Cover Collector – April Greens

Design by Ryan Morrissey

I don’t know about you guys, but I love a good album collage. One of the first things I do every Friday is head over to tapmusic.net and render a 4x4 chart of the albums I listened to most over the past week. At the end of each month, I do the same thing with a 5x5 that recaps my previous 30 days of listening. By the time December rolls around, I look forward to recapping the last twelve months with a gigantic 10x10 grid in an unwieldy encapsulation of the 100 albums that defined my year. 

Is it a little self-aggrandizing? Sure, but it’s also a fun way to see a quick snapshot of what my last week, month, or year has sounded like. At its best, this practice has led to fun conversations and solid recommendations going back and forth with friends as we bond over specific albums. Sometimes it’s that shared love over a deep pull from years gone by, other times it’s just noticing trends with a recent fave that seems like an unshakable presence week in and week out. At the very least, I suppose it’s satisfying to see a bunch of records that I feel an affinity toward lined up and embodying a specific stretch of my life. 

At some point near the tail end of last year, I conceived of a more communal way to bring this love of album collage to life. Because, sure, getting a live readout of your listening history is cool, but this is also about album art, an essential part of the experience and something us nerds can fixate on just as much as the songs that sit beneath the cover. As such, I’m excited to welcome you to the fourth edition of Cover Collector: a monthly installation where the Swim Team discusses some of our favorite albums based on album color. For April, we’re writing about gorgeous greens. 

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The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die – Whenever, If Ever

Topshelf Records

Much like the color blue, I think there’s something primordially calming about green. It’s everywhere in our natural world, from the grass of the field to the leaves on the trees that tower above us. It’s calming, pastoral, and speaks to something deep within our brains that seems to signal pause and restoration. It’s no big surprise then that the cover for Whenever, If Ever, the debut studio album from the foundational emo act The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die, evokes a sense of fuzzy nostalgia before you even hit play. The slightly out-of-focus photograph shows someone jumping off a high rock into a cool body of water below, everything framed by foliage and warmed by the bright sunbeams above. The album’s two-minute instrumental welcomes you into this world before whisking the listener away into the brilliant splendor of “Heartbeat in the Brain.” Not only is Whenever, If Ever a defining emo album, it operates from this mystical point of undying adventure and youthful adoration that every nostalgic teenager and wistful 20-something understands as soon as they realize that the world will never quite be the same again. The band rouses and rises to the occasion. There’s a collectivist sense of powering through with each other, despite it all. The band said it best themselves in the knockout seven-minute closer “Getting Sodas,” when they sang “The world is a beautiful place, but we have to make it that way.”

– Taylor Grimes

Blues Traveler – Four

A&M

In my journey as one who writes about music, I often return to my origins: MTV2, VH1, and my Mom’s big purple CD binder. My earliest music memories involve sitting at the foot of our wooden entertainment center, next to the six-CD changer-stereo combo, beneath a blue curtain with that classic ‘90s gold-moons-and-suns astrology pattern, leafing through this CD binder that must have held 300 CDs.

Among the Dave Matthews Band, Aerosmith, and Sheryl Crow CDs, two discs always caught my eye. The first was Kid Rock’s Cocky, because the image on the disc featured Mr. Rock flipping the double bird. The other was Blues Traveler’s Four. Not only because the disc was bright green, in great contrast to other CDs at the time, but because of the cartoon cat smoking a joint at the top. What can I say? I was like seven years old and titillated by things I knew were naughty! And yes, I’m sorry for airing out my Mom just now and admitting she owned a copy of Kid Rock’s Cocky, though it’s entirely possible that one belonged to my stepdad, and this was after the “Great CD Co-Mingling of the Early 2000s.” That’s where his Ludacris Chicken and Beer CD touched faces with her copy of Madonna’s Ray of Light, and they found happiness.

Four became one of my favorite albums over my childhood and adolescence, and it still reminds me of car rides with my Mom to this day. Blue Traveler has picked up a sort of “Nickelback Factor” where people love to talk shit but refuse to admit that they had some real joints. The singles from Four (“Run-Around,” “Hook,” and “The Mountains Win Again”) can come off a bit hokey now, but that’s because they’re devoid of context. Four was released in September of 1994. Grunge was in the rearview mirror, and labels were clamoring to catch the next rising star. Blues Traveler arose as something different with drawing power. In a crowded field of jammy, blues-inspired acts from the Northeast and Southeast (along with Spin Doctors, Phish, Widespread Panic, God Street Wine, Dave Matthews Band, and Medeski Martin and Wood), they innovated an entire new genre in a couple of years, playing thousands of live shows at colleges all over the Eastern United States. There’s a really great book about this mid-90’s jam scene, Mike Ayers’ Sharing In The Groove.

There’s really not a skip on Four, and it’s an outstanding document of a band at the tippy-top of a scene doing what they do best. For my money though, their first live CD, Live From The Fall, is the best way to hear what those A&R guys heard in 1992. John Popper is one of the greatest frontmen of all time, and Live From The Fall is the proof.

– Caleb Doyle

Type O Negative – Slow, Deep And Hard

Roadrunner

There may not be a more obvious, entry-level, green-coded band than Type O Negative. Few bands have held their identity with just one or two colors, but from 1991 to 2007, the Brooklyn “drab four” created an entire discography of iconic green-and-black imagery. My favorite Type O album is 1996’s October Rust, although that cover art is the least directly green of them all, so let’s dive into their penetrative debut, 1991’s Slow, Deep And Hard. Lead vocalist, lyricist, bassist, and 1995 Playgirl centerfold Peter Steele was beginning his next musical chapter after the end of his previous band Carnivore, and he was not in a good mood. Slow, Deep And Hard may be the first and only thrash metal breakup album, bridging the gap from Carnivore’s direct East Coast fury to the introduction of Type O Negative’s (anti-)romantic doom. It doesn’t sound much like what the band would become afterward, nor does it line up with any other metal album before or since. The twelve-and-a-half-minute opener “Unsuccessfully Coping With The Natural Beauty Of Infidelity” is a signature moment of Steele’s tongue-in-bleak attitude that he would carry throughout the rest of his career, even with it being a completely raw and unfiltered reflection of his feelings. “Xero Tolerance” moves back and forth between dissonant sludge and major-key punk rock, with a “kill you tonight” shouted refrain that’s as nasty as it is ridiculous.

Of the album’s seven songs, two of them are back-to-back entries in Type O’s list of album pranks: “Glass Walls Of Limbo (Dance Mix)” is nothing but a dark ambient/martial industrial interlude, and “The Misinterpretation Of Silence And Its Disastrous Consequences” is… well, you’ll have to listen to get it. The five core, multi-movement songs end with “Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 × 10−8 cm−3 gm−1 sec−2,” simply one of the finest, physics-inspired, relationship-dissolving, gothic thrash album finales in Type O Negative’s history. Slow, Deep And Hard is something all its own, not for everyone, but should be heard by everyone.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Víkingur Ólafsson – Opus 109 (Beethoven | Bach | Schubert)

Deutsche Grammophon

It’s challenging to break through the noise in any genre of music, but I would argue that it’s particularly difficult to do so in classical music. The genre is overshadowed by great performers and ruled by strict, historically accurate performance demands. And yet Vikingur Olafsson has done the impossible and cut into the surface of this realm with clear, precise intent. I am an avid fan of Olafsson’s interpretations and claim him as my favorite performer of classical piano music - his 2017 album of various Philip Glass selections is a treasure, and he made waves with his fresh, sparkling recordings of the Goldberg Variations in 2023. 

In Olafsson’s latest recording, Opus 109, he explores the throughline that runs so clearly through Bach to Beethoven to Schubert. You can hear the pull of emotion in every note of Olafsson’s interpretation, indicative of the new era that music was hurtling towards. Programming Schubert alongside two giants of classical music may seem an unusual choice at first glance, but upon closer inspection, we can trace a theme from Beethoven to Schubert: both composers defied traditional compositional structure in their later works. Schubert’s two-movement sonata, widely considered incomplete, is argued to be the opposite by Vikingur. Schubert would be utterly pleased to see his name alongside Beethoven’s on this cleverly planned album.

Vikingur Olafsson’s renditions of the works on this album are resonant, warm, and thoughtfully prepared. The album exterior reflects an equal amount of care: it’s impossible to ignore the mesmerizing cover photo. Vikingur has always leaned into his artistic sensibilities for the covers of his releases, and this portrait of him is no exception. Lush, sensual, and surreal, the artist invites the listener into his world with a direct gaze that breaks the fourth wall. You are beckoned to experience the beauty of these works alongside him. The performer is nothing without someone to play to, for what is music without anyone to hear it?

– Britta Joseph

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along - Fill Your Lungs

Flightless

Back when I was a green Gizz listener, I prided myself on holding the niche take that Float Along - Fill Your Lungs was the Australian psych-rock genre-be-damned mega-unit at their very best. And, even as “good ole days,” I still stand by it. Hearing “Head On/Pill” for the first time rewired what I thought a long song could be. (People joke about riffs or melodies being able to lift them from comas, but the “Head On” riff really does summon my Gizz geeker self from the depths of my psyche.) The opening guitar echoes and wobbles on “Head On/Pill” felt like a green, slimy, sticky, swampy flare shot straight into the night sky. (As Stu wrote in the liner notes: “It was short at first, but it just kept fucking growing like pond scum.”) And I realize now that I used to think it was the best Gizz album because it was the first Gizz album where the minds were truly meeting, the Gizzards letting their improvisational freak flags billow until they broke. It was also the de facto double-drummer album, a return to form that became a focal point of Gizz's live presence in the mid-2010s. With a ripping, wandering opener and a theme-song-esque title-track closer, the middle of the album is oft overlooked, but not in my world. Not in the world I’m living in. That’s where the Gizzards sneak their droning (“30 Past 7”), their fuzzy (“Pop In My Step”), their overmodulated (“God Is Calling Me Back Home”), and their funky (“I’m Not a Man Unless I Have a Woman”)—a great, big green journey into the outer reaches of it all. 

– Cassidy Sollazzo

The Hush Sound – Like Vines

Decaydance Records

When I was around 11 years old and burning the midnight oil on World of Warcraft in the family computer room, there was a good chance I was usually either listening to Billy Talent’s second LP or Like Vines by The Hush Sound. Released in 2006 on Pete Wentz’s Decaydance Records, this no-skip banger of an album is a masterclass in imaginative poetry and use of playful textures. Despite this release dancing in the same circles as Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco, Like Vines stands strongly on its own feet outside the shadow of its contemporaries. This record’s unabashedly twee nature and jaunty rhythms, combined with its melancholic lyricism, feel very much at home in a time period where Hot Topic and the global village coffeehouse existed simultaneously. 

Like Vines gives you such a strong impression of what it’s about within seconds of starting with the charismatic, almost showtune-esque “We Intertwined” while tracks like “Lighthouse” and “You Are the Moon” display the group’s more heartstring-tugging, piano-forward qualities. It’s the effortless versatility, this shifting between full-band tracks with the more subtle breaks consisting of a single vocalist and a piano, that help this album stand the test of time. 

While I believe every track on this album is its own perfect, self-contained world to explore, the song “Wine Red” alone is reason enough for everyone to experience Like Vines at least once in their time on this earth. Of course, I’m also going to give a special shoutout to the Patrick Stump feature in “Don’t Wake Me Up” that I admittedly did not clock as him until many years into listening to the album.  

– Ciara Rhiannon

Hatchie – Giving The World Away

Secretly Canadian

If you’ve been looking for something to listen to while walking in a dusky city on a cool, spring night, look no further. Hatchie’s 2022 breakout album has the whimsical reverb that perfectly parallels Giving The World Away’s dreamy album cover, with beams of light and a glow reminiscent of a still frame from a futuristic Wong Kar-wai movie. The standout “Quicksand” was on my playlist for the entirety of 2022, making its way into my personal library when I would take the green-bullet G train and get a glimpse of the downtown skyline before heading back into the tunnels underneath Brooklyn. That bass during the chorus envelops me in such a beautiful way. Outside of Hatchie’s pop masterpiece, songs like “This Enchanted” explode with sound and color, while “The Rhythm” feels equipped for your dancing shoes. There’s a deep cut on this record called “The Key,” which is simply shoegaze perfection, with a chorus that slams with levels of distortion like nothing you’ve ever heard. There’s RANGE on this one! 

– Samuel Leon

Alex G – Rocket

Domino Recording Co

They say you never forget your first, and when it comes to Alex G albums, that’s certainly true for me. I distinctly remember trying to “get into” Alex G back in 2017; he was fresh off his contributions on Frank Ocean’s Blonde, and I was eager to learn more. First, I tried DSU since that seemed to be a consensus fan favorite at the time, but that record didn’t do much for me. This was still during his “(Sandy) Alex G” era, and I remember deciding to give him another shot early on in the summer when he released Rocket. I threw the album on while out for a walk, and the whole thing soundtracked my walk perfectly, seeping into the grooves of my shoes and flinging the hot air past me. I was walking through neighborhoods and fields that looked eerily similar to the one on the cover of Rocket: lush, waving, and full of motion off toward an indistinguishable horizon. There was no Jacob Sheep staring me down, sure, but I will tell you the first time I heard the dog bark on “Poison Root,” I took out my earbuds because I thought it was coming from a nearby backyard. That moment turned out to be transportive in the best way, making me laugh as I slipped my headphones back on and hit play again. The rest of the record is super laid-back and breezy, barring the off-kilter three-song suite from “Witch” through “Brick,” but even that I love as a sort of mid-album bridge into “Sportstar” and the remainder of Side B. Rocket is just a really special record that helped me unlock the rest of Alex G’s discography. I feel lucky to have fallen into it.

– Taylor Grimes

If we’re talking solid-color album art, there’s one band that stands above the rest, and that’s Weezer. Across fifteen studio albums, more than a third of their discography is made up of self-titled albums that fans simply refer to by their color. Each features the band members lined up staring down the barrel of the camera against a solid-colored background. In this recurring section, we’ll address the elephant in the room that is Weezer’s discography.

Alright folks, big Weezer fan Lillian Weber talking here. And by that I mean up until today, April 25th, 2026, I have only listened to Weezer, Pinkerton, Everything Will Be Alright in the End, and Weezer in full. No, those are not in chronological order, and which colored Weezer albums I am referring to is for you to decide. Weezer (The Green Album) was not one of them. Beyond those four albums, I knew the singles, and no one could convince me I really needed to listen to anything more from further Weezer albums. With Green, I knew one song that wasn’t a single, and it’s this live performance of “Don’t Let Go.” This is much better than the version on the record because River’s sings like this song actually has a target, like there is actually a love he is desperate to keep in his life. But I’m getting too close to my issues with this record, and we have singles to talk about. 

What do I think of the singles? “Hash Pipe” is obviously a perfect song, and “Island in the Sun” is just that: a pleasant idea. Listening to this record today, what I’m most struck by is how pleasantly this record goes down. You can’t call it bad, per se, because the melodies are good, the lyrics are inoffensive (except “crab at the booty”), and the instrumentals are the perfect bridge between the emotive alt-rock of The Blue Album and the fluff Weezer would continue to pump out until EWBAITE (but which immediately returned on White). The band went to the studio with the intention of resetting to what fans liked about Blue after the EVERYTHING of Pinkerton. But what makes The Blue Album so good to this day is how it melds the emotional anguish with hooks. The Green Album is just hooks for the sake of hooks, and hey, I’m not above the platonic ideal of a hook, but this is WEEZER we’re talking about. But now that I think about it, this is Weezer we’re talking about. 

The cover is okay. River’s looks a little surprised by the camera, and that’s about all the emotion we get out of him on this record…. I’m sorry he really sings “crab at the booty.” WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? 

– Lillian Weber

Crash of Rhinos – Distal

Triste 

If you have an opinion on the term “midwest emo revival,” then you probably know this album already. Released in 2011, Distal is a brooding work of dueling guitars and uncertain trajectories, inhabiting the intricate space between emo and math rock. The reason I call this period “revival” is because bands like Crash of Rhinos, Algernon Cadwallader, and Sport brought back a sound from the mid-to-late nineties. The sound they breathed new life into was originally concocted by Cap’n Jazz and Braid, who crafted fast, chaotic, and thoughtful tunes for as long as they could manage. The cost of their energy and intensity was an all-too-brief lifespan. This was similarly borne out by Crash of Rhinos, whose original run as a band lasted from 2009 to 2014.

Despite knowing about this album and listening to it for the better part of five years, this is the first time I’ve looked intently at the cover. It appears to be a picture of a threshold into another room, with a dark green filter applied on top of some building notes. The cover is maybe even referenced in “Lifewood” with the line, “Take back these ideas / These words and notes and papers and plans.” 

It would seem to me we are living through another revival, but this time it might stick. Emo is approaching mainstream “cool” in a way it never has before, long-defunct bands are reuniting for huge festivals, and the internet has made it possible for anyone with enough free time and DIY grit to achieve global listenership. Luckily for us, Crash of Rhinos is one of these reuniting bands, with a full album releasing on May 22nd. If you can’t wait, you can already listen to two new badass singles on Bandcamp, released just last month.

– Braden Allmond

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – I’m In Your Mind Fuzz

Flightless

Am I in Heaven? No, I’m just listening to King Gizzard’s fifth studio album: I’m In Your Mind Fuzz. Often called a psych rock or garage rock record, this album transcends both genres to do something bigger, opening with a four-song suite, the first of many that Gizz would go on to do, becoming a staple of the band’s sound. This album is much more than its ripping first four tracks, however, as Side B gives us something else we’ve never seen before from this band: slow jams. Throw away your spring reverb, fuzz pedals, and turn down the gain on your amp, cause it’s time to slow things down and talk about saving the earth.

Of course, it’s hard to talk about this album without talking about the album art. Visual artist (and essentially the bonus member of Gizz) Jason Galea designs nearly all the band's visuals, from album artwork and music videos to show posters and projections. Galea, in short, is the band’s visual identity, which is why it’s so weird that this time he just shamelessly ripped off the cover art for the 1983 Atari game Fortress. as the band begins to create The Gizzverse, an interconnected story that ties together many of their albums and songs.

The Gizzverse is only visually depicted on this record through the cover art, but in subsequent albums, we’ll get context for why the sea is green on the cover and why the castle is crumbling. Perhaps we even get answers as to where the lightning is coming from. Indeed, this record’s art sets up the story for at least the next eight records the band would release. Don’t call it psych rock. Vocalist Stu Mackenzie has tried to shed that label. Rather, think of it as a puzzle piece, a first look into what’s to come, and an invitation to put in some work on this angel of a planet we call home.

– Noëlle Midnight

Coheed and Cambria – The Second Stage Turbine Blade

Equal Vision Records

As a lifelong Coheed and Cambria fan, I would be remiss not to give a special collection of words to the green album that started it all. The Second Stage Turbine Blade is easily one of the most ambitious debut albums I have ever heard, and even 24 years after its release, I am continually impressed and inspired by it. Coheed’s firstborn originated many of the group’s staples – the eerie, instrumental opening track and outro, the handful of proggy tracks exceeding 10 minutes in length – while also birthing a discography-spanning, sci-fi epic centered around the two characters for whom the band is named. 

While Coheed’s third album, Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, is my indisputable favorite of the band’s catalog, The Second Stage Turbine Blade contains some of my top Coheed tracks, including the impossibility badass and sonically rich “Delirium Trigger” that I once transcribed by ear for classical guitar quarter in my final year of college. “Everything Evil” similarly ranks high in the pantheon of Coheed tracks and is probably their best live song to date, with its entrancing final “Dear Claudio-o” chant and typically present ripper of a guitar solo. It’s difficult not to list every track on this album as heavily influential, but “Junesong Provision” holds a special place for me, along with its acoustic demo featured in the deluxe version of the album, complete with an audio clip from the cult classic, Army of Darkness.

The Second State Turbine Blade is owed reverence not only in the history of great rock albums, but in my history as a music-lover, leading me down the paths I have been able to walk and the relationships I’ve been able to form through Coheed and Cambria. Fortunately, it remains a classic and a timeless masterpiece that I get to return to and enjoy to this day. 

– Ciara Rhiannon

Ogbert the Nerd – I Don’t Hate You

Sun Eater Records

My first show after the COVID-19 Pandemic was in July of 2021. It was called the DIY Super Bowl, featuring an absolutely stellar lineup: Guitar Fight from Fooly Cooly, Blue Deputy, Oolong, Carly Cosgrove, and Ogbert the Nerd—a veritable who’s who of the burgeoning community of fifth-wave emo bands. After over a year without shows, the DIY Super Bowl finally offered the catharsis we all so desperately needed. No one brought that catharsis on that sweaty July night quite like Ogbert the Nerd. 

Their debut LP, I Don’t Hate You, showcases their incredibly messy brand of emo perfectly. It is far from polished, even by the increasingly lo-fi, messy standards of fifth-wave emo. The guitars are frantic, constantly driving forward and nearly careening off course. On “Do It For Elio,” lead singer Madison James’ voice is constantly breaking and straining with pure emotion. Throughout its brisk 30-minute run time, their vocal cords always sound moments away from snapping in half while screaming about being a fuckup, being fucked up, and being fucking mad at your fuckup friends. “You Like the Raiders?” opens with genuinely one of the meanest opening lines of any song: “Hey fucker, nobody ever gave a shit about you.” For a 20-year-old whose life was just derailed by a global pandemic, who struggled with finding joy, who didn’t believe in herself, and who was harboring a great deal of frustration with the world, I Don’t Hate You felt like a bolt of lightning. An album that was the pure distillation of all the energy, anger, and anxiety I had bottled up inside of me.  

The moment from Ogbert’s set that will always stick with me is when I attempted my first-ever stage dive. Attempted is the keyword here, as it was much more accurately a belly flop. I fell directly into the first row, where somehow the perfect number of people both dodged and tried to catch me, leaving my feet pointing sky high, my face planting into what must rank as one of the top three grossest venue floors of my life. Despite this, the most vivid part of my memory is how I bounced right back to my feet, energized by the hectic, frantic music, ready to keep swinging, keep dancing, and keep embracing the pure catharsis that Ogbert the Nerd brought that evening.

– Caroline Liaupsin

Angel Du$t – Brand New Soul

Pop Wig Records

I am going to hop on my fucking soapbox and declare that Brand New Soul is the best record to drive to. Ever. Of all time. Don’t believe me? Okay, well, get in my Accord, baby, and we’ll go for a spin. “Brand New Soul” is the perfect song for trying to connect your phone to the Bluetooth thing. “Love Slam” is the perfect song for pulling out of your parking space and hitting the gas a bit too fast. “Don’t Stop” is a humble trucking song. “Racecar” is a song for sitting at the red light. “Space Jam” is for the light finally turning green. You get it? It’s a perfect LP, and I’m not just saying that because it has “Sippin’ Lysol” on it.

– Caro Alt

Anxious – Little Green House

Run For Cover Records

Anxious doesn’t waste time with sugarcoating difficult emotions in their debut album, Little Green House. Sitting at a tight 32-minute run time, this record approaches the bittersweet experience of growing up with honesty and wisdom beyond the band’s years at the time of writing. In the same way that life often demands that we balance many feelings at once, Little Green House simultaneously addresses themes of relationships, grief, change, and doubt. What better way to work through such heaviness than the tender, precise blend of melodic hardcore and emo that Anxious has been refining since high school?

Despite its subject matter, this record doesn’t lead me to dwell on things. Instead, it evokes grit, determination, and an intent to keep moving forward after reflecting on the past. The first three tracks are punchy – anthemic even – and they carry a momentum as if to suggest that the only way out of pain is by going through it. This energy is contrasted beautifully in the stripped-down moments of “Wayne” and the poignant closing track “You When You’re Gone.” Anxious stay true to the genre in their configuration, yet deliver an instantly recognizable sound through subtle vocal processing and unique instrumentals. This record feels like a raindrop-soaked memory in a rearview mirror; the perfect backdrop for leaving something behind before facing a new chapter. If you’re wrestling with confusion, gloom, or transformation in life, you very well may feel at home within the walls of Little Green House.

– Annie Watson

Bomb the Music Industry – Get Warmer

Quote Unquote Records

A bright, empty green field is a promise, a clean slate to build on. Jeff Rosenstock knew what he was doing when he picked a photo of a field for the cover of Get Warmer, a record about how you can get a clean slate by moving states, getting sober, and riding bikes, but things won’t really change unless you do. When Rosenstock sings, “It never seems to get warmer / no matter how far south you go,” he doesn’t just mean literally. The obvious double entendre implies that when you look outside yourself for the truth, you just get colder. It doesn’t matter what the Georgian summer brings when “problems are all I create.” For as goddamn fun as this album sounds — specifically how euphoric “I Don’t Love You Anymore” is to shout along with — this is a desperate record that can’t fulfill any promises you can’t do yourself. 

– Lillian Weber

Field Medic – Light Is Gone 

Self-released

I was pretty late to the Medic Nation. I jumped on board after seeing a tweet someone had posted about not being able to listen to Field Medic because of the way he looked. Usually I just scroll past that sort of online hate, but it was 2020 and I didn’t have anything better to do considering the world outside had stopped, so I decided to see what this person looked like that made someone so angry. Six years later, Kevin Patrick Sullivan, the man behind Field Medic, Paper Rose Haiku, and Protection Spell, remains one of my favorite artists. Debut album Light Is Gone is a homebrewed, lo-fi folk album that is somehow reminiscent of the old folk music my mom would play in the kitchen, yet also contemporary and fresh. Recorded live directly to cassette tape, the songs on Light Is Gone are sparse in their arrangements but dense in their lyrics of love lost and nights spent alone drinking. One of my highlights on the album is the closer “it’s still you,” where Patrick sings about a sketchy situation of some dudes getting him to cash a stolen check for them. I was genuinely shocked to hear something so transparent and vulnerable from an artist. That courage to put out a song that revealing inspires me to this day and always keeps me coming back to not only Light is Gone, but to Patrick’s work in its entirety. May we all be that true to ourselves in our lives.

– Nickolas Sackett

Honorable Mentions

Hey, we can’t write about every album with this color, so here’s a list of some more that we feel like we should mention.

• American Football - American Football

• The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die - Harmlessness

• Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Adult Summers

• Alien Boy - Don't Know What I Am

• Minus The Bear - Menos El Oso

• Anxious - Little Green House

• Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

• Soup Dreams - Hellbender

• Charli XCX - Brat

• Band of Horses - Everything All the Time

• Big Black - Songs About Fucking

• The Beths - Expert in a Dying Field

• Enter Shikari - Common Dreads

• SZA - Ctrl

• Wilco - Schmilco

• Big Thief - Double Infinity

• The Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot

• Alex G - DSU

• Deftones - Private Music

• Pool Kids - Easier Said Than Done

• Tiberius - Troubadour

• Gladie - No Need to Be Lonely

• Ratboys - Singin’ To An Empty Chair

• Origami Angel - Somewhere City

• Fiddlehead - Between the Richness

• Lucky Boys Confusion - Commitment

• Opeth - Watershed

• Type O Negative - The Origin Of The Feces

• Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses

• Type O Negative - World Coming Down

• Type O Negative - The Least Worst Of

• Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

• Type O Negative - Dead Again

• Alex G - Rules

• MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks

• bedbug - pack your bags the sun is growing

Swim Into The Sound's 20 Favorite Albums of 2019

Music moved too fast for me in 2019. Last year I listened to over 450 new releases and wrote reviews for nearly one-quarter of them. This year I listened to less, I wrote about less, and felt more out of the loop than ever before. I still managed to make it out to a ton of concerts, kept a long-running list of new albums, and discovered some cool stuff along the way, but I’ll be the first to admit there’s a lot that passed me by in 2019. 

In addition to my lack of exploratory listening, this was also a year of “good-to-great” for me. Not only did this year lack a unanimous critical darling (I refuse to acknowledge NFR), there wasn’t even one breakaway album that I heavily connected with until about halfway through the year.

For some reason, once summer rolled around, things really started to pop off, and an avalanche of new albums led to what honestly felt like a new phase of my life. This mountain of new music, combined with moving across the country (again) this time to Denver, really made 2019 feel like multiple years packed into one. 

I may have listened to less “new” music than ever before, but last year taught me that’s an exhausting endeavor to undertake. Instead, this year I found myself discovering albums that I loved and burrowing I to them like a security blanket. Most of the albums you’re about to read about connected with me immediately upon first listen, but also went on to become something that I could return to often. Instead of listening to a critical darling, thinking ‘this feels important,’ and returning to it very few times, this year I listened to what I wanted to, and I think this list reflects that. That means this list has a more narrow scope than any previous album of the year list I’ve ever published on this site, but it feels true to me and true to my experience this year.

These are the albums that soundtracked my year. Not only that, these are the albums that made my year. That made me feel welcome. That made me feel grounded. That made me feel at home, even when I was thousands of miles away from my friends and family. These are the records that I listened to and saw a piece of myself in. These are my favorite releases of 2019. 

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20 | King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rats’ Nest

As is the case with most people, my first foray into music was hyper-uncool. Aside from digging through my dad’s CD collection and mindlessly consuming whatever was served up to me on VH1, the first albums I ever spent my own money on were Motörhead’s Ace of Spades and Anthrax’s Attack of the Killer B’s. One of the first new records I ever purchased was Black Tide’s Light from Above, which retroactively, wasn’t particularly “cool,” but makes sense in the grand scheme of things. Given this early childhood brush with various forms of heavy metal, it’s easy to see why Infest the Rats’ Nest feels like an album tailor-made for me. 

I’ve never been a big King Gizzard guy, I respect the high-concept albums, the hustle of releasing five albums in one year, and the overall energy of the band’s live performances, but it wasn’t until this year that that band finally created the album I’ve been waiting for them to make. Featuring red-hot guitar licks, boisterous, driving rhythm sections, and snarling heavy metal vocals, this is Gizz’s heaviest album to date. It’s a mix of speed metal, stoner rock, whacky 80’s hair metal, and borderline-prog all rolled into one. It genuinely feels like the band took that first collection of CDs on my middle school iPod Mini and modernized it in the best way possible. It’s a goofy album, but that’s kind of the point. The band is at their best when they’re not taking themselves too seriously or trying too hard, and Rat’s Nest comes off as an effortless love letter to the albums that my entire musical taste is built off of. 

19 | Bon Iver - i,i

Three months before Justin Vernon began to tease Bon Iver’s newest album, I published a career retrospective that hypothesized the band’s discography had only gotten stranger and more removed from reality as it went on (in a good way). I’ve come to love it all, but this newest record proved that once you travel far out enough, the only direction to go is back. If 22, A Million was Justin Vernon as a glittering meteorite far off in space, then i,i is the sound of his soul returning to earth. Blending elements of all the band’s previous releases, i,i takes pieces from the group’s folk, baroque pop, and electronic phases and combines them all into something that ties a neat bow on the band. It’s holistic and fulfilling, the long-awaited conclusion to over one decade of heartbreak and growth. If this is where Bon Iver decides to call it quits, then it would be a satisfactory finale. 

18 | Charli XCX - Charli

There are few things more cliche than a music journalist invoking the phrase “future of pop” when talking about Charli XCX. The reason that phenomenon has become so widespread is because it’s hard to listen to Charli’s music and place it anywhere on the musical spectrum that currently exists. It sounds like pop; it’s approachable, singable, and incredibly-well produced, but it’s also glitchy, bassy, and laden with so many other genres that it genuinely feels like the near-future amalgamation of all pop culture. It’s the re-introduction to the monoculture, should we be so lucky. 

Charli finds our would-be pop princess of the future actualizing herself (and her music) in a way that she never has before. Charli XCX songs tend to be about one of two things: partying, or the comedown. Aided by a star-studded lineup of musicians, Charli makes some of her most poppy (“1999”), emotional (“Thoughts”), and hard-hitting (“Click”) music to date. There are choruses worthy of a Taylor Swift album alongside bars worthy of a Young Thug mixtape, and in that duality lies the raw power of Charli XCX.

17 | Heart Attack Man - Fake Blood

Earlier this year, Heart Attack Man’s guitarist, lead singer, and social media mastermind Eric Egan made headlines when he posted a (normal, average, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary) orange beanie on eBay and racked up a bid of nearly 100k dollars. This meme-worthy auctioneering move brought the band to the attention of traditional music publications and earned them swaths of new listeners (myself included). When they released their sophomore album Fake Blood several months later, it immediately became clear that the band is good at a lot more than generating headlines. 

Taking a guitar-first approach to pop-punk, the group crafted eleven immaculate tracks that are somehow catchy, moshable, touching, and personable, oftentimes all at once. Songs like “Fake Blood” and “Out For Blood” lean heavier into the catchy pop side of things sounding like they could have come straight off a late-90’s alt radio station. Meanwhile, deeper cuts like “Cut My Losses” and “Sugar Coated” find Egan bearing his teeth and spitting bile at whoever finds themselves unfortunate enough to fall within his crosshairs. Personal favorites “Rats In a Bucket” and “Crisis Actor” are riff-centered singalongs that feature addicting hooks, biting commentary, and even a reading of the Miranda Rights that manages to sound heavy as fuck. Fake Blood feels like the best example of what pop-punk can achieve in 2019; a perfect mix of studio polish, well-paced energy, stellar songwriting, and just the right amount of heaviness sprinkled throughout. It may be 17 on our list, but if there were an award for the most crowd-hyping, guitar-shredding, hard-hitting pop-punk record, then this would be number one.

16 | Field Medic - fade into the dawn

I first discovered Field Medic in a freak playlist accident, and have been deeply in love ever since. Combining Bob Dylan-esque deliveries, jaunty folk ditties, boombox-led bangers, alongside some of the most poetic love songs I’ve ever heard, Kevin Patrick Sullivan offers a hyper-modern take on folk music. fade into the dawn was on my radar from the moment it was announced and somehow did not disappoint my exceedingly-high expectations. Featuring a similar spread of folk to country to borderline-pop, Field Medic’s 2019 record offers an escape from the normal into the extraordinary. While some songs provide far-off musings of the future, most of the tracks simply offer unique perspectives of everyday events and relationships. Whether it’s the life of a touring musician, body art, or the unknowable other, Kevin Patrick Sullivan has once again proven himself adept at reflecting the human condition within the space of several beautiful minutes. On top of all this, album closer “helps me forget...” is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard all year and was only narrowly edged out by The National and Slaughter Beach, Dog as my favorite song of the year. 

15 | Greet Death - New Hell

Listening to New Hell is like casting a spell upon yourself. From the moment you hit play on the record, its energy will pour from your speakers and will grow to permeate every corner of whatever room you find yourself in. The songs creak, rumble, and reverberate, bouncing around the walls of your brain and leaving you emotionally-drained in their wake. It’s not a fun listen by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s an emotional outpouring, and that can be rewarding in a different way. From the folksy (Sandy) Alex G-like “Let It Die” to the heavy-as-shit borderline-stoner-rock shoegaze found on “Strain,” the record is varied and masterfully-crafted. There’s an impressive range of moods on display here, each one a different shade of downbeat but also adorned with shimmering gold and silver accents that add some brightness to the otherwise overwhelming darkness. And while New Hell is one cohesive piece overall, each song also has special moments that make it feel unique from the others that surround it. There’s a molten guitar solo on “You’re Gonna Hate What you’ve Done,” there’s crushing fuzzed-out riffage on “Strange Days,” hypnotic lyricism on “Entertainment,” and the band caps it all off with an epic ten-minute closing track. New Hell is a dark, moody, and morose album with transitive properties so strong that it’s impossible to come out of your first listen the same person.

14 | Future Teens - Breakup Season

I’ll start this off by saying that I absolutely despise the fetishization of sadness. Even worse than that, the memeification of sadness (tweeting “listening to the new Mount Eerie and crying, brb” or something along those lines). If that’s how you get your sadness out, then go for it, but more often than not, it feels like people idolizing the wrong thing and emulating “sadness” for the sake of internet points… well, this got off track quickly. The point is that Future Teens’ sophomore album Breakup Season feels like real, genuine sadness in a way that isn’t overwrought, performative, or played-out. There were probably sadder releases to come out this year, but where Breakup Season excels is that it feels like a version of sadness that’s true to me. It’s not overtly sad (in fact, it’s often pretty catchy and upbeat), but the feelings are real, the experiences are shared, and that takes guts. 

“Happy New Year” is a dynamite slow-burn opener that allows for Amy Hoffman’s voice to shine like a diamond. “Born to Stay,” “Emotional Bachelor,” and “Frequent Crier” are all peppy sing-along emo tracks that zero in on specific elements of living with depression with hyper-realistic and confessional slice-of-life observations. By the back half of the album, the group has turned their gaze outward to their relationships with the people around them. “Swiped Out” tackles what an average relationship looks like in the era of smartphone dating, and “Heavy Petting” is a cleverly-written love song about the time when your pet feels like the only constant companion in your life. Breakup Season captures and articulates a specific brand of struggles for the mid-to-late-20-something, and that’s what makes it particularly affecting. The fact that it’s all catchy as hell is just a bonus.

13 | Mannequin Pussy - Patience

I once heard a theory: every band name is bad, it’s just a question of whether or not the band’s music makes up for it or not. Think about it. Mom Jeans is a bad name, but their music is good. DaBaby? Terrible name, but his songs bang. Even The Beatles, one of the most revered musical groups of all time, has a name that’s based on a terrible pun. While that observation was mostly a joke, I can’t think of a better example of this theory than the punk phenom Mannequin Pussy. The band has weighed in on their own name, even offering to write coworkers and moms letters explaining the meaning behind the name, but for those not easily swayed by “bad” words, the music more than speaks for itself. 

Patience is, at its core, a breakup album; 25 minutes of anger, resentment, and recovery that come in the wake of a major emotional turnover. My friend described lead single “Drunk II” as “a war crime,” and he couldn’t be more right. The song strikes a perfect balance of sneering punk anger, real-ass emotions, and a hook that’s catchy enough to climb the Billboard charts (if there were any justice in the world). Much like the band’s sophomore effort, Patience is a short burst of hooky, well-envisioned, and incredibly-polished punk music. There’s a perfect spread of fast-paced thrashy scream-along ragers alongside catchy and approachable love songs that your mom might even be able to tolerate. The record moves fast, hits hard, and leaves you wanting more, the way that all great music should. 

12 | 100 gecs - 1000 gecs

As is I’m sure was the case with most people I hit play on 1000 gecs not knowing what I was getting into. I think out of everything I’ve listened to this entire year, 1000 gecs was the only record to truly surprise me. And I mean shock me. Comprised of musicians Laura Les and Dylan Brady, 100 gecs is making music that needs to be heard to be believed. The two musicians have a ravenous appetite for (and adoration of) music, and 1000 gecs is a solidified effort to display it. 

On this record, you’ll hear PC music, dubstep, bubblegum pop, hip-hop, grindcore, pop-punk, house, ska, and dozens more. The most obvious connections to draw are artists like SOPHIE, Sleigh Bells, BROCKHAMPTON, Crystal Castles, and maybe even some Breathe Carolina… but even that long list of genres, artists, and influences fail to capture what 100 gecs sound like. The duo is deconstructing not only pop music, but pop culture. This is what Lil Aaron was doing when he combined leaned-out autotuned trap and pop-punk. This album is jittery, jumping between genres, sounds, phrases, and ideas within seconds. It’s blindingly-bright fun, and if you’re a fan of any one of those genres, you’ll likely find something to glom onto throughout the album’s 25-minute running time. 1000 gecs is a record in its own class and of its own world. 

11 | The National - I Am Easy To Find

The National have become masters of the pivot. Their discography is fluid; each album flows easily from one to the next with the band only making minor changes and gradual shifts. Over the course of decades, the band has managed to make each record sound just different enough that every new release feels refreshing yet familiar. They ease fans into each new era with strong singles, they know how to close a record, and they put on a hell of a good live show. There’s a reason they’ve become the de facto father figures of the indie rock circuit because they’re one of the most consistent bands in the industry. 

The pivot the band made on I Am Easy To Find sees the group shifting the spotlight away from lead singer Matt Beringer and his iconic voice towards a cast of female singers. Released alongside an accompanying 27-minute film by Mike Mills, I Am Easy To Find is part album part visual art piece. The film depicts one woman’s life from birth to death, all set to songs from the album. We see her first breath, first love, her first fight, her first child. Everything. It’s a gorgeous, goosebump-inducing black-and-white narrative that is nothing short of captivating. The album tells a similar narrative over the course of it’s one-hour running time, but its crowning achievement comes in the final three minutes with “Light Years.” The song is an achingly-gorgeous piano ballad that also happens to be my favorite song of the year. It’s a wonderful and meditative message that ties the record up with a neat little bow and sends the listener off into the night thinking about what they had just consumed. It’s beautiful, painful, and ever-changing, much like life. 

10 | Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

While I do consider myself a fan of Vampire Weekend, I have what I like to call an “on-again, off-again” relationship with the band’s discography. I arrived at their self-titled record years after everyone else, and the only song I still find evergreen is the fast-paced (but admittedly basic) “A-Punk.” Meanwhile, I believe Contra is a near-perfect indie rock record, while Modern Vampires of the City is mostly over-cooked and only has one truly great song on it. When Rostam left the band in 2016, people (rightfully) thought Vampire Weekend might not be long for this world. His production and instrumentation had become so synonymous with the group’s sound that fans wondered how they would ever continue without one of its most pivotal founding members. Turns out the answer, after a six-year gap between albums, was to smoke a ton of weed, retreat into nature, and get really into the Grateful Dead.

Preceded by a perplexing album cover that broke the band’s longstanding visual aesthetic, lead single “Harmony Hall” set the tone (and expectations) for this album early on in its release cycle. Opening with an acoustic guitar, serene lyricism, and a melody that echoes The Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey,” this song let fans know early on whether they’d be into this new era of the Vampire Weekend or if they should tap out now. There’s something equal parts cringey and endearing about a bunch of ultra-white Ivy League graduates trading in their polo shirts and boat shoes for tye-dye t-shirts and Birkenstocks, but the music speaks for itself. “Bambina” is a bouncy auto-tuned Contra-level cut, “This Life” is a fast-paced ass-shaking track, and the Steve Lacy-assisted “Sunflower / Flower Moon” are as danceable as they are musical, offering a groovy late-album one-two punch. Meanwhile, closing track “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin” is a pensive Modern Vampires-esque send-off that’s lovingly-constructed and precious. And if you need any proof that the band can actually live up to the jammy-inspiration of The Dead, then look no further than any of this year’s Austin City Limit’s performances where the group shows they can skillfully take one of their base songs and blow it up to extraordinary and psychedelic proportions. Father of the Bride is proof that sometimes change is for the best, and sometimes your best is yet to come. 

9 | Charly Bliss - Young Enough

The innate power of Charly Bliss lies in how genuine each member of the band is. While they first made a name for themselves in indie/pop-punk/alt music circles with 2017’s Guppy, this year’s Young Enough is a step up in nearly every imaginable way. Still bearing Eva Hendricks’ piercing and unmistakable vocals, the band’s newest effort takes the power-pop found on Guppy and infuses it with a hearty helping of synth, resulting in a record that feels accessible and honest with just the right amount of bite.

The album walks a fascinating and addicting line between throwback synth-pop tendencies and hyper-modern rock songwriting. Electronic drums keep time in between distorted guitar stabs on “Capacity,” slow-building guitar and basslines build to an explosive finish on “Young Enough,” and “Hard to Believe” sounds downright Pixies-esque in its foundation. This album, combined with October’s follow-up EP Supermoon, paint the picture of a band with a fully fleshed-out vision and an unapologetic approach to their music. Young Enough is an album that radiates strength, even in its weakest moments, and that’s the kind of energy we could all use more of in 2019. 

8 |  Knocked Loose - A Different Shade of Blue

Confession time: I first listened to Knocked Loose in October of 2018. Partially because I had aged out of the hardcore phase of my high school years, but also because I had somehow confused them with Knuckle Puck for literal years. So imagine my surprise when I listened to Laugh Tracks and heard something as decidedly not-pup-punk as Knocked Loose. Needless to say, Laugh Tracks is a spectacular album that quickly became my go-to when I needed some angry hardcore music. While it’s a well-constructed release, Laugh Tracks it also very much feels like a “debut album,” so I was ravenously curious to see how they would follow that up on their sophomore release, especially now that the band had garnered a massive following.

A Different Shade of Blue is pure emotional catharsis. “Mistakes Like Fractures” is bone-crushing. “Forget Your Name” will rip your ribcage open like a shotgun blast. “A Serpent’s Touch” should come with a fucking warning label. The album is 38 minutes of nonstop, punishing riffage, violent breakdowns, and vitriolic lyricism. It’s moshpit-initiating, fight-instigating hardcore, and this record made it clear why Knocked Loose has become the gold standard for the genre.

7 | Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Cosmic Thrill Seekers

It’s easy to make a great first album; it’s the culmination of years of hard work, a lifetime of creativity, and countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears. For these reasons, the Sophomore Slump is a very real thing, yet Prince Daddy & The Hyena managed not only to subvert this phenomenon; they vaulted over it in style. It’s one thing to make a good sophomore album, but the decision to make the follow-up to your breakthrough album a three-act concept piece based on a bad acid trip filtered through the lens of The Wizard of Oz is next-level insanity. 

Cosmic Thrill Seekers is a 40-minute excavation of the soul, accompanied by all the fears, insecurities, and manias that come with it. Beginning with“I Lost My Life,” the album throws the listener headfirst into Kory Gregory’s raspy singing voice as he recounts the beginning of his acid-fueled tale over an acoustic guitar. Things really open up on “Lauren (Track 2),” where the band launches into a hard-charging riff that blends punk and emo into a finely-distilled fusion of the two genres. The songs flow together flawlessly, quickly guiding the listener along fast-paced crowd-churners, grungy pop meditations, and even upbeat dance tracks. Cosmic Thrill Seekers is an album packed with intricacies, scattered thoughts, and self-referential melodies. Songs fold in on themselves, pulling back language and chord progressions used on earlier songs. On top of all this, the closing track loops perfectly back to the beginning of the album, making this an endlessly-relistenable release that circles the listener right back to the start of the adventure. These elements all combine together for a rewarding and slightly-high-concept emo record that has its own dream logic and internal rhythms. It’s wandering and wonderous, charming, thrashy, and endearing. 

6 | Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties - Routine Maintenance

The first Aaron West album, We Don’t Have Each Other, was the story of a man blindsided by divorce. Grief-stricken and confused, Aaron fled south on an impromptu road trip to Georgia in order to find himself, or at least some answers. Bittersweet, the following 7” recounted the story of his return to New York, and found our hero facing the memories of the relationship that he had left behind. 2017’s Orchard Park was a one-off single that offered a brief update on Aaron’s life in the form of himself and his mom spreading his father’s ashes. This year, the newest update to the Aaron West saga arrived in the form of Routine Maintenance, and it’s one of the albums that made me feel most consistently this year.

It’s worth mentioning that this story, the downfall of Aaron West, is all a fabrication, a character study helmed by Dan Campbell, the frontman of The Wonder Years. Much like his main band, Campbell lends his poetic songwriting and emotional voice to Aaron, but the fact that he’s been able to create this character and relationships that feel so realized and lived-in is nothing short of an absolute artistic achievement.

While it would have been easy to make Routine Maintenance about Aaron meeting someone new, falling in love, and getting over his previous relationship, we all know that real life doesn’t work that way. Instead, the latest record finds Aaron at a crossroads. He takes his band on the road, finds some success, and then suddenly, his brother-in-law passes away. By the end of the record, Aaron is living with his mother, sister, and his nephew Colin under one roof in New Jersey. Aaron is helping out around the house, taking Colin to school, and doing the best he can to fill in the role of a makeshift father figure. It’s in the album’s final moments that it’s title Routine Maintenance makes sense. Because sometimes life isn’t about getting better, it’s about helping other people get better. It’s about doing what you can, carrying the weight, and doing minor upkeep in the name of making the world around you a little better.

5 | PUP - Morbid Stuff

Life isn’t miraculous. It’s not a movie, and it’s not a pop song, hell, it’s not even a commercial. There’s no justice, no resolution, and there’s definitely not a storybook ending… but that doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad. More often than not, life is just lots and lots of the same thing, and that’s a different kind of evil. Life’s not out to get you; it merely bides its time until you fall prey to it in one way or another. This unchanging and unflinching indifference of life often makes one fantasize about the end of it, if only because it’s the last significant change we have left in store for ourselves. Struggling with (and raging against) that monotony of everyday life is exactly what Morbid Stuff is about. 

Coming off their genre-elevating sophomore album The Dream is Over, Pup’s third album is filled to the brim with throat-shredding group chants, cutting lyrical honesty, and fist-balling riffage. The album opens with an anemic guitar lick that sounds like it’s being played from the top of a mountain for onlookers below. Lead singer Stefan Babcock quickly undercuts this propulsive energy as he enters the fray and snottily explains how he was “Bored as fuck / Sitting around and thinking all this morbid stuff / Like if anyone I’ve slept with is dead.” These morbid curiosities pave the way for full-throated group chants and rocket-like drum beats that eventually fizzle out into a defeated lullaby ending, a perfect crash course for the particular brand of unhappiness that PUP deals in. As a whole, Morbid Stuff feels like an incredibly democratic creation, with each member getting chances to shine from one song to the next. There’s cynical, biting songwriting on “Kids,” moshpit nu-metal breakdowns on “Full Blown Meltdown,” and even enough room for a one-line guest feature from Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss on “Free At Last.”

Morbid Stuff lies at an odd intersection between pop-punk and full-on punk. The band has a knack for making these incredibly-catchy and energetic songs that are ripe for singing (screaming) along with, but there’s also enough of an edge to them that they’re rowdy, sweaty, and cathartic in a live setting. It’s like Speed; these are songs you can sing along to while in the car, but it feels detrimental to the artistic experience if you’re shouting along while going any slower than 50 miles per hour. Best consumed while flying down the highway or packed into a room with 500 other sweaty fans, Morbid Stuff is not for the faint of heart — it’s for the ones with the pissed-off, fed-up, raging hearts.

4| Oso Oso - Basking in the Glow

In the past few years, the lines between emo, pop-punk, and indie rock have become so blurred that we’ve almost looped back around to using the word “emo” as a slur. As artists continue to experiment with mixing these sounds into one big genre-fluid cocktail, nobody did it better this year than Jade Lilitri of Oso Oso. 2017’s Yunahon Mixtape was a near-perfect emo album, packed with more hooks than Nevermind and some of the best bridges in the game. Last year’s two-track single offered a tantalizing glimpse at where Lilitri was taking the group, and 2019’s Basking in the Glow represents the fully-realized potential of that emo/indie sound.

Songs like “the view” and “basking in the glow” are some of the sweetest and poppiest tracks I’ve heard all year with choruses that shimmer and lyrics that are ready for emo kids’ Instagram captions the world over. And as you would expect with any emo-adjacent record, there’s also an impressive range of emotions on display throughout. The thoughtful “dig” is a spacy and meditative track with a Smashing Pumpkins-like fuzzed-out buildup, meanwhile “wake up next to god” is a fast-paced air-drum-inspiring banger featuring tight palm-muted punctuation. Basking in the Glow is (fittingly) a bright, sunny, and warm record with a constant underlying layer of unhappiness. It’s like a spoonful of honey; sugary sweet, beautifully-golden, and sticky enough to stay with you long after you first consume it.

3| Macseal - Super Enthusiast

Simply put, I don’t think there was a better crafted, better written, or better-performed album this year than Super Enthusiast. While Macseal made a name for themselves with Always Sunny name-dropping and hyper-compelling shout-along emo rock, they gradually did what all of us do and mellowed out. Last year’s four-track Map It Out saw the band leaning away from those guitar-tapped riffs and screamed vocals of their early recordings and into something more poppy and polished. This year’s Super Enthusiast sees the band completing that transition swirling together a mix of mathy emo and hyper-polished indie rock.

Super Enthusiast is picture-perfect emo. It’s not particularly midwesty, it’s not really screamy, but the band was able to take the best elements of all those disparate subgenres and combine them into something remarkably holistic and pure. The songs sparkle with crystal-clear guitars, immaculate bass, and pristine drumming. Other than the band’s slight sonic shift, one of the most significant changes from Macseal’s early work is the noticeably better production. Even the most slow-paced song on Super Enthusiast is lovingly-crafted, adorned with reverb, crisp background vocals, and a slow build of distortion. There are also some remnants of the band’s early sound on songs like “Upside Down Again,” which bears a floaty, dreamlike riff that’s probably my favorite of the entire year.

Super Enthusiast feels like the album equivalent of one of a freshwater lake. It’s wondrous, natural, and almost too pure for this world. As you look down from the snow-capped mountains and gradiented blue sky, you see the reflective surface of the calm water and feel at peace. The band is no longer comprised of emotionally-turbulent teenagers, they’ve grown up, developed, and evolved into people with different coping mechanisms than whining and watching Always Sunny. They still have problems, frustrations, doubts, and fears, but they have developed new ways of dealing with whatever life throws at them. They have an unshakable lust for life.

2 | Origami Angel - Somewhere City

This year I turned 26. This means that Wonder Years lyrics hit different now, but it also means that I’m (arguably) more of an adult than I was before. This year I also moved across the country (again), got a place of my own (again), and started a new job in a new city (again). I packed everything I owned into the trunk of my car and drove my ass from Michigan to Colorado over the course of a few days in late November. I fought through fog, snow, and freezing rain, but I got there in one piece, settled in, and moved into a new apartment all my own with a new job right down the street.

I guess all of that is an achievement worth celebrating, but this year I also did something else I’m proud of: I bought Gushers at the grocery store. They weren’t that expensive (or as good as I remember), but that purchase felt symbolic: a snack from my childhood bought with my own money for the explicit purpose of taking myself on a trip down memory lane. Somewhere City is an album about that.

Half concept album, Somewhere City finds Origami Angel weaving a tale of a mythical land where the fast food is abundant, and the Dr. Pepper flows freely. It’s a place where your childhood cartoons are always on TV, and the only commercials are from those 2000’s youtube nostalgia compilations. It’s an album-length early-twenties realization that things will never be the same, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try your hardest to recapture a small fragment of your past.

Since the beginning of the year, Origami Angel have been on a roll. Between splits, EPs, energetic live shows, and out-of-the-box promotion, the DC-based duo has rightfully made a name for themselves as one of the faces of emo’s fifth wave. Their music is catchy, smart, and hooks into a level of nerdy specificity that connects directly with my brain. This is all to say the band seemingly has everything going for them, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can watch any one of their music videos, and you’ll see the glowing, joyous, communal spirit of DIY emo.

Which brings us to the album.

Released at the tail end of the year, Somewhere City is Origami Angel’s first full-length record, and the band pulled out all the stops. From a “nice touch” technical level, the album pulls off all the cool conceptual things I love; it loops from beginning to end like Cosmic Thrill Seekers, and it ends with a medley of every previous song much like “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral.” Most importantly, every song stands on its own as a one-of-a-kind creation, and I mean every song. There’s catchy riffage on “24 Hr Drive Thru” and “Doctor Whomst,” speed-metal breakdowns on “666 Flags,” and bouncy power-slide emo on “The Title Track.” Most uncharacteristically for the genre, the biggest throughline of the album is a message of overwhelming positivity and reassurance on songs like “Skeleton Key” and “Find Your Throne.”

Somewhere City is an unapologetically bright and youthful album. Despite the album’s multiple layers of conceptuality and its ARG rollout, Somewhere City is, at its core, 30 minutes of tight riffs and feel-good nostalgia that will send long-lost memories rushing back like a pack of Gushers. This one of the best emo albums of the year, one of the best debuts of recent memory, and will likely go on to be a formative album for thousands of music fans à la to Home, Like Noplace Is There, or Whenever, If Ever.

Somewhere City spans childhoods, generations, and emotions. It’s lovingly-constructed and musically-correct. It’s filled to the brim with fast-tapping riffage and already-iconic group chants. If you haven’t yet memorized every beat of this record, there’s still time to grab a ticket to Somewhere City, all you need is an open mind and a hungry soul.

1 | Jail Socks - It’s Not Forever

The best and worst part about running a blog by yourself is trying to decide your album of the year. Do you pick the albums that made the most significant cultural impact? Do you pick the most financially successful albums that dominated the radio and defined the year? Do you pick the consensus albums that show up on every other blog? Honestly, those are all background factors, because ultimately your “album of the year” should come down to one of two things:

1) The album that you thought was the “best” this year
2) The album that connected with you the most

Sometimes the first one makes sense — albums like Blonde and To Pimp A Butterfly that are undeniably great and well-crafted. Sometimes the second one makes sense, an album that hit you at the right time, spoke to you in the right way, and put words to the emotions you couldn’t articulate. For me this year, that was Jail Socks. 

Within the space of a calendar year, I went from not knowing who Jail Socks were to being a die-hard fan. I go into greater detail in the full review for It’s Not Forever, but for the sake of a quick recap; after discovering the band through a video making the rounds on emo twitter, I downloaded the band’s four publicly-available songs which almost immediately worked their way into my daily rotation. 

It’s safe to say this EP was easily my most anticipated release of the year. For my first listen, I sat down, cranked my speakers as loud as I could stand, and freaked out to every note alone in my house like I was a goddamn youtube reaction channel. But I wasn’t performing for a camera; it was one-hundred-percent genuine.

It’s Not Forever is punctual, a lightweight six tracks clocking in at a collective 20 minutes. It contains two re-recordings of songs from the band’s first demo and four new tracks. Even with its abrupt running time, this group of riff-obsessed teenagers from North Carolina managed to do more with one side of a record than some artists did with 60+ minutes this year. 

The EP starts off like a firecracker with fast-paced emo guitar tapping on “Jake Halpin.” That song bleeds flawlessly into “Parting Words” as the band strings the listener along with a breadcrumb trail of bouncy basslines, crashing cymbals, and anthemic group chants. Lead single “Poplar Avenue” is an energetic feel-good breakup anthem, and “Steering Wheel” is an impactful song of personal growth set to a background of cascading guitarwork and emotional vocals. It’s instrumentally-precise but emotionally messy, and that’s a dynamic I find myself endlessly enamored with. 

Everything on this EP simply works. It may not be all that accessible to anyone outside of the midwest emo scene, but it connected with me in a way that I find absolutely astonishing. Not only is this EP great on a technical level, but it’s also hard to overstate how important a role this band has played in my 2019. Jail Socks have been the soundtrack to my year. They’ve been the soundtrack to my time in Detroit, and the words to everything I’ve felt this year. They’re emblematic of a greater movement in emo music and symbolic of everything that 2019 has meant to me. When I look back on my time in the Midwest ten years from now, these are the songs that will pop into my head. 

Very few times have I found a collection of music that seems so specifically wired to my brain. Every guitar tap, bass thump, drum hit, and shout-along vocal lands. I’ve memorized every molecule of this EP because it makes sense to me on a higher level. It’s like someone took a corner of my brain, threw it into the studio, and then performed it back at me. It’s miraculous, and I hope that everyone reading this is fortunate enough to find their equivalent at some point in their life.