Top 50 Records of 2019
50 Sinkane
Dépaysé
City Slang49 Flamingods
Levitation
Moshi Moshi48 Iggy Pop
Free
Loma Vista47 Rosie Lowe
YU
Wolf Tone46 Gruff Rhys
Pang!
Rough Trade45 Stephen Mallinder
Um Dada
Dais44 The Comet Is Coming
Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery
Impulse!43 Hayden Thorpe
Diviner
Domino42 Big Thief
UFOF
4AD41 Some Bodies
Sunscreen
Funnel40 Velvet Negroni
NEON BROWN
4AD39 Nick Cave
Ghosteen
Ghosteen Ltd38 Thom Yorke
ANIMA
XL Recordings37 Jessica Pratt
Quiet Signs
City Slang36 JOHN
Out Here On The Fringes
Pets Care35 Doomsquad
Let Yourself Be Seen
Bella Union34 Angel Olsen
All Mirrors
Jagjaguwar33 Gong Gong Gong
Phantom Rhythm
Wharf Cat32 Death And Vanilla
Are You A Dreamer?
Fire31 Little Simz
GREY Area
Age 10130 Lapalux
Amnioverse
Ninja Tune29 Black Midi
Schlagenheim
Rough Trade28 DIIV
Deceiver
Captured Tracks27 Maija Sofia
Bath Time
Trapped Animal26 Josienne Clarke
In All Weather
Rough Trade25 The Hold Steady
Thrashing Thru The Passion
French Kiss24 Cigarettes After Sex
Cry
Partisan23 Purple Mountains
Purple Mountains
Drag City22 The National
I Am Easy To Find
4AD21 Drahla
Useless Coordinates
Captured Tracks20 Metronomy
Metronomy Forever
Because19 Blanck Mass
Animated Violence Mild
Sacred Bones18 FEET
What's Inside Is More Than Just Ham
Clapped Records17 Michael Kiwanuka
KIWANUKA
Polydor16 Whitney
Forever Turned Around
Secretly Canadian15 Dave
Psychdrama
Neighbourhood14 Big Thief
Two Hands
4AD13 Kim Gordon
No Home Record
Matador12 Jerkcurb
Air Con Eden
Handsome Dad11 Common Holly
When I say to you Black Lightning
Dalliance-
10 The Specials
Encore
UMCIt’s been 37 years that we’ve been waiting for this. The veteran ska-punk band’s return addresses Brexit, Tory austerity, Black Lives Matter and mental health. Encore is filled with tracks that cut deep into the malignant tumours of society, looking to heal them by brutal and frank exposure.
9 FKA twigs
MAGDALENE
Young TurksThe half-decade since twigs’ debut album has been plagued with an unwanted publicity through two high-profile relationships. Her new album is an ode to all of these people – a breath-taking, shapeshifting vanguard of modern pop music. Weird bangers for when we all live in outer space.
8 Sharon Van Etten
Remind Me Tomorrow
JagjaguwarSharon Van Etten’s fifth album is her most atmospheric, emotionally haunting album to date. It’s an angry and asphyxiating ode to cleaning up your shit, fuelled by a steady self-belief whilst working through a new-found identity as a mother. It’s a pat-on-the-back, a to-do list and a firm grip over a ‘getting there’ kind of life.
7 Slowthai
Nothing Great About Britain
MethodIf grime has always existed in Northampton with rappers like Slowthai, you have to ask why London’s been getting the publicity. His debut is a lo-fi, grungy and hilarious portrait of the nation, featuring glue sniffing, League Two football and faux-aristocratic choruses of God Save The Queen, accents and all.
6 Hot Chip
A Bath Full Of Ecstasy
DominoAn oddly moving and existential dancefloor record. Hot Chip’s seventh album is our favourite they’ve released to date. A colossal, sprawling gospel-sampling title track hits with all the purity of early the xx, with the psychedelic whizz of Cassius’s late great Philippe Zdar on production feeling as hallucinogenic as it does epic.
5 Anna Meredith
FIBS
Moshi MoshiA nervy, chaotically-controlled embodiment of contemporary uncertainty, that few pioneers of contemporary electronic and classical music come close to. The Scottish composer already had an MBE after her name not one album down, and this collection of sweet little lies underpins her as somewhat of a precarious modern visionary.
4 Fontaines D.C.
Dogrel
PartisanThe year in which Dublin took over our ears really started here. Fontaines D.C.’s spitefully poetic rock ode to Ireland’s capital scurries through Dickensian streets and back alleys. There’s the IDLES lineage, the blistering post-punk brawl that runs on anger and adrenaline, but there are tender moments too; love songs to the city that brought them together, a nod-of-the-hat to revolutionary folk music. This is an essential, communal listen.
3 Sampa the Great
The Return
Ninja TuneThe Melbourne rapper’s breakout album brings everyone in: it’s an epic suite, from beats tinged with jazz, ‘90s R&B, gospel and hip-hop, to lyrics bereft with Sampa’s heritage (born in Zambia, raised in Botswana, residing in Australia), her ideas of home, being an exile and overcoming a perpetual “othering”. Have this on repeat from now until New Year, and you’ll still find something new come 2020.
2 Sleater-Kinney
The Center Won’t Hold
Mom + PopTwo headlines took over this album’s narrative when it came out: that St. Vincent’s sleek production opened it up to a new sonic world for a band entering their third decade together, and that it would be the last record featuring co-founding drummer Janet Weiss. The Center Won’t Hold is a record picturing a beautiful collapse, politically and personally, that looks back to riot grrrl roots with a new balletic and discordant edge.
1 The Murder Capital
When I Have Fears
Human SeasonAs the captive thralls of twenty-nineteen settled into some strange paralysis, there was one record we kept coming back to. The brooding and confrontational debut album from Dublin five-piece The Murder Capital is the kind of art-punk that might take its name from a John Keats poem, but ignites the pawing intensity of Joy Division’s drum tattoos and the old Pixies trick of quiet-and-loud. It’s beautiful, menacing, and our Album of the Year.