 – Beach House
5: You Won’t Get What You Want – Daughters
6: Konoyo – Tim Hecker
7: All Melody – Nils Frahm
8: Suspiria – Thom Yorke
9: And Nothing Hurt – Spiritualized
10: Essential – Soulwax

THIN LIPS’ FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2018

The Sidekicks – Happiness Hours
Amazing album/production/songwriting. Been obsessed with this all year. This should be your favorite band.

No Thank You – All It Takes To Ruin It All
Our fucking buds doing it again!

Dr. Dog – Critical Equation
One of my all time favorite bands and hometown heroes release another great record – elegant in its simplicity. [- Kyle]

Noname – Room 25
Love Chicago hip hop – Noname is no exception with beautiful beats and profound lyrics.

Kississippi – Sunset Blush
Love you Zoe!

Camp Cope – How To Socialise & Make Friends
When I put the first song on it gave me chills. [- Chrissy]

Hop Along – Bark Your Head Off, Dog
Homies ripping it once again

The Breeders – All Nerve
Best record of their career

The HIRS Collective – Friends. Lovers. Favorites.
Bought this record on whim at Common Beat in Philly. Blew me away. The intensity of the hardcore punk I grew up listening to with something real to say in 2018 [- Kyle]

Katie Ellen – Still life
A great band full of the best people

Jeff Rosenstock – POST-
So good we had to add an 11th!

Ariana Grande – Sweetener
My fave album of 2018! – Chrissy

MIKE KROL’S FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2018

Swearin’ – Fall Into The Sun
Superchunk – What A Time To Be Alive
Rock*A*Teens – Sixth House
Jon Spencer – Spencer Sings The Hits
Albert Hammond Jr. – Francis Trouble
Night Shop – In The Break
Bat Fangs – Bat Fangs
The Essex Green – Hardly Electronic
Ethers – Ethers
The Breeders – All Nerve

LALA LALA’S FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2018

Sen Morimoto – Cannonball
I am a long time super fan of Sen & he has really outdone himself on this one!!!!!!!! This album is easy to listen to but also challenging music. Hot combo

Fielded – Drip Drip
Lindsay Powell has a voice like no one else and is a phenomenal producer. Sick and emotional dance music

Beach House – 7
Beach House has stayed sounding like just themselves while still managing to get exponentially better. I think this album is ***perfect****

Mitski – Be The Cowboy
Mitski GETS TO ME her songs are brilliant and physically painful to me and I think the production on this record is brilliant.

Serengeti – Dennis 6e
This record ties with the Yoni & Geti album for best music Serengeti has made. I think it’s fun and sad

Paperbark / r ben – Reasons To live
I don’t know anything about this at all – I found it recently through Emily Sprague’s ambient music (which I also recommend). I love it

Amen Dunes – Freedom
I love all the sounds on this record. Particularly on ‘Miki Dora’ and ‘Blue Rose’ . ‘Believe’ is also so good. I like all the songs. Every song on this record is good.

Makaya McCraven – Universal Beings
This whole record is made from cut ups of live improvisations. There are so many cool musicians on it. I doubt that Makaya will ever make anything that is not fantastic

U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited
This record makes me feel like I’m a really good party in a movie. Varied and excellent

Half Waif – Lavender
This is magic music!! so good it hurts my feelings

BEACH GOONS’ FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2018

CHRIS:

Soccer Mommy – Clean
I got really into this band on our last tour this is their latest record that came out earlier this year its tremendous

Playboy Carti – Die Lit
we listened to it in the van a bunch of times, big hype

Culture Abuse – Bay Dream
Ive been into this band for a while this latest album is insane my favorite from them so f-r for sure

DAVID:

Hunny – Windows II
I hella just recently discovered this band and I fuck with them sooo hard. Rebel Red is my anthem. Great drop this year for sure.

Palm – Rock Island
I discovered this band super recently too. They’re amazing! They have all that technical shit and on this album, they have synth stuff and it’s so badass.

Sean Nicholas Savage – Screamo
I’ve known of the legend, Sean for quite some time. He’s the synth pop king of Canada for sure. This release is just another legendary drop for him.

PABLO:

Jurassic Shark – Overflow
Weʼve played a handful of shows with Jurassic Shark; pretty much our first shows back when we were just starting Beach Goons in early 2015. They just dropped this a few months ago and I‘ve been listening to the album nonstop. Theyʼre hella good live too.

Mac Miller – Swimming
This album was amazing from bringing to end, we played a lot of it on tour. Iʼve always been a big fan of jazz rap and I love Macʼs take on it.

Earl Sweatshirt – Some Rap Songs
I‘ve been waiting on some new music from Earl for hella long and he just dropped a new album and it slaps from top to bottom, easily a top favorite of mine.

BEACH GOONS:

Shoreline Mafia – ShorelineDoThatShit
This whole album goes HARD. This is all we listened on our first west coast + east coast tour so you know we had to put it down on the list. shouts out to shoreline mafia.

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Browse our ‘Best of 2018’ page for even more year-end lists.