Swim Into The Sound's 15 Favorite Albums of 2021

I hate to always start these with a gloomy intro paragraph, but I’ll be real; 2021 has been hard. In some ways, harder than 2020. While many of us spent last year hunkered down and reeling from a global pandemic, this year has been far more undefinable. We’re nearing a million dead from COVID here in the US, and the government response has essentially boiled down to a shrug. At least last year, it felt like we were all in this together. 

For me, 2021 has been a year of breakups, burnouts, and overall bummers. As we sit on the brink of another outbreak with collective “pandemic fatigue,” I’m beginning to think that we’re never getting out of this. It seems that, when faced with two options, most people will opt for the one that helps them and them alone. Either that or people are so far down their individualistic rabbit holes that they can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s been a debilitating and demoralizing season, but I’m still here, and so are you. 

As with most other years, music was a shining bright spot in my life that helped me through each and every day. Whether consoling, comforting, or just helping me forget about the outside world for a few minutes, there were plenty of albums this year that I found peace in. These albums have been my oasis. The safe space that allowed me to weather the storm and make sense of it all. They’ve soundtracked moments of joyous exhilaration and crushing loss. No matter what they sound like, these are the albums that have helped me through a very dark, very long, very hard year. 

Despite how dour I sound and how paralyzed I feel, I am thankful to be here and grateful that I get to experience works of art such as these. Here are my 15 favorite albums of the year. 

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15 | Wild Pink - A Billion Little Lights

Royal Mountain Records

For the better part of the last decade, Wild Pink have been carefully fleshing out their own corner of the musical world with loving brushstrokes. Sometimes those brushstrokes would be long, vibrant streaks like 2018’s Yolk in the Fur, and other times they would be shorter dispatches like an EP here, or a random Taylor Swift cover there. Throughout 2021, the heartland indie rockers seemed hellbent on adding more onto their canvas than ever before. Released in February, A Billion Little Lights is a searching album that conjures the awe-inspiring feelings of a drive through America’s heartland. The sun shines down upon you as you feel the wind in your hair and take in the vast expanse before you. The amber-coated fields of grain contrast the cloudless blue skies, and you feel at home, even though you’re hundreds of miles away from everything you’ve ever known. That’s what listening to A Billion Little Lights is like. Supported throughout the year by a tour, an EP, some covers, a live album, and capped off by an excellent single, there has never been a better or more rewarding year to live within the world crafted by John Ross & co.

14 | The Antlers - Green To Gold

Anti-

Some albums capture the frigid landscape of winter. Others embody the celebratory warmth of summer. While I love those types of albums, I’ve never heard a record capture the transition between seasons quite like Green To Gold. With dreamy lounge piano, vibrant steel guitar, and expansive instrumental stretches, The Antlers’ sixth studio album (and first in seven years) sees the band at a transitionary period too. Conceived and written almost entirely in the morning hours, the band’s latest is, as lead singer Peter Silberman puts it, “the first album I’ve made that has no eeriness in it.” He went on to elaborate, “I set out to make Sunday morning music.” Despite this aversion to darkness, everything about Green To Gold, from its title to the songs contained within it, is about the liminal spaces of life. And when you really think about it, aren’t those in-between moments are more compelling anyway? It’s easy to paint life with binaries, but the truth is more often somewhere in the middle. What’s really telling of who you are as a person is what you do to swing out of those periods and move between them. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? For The Antlers, the answer lies within this record. 

Just as Green To Gold soundtracked our world’s unthawing, the recently-released Losing Light captures our yearly withdrawal. Slower, darker, and released at the perfect time in the depths of November, the EP is a worthy addendum to the band’s latest record that makes it feel like a living, breathing piece of art. 

13 | Good Sleepy - everysinglelittlebit

No Sleep Records

everysinglelittlebit begins like a dream. As the album’s introductory track unfolds, it feels as if you’re making your way through a dense, moss-covered forest. Thick fog fills the air, carrying disembodied voices that swirl around the outer reaches of your perception, and suddenly everything drops out at once with “suffokate.” It’s like one of those trapping pits where hunters cover the opening in branches and leaves. You set foot onto it, shift your weight, and suddenly find yourself in a freefall. The song hits you like a punch to the gut, combining jittery guitarwork with a tight rhythm section and weighty shout-along vocals. Despite this bombastic sequencing, the tracklist does a good job of giving the listener a chance to catch their breath every once in a while, only to sap it away with the next track. Good Sleepy spend the duration of their debut album grappling with overwrought emotions, complicated relationships, and the idea of emotional self-sustainability. The instrumentals are tight and punchy, settling in at a middle ground somewhere between Stars Hollow and Ogbert The Nerd. The end result is an album with the nervous energy of speeding down the highway while chugging a Red Bull on your way to a basement gig. I know with everysinglelittlebit of myself that we’ll all be back there soon.

12 | Alien Boy - Don’t Know What I Am

Get Better Records

Don’t Know What I Am plays out like the soundtrack to a long-lost ​​mid-90s coming-of-age teen comedy. I’m not even talking about that made-for-TV trash, I’m talking top-of-the-line teen dramedies like Heathers and 10 Things I Hate About You. The kind of movies that culminate in a house party and always know when to bust out a peppy pop-punk tune. I suppose that would make “The Way I Feel” the scene-setting opening credits song that would play as we swoop into some bustling high school and meet our main characters. Throughout the record, the Portland rockers do an excellent job of introducing themselves to the audience, guiding them along this emotional journey, and pulling on our heartstrings with expertly-crafted hooks fit for 90s alt radio. The instrumentals are dripping in fuzzy shoegaze feedback that borrows equal parts from power pop and emo. Best listened to loud af, Don’t Know What I Am tackles topics of self-discovery, partnership, and queerness. More than anything, this record sounds like unrepentant love. It sounds like teenage adoration. It sounds like finding someone who loves you for who you are. This is the way things should have always been and should always be. It’s love the way you always wanted. 

11 | Lucy Dacus - Home Video

Matador Records

Home Video hurts to listen to. Not just because it’s a collection of raw feelings and confessional songs, but because it was released as my relationship was crumbling in real-time. I usually try to not inject too much of my personal life on here (much less in an AOTY countdown), but this album’s pain feels intertwined with my own. The songs of unfit pairings, longing, and heartbreak mirror the feelings I’ve experienced this year. Home Video is a hard album to listen to, but even still, I can’t deny its mastery. This record delivers everything I loved about 2018’s Historian and makes it even more approachable. There are still killer guitar solos, anthemic choruses, and aching balladry, but Dacus seems even more sure of herself. These pleasant qualities help dislodge these songs from the hurt. This record may still be hard for me to listen to, but a few years down the line, I can’t wait to revisit this release from a new perspective and ride alongside in Dacus’ passenger seat, taking in the world.

10 | Stars Hollow - I Want to Live My Life

Acrobat Unstable Records

Like most emo records, the debut album from Stars Hollow sees our narrator coming face to face with their faults. The key difference between I Want to Live My Life and most other emo records is that we actually accompany our hero on their journey towards self-betterment. While other releases of this genre lament not being able to get the girl or dig yourself out of a rut, I Want to Live My Life rolls up its sleeves and actually does the hard work. This means is that the listener experiences every phase of this journey as the band works their way from merely maintaining to striving to achieve something more. It’s a beautiful and true human experience captured in a compelling 25-minute run time.

Read our full review of I Want to Live my Life here.

9 | Fiddlehead - Between the Richness

Run For Cover Records

While Springtime & Blind was an album mired in death, Between the Richness is an album about life. Specifically, about the things that define a life. Inspired by lead singer Patrick Flynn’s experience as a recent father, the album uses his newfound perspective to unflinchingly capture the things that define us early on. Childhood friendships, mentors, conflicting emotions, growing apart, and academic expectations are all topics that inform the songs here. This all builds to an album-length collage that mirrors the building blocks most of us are comprised of.

After many, many, many repeated listens of Between the Richness, there’s one thing that always sticks in my mind. After all the dust has settled; after the EE Cummings poem, the Latin passages, and the obituary readings, one lyric always rattles around in my brain for hours on end; “How do I say goodbye?” Like many other lines on the album, it’s belted in a near-scream by Flynn, but is swaddled in a melody that can get stuck in your head for hours… and therein lies the beauty of Fiddlehead. Complicated articulations of even more complicated feelings delivered in a cathartic way that not only makes sense but makes you want to join in.

8 | Mannequin Pussy - Perfect

Epitaph

Punk music was never meant to be indulgent, and no release this year proved that more than Mannequin Pussy’s Perfect. A compact collection of five songs weighing in at a collective 14-minute runtime, this might be (pardon my pun) the perfect punk album… or at the very least, the best distillation of Mannequin Pussy’s range of sounds. “Control” is the ultra-relatable lead single, “Perfect” is the burn-it-all-down punk cut, and “To Lose You” is the soaring lovelorn middle child. Beyond that trifecta, “Pigs Is Pigs” is a bass-led hardcore sucker-punch with a vital message immediately contrasted with “Darling,” the EPs solitary closing ballad. Perfect is a full range of emotions captured in a rapid-fire montage of rage, love, injustice, hate, loneliness, and adoration. There’s simply nothing more you could ask for. 

7 | Cory Hanson - Pale Horse Rider

Drag City Inc

In my mind, Pale Horse Rider is a concept album. It’s a record about a cowboy riding an undead skeletal horse to the psychedelic depths of hell. The reason isn’t entirely clear, but odds are he’s going to rescue the girl from a hulking demonic behemoth. It’s like a Robert Rodriguez film, but way more laid back. Or maybe Evil Dead if the characters cracked a few less jokes. It’s Dante’s Inferno in a western setting. 

The title track is an early tent poll that plays out like the would-be movie’s title card. From there, we wind from the desert-like desolation of “Necklace” to the epic battle portrayed as a guitar solo on “Another Story From the Center of the Earth.” Even the celebratory moments like “Limited Hangout” are carried out after acknowledging how arduous the journey has been. “Sometimes it's so hard not to feel like a corpse Dragging a soul on two broken wheels / I have often felt the edges of my body trying to escape,” Hanson bemoans before picking up a drink. It’s a nice little moment of lightness that still acknowledges the dark reality we often find ourselves in.

With Hanson as our ferryman, he guides us through the voyage with crystalline pedal steel, rumbling cowboy drums, and jangly campfire acoustic guitar. Despite the macabre theme and overall mood, the release closes out with a sunny disposition on “Pigs,” which plays out like the final credits after we’ve clawed our way back to the surface of the earth. In true old west fashion, the album leaves you ready for another pulpy expedition, but not before celebrating with a stiff drink.

6 | Jail Socks - Coming Down

Counter Intuitive Records

When I listen to Coming Down, I hear Jail Socks, but I also hear my childhood. I hear my first collection of CDs like Sum 41, Good Charlotte, and Simple Plan. I hear candy-coated pop-rock with immaculate hooks and catchy choruses that mask a more profound layer of emotions lying just beneath the surface. Essentially an album about the comedown of youth, the band’s debut album builds off the foundation laid out in their 2019 EP and draws influence from 90s alt-rockers like Third Eye Blind and Jimmy Eat World. From outright rippers like “Peace of Mind” and “Point Point Pleasant” to more pensive moments found on “Pale Blue Light” and “More Than This,” the band explores a dazzling range of early-20-something lamentations on this record. Already my most-listened-to album of 2021, I know that Coming Down will be an album I’ll return to for many years to come. 

Read our full review of Coming Down here.

5 | The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - Illusory Walls

Epitaph

An 80-minute post-emo, post-hardcore, post-rock album about the social, moral, and ideological rot of late-stage capitalism? AND it’s all passed through a conceptual Dark Souls filter? I am in. There’s simply no amount of hyperbole I could pack into this introduction that would do Illusory Walls justice, so I’ll just say that this was one of the most impactful first listens I’ve had with an album in years. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die are perhaps best known for being forebears of the 2010s Emo Revival. Famous for their long name and even longer list of band members, everything about Illusory Walls seems counter to their previous work. It’s a darker, fiercer, and more focused album that was conceived amongst the group’s (now core) five members. 

While the singles range from a mixture of The Anniversary and Broken Social Scene on “Queen Sophie For President” and heavy metal riffage on “Invading the World of the Guilty as a Spirit of Vengeance,” the group rounds out distant corners of their universe on songs like “We Saw Birds Through the Hole in the Ceiling” and “Your Brain is a Rubbermaid.” The cherry on top of this album comes with the one-two punch of its closing tracks. Both the 16-minute “Infinite Josh” and the 20-minute “Fewer Afraid” are absolutely jaw-dropping tracks that are guaranteed to inflict goosebumps upon any listeners who might take them in with an open heart. While “Infinite Josh” is built around a post-rock build and steadfast bassline, “Fewer Afraid” is a career highlight manifesto complete with a spoken-word passage and philosophical sentiments. The latter of these two songs evoked an actual joy-filled scream from me upon first listen when the band broke out into an interpolation of my favorite song of theirs from nearly a decade earlier. 

Over the course of this album’s final 36 minutes, the group touches on topics like death, the passage of time, religion, and the desire to make the world a better place. It’s inspiring, cosmically-affirming, and downright staggering. In one of the record’s most profound lines, friend of the band Sarah Cowell sings,

You cry at the news, I just turn it off
They say there's nothing we can do and it never stops
You believe in a god watching over
I think the world's fucked up and brutal
Senseless violence with no guiding light
I can't live like this, but I'm not ready to die

Even if you aren’t a fan of this band or emo as a whole, Illusory Walls is a boundless work that shatters nearly every preconceived notion one might have about the possibilities of this genre—an extraordinary feat of the medium.

4 | Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee

Dead Oceans

Michelle Zauner has had a hard couple of years. After the dissolution of her previous band and the death of her mother, Zauner coped the best way musicians know how: by creating. She recoiled into grief over the series of several Bandcamp EPs, culminating in 2016’s phenomenal Psychopomp. She processed her loss in the outer reaches of space with 2017’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet and then took a few years to explore her creative whims. She recorded some covers, did some collabs, and even wrote a damn book. This is all to say that Zauner has kept busy, and after plumbing the depths of sorrow for nigh on five years, she has earned herself a bit of joy. Enter Jubilee. 

Japanese Breakfast’s aptly-titled third album finds Zauner basking in vibrant colors, biting into a sweet persimmon, and allowing herself a cautious bit of happiness. “Paprika” sifts through the rubble, eventually uncovering a triumphant parade of love. This leads directly into “Be Sweet,” which is a downright untouchable anthem that deserves nothing less than to be sung at the top of your lungs while bouncing around in pure revelry. This is not to say Jubilee is all good vibes; the album’s happiness is also tempered with plenty of realism and darkness found in songs like “Posing In Bondage” and “Savage Good Boy.” Just as there will always be loneliness and shitty men even in life’s best moments, Jubilee acknowledges the presence of good alongside the bad. It’s a complete spectrum of emotions that all cement in the epic six-minute slow-burn closer “Posing For Cars.” Michelle Zauner will not be defined by her grief nor her happiness. She is a complete human with a planet’s worth of emotions contained within. Jubilee is merely Zauner’s attempt at capturing that ever-shifting mix of feelings. It’s a rush.

3 | Turnstile - Glow On

Roadrunner Records Inc.

Before Turnstile even announced Glow On, the band’s four-song Turnstile Love Connection had already made its way onto my album of the year shortlist. On Turnstile’s third studio album, the band builds off their summer sample platter (and excellent visualization) into an expanded world of pink cloud hardcore punk. One spin of the album’s opening call to action, and it’s easy to see the appeal; muscular guitar riffs, exhilarating instrumentals, and catchy scream-along lyrics are all things the group has mastered now over a decade into their career. 

Months ago, I saw someone online describe the album as “pop-punk,” and I have become obsessed with that descriptor. Glow On isn’t pop-punk in the frosted tips Sum 41 sense of the term but in a much more literal interpretation of those two words. This is hardcore punk music made in a poppy, approachable way. This is radio rock that can deadlift hundreds of pounds and throw up a 6-minute mile no problem. If this album doesn’t want to make you take flight, then quite frankly, nothing will.

2 | Wednesday - Twin Plagues

Ordinal Records

How many of us have experienced Twin Plagues over the last year? The loss of a family member and the loss of a job. A life-threatening accident and a breakup. Bad news following already bad news. Sometimes these things just overlap, and when they do, they compound, making each feel worse in the process. Add a climate crisis, political regression, and a pandemic on top of it, and you’ll find that one section of your brain has been passively worrying for the last two years, if not longer.

Twin Plagues is an album full of these dual-wielding worries, contrasted against midwest mundanities. NFL teams, burned-down fast food buildings, high school acid trips, family photos, and dead pets are brought up and passed by like a roadside attraction that nobody wants to stop the car for. While nondescript on paper, these observations are rendered beautifully within the album, set to an instrumental backdrop that ranges from fuzzed-out shoegaze to wistful slide guitar.

This record captures these overlapping plagues and offers a surprising amount of compassion to the emotionally rung-out listener. It’s the sound of multiple major life events converging on you at once, all while the world outside continues to spin onward. It’s the sound of catastrophe happening while you find yourself caught in the eye of the storm. 

That said, there’s still escape and comfort to be found here. Twin Plagues may not offer a solution, but in a way, it offers something better; solidarity. It provides the knowledge that you are not alone. It quells your mind with the fact that there are other people out there experiencing the same thing, and, despite how it may seem, we are stronger together than anything the world can throw at us individually. And if you’ve made it this far? If you’ve weathered those Twin Plagues or you doubt that you have the strength to do so, then look no further than the affirmative first words of the album: you are fearless. 

1 | Home is Where - I Became Birds

Knifepunch Records

If I were to describe I Became Birds with one word, it would be electrifying. There are tons of things you can compare Home Is Where to: Neutral Milk Hotel, Bob Dylan, and your favorite local punk band, just to name a few. But simply put, this band is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. As a collection of songs, I Became Birds is all of those sounds and influences packed into a magnificent 19 minutes that strikes my soul like a bolt of lighting. With poetic and visceral lyrics that capture the trans experience, these songs tackle important and seldom-discussed topics like body dysmorphia and self-discovery in inventive and affirming ways. The band also touches on rustic backcountry sentiments, the desire to pet puppies, and presidential assassinations throughout the album’s blistering fast runtime. 

Back in March, I described the release as a rickety roller coaster, and I standby that. Every time I give this record a listen, I half expect it to collapse under the weight of itself. This is even reflected in the band’s live performances as lead singer Brandon Macdonald leaps, screams, shouts, wails, and collapses as the songs unfold. The guitars sway, tap, and shred with a fiery passion, floating just above the propulsive rhythm section, which alternates between gently guiding the songs forward and putting the pedal to the metal, forcing them into a careening full-tilt. Throw in some harmonica, synth, horns, violin, group chants, and a singing saw, and you have an honest, revelatory, and elating experience that also makes for the best album of 2021.

The Best of June 2021

A (slightly delayed) roundup of the best releases of June from ska to stoner rock, plus a couple of easy album of the year contenders. 

Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee

Dead Oceans

Listening to Jubilee is like eating a cheesecake; it’s sweet, delicate, and best enjoyed when you savor every morsel. This is not a dessert to be scarfed down in one sitting over the kitchen counter, but a delicacy where each bite delights your palette in different ways. While Psychopomp was a brief but impactful album that saw Michelle Zauner grappling with the loss of her mother, Soft Sounds From Another Planet was a coping mechanism where that grief was filtered through a sci-fi lens and beamed in from some distant corner of the galaxy. By contrast, Jubilee sees Zauner trading the far reaches of space for a more grounded sense of serenity. However, joy, while hard-fought and well-earned, cannot exist in a vacuum. In order to genuinely experience happiness, one must open themselves up to a full range of emotions. Even with the record’s relatively sunny disposition, Zauner is realistic in the strides she attempts to make. Perfection is too far away, but lines like “I want to navigate this hate in my heart... somewhere better” illustrate an achievable middle ground. After two records of grief and self-consolation, Zauner is ready to reclaim her joy.

We Are The Union - Ordinary Life

Bad Time Records

You wake up to an empty apartment in Pasadena. You are trans, and the world is not your oyster. Ordinary Life follows We Are The Union singer Reade Wolcott’s gender transition and details all the feelings, events, and dynamics that come in the wake of such a seismic personal change. This is a story that’s told beautifully on-record but also through the band’s fun-loving music videos. From burying your old self to removing labels, each outing is a vibrant and lighthearted helping of summer ska. Ultimately, despite all the consolatory cigarettes, side-eyes, depression, and dysphoria, Wolcott achieves peace through the realization that she is “anything but ordinary,” and that is not only worth celebrating but worth every ounce of strife encountered along the way. 

Read our full review of Ordinary Life here.

ME REX - Megabear

Big Scary Monsters

In a landscape dominated by substanceless viral singles, blatant streaming bait, and otherwise uninspired artistry, sometimes you have to do things differently to stand out. What’s more, sometimes you have to be realistic about your listener. Not everyone will listen to your album, and those who do might not even make it all the way through. Maybe that’s why Megabear is such an exciting album. The debut record from the UK indie rockers is comprised of 52 different song “segments” that can be shuffled together in any order to form an infinite, endless loop of songs. It sounds like a gimmick, but the amazing part is that it actually works. Most of the tracks are sub-one-minute excursions, but that doesn’t mean there’s any lack of personality or charm. In a world where the concept of the “album” changes on a seemingly daily basis, it’s interesting to see an artist lean into breaking old formats and doing it so effectively.

Parting - Unmake Me

Count Your Lucky Stars

Unmake Me is an unassuming little album. A lightweight seven tracks clocking in at a collective 18 minutes and 23 seconds, it might be easy to mistake for an EP. What’s hiding behind the new band name, goofy song titles, and the swan-adorned cover is the musical talent of an emo supergroup composed of members from iconic acts like Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) and Dowsing. Together they join forces to craft a compelling narrative of loss and conflict in classic fourth wave emo style. The members’ tenure in other bands is impossible to miss; the instrumentals are tight, and the lyrics stick to your brain like glue. It’s easy to listen to Unmake Me and see “just another” emo album, but just a few spins will soon reveal the powerful force of humanity at its center.

Read our full review of Unmake Me here.

Lucy Dacus - Home Video

Matador Records

Aside from being one of the best albums of 2018, the last LP from Lucy Dacus centered around the idea of being a “historian.” Throughout the album, she uses the term to describe both herself and members of her lineage capturing each other’s lives through words and experiences. On her newest album, Home Video, Dacus puts this idea into practice with a collection of tracks that see the singer-songwriter holding her past up to the light and letting it bounce off like a disco ball. These memories take the form of basement makeouts, abusive parents, and friends settling in their relationships. All of these tales are delicately woven through Dacus’ velveteen voice, masterful guitarwork, and dynamic instrumentation in what is an easy shoo-in for one of the best records of 2021. 

Newgrounds Death Rugby - Pictures of Your Pets

Suneater Records

I’m a simple man; when I hear a good riff, my brain is happy. Luckily, Newgrounds Death Rugby is here to supply the serotonin for me and every other emo like me with Pictures of Your Pets. The release opens with a mellow little guitar lick and toy piano, which welcome the listener into the record with a sense of childlike wonder. Soon lead singer Danny Jorgensen enters with vocals that feel reminiscent of long-lost emo side project Adventures. Overall, the songs on Pictures grapple with the same sense of innocence lost as many other emo records of its ilk, but through some combination of sincerity, charm, and technical skill, Newgrounds Death Rugby manage to make it all feel fresh.

Iceburn - Asclepius

Southern Lord

The invitation was simple; “feel it’s mammoth power,” read the tweet from Southern Lord records. It turns out that was all I needed. A tweet from a label that I love promising mammoth riffs? Say no more. Even though it’s from a band I’ve never heard of, Asclepius delivers on every possible front. Containing two tracks clocking in at just under 20 minutes each, both songs on this album pummel the listener with dense, fuzzy stoner rock riffs that will have you bobbing your head along with the all-powerful groove. I discovered upon doing just a minimal amount of research that Asclepius is the tenth release from Iceburn and the first in 21 years. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the sand-covered Mad Max world of stoner rock, a reunion album that shreds this hard is worth your time. The riffs speak for themselves. 

Pom Pom Squad - Death of a Cheerleader

City Slang

For nearly one century of media, the cheerleader has been one of the most persistent tropes in pop culture. Cheerleaders are always depicted as the most popular, attractive, and dominant forces in any school. They sit atop the social hierarchy and look down upon their fawning masses with a strange mix of pity and admiration. For a school full of teenagers, the death of a cheerleader would be tantamount to England losing their queen; it’s a loss that would make their respective domains stand still. Death of a Cheerleader takes this dynamic and upends it in a collection of 14 poppy indie rock tracks that reframe this all-too-familiar narrative with a definitively queer perspective. 

In its best moments, Cheerleader feels like an assembly of cult faves funneled through a pastel-colored pep rally lens. Whether taking visual inspiration from films like Heathers and The Virgin Suicides or channeling iconic left-field creatives like John Waters and David Lynch, the album still feels like it was created with a holistic perspective. Song topics range from things as heavy as questioning gender roles and weathering abusive relationships but still maintain the energy of a cheerleader facing the crowd during the first homecoming game. In the album’s most simple moments, the songs can feel like a reminder to allow yourself to indulge in rage or simply feel emotions in the first place. Most notably, a cover of “Crimson and Clover” sits smack dab in the middle of the tracklist, echoing Joan Jett’s famous gender-swapping cover from 40 years earlier. Whether consumed in one sitting or snacking on the album’s bite-sized singles, Death of a Cheerleader is an undeniable new landmark for queer poppy indie rock. 

Quick Hits

Holy Profane - Jettison Yr Dreams - The latest album from Holy Profane tackles disillusionment, disjointed memories, and the hangover of youthful folk punk idealism.

Danny Elfman - Big Mess - Essentially the closest we’ll ever get to a Nightmare Before Christmas sequel.

Sleater-Kinney - Path of Wellness - A back-to-basics course-correction after 2019’s disastrous The Center Won’t Hold.

Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend - Explosive and ever-shifting, Blue Weekend effortlessly winds its way from heartfelt ballads, soaring indie rock, and sneering punk rock with impressive finesse.

Migos - CULTURE III - The third entry in the Culture series comes after a trifecta of solo albums and omnipresent trap features over the last few years. It’s unwieldy, but it ticks all the boxes.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Butterfly 3000 - In their second album of the year, the Australian rockers lean far into the synthy side of their spectrum for an MGMT-like psych record. 

Portugal. The Man - ULU Selects Vol #1 - Three stripped-down live cuts and an Oasis cover from the recently-ascendant Alaskan indie rockers. 

Dating - I Would Prefer Not To - Part shoegaze, part post-rock, part emo, part post-hardcore, the first album in eight years from the Swedish quartet sits at an intersection of genres that feels tailor-made for me. 

heavenly creature records - 1980 something: an 80s cover comp for no more dysphoria - A compilation of DIY greats covering their favorite 80s songs with all funds going to No More Dysphoria.

Good Beats Records & Ear Coffee - Simple Demands: A Hop Along Tribute - A collection of Hop Along covers with all proceeds will going No More Dysphoria and The Jim Collins Foundation.

Fuckin Whatever - Fuckin Whatever - A wonderful little EP from a supergroup comprised of Anthony Green (Circa Survive), Adam Lazzara, and John Nolan (Taking Back Sunday).

Rostam - Changephobia - The expansive and exploratory sophomore album from the ex-Vampire Weekend member.

Sufjan Stevens - Convocations - Returning to his earliest electronic tendencies, everyone’s favorite indie sadboy dropped a massive 49-track, five-part computerized release that stretches from inward meditations to outward celebrations. 

Slow Fire Pistol - Rabbit Town Blues - A five-track hardcore release that contains one of the coolest riffs of the year so far. 

Dikembe - Game Over - A career-spanning collection of 8-bit remixes from one of Florida’s forefront emo bands. 

Terrible People - Home, In A Way - An EP-length Singaporean emo album that will undoubtedly scratch that Hotelier itch.

COWBOY BOY - GOOD GIRL - With vocals that sound like Retirement Party’s Avery Springer, lyrics as relatable as Future Teens, and instrumentals that bring the bite of Diet Cig, GOOD GIRL is a catchy, anthemic, and personable collection of 12 songs. 

Options - On the Draw - Wrote and recorded in just a week, On the Draw is beautifully roomy with wonderful, dancy indie rock sensibilities.

Turnstile - TURNSTILE LOVE CONNECTION - A pack of three-and-a-half shredders from the hardcore punk act.

Angel Du$t - Bigger House - The once-hardcore band pivots further into softer 90-alt-rock-inspired sounds to great effect. Beautiful summer bops capped off with two remixes. 

The Mountain Goats - Dark in Here - John Darnielle and co. create another darn good Mountain Goats record that possesses a hunkered-down-in-the-bomb-shelter feel. 

Beabadoobee - Our Extended Play - Beatrice Laus teams up with The 1975’s Matty Healy for a bite-size EP of 90s alt-pop bangers.

Pure Noise Records - Pure Noise LoFi Punk Chill - Pop-punk goes lo-fi-hip-hop-beats-to-study-to featuring the best of the Pure Noise roster from Knocked Loose and Seahaven to Just Friends and The Story So Far.

Free Throw - Piecing It Together - As Free Throw approach their first decade together as a band, they continue to crank out high-energy emo that’s as moshable as it is relatable. 

Slow Pulp - Deleted Scenes - The porch-beer-friendly indie rockers revisit and reimagine two songs from last year’s excellent Moveys. 

Modest Mouse - The Golden Casket - A multicolored acid trip that grinds its way from off-kilter to optimistic in classic Modest Mouse fashion.

Jungheim - Songs That Piss Men Off - Nayla Maya continues to prove herself as one of the sharpest and most creative musicians with this collection of five loosely country-themed songs.

SPELLLING - The Turning Wheel - FKA Twigs, but witchy. 

Kevin Devine - No One’s Waiting Up For Me Tonight - Tender and wistful sentiments lie coiled at the heart of Kevin Divine’s new folky back-to-basics EP. Read our full review here.

Owen - The Avalanche Remixes - Emo Godfather Mike Kinsella turns his 2020 LP over to a host of conspirators and collaborators ranging from Jay Som to NNAMDÏ.

Olivia Kaplan - Tonight Turns to Nothing - Finally, Mermaid Rock is here, and it’s a glorious genre. 

Skatune Network - Burn The Billboard - Ska covers of pop songs, alternative rock hits, and ringtone rap. Checker-patterned chef’s kiss.

Tyler, The Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST - Tyler, The Creative drops the lounge singer heartbreak found on 2019’s IGOR and returns to the golden era of early 2010’s mixtape bars.

Faye Webster - I Know I’m Funny haha - Hushed vocals, slide guitar, and sentimental feelings are the foundation keeping Faye Webster’s excellent fourth album afloat. 

Wild Pink - 3 Songs - Another three songs from the heartland indie rocker who has already gifted us one of the best albums and some of the best covers of the year. 

Maple Glider - To Enjoy is the Only Thing - Naturalistic indie rock fit for the backdrop of campfires, lakeside chats, and beachside sunsets. 

Hiss Golden Messenger - Quietly Blowing It - Despite the objectively hilarious title, the umteenth record from Hiss Golden Messenger is a pleasant, unoffensive, and laid-back listen.

Drug Church - Tawny - Eleven minutes of borderline-post-hardcore that will satisfy all your brawny Title Fight desires. 

Squirrel Flower - Planet (i) - From desert flora to the far reaches of space, the latest from Squirrel Flower is a miraculous indie rock record.

Hurry - Fake Ideas - Somewhere between porch beer albums and emo rock exists bands like Sinai Vessel, Trace Mountains, and now... Hurry. 

Covey - Class Of Cardinal Sin - Personal tales woven into an emo-tinted singer-songwriter blanket.  

The 2020 Diamond Platters: Swim Into The Sound’s Ancillary End of the Year Awards

Welp, it’s that time of the year again. Not the holidays, not Christmas, not Hanukkah, but List Season. Yes folks, it’s that wonderful time of the year where every other mainstream music publication stumbles over themselves to write compelling one-paragraph write-ups on the same 50 albums as every other blog.

Vindictive as I sound, I do have a strange affinity for List Season. I’m always curious to see what the critical consensus is and where my favorites rank among the lists (if at all), yet there’s something so off about the whole thing. A 3-page listicle of 50 different one-paragraph album write-ups has never felt indicative of the year. Sure, you can revisit the big hits, the 10 out of 10s, and the cultural touchstones, but the format itself is limited. A simple countdown doesn’t do the year justice. Where are the EPs and splits? Where are the weird headlines? Where are the cover songs? Where are the other formative musical events of the year that don’t fit into the album format? That’s why I created The Diamond Platters. 

Intentionally named to be as gaudy and opulent as possible, these awards are the highest honor that I, a music blog with impeccable taste, can possibly bestow upon an artist. Music sales, popularity, playing to swaths of adoring fans, those should all come second, because if you made it on this list, then you made it baby. 

Tongue-in-cheek sarcasm aside, this tradition began four years ago and was so well-received that I just had to do it again in 2018. That second iteration was less-well-received, but I thought ‘analytics be damned!’ and did it again in 2019 to relative success. These awards began as a way for me to circumvent publishing “just another” end of the year list. This is a look at the past 365 days in music through a unique (and sometimes hyper-specific) lens. These awards allow me to draw attention to the creations that may not get discussed on a typical publication’s end of the year list. Most importantly, it’s a way to celebrate the year in music without pitting artists against each other. Unique categories for the unique music listener, because not everything fits into a list of 50.

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Best Acoustic Reimagining

Winner: The Wonder Years “Hoodie Weather”
Over the course of the last decade, The Wonder Years have become a stalwart of the pop-punk scene. The band has aged gracefully into each iteration of their career, gradually shifting from energetic teenage goofiness to post-college listlessness and, more recently, morbid pathos. This year, the band released the second iteration in their Burst & Decay series, allowing them to revisit their old songs and update them in a way that feels more true to where the band members are today. The group’s acoustic reimagining of 2011’s “Hoodie Weather” merges these worlds together, taking a song about the restless touring of their early 20’s and rendering it in a pensive, more idyllic light. This rendition of the track retains the sentiment at the core of the original and feels like an update that looks back on the events with reverence provided by the distance of time. It’s a revisitation, but also an update. In a way, this feels like the way the song was always meant to be heard. It’s proof that the band still has more to say, even if it’s just saying it differently.

Runner-up: Future Teens “Swiped Out”
Future teens have always straddled the line between “emo band” and something more profound. They have achieved success by using many of the same struggles and stylistic choices as your average emo group but have managed to present them in a more mature way. With their Sensitive Sessions EP, the group revisited four songs from last year’s Breakup Season and somehow managed to make them even sadder. Hell, the band even managed to make Smash Mouth sound sad, so at this point, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing they can’t do. 

Best Album Art

Winner: Vile Creature - Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!
For an album that I’ve only listened to one time, the cover to Vile Creature’s Glory, Glory! Has stuck with me more than any other release this year. Capturing the heaviness and beauty at the heart of this sludgy release, this album art is simultaneously gorgeous and disturbing to look at. The cover both sticks with you and accurately indicates the exact kind of songs you’re about to take in. When flipping through vinyl at a record store, this cover is enough to stop any music fan in their tracks, and that means it’s a success on every level. 

Runner-up: Niiice. - Internet Friends
Looking at the cover for Internet Friends, you might wonder who some of these people are, but if you’re a part of the emo DIY circuit on Twitter, then you’d quickly recognize a majority of these faces. From Origami Angel to Stars Hollow and Short Fictions, this cover is a veritable Avengers Endgame of 5th wave emo. This means you can spend a majority of the album’s runtime combing over the front and back of the vinyl scanning for easter eggs while taking in songs about weed and depression, essentially the ideal way to spend an evening in 2020. 

I Miss Shows: Award For Best Live Album

Winner: Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties - Live From Asbury Park
It probably goes without saying, but concerts were fucked this year, and that meant we had to rely on livestreams and live albums to fill that void. I was fortunate enough to catch a grand total of 6 shows in the two and a half months of 2020 that things were still open. Halfway through the year, Dan Campbell (aka Aaron West) released Live From Asbury Park, a one-hour album capturing two sold-out nights of energetic, folksy, Springsteen-inspired performances from the tail end of 2019. This record is everything a live album should be. There’s crowd interaction, jaw-dropping high notes, and gorgeous brass instrumentation. On top of all this, the live rendition of “Divorce and the American South” is one of the only songs to make me cry outright this year, so this record is worth checking out for that fact alone. 

Runner-up: Bon Iver - Blood Bank (10th Anniversary Edition)
I’m a longtime Bon Iver guy and seeing Justin Vernon treat the tenth anniversary of Blood Bank with such reverence warmed my heart. It’s not exactly a sizable release in the band’s discography, but still a memorable stopgap after the breakthrough success of For Emma, Forever Ago. Even though the EP’s tenth-anniversary release is essentially just the original EP plus a collection of four live tracks, the selection of songs taken from different locations across their 2018 tour makes it feel like a lot of time and thought was put into its presentation. Having (finally) seen the group in concert back in 2019, I can say that the selections on this release do an excellent job of bottling up the raw emotional power of these songs when rendered live on-stage. 

Best Sequenced Album

Winner: Ratboys - Printer’s Devil
Longtime readers know that I’m a diehard supporter of short albums. I’m already a big believer in ‘less is more,’ but the longer an album is, the more opportunities there are for lulls and rough patches. While it may or may not end up on my album of the year list in a few weeks, there’s no denying that Ratboy’s third album is an immaculately-crafted work. It’s perfectly paced with peppy, upbeat tracks opening each side, long wistful passages right when they’re needed, and a wonderfully pensive closing track. In other words, this is a masterfully-structured release that hits all the right beats at all the right times. 

Runner-up: 100 Gecs - 100 Gecs and the Tree of Clues
Nine times out of ten, you could hand me a remix album and I’d throw it straight in the trash. Even for bands that I love, all a remix typically makes me want to do is stop listening to it and go turn on the original. There are some rare examples where a remix can elevate the original or cast it in a new light, but on 100 Gecs and the Tree of Clues, pretty much everything and the kitchen sink is included, yet somehow everything works. Essentially an album-length victory lap for the breakthrough hyperpop act, Tree of Clues sees the duo turning their eclectic 2019 album over to a host of collaborators and conspirators. These guests create ecstasy-fueled EDM bangers, hash noise rock assaults, and everything in between. Every song is different from the ones that came before it, which means there’s never a dull moment.

Remix of the Year

Winner: 100 gecs “ringtone remix featuring Charli XCX, Kero Kero Bonito, and Rico Nasty”
When 100 gecs dropped their ringtone remix at the beginning of the year, I’d never experienced anything quite like it. The mix of Charli XCX’s PC Music pop, the brash bars provided by Rico Nasty, and the kawaii interlude courtesy of Kero Kero Bonito proved to be an intoxicating mixture that felt like falling in love. This remix takes an already great track and re-infuses it with that feeling of meeting someone you’ve fallen head over heels for. A powerful emotion to have bottled up in a three-and-a-half-minute song.

Runner-up: Origami Angel - Origami Angel Broke Minecraft
Once we all collectively realized that gigs weren’t happening this year, Origami Angel did the only logical thing and released a Minecraft-themed remix of their greatest hits for a livestreamed concert taking place in the same game. Despite the complicated and meme-like origins surrounding its release, I’ll never say no to new Gami, much less Gami with Lil John drops.

Best Hiking Album

Winner: Cory Wong - Trail Songs Dusk/Dawn 
On top of releasing one album with Vulfpeck and an album with the Fearless Flyers, Cory Wong also somehow found time to release a solo album in January, a live album, a jazzy piano record, a second two-part live album, and another solo album. On top of all this, he also managed to release a conceptual double EP at the peak of summer that (literally) walks the listener through two different halves of a hiking trip. The first release focuses on the sunny hike up the trail, while the second release captures the starry night spent around the campfire. As someone who got into hiking this year, I can’t articulate how beautifully Wong manages to capture the feeling of boundless exploration and wonder that one experiences on their way up a trail, as well as the sense of satisfied triumph you feel on your way back down. It’s a beautiful breath of fresh air that I can’t wait to revisit all winter long.

Runner-up: Empty Country - Empty Country
Empty Country’s self-titled release is an arid, jangly album that walks the line between emo, indie rock, and even a touch of heartland Americana. Much like Wild Pink, this is a band that fuses all of these sounds together into something fresh and accessible. Listening to Empty Country feels comparable to a lackadaisical stroll through a field, or the view from the top of a hill. 

Best Interpolation

Winner: Dance Gavin Dance “Born To Fail” (Interpolating Tides of Man)
When I first heard “Born To Fail,” I was digging it. Then, when I heard Tilian quoting my favorite Tides of Man song a full decade after he first sang it, the song officially blew my mind. It never even occurred to me that a band was even ALLOWED to do this, but like everything else that Dance Gavin Dance does, they made it sound great.

Runner-up: Gleemer “TTX” (Interpolating Lesley Gore)
While the interpolation on “Born To Fail” is fantastic because of the reference track's mind-bending context, Gleemer's “TTX” is noteworthy for an entirely different reason. Here, the band interpolates Lesley Gore's “It’s My Party” and integrates it so seamlessly that the lyrics sound completely organic.

Best Music Video

Winner: Rico Nasty “Own It”
Every frame of this video is art. From the bikini-clad Hellraiser look to the babushka-adorned champagne tea party, “Own It” truly feels like Rico Nasty in her element. There are bright colors, triple-take costume designs, and animated in-your-face movements that come across as equal parts boisterous and calculated—a perfect, disorienting crash course into the world of Rico Nasty. 

Runner-up: Dogleg “Wartortle”
This seems like a safe place to admit that Clerks blew my mind when I first saw it in college. Not even a casual “blew my mind and liked it,” but an “I need to go sit by myself and think about that movie because it spoke to something that deep within me.” I’m a little embarrassed by that fact six-ish years down the line, but seeing Dogleg’s faithful recreation of the Kevin Smith classic in the music video for “Wartortle” made me feel a little bit better about my regrettably deep-rooted connection.

Best Music-Related Game of the Year

Winner: Dikembe: The Video Game
I’ll admit this category was not entirely my idea but came from Dikembe themselves jokingly suggesting it on Twitter. Despite the artificial creation of this award, this is precisely what the Diamond Platters were made for. After all, how many other DIY bands have the brains big enough to promote their upcoming record with a platformer? Just one, and it was Dikembe.

Runner-up: Get To The Gig: The Chillwavve Records Video Game
In a similar vein, Get To The Gig from Chillwavve Records is a throwback RPG that finds its hero fulfilling the title’s promise and meeting a roster of DIY emo icons along the way. If that wasn’t enough, the “leaked” song at the end of the game made the entire journey feel worth it. Eat your heart out, Travis Scott Fortnite performance. 

Best Guest Feature

Winner: Uwade Akhere on Shore
I may not have liked Fleet Foxes’ fourth studio album, but Uwade Akhere’s contributions are undeniably the record’s high points. In fact, the band places a lot of weight on her shoulders for an unknown talent. From opening and closing the album to contributing gorgeous melodies to the album’s best cut, it’s painful to imagine what Shore would have been without her.

Runner-up: Morgan Freeman on Savage Mode II
Morgan Freeman’s dulcet tones are pretty much the last thing you’d expect to hear when clicking play on the newest 21 Savage mixtape, yet on the sequel to 2017’s Savage Mode, they somehow manage to fit perfectly. From welcoming the listener to the album, giving a detailed explanation on the difference between ‘snitches’ and ‘rats,’ to closing the tape out with a reminder to “stay in savage mode,” it’s fair to say this release wouldn’t have been the same without him.

Best Cover Song

Winner: Phoebe Bridgers & Maggie Rogers “Iris”
2020 was a banner year for Phoebe Bridgers; she released her sophomore album to critical acclaim and (relative) enthusiasm from long-time fans. She earned a slew of Grammy nominations, performed at Red Rocks, released her annual Christmas song, and had a seemingly never-ending barrage of attention-grabbing interviews. The arguable peak of Phoebe-dom happened when, during a particularly bleak moment on Election Day, she tweeted, “if trump loses I will cover iris by the goo goo dolls.” Not only did Trump end up losing, but Phoebe stuck to her word, releasing the song for only 24 hours on Bandcamp with all proceeds going to Fair Fight, an organization dedicated to fighting for free and fair elections. On top of all this, both Bridgers and Rogers earned their first Billboard Hot 100 with this cover based solely off of Bandcamp Purchases alone. The song itself is an absolutely gorgeous and heartfelt rendition of the late-90s radio banger, a genre of music I’ve found myself increasingly unironically drawn to over the course of quarantine. If anything, Phoebe’s version of the song only further solidified my belief in the earnest beauty that lies at the heart of corny songs from my childhood. 

Runner-up: Pelafina “Cardigan”
I’ll be honest. I have no idea how I stumbled across Pelafina, let alone became a follower of theirs on Bandcamp, but when I got an email announcing their Taylor Swift covers, I bought them without hesitation. TS finds the band revisiting two recent Swift hits, “Cardigan” and “Cruel Summer,” both of which the band casts in a new and loving light that’s both faithful to the source material while retaining their style as a band, exactly what a good cover should be. 

Headline of the Year

Winner: “Scooby-Doo Is Going on Tour With Björk's Costume Designer”
The fact that 2020 robbed us of this experience is nothing short of a national tragedy. 

Runner-up: “Sex Pistols star Johnny Rotten bitten by a flea on his penis after rescuing squirrels”
Look, if I had to read this, y’all do too.

Porch Beer Album of the Year

Winner: Routine - And Other Things
Porch Beers, a term coined by me and popularized with my two-follower Spotify playlist, is a subgenre of music characterized by jangly guitars, lackadaisical lyricism, and relaxed rhythm sections. It’s country-tinged indie rock that pairs flawlessly with a porch and a pink sky on a summer evening, and there wasn’t a release this year that captured that feeling better than And Other Things. Surprise announced in the last quarter of the year, this 17-minute EP brings together partners Melina Duterte of Jay Som and Annie Truscott of Chastity Belt for a collection of songs that feels as fulfilling as a full-length. As you’d expect from such a short release, the two waste no time jumping straight into it with “Candy Road” which sparkles like desert sand in the midday sun. The titular “And Other Things” is a masterwork of revelatory reverb. Meanwhile, “Calm and Collected” sends things off perfectly with an extended instrumental stretch that leaves just enough room for reflection while you queue the record up again and grab another beer. 

Runner-up: Kevin Morby - Sundowner
With songs like “Valley,” “Campfire,” and of course the titular “Sundowner,” Kevin Morby’s sixth studio album feels tailor-made for porch beers or long, reflective drives home. It’s laid-back, countrified, fresh air music that practically begs you to crack open a cold one, inhale some fresh air, and appreciate your surroundings.

Best Gothic Country Album

Winner: Holy Motors - Horse
If someone were to ask me what Gothic Country is, I would simply show them the cover art for songs like Holy Motors’ “Country Church” and “Endless Night,” then I’d hit play on the band’s excellent sophomore album. 

Runner-up: BAMBARA - Stray
Swirling together a mesmerizing blend of gothic country and post-punk, Bambara’s Shadow On Everything was a dark horse entry in my 2018 Album of the Year list. Two years later, they’ve continued to develop that sound into a new release that’s haunting, unsettling, groovy, and even singable at times. 

Favorite Longform Piece I Wrote This Year

Winner: The Stark Maximalism of Sufjan Stevens
Spoiler alert: sometimes I use these awards to re-promote some of my old articles. While it may seem like insular self-promotion, what better time than the end of the year to look back on some of my favorite pieces of writing? Literally the first article I published this calendar year, my retrospective on Sufjan’s Carrie & Lowell was a long time coming. Bringing together years of listening history, a live album, and a B-sides collection, I felt like I finally said everything I’d spent five years ruminating on. Not only that, I feel like I was able to articulate myself completely and beautifully, which is one of the most satisfying experiences as a writer. 

Runner-up: An Introduction To Post-Rock
Post-rock is a genre that’s gotten me through a lot of tough times. It’s scored countless hours of reading, writing, and creating for me. It’s a pretty specific but deep genre, which means it’s infinitely rewarding to get into. In this piece, I did my best to put the wordless power of the genre into several paragraphs, a task that proved to be both rewarding and herculean. Intended to serve as an entry point for someone new to post-rock, this post takes nine of genre’s best records and explains the differences between each so someone can jump in with an album that’s up their alley stylistically then (ideally) journey in deeper from there. 

Y’all Sleep: Most Overlooked and Underappreciated Release of the Year 

Winner: Marble Teeth - Park
Do you like Slaughter Beach, Dog? What about Oso Oso? How Do you feel about Field Medic? If you responded positively to any of the above questions, then what are you waiting for? Press play on Marble Teeth’s Park immediately. While Cars weaved minute-long stories of high school football players, paranoid Pop-Tart connoisseurs, and lifelong love, Park ventures into more polished and personable territory. While Cars centered around acoustic guitar licks and simplistic electronic beats, Park favors a full(er) band approach that strikes at the heart of midwest mediocrity. Still centered around Caleb Jefson’s astute observations of the human condition, these songs sway forward in the most approachable and unexpected ways. There’s nothing quite like reveling in the world of awkward relationships, midnight dances, and Connecticut rest stops depicted in Park. This is a superb and lived-in release that is more creative, wondrous, and well-observed than almost anything I’ve listened to this year.

Runner-up: Fixer - Married
Portland, Oregon doesn't have much of a music scene because if there was any justice in this world, then Fixer’s sophomore album would have roughly one million streams by now. A lowkey indie rock release from the beginning of quarantine, this record is catchy, groovy, and immaculately produced. A literal shame that more people haven’t dug into these songs because this 25-minute release is worth its weight in gold. 

Best “Making Of” Documentary

Winner: Glass Beach - the making of the first glass beach album
Have 90 minutes to kill and don’t feel like watching a movie? Well, it’s hard to beat the making of the first glass beach album. The perfect introduction to the emo-ish prog-ish indie-ish band, this feature-length documentary is up for free on Youtube and details (as you would expect) the creation of the band’s titular first album. It’s fun, it’s funky, it’s a journey. 

Runner-up: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Ratty
Have another 30 minutes to kill? Well, Ratty is a documentary from genre-agnostic Aussie rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. This mini-movie details the creation of their thrash metal masterpiece Infest The Rats Nest, which wound up on our 2019 Album of the Year List. For a band as entertaining and musically diverse as King Gizz, this doc is a great peek behind the curtain into the psych rocker’s creative process. 

Best Cover Song Part II: Electric Boogaloo

Winner: The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die “In Circles”
The World Is A Beautiful Place are emo legends. Sunny Day Real Estate are emo legends. It would only make sense that the two should meet at some point, and this cover bridges the gap between emo generations like nothing before. It shouldn’t be surprising that TWIABP does “In Circles” such justice, but they also manage to put their own spin on it that feels distinctly modern. It’s gorgeous and honestly just makes me want a full album of Sunny Day Real Estate covers. 

Runner-up: Dogleg & Worst Party Ever - go ep
It started, as many things do, with a tweet. Late November, Michigan punk band Dogleg pitted a fight against Florida emo rockers Worst Party Ever. Accusations were made, shots were fired, the gauntlet was thrown. This jokingly playful beef culminated in the two bands exchanging covers, all of which were collected in a split that warms my emo heart.

Most Triggering High School Metalcore Phase Flashbacks

Winner: Mikau - Phantoma
This year I stumbled across a vinyl copy of The Word Alive’s debut EP Empire at a local record shop. I’m pretty sure I audibly gasped and quickly threw down however much money allowed me to leave the store with the record in-hand. If that reaction makes sense to you, then Mikau’s Phantoma is likely to spark that same corner of your latent 2010’s Hot Topic brain as it did me. There are chuggy riffs, crabcore breakdowns, and synthy interludes. In short, this is the type of band who would have signed to Rise Records in 2011 and raked in money by the thousands every summer at Warped Tour. Instead, we’re lucky enough to have them in 2020, where they can be appreciated for the nostalgic, lost art form that they really are. 

Runner-up: If I Die First - My Poison Arms
When I first stumbled across If I Die First on Spotify, I didn’t even know what genre they were. When I clicked play on My Poison Arms and was greeted electronicore in the vein of This Romantic Tragedy, I was immediately smitten. This EP would have fit in perfectly on my iPod Classic circa 2009, so I am legally obligated to love it with every molecule in my latent metalcore-loving heart.

Song of the Summer

Winner: Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion “WAP”
Let’s just get it out of the way; “WAP” is a great song. The track is catchy, dirty, and sexually-liberating, which is all well and good, but what strikes me most about this cartoonishly horny hip-hop cut is the fact that it managed to be so pervasive despite a nationwide shutdown. I know there were (unfortunately) still people out partying this summer, but this song’s ability to spread through TikTok, Twitter, and various other social media is what really cemented it as an artistic achievement in the face of a distinctly non-WAP summer. 

Runner-up: Dababy & Roddy Ricch “Rockstar”
I know it was a quarantined summer, and having a hit song during this time feels like it comes with a giant asterisk. However, if your song managed to make its way to me (an uncool white guy in his late-20s), I can only assume it’s reached a level of cultural pervasiveness that is worthy of praise. 

Favorite Review I Wrote This Year

Winner: Young Jesus - Welcome To Conceptual Beach
More shameless self-promo, this time in review form! While those earlier articles were longer-form pieces, my review for Young Jesus’ phenomenal fifth album is short, pointed, and poured out of me in one writing session. Sometimes the most challenging part of writing a review is just figuring out your way in. Young Jesus provided so many different ways in on their latest record, the problem became figuring out which one to pursue. Luckily, I feel like I did the album justice and spoke articulately to the statement that it’s making. 

Runner-up: Sinai Vessel - Ground Aswim
Much like my Young Jesus review, my review for Ground Aswim poured out of me over the course of one impassioned afternoon that I spent with the record. Also, much like the Young Jesus album, Sinai Vessel’s sophomore effort is a measured, precious, and relaxing album with a statement to make coming at a prescient time. 

Best Cover Song Part III: Return of the King

Winner: Lucy Dacus “Lips of an Angel”
Apologies for three identical categories, but we got lots of great covers this year, and I want to talk about “Lips of an Angel.” Originally by the American rock band Hinder, “Lips of an Angel” arrived upon our earth in 2005 and is arguably the toxic masculinity anthem. There’s cheating, gaslighting, pleading, and everything else you’d expect to hear while listening to a shitty dude talk to his ex on the phone. Lucy Dacus takes the band’s cringy lyricism and re-frames it from a distinctly femme perspective that de-fangs the negativity and replaces it with a layer of deeply-felt beauty. 

Runner-up: SASAMI “Toxicity”
If you were to sit me down and just start connecting random artists to songs they’ve covered, I would never, ever, in a million years, have connected indie rocker SASAMI to System of A Down. I suppose given the band’s semi-ubiquitous prevalence throughout the early to mid-2000s, it’s unsurprising that an artist currently in her late-20s would have an intimate familiarity with the nu-metal group. What’s impressive is not only how incredible her cover sounds, but how drastically different it is from the original. Proof that a good song is a good song no matter what, and a good artist can always take a good song and make it sound even better. 

Greatest Addition to the Christmas Canon

Winner: 100 gecs “sympathy 4 the grinch”
Back at the beginning of December, I mindlessly liked this tweet from 100 gecs and never gave it a second thought. It had never occurred to me that the hyperpop duo even could release a Christmas song. That was simply too awesome a combination of my tastes and interests to exist in 2020. We didn’t deserve it as a society. When the gecs dropped “sympathy 4 the grinch” less than 24 hours later, I was shook to my core. The perfect Christmas song. Finally. 

Runner-up: girl in red “two queens in a king sized bed”
As a man, I feel unilaterally unqualified to speak on the queerness of “two queens in a king sized bed.” What I will speak on however, is how beautiful, soft, and caring this song is. Pairing a piano with faint jingle bells and a pulsating drum build, this song is as loving, caring, and gorgeous as you’d want your lover to be. It’s gay as hell and Christmassy as fuck; what’s not to like? 

Most Impactful Beat Drop

Winner: Beach Bunny “Rearview”
Complete candor: this song was neck-and-neck in the running for my song of the year, but just barely got overtaken in the homestretch. That said, it’s still one of my favorites of the year, and this list would have felt utterly incomplete without its inclusion. “Rearview” is a mid-album cut off Beach Bunny’s fantastic debut album. It begins simply enough; a gentle guitar paired with Lili Trifilio’s confessional vocals. As she pines for her unrequited love over the guitar, her strums gradually pick up energy, morphing into a more-pointed riff. In the last minute of the song, she lands on the track’s namesake and pauses for a moment, then proceeds to sing a simple rhyme over a cool bassline. “You love me, I love you / You don't love me anymore, I still do. I'm sorry, I'm trying / I hate it when you catch me crying” As these words emerge from her lips, a whirl of feedback tears through the track along with two drum hits that make way for the rest of the band. From there, the group introduces a towering riff that makes the listener feel like a speck of dust in their all-encompassing emotional oasis. It’s goosebump-inducing and possibly my single favorite moment in any song this entire year. 

Runner-up: Soccer Mommy “Gray Light”
Sophie Allison knows how to end an album. From the quiet “Switzerland” to the confessional and forlorn “Waiting For Cars,” this fact has been clear from the very outset of her career. But two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. Allison ends Clean with the soul-decimating “Wildflowers” which works its way up from a solitary acoustic guitar to an ascending electronic whir that feels like every emotion you’ve ever had lifting you up into the air like an alien tractor beam. “gray light” accomplishes a similar effect, winding up from a slow soul-crushing spacey electronic bed into a weird reversed electronic “snap” that commands all attention then sends the listener off on a dreamy Mazzy Star guitar slide. It’s bliss. 

Most Hypnotizing Bassline 

Winner: Seahaven “Moon”
Seahaven made us wait seven years for this record, and honestly, the bassline on “Moon” alone makes that wait worth it. Placed in the skillful hands of Mike DeBartolo, this song sounds like it was made with the express purpose of winding around his knotty basswork. It’s dark, witchy, and downright spooky yet utterly captivating. I swear I could listen to just the bass on this song for the album’s full runtime. 

Runner-up: Thank You, I’m Sorry “Follow Unfollow”
Admittedly more energetic than “Moon,” “Follow Unfollow” from midwest emo outfit Thank You, I’m Sorry features a dynamic, bouncy bass that drives the song forward. As the bass, courtesy of Bethunni Schreiner, bounces back and forth, the listener is left to watch in awe, taking the track in like a tennis match, merely trying to keep up.

Find Your Throne: Award For Most Positive Song of the Year

Winner: Cliffdiver “Gas City”
Positivity felt in short supply this year. Maybe that’s why songs like “Gas City” stuck out so much from the crowd. Cosmically affirming and infinitely singable, this single from the Oklahoma-based emo group also introduced the group’s new co-lead singer Briana Wright who brings a soaring quality to the song that makes it all the more uplifting. Also featuring the group’s usual mix of tappy emo, honest lyricism, and soulful saxophone, this song has become my go-to whenever I need a pick-me-up.

Runner-up: Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly “My Friends Are My Power (Spoiler Alert!)”
Any song that opens with a Kingdom Hearts sample and throws directly into a moshpit volley of drums is a winner in my book. I won’t give away the “spoiler” here, but it’s well worth the 1:39-second listen.

Lose Your Throne: Award For Most Self-Deprecating Song of the Year

Winner: Cheem “Smooth Brain”
I feel that “Smooth Brain” really captures the essence of this year well. Between quarantine, the election, and everything in between, I think I could have scraped my brain into a blender and turned it on high for 360 days straight, and I still would have kept it in better shape than whatever I ended up doing. Blending a Patrick Stump-like chorus with pained bars and a glittery instrumental, “Smooth Brain” is the real song of the summer. 

Runner-up: I Love Your Lifestyle “Stupid”
Sometimes everything just plain sucks. You are stupid, I am stupid, he is stupid, she is stupid, this whole thing is stupid. That’s almost literally the sentiment captured in “Stupid” by I Love Your Lifestyle. Built around a repetitive, building, earworm of a chorus, this is a song that sounds more like the things you mutter under your breath while working your retail job dealing with abject nonsense day-in, day-out. Truly an anthem for these stupid ages.

Best Posthumous Album

Winner: Pop Smoke - Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon
Posthumous albums are inherently an uphill battle. You never know how much was created before the artist’s passing and how much was studio fuckery. While Pop Smoke’s death at the beginning of 2020 was an outright tragedy, Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon is nothing short of a triumph. From star-studded features, teeth-gritting bangers, and career-affirming assists, this record does everything right. There’s a diverse wealth of sounds, and Pop Smoke rarely feels overshadowed on his own release, which is an all-too-common pratfall of the posthumous album. Shoot For The Stars is already one of the best trap albums of the decade, it’s just a shame we never got to see Pop Smoke’s career flourish the way he deserved. 

Runner-up: Mac Miller - Circles
Mac Miller’s death at the end of 2018 came as a shock to pretty much everyone. Having spent a decade developing his sound from frat rap mixtapes as a teen to the jazzy poetry he released just a week before his death, Mac was a poster boy for artistic development on top of being an all-around great dude. Circles continues the sound that Mac was fleshing out on Swimming and ends his story in a satisfying place that offered fans some semblance of closure. 

Record Label of the Year

Winner: Acrobat Unstable Records
At nearly every step of the way this year, I was amazed by the North Carolina upstart indie label Acrobat Unstable. Initially conceived as a way for labelmates Eric Smeal and Martin Hacker-Mullin to make tapes and merch for bands that they liked, this quickly ballooned from local acts to bands like Short Fictions and the Callous Daoboys. This year, the label helped release projects from the likes of Carpool, Charm, Acne, Ultimate Frisbee, and Thirty Cent Fare, none of whom I’d heard of before this year, but all of which blew me away. The label also released hundreds of vinyl records and helped bands like Hospital Bracelet, Jail Socks, Stars Hollow, and Origami Angel release merch and vinyl. If next year bears even a semblance of the label’s success in 2020, then we are in for a wild ride. 

Runner-up: Moon Physics
While Acrobat Unstable wins for turning me on to a constant stream of new music throughout 2020, Moon Physics earns their runner-up spot for positing a new way that a label can operate in this capitalist hellscape. Centered around monthly “drops,” this Tony-Hawk-inspired entity describes themselves as a “zero-profit, anti-capitalist” springboard for artists. In between dropping tapes, vinyl, and fingerboards, the label acts as an educational resource that also splits the profit of sales between the artists and local community organizations. An aspirational model that I hope sets the tone for a new decade of labels. I cannot wait to see what’s in store for the organization in 2021.

Honorable mentions to Good Luck Charm Records, Chillwavve Records, and Take This To Heart Records because each of these labels consistently dropped fire releases all throughout the year.

Came Out Swinging: Best New Band of 2020

Winner: It Doesn’t Bother Me
You can say a lot of bad things about 2020, but at least it gave us It Doesn’t Bother Me. This Midwest emo project may have had the misfortunate timing of dropping their debut EP at the height of a quarantined spring, but the way I see it, that just gives them more time to rack up fans who will soon be screaming along to these songs in a sweaty Michigan basement. Alternating between catchy Mom Jeans choruses and You, Me, And Everyone We Know-esque vocal stylings, the band is more than equipped to create a string of iconic emo songs ready for Spotify playlists, emo mixtapes, and infinitely-bigger stages. Get hip now before they blow up. 

Runner-up: Blue Deputy
Blue Deputy didn’t exist before 2020, and now they do. That alone makes this year worth it. A creative (and romantic) partnership between Andy Bunting and Brody Hamilton, Blue Deputy explores the tender spaces of relationships that can only be observed as you’re living them. Look no further than the gorgeous double New Jersey / I Hate Steven Singer for two catchy emo-flavored bedroom pop songs that sparkle and glisten like the glitter on a freshly-uncapped gel pen. These two will do amazing things, and we’re lucky that 2020 allowed such beautiful songs as these into existence. 

Biggest Come-up

Winner: Roddy Ricch
Roddy Ricch began the year with a chart-topping #1 song that fended off singles from both Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. He contributed to the (*secondary) Song of the Summer with Dababy and tossed out features to the likes of Gunna, Pop Smoke, and Ty Dolla Sign. In short, it was Roddy Ricch’s year, unfortunately, the stars just happened to align for him on a really shitty year. 

Runner-up: Redveil
Within the space of one calendar year, Maryland-based Redveil went from an unknown Twitter rapper to one of the internet’s hottest upcoming artists. A baby-faced 16, Redveil created a mixtape that single-handedly made waves all over Twitter and garnered millions of streams, all before he was legally allowed to drive.

Best Revisitation

Winner: Into It. Over It. - Canada Sessions
I respect Evan Thomas Weiss as the face of Fourth Wave emo. I respect his output, I cherish his voice, and I love his dynamic autumnal album from this year. While I love and appreciate his body of work, nothing sits quite as close to my heart as 52 Weeks. That record was formative in my emo upbringing, and it makes me sad he’s “moved on” with albums that have had bigger hit songs. Nothing speaks to me quite the way “Basto” does. Nothing gets me singing quite like “A Song About Your Party.” Nothing feels quite as bile-filled as “Bullied Becomes the Bully,” and honestly, that’s a bummer. I had these songs all but written off until 2020 when Weiss released Canada Sessions, a short EP that saw him revisiting two different decade-old tracks off his breakthrough year of music. Obviously better produced than the original tracks, both “Embracing Facts” and “22 Syllables” absolutely shine in this new context, slightly updated to reflect Weiss’ more recent artistic leanings but still tapping into the same younger soul that created them. An affirmation and a celebration. 

Runner-up: The Fearless Flyers “Adrienne and Adrianne”
The Venn diagram of members between Vulfpeck and Fearless Flyers is almost a circle, and with four iterations of one song under their belt, Vulfpeck are no stranger to revisiting a tune. While I admittedly have a propensity for the band’s earlier instrumental EPs, I have grown to love the Fearless Flyers for the very same reason as Vulf; an abundance of proficient, funky, fun instrumentals. When I heard the sounds of an eight-year-old Vulfpeck deep cut coming out of my 2020 Fearless Flyers record, I just about lost my shit. It’s like putting on an old winter coat; fits like a charm. 

Best Deployment of a Harmonica

Winner: Slow Pulp “Montana”
Essentially the end credits to Slow Pulp’s fantastic debut album, “Montana” is a laid-back and relaxing track that’s as easy as the rolling hills that the song seeks to depict. The song builds to a hypnotic repetition as lead singer Emily Massey pleads, “come on get out of my head,” and becomes fixated on the word “head,” singing it over and over until the song’s close. The deployment of harmonica midway through the track not only breaks the repetitive wave-like nature of the lyrics but feels like a stand-in for something larger than the piece itself, something spiritual I haven’t quite figured out yet. 

Runner-up: Field Medic “HEADCASE”
Kevin Patrick Sullivan (better known as Field Medic) has made his name as an outspoken and famously-mulleted poet, equal parts emo and horny. While the Bob Dylan comparisons can feel simultaneously on-the-nose and unfair, sometimes it’s a hard thing to avoid when one pairs acoustic guitar with harmonica this much. “HEADCASE” is a fast-moving Field Medic track where the harmonica comes in at just the right spot, punctuating a top-tapping chorus and capping off an array of confessional sentiments found in each verse.

Best Split of the Year 

Winner: Arcadia Grey, Oolong, Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly, dannythestreet - Fatal 4 Way Split
To some degree, many of the big bands from the 5th Wave Emo Movement have already revealed themselves to the world… However, if you were to ask me who some of the best, most promising upcoming bands in the scene are, I’d point you to this split. All harnessing the same jittery zoomer energy, this lineup features some of the best bands currently releasing music on the regular. From the moshpit-opening body dysmorphia found on Arcadia Grey’s “Braum” to the propulsive combo of tapping and screaming found on Oolong’s “Dippin Daniel,” I really believe there’s something for everything on this meeting of the emo minds. Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly kicks their contribution off with a fist-balling Mortal Kombat sample that makes me want to start swinging the same way “2nd Sucks” did way back in high school. dannythestreet closes the rumble royale off with a glimmering earworm of a melody that leaves me hopeful for the next generation of emo acts. 

Runner-up: Snarls, The Sonder Bombs - A Really Cool Split
As previously established above with the Dogleg x Worst Party Ever split, I’m a sucker for bands covering each other’s songs. It’s cute and sometimes just makes sense in some cosmic way. A Really Cool Split from Snarls and Sonder Bombs sees the two Cleveland bands swapping songs to great effect on top of an acoustic rendition and a long-awaited pre-album single. It’s a loving little pit stop for both bands, one coming hot off one of the most underrated indie pop records of the year and the other ramping up to drop one of the best of 2021. 

Best Release From 2019 That I Didn’t Give A Fair Shake

Winner: Hovvdy - Heavy Lifter
By the time fall rolled in, it was simultaneously jarring and calming. Precipitated by the changing of the leaves and sharp snaps of fall temperatures, the fall season still managed to take me by surprise, but I’ll admit that quarantine has thrown off all sense of time. As I mentally relegated myself to the frigid wintertime, I found Heavy Lifter to be a perfect reflection of my mental state. Somewhat inward, a little bit scattered, and wholly comforting, I did not give this album the time of day back in 2019. Aside from the warming blanket of comfort, what I find more artistically impressive about this record is the way that it can make banal things like falling asleep to YouTube and free parking practically romantic in melody. Never again will I sleep on Hovvdy.

Runner-up: Orville Peck - Pony
While I had seen Orville Peck back in 2019 (his half-mask, half-tassel cowboy hat is hard to miss after all), I realized I had never actually listened to him until this year. Within seconds of hitting play on “Dead of Night,” I realized I’d made a grave mistake. Pony is a dark, mysterious country record centered around Peck’s smoldering baritone, which lends an air of genre-based familiarity. Aside from the record’s immaculate production, what makes these familiar genre trappings fresh is how Peck updates the topics to feel more reflective of our society as it stands. He talks candidly about queerness, drug use, and his own emotions, three things the country of yesteryear would never touch with a ten-foot pole. In other words, Pony represents a long-needed update to an entire genre that everyone is quick to write off; I’m just glad I got here when I did. 

Song of the Year

Winner: Spanish Love Songs “Losers 2”
Seeing Spanish Love Songs live was one of the last concerts I went to this year, and (apparently) one of the last concerts I’ll go to for a while. I could focus on that lack of live music and dwell in a pit of despair, but instead, I’d rather focus on the freedom I felt that night screaming along to my favorite songs with a wall of sweaty fans. 

“Losers 2” is easily my favorite song of the year. Centered around sharp lyricism and a cathartic build, this track quickly became an outlet for me early in 2020. It represents something bigger, something I may not experience for a while, yet experience every day. 

For roughly two minutes, lead singer Dylan Slocum finds himself displaced, revisiting former homes, dead relatives, and economic inequalities. Destined to die poor and wake up forever tired, Slocum has no choice but to continue. Third jobs enter the picture, but the larger scene of mortality and capitalism never fades. It’s a life that many millennials can understand. A life where nothing bad can ever happen because a single accident, a single diagnosis, a single unplanned event can throw your entire future into disarray. Minimum wages aren’t fought for by our politicians, but by mothers, forced to rideshare to demonstrations because they don’t have vehicles of their own. The entire thing paints this richly-detailed picture of a deeply-failed country. Of a failed generation. Of the world in which we currently exist. 

About midway through, the song transitions to the bridge and here’s the part that gets me every. fucking. time. Just as Slocum self-deprecatingly describes himself as a “walking tragic ending,” something shifts inside him. The instrumental cuts out to a single warbling synth note which makes way for the most poignant sentiment of the entire record. The bridge, which I’ll paste here in-full, is a pitch-perfect depiction of this stalemate between economic and emotional devastation.

So I'm leaving the city / Maybe the country / Maybe the earth
Gonna find a place of my own

Where the fuckups aren't cops / Patrolling neighbourhoods they're afraid of / And the rest of us won't burn out / Displacing locals from neighbourhoods we're afraid of

Now if we weren't bailed out / Every time by our parents we'd be dead / What's gonna happen when they're dead?”

There’s really nothing else I can say.

Runner-up: Mandancing “Johnny Freshman”
Mandancing released one of the most underrated emo albums of 2020. The record is packed with gorgeous slice of life tales of love, loss, and friendship. There are stellar performances, jaw-dropping arrangements, and earnest emo deliveries aplenty. Amongst an album that’s so consistently great, my personal peak comes at the tail end with the closing track “Johnny Freshman.”

This enigmatic and slow-moving song is centered around a dual vocal and instrumental build that both peak in the same cathartic way before whisking the listener off on a shimmering emo outro that’s reminiscent of some of my favorite songs of all time. “Johnny Freshman” borrows the same pleading sentiment as Julien Baker’s “Go Home” as lead singer Stephen G. Kelly belts “would you please come home?” over a near-bear instrumental bed. These pleas repeat and eventually culminate in a goosebump-inducing cry of the same phrase as the instrumental grows in scope, eventually consuming the entire track. For 90 seconds the guitar reverberates, the drums roll, and the bass shakes as the band plays out the same ascending chord strum dozens of times, lending the track this meditative quality that gives the listener time to think and reflect on the entire record they had just taken in. Simple masterful. 

Most Anticipated Release of 2021

Winner: Jail Socks - Debut Album
Jail Socks had already created my 2019 Album of the Year, so it probably goes without saying that I’m feverishly anticipating the next moves from the fresh-faced No Sleep signees. Despite only having released a grand total of eight songs to the public, Jail Socks had become one of my favorite 5th Wave emo-ish bands by the end of last year. I still listen to It’s Not Forever on an (at least) weekly basis, so I cannot wait to see what the band does with their first full-length next year. 

Runner-up: Michelle Zauner - Crying In H Mart
My second most-anticipated release of 2020 isn’t an album, but a book. Crying In H Mart is the soon-to-be-released memoir by Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast. The book is based on, named after, and presumably in the style of her heartbreaking New Yorker article of the same name. Zauner, who was also the winner of our 2017 Album of the Year, has a beautiful way of navigating words and emotions in a manner that cuts directly to my soul. I’m sure Crying In H Mart will be nothing short of a crushing read, but that’s exactly what I want, and exactly what I need.

The 2019 Diamond Platters: Swim Into The Sound’s Ancillary End of the Year Awards

Between end of the year awards that start in November and (this year) decade retrospectives that started coming out as early as October, I’m sure you’re as tired of listicle countdowns as I am. That’s why I created The Diamond Platters; the extravagant, opulent, and hyper-exclusive end of the year list designed for people who are sick and tired of end of the year lists.

The Diamond Platters are designed around categories that you won’t see on your average clickbait music review site. You’ll find no “album of the year,” and no high-minded retrospective attempting to weave these songs into some forced narrative of what this year “represented.” No, these are awards designed to highlight music, people, and events that made this year feel special. What follows may not fit into a website’s typical “Best of 2019” list, but still felt important and worth celebrating nonetheless. 

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Best Cover Song

Winner: Skatune Network - Everything
For the last three years, Jeremy Hunter (aka Skatune Network) has been creating some of the best and most consistent covers on the internet. They’re niche in the sense that every cover is ska, but for me, that merely adds an additional layer of charm. The fact that Hunter plays every instrument makes each video a feat of musicality that’s nothing short of wondrous to behold. Whether it’s Billie Eilish, Blink 182, Pokemon, or half of the Counter Intuitive Records roster, Hunter has a knack for making anything and everything sound wonderful and skank-able.

Runner-up: Denzel Curry “Bulls On Parade”
The magic of a cover song is taking something that belongs to someone else and making it feel wholly your own. Rage Against The Machine had a distinct (and hard to copy) sound, but for his cover of “Bulls On Parade,” Denzel Curry took that famous RATM energy and infused it with his own, resulting in a one-of-a-kind performance primed to become a staple of your gym playlist.

Best Album Art of the Year

Winner: Flume - Hi This Is Flume
Album art used to have one job: catch your eye on the shelf of a record store with the hopes of leading to a purchase. Its secondary job was to give potential listeners a visual representation of what the music directly behind it sounded like. Now that every song is one click away, artists have far more flexibility to make album art that fulfills that second bullet point, and this year no one did it better than Flume. The cover to his surprise-released mixtape is not only eye-catching, but it also does a fantastic job of encapsulating the vibrant, violent, and often-clashing elements of his particular version of electronic bombast. Additionally, the way the car was featured in music videos and Spotify visualizers only lent further depth and accuracy to the album cover.

Runner-up: Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won’t Hold
Lineup turmoil and a few mediocre songs aside, the cover to Sleater Kinney’s ninth studio album is a beautiful black-and-white optical illusion, collaging together every member’s face into a mishmash of lips, bangs, and winged eyeliner. It’s an arresting image that also manages to tackle the album’s central theme of being a middle-aged woman in music.

Best Music Video

Winner: FKA Twigs “Cellophane”
When the video for FKA Twigs’ “Cellophane” dropped, you could distinctly feel waves of ‘what the fuck’ reverberating throughout the internet. First off, it’s quite ballsy to release the closing track for your upcoming album nearly six months before its release, but as this video proves, FKA Twigs is a mastermind operating on a level higher than us mere mortals are capable of understanding. Aside from the notable way in which this track rolled out, the video itself is a beautiful and breathtaking meditation split into two main acts. “Cellophane” opens with FKA Twigs embracing her newest passion, pole dancing, in a routine that’s equal parts beautiful and athletic. From there, the video flies into a CGI-fueled acid trip as Twigs ascends into the sky, comes face to face with a robotic version of herself, then comes crashing back to earth in a coat of blood-red paint. This video is unlike anything I’ve ever seen this year, and all we can do is take it in and thank FKA Twigs for being herself. 

Runner-up: The Menzingers “America (You’re Freaking Me Out)”
Much like their music, the lead single off Menzingers’ Hello Exile is at once comedic, self-deprecating, socially-conscious, and pissed-off. Plus, the fact that the music video was filmed in Portland (a fact that I up on based off a strip club in one shot) means that it’s near and dear to my heart. 

Best Album From 2018 That I Missed

Winner: Charmer - Charmer
While I technically listened to Charmer’s self-titled album two times in December of 2018, within the space of a year, Charmer has climbed the charts to become my second most-listened-to album of all time on last.fm. I spent the better part of 2019 listening to the album at least once a day, usually on my way to work, and it single-handedly made my mornings bearable. I’ve seen the group live three times, including a front-to-back playthrough of this very album, and I was there singing along with every word. I can’t quite explain why this record resonates with me so hard, but I imagine it’s a little bit of everything. There’s impeccable emo guitarwork, powerful drumming, and choruses that get stuck in your head faster than you even realize. All of this swirled together into an album that I simply can’t get enough of. I may have arrived at Charmer late, but now I’m glad it’s become a part of my life. 

Runner-up: Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly - Alpha, Omega, Murphy
Much like Origami Angel, Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly takes fast-tapping emo and infuse it with nerdom, pop-culture references, and a hearty helping of sincerity. Clocking in at a mere 17 minutes, Alpha, Omega, Murphy is a packed little EP that merely represents the first step of a band riffing their way onto a larger stage as promising up-and-coming members of the 5th wave of emo.

Best Soundtrack of the Year

Winner: Labrinth - Euphoria (Original Score from the HBO Series)
Not only was Euphoria one of the best shows on TV this year, but it also addressed addiction, anxiety, and sexuality with more honesty than anything else on the air. One of the best unsung parts of Euphoria is Labrinth’s excellent Drake-produced score. Whether it was soundtracking a neon-lit high school party or a ten-minute conflict set at the state fair, Labrinth always seemed to know what the mood called for. The result was a soundtrack that perfectly mirrored the emotions poured out on-screen. On top of that, the album is eclectic, containing a range of genres from bumping hip-hop, soaring orchestras, and even some radio-ready pop hits. There’s a little bit of everything in the Euphoria score, and that only ended up elevating what was already one of the best shows of 2019.

Runner-up: Bobby Krlic - Midsommar (Original Score)
Much like Hereditary before it, the soundtrack to Ari Aster’s second feature-length film helps magnify the horror and accentuate the skin-crawling twists. As great at the movie is, it wouldn’t have been half as unsettling without Bobby Krlic’s excellent score lurking menacingly beneath every moment. 

Best Promo

Winner: Prince Daddy & The Hyena “Love Of My Life: Chasing Gold”
Advertising is hard. For bands, it’s a necessary evil to promote their new music. For brands, it’s their bread and butter. Usually any sort of corporate-fueled musical crossover is cheesy as hell, but when Taco Bell asked Prince Daddy & The Hyena to cover a song from their recent biopic-skewering campaign the group jumped at the opportunity (because what emo band doesn’t like Taco Bell?) The result was definitively awesome, true to the band’s style, and hopefully got them a few free Crunchwrap Supremes out of the deal. Really, it’s a win for both parties, with the end result being advertising done right. 

Runner-up: Punk Goes website redesign
The Punk Goes series has always been a stronghold of nostalgia. Sometimes it’s nostalgia for the songs being covered, and sometimes it’s nostalgia for the bands from the listener’s childhood who have resorted to covering an outdated pop song. This year, Punk Goes decided to lean into this aesthetic, completely redesigning their homepage to resemble peak-era MySpace (friends list and all) to promote their third iteration of Punk Goes Acoustic.

Most stank-face inducing song of the year

Winner: Rico Nasty & Kenny Beats “Cold”
The opening track to Rico Nasty’s aptly-named Anger Management is a blistering two-and-a-half-minute takedown of haters and dickriders alike. Backed by a disgustingly-hard Kenny Beats instrumental, the song hits like a ton of bricks. Pair that beat with Rico Nasty’s fast-paced in-your-face rapping, throw in a few screamed ad-libs for good measure, and you got yourself a 100% USDA Certified banger.

Runner-up: Danny Brown “Savage Nomad”
My face every time I hear the opening lines to this song.

What the fuck is this outro????

Winner: 100 gecs “745 Sticky”
I entered 100 gecs’ debut album an innocent man. What I heard when I clicked play on “745 Sticky” was a whir of electronics followed by a barrage of autotuned Lil Aaron-esque raps and Brockhampton-like croons. The chorus hit hard, and the instrumental shook my fragile bluetooth speakers, but the pièce de résistance came at the end where a spike of 8-bit distortion makes way for a hyped-up group chant set to a bubblegum pop beat followed by a dubstep drop punctuated by screams, dog barks, screeching tires, and other stock sound effects. By the time the first song ended I was breathless, shaken, and my speaker had literally rattled off the table that it was sitting on. I felt both confused and seen. Like someone took my Spotify account, highschool music library, and favorite Instagram meme account, then blended them together in GarageBand. Suddenly everything made sense. 

Runner-up: Charli XCX “Click”
Someone on the /r/popheads subreddit said it best: “Had to turn down the volume during Click's outro due to feeling like my eardrums were about to blow up and lose a significant portion of my hearing. 10/10”

Hardest Working Person In DIY

Winner: Lex Atchison of Chatterbot Records
There’s something innately admirable about the DIY hustle. Maybe it’s the fact that no one makes money doing this, and there’s very little clout to be had. That means almost everyone involved in the scene is doing this from a place of love. That means they’re spending all this time and energy for the sole purpose of sharing art they love with the world. In 2019, no one did that better than Lex from Chatterbot Records. This year Lex helped artists release dozens of albums, EPs, and singles. She directed and edited music videos, joined bands on tour, produced dozens of merch items, and launched an ARG album announcement. If that sounds like a fulltime job you’re right. Sometimes DIY takes precedence over a sound sleep schedule.

Runner-up: Alex Martin of Short Fictions, Soft Toss, and You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania Booking
After helming one of the most slept-upon emo projects of last year, Pittsburg-based Alex Martin showed no signs of slowing down in 2019. This year they booked more than 45 tours for dozens of bands through You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania Booking, and anyone that’s even so much as touched a tour Google Sheet knows what an undertaking it is. Aside from insane amounts of booking this year, Martin also formed a new band called Soft Toss, and just this month released an absolute heater of an emo album with Short Fictions. The fact that Martin did all of this alongside school and a “real” job seems borderline-impossible to me, but the more I think about it, the odds that they have access to some sort of time travel seems increasingly likely to me. 

2019 Time Capsule

Winner - Lil Nas X “Old Town Road - Remix” Video
The animated music video for the third remix of “Old Town Road” almost has almost too much 2019 in it. Aside from being the biggest song of the year, this video contains Lil Nas X, Billy Ray Cyrus, Young Thug, The Yodeling Kid, Thanos, Area 51, and Keanu Reeves Naruto running all in under three minutes. This video represents everything 2019 was about, and I love it

Runner-up: SZA, The Weeknd, Travis Scott “Power Is Power”
Unlike the wholesome goofiness contained in the “Old Town Road” music video, “Power is Power” is emblematic of 2019 for all the wrong reasons. Here we have a shallow music video, soulless verses, and lifeless instrumental that ends up feeling like a blatant cash grab in an attempt to pick a Black Panther-esque hit off the bones of a dying TV show. Yuck.

Too Iconic For This World: Most Breathtaking IG Feed

Winner: Sim Morales of Insignificant Other
Some people simply light up your timeline and provide you with an ever-renewing sense of warm fuzzies with each post. Sim Morales of Insignificant Other is one of those people. Aside from putting out one of the best power-pop records of the year, Sim’s Instagram feed is filled to the brim with killer looks and unforgettable fits. They are a DIY Fashion icon, plain and simple.

Runner-up: Aubree Roe of The Weak Days, Get Tuff, Safe Face, and Jetty Bones
Much like Sim, Aubree Roe (better known as RB) is a constant source of glammy makeup pics that make me feel simultaneously impressed and like one of those memes where people are surrounded by heart emojis.

Most Unexpected Celebrity Appearance

Winner: Strange Magic x Gilbert Gottfried
I don’t know what Mr. Gottfried’s going rate is, but the decision to include him throughout Strange Magic’s blistering 14-minute punk album was nothing short of a masterstroke. First introducing the listener to the record, then quickly moving on to heckling the group as the tracks wear on, Gilbert Gottfried’s presence only elevates an already-fantastic release. 

Runner-up: Mr. Moseby x Surely Temple
When you’re a band, getting people to listen to your album is hard. When you’re Mr. Moseby from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and The Suite Life on Deck, getting people to listen to your album is easy. Truly a genius marketing play by Surely Temple. Plus, it helps that their EP is pretty great (seriously, “enough.” is one of the most slept-on emo songs of the year). 

I Hope Someone Fights Me Right Now

Winner: Kublai Khan TX
I’m generally a pretty happy dude, but sometimes you just need to blow off some steam, and Kublai Khan TX has the riffs, lyrics, and attitude to soundtrack your next fight. Shit hits like a steamroller.

Runner-up: Gulch
I feel like this video explains the energy of Gulch pretty well.

Don’t @ Me: Best Social Media Presence

Winner: Eric Egan of Heart Attack Man
If you follow pop-punk twitter at all, then the phrase “Good morning everyone it’s Eric from Heart Attack Man” is probably all-too-familiar. From daily morning selfies with his coffee and Tik-Tok-ready memes to racking up a nearly $100K bid for a beanie on eBay, Eric has proven adept at garnering attention for both himself and his music through consistent and unrelenting shitposting. While most of it is positive (who doesn’t daily coffee-clad selfies from their favorite frontman?), a recent light-hearted beef with Hot Mulligan over the band’s un-verified twitter status brought even more eyes to the group, further solidifying them as the meme-generating centrifuge of pop-punk twitter.

Runner-up: Chris Farren of Chris Farren
Turning yourself into a meme is a risky gambit. However, turning yourself into a promotional tool for your music seems to have worked for Polyvinyl’s Chris Farren. In between writing his own music, designing his own merch, and putting on his own one-man live shows, Farren has been a consistent bright spot on my social media timeline throughout the year.

Best Single of the Year

Winner: Stars Hollow “Tadpole”
Some bands only put out one song this year, and Stars Hollow might have put out the best. As they shitposted on twitter earlier in the year: “Broke: Stars Hollow only released a single this year. Woke: Stars Hollow released a one song album this year.” They may be joking, but “Tadpole” genuinely comes off as a fully-realized entity that stands on its own more than some full-length albums I’ve listened to this year. Almost a postscript to their 2018 EP Happy Again, “Tadpole” is a continuation of the band’s fresh take on midwest emo. In the band’s own words, “It’s about how I want to be young forever and how I’m anxious that people want me to grow up.” It’s tappy, it’s screamy, it’s really fucking good. 

Runner-up: American Spirits “Retrograde”
This year Bowling Green mainstays American Spirits broke up, played a packed farewell show, and put out two of the best songs of their career. “Retrograde” is merely one half of the one-two-punch along with the cleverly-named “Error 404: Band Not Found.” While these may have been the band’s last songs, there’s also something to be said for going out on top. Plus, the newly-formed Soft Toss and half kidding share many of the same members, so hopefully this won’t be the last we’ve heard from these boys.

Most Goosebump-inducing Moment of the Year

Winner: Bring Me The Horizon “Ludens”
Bring Me The Horizon have transitioned from deathcore to metalcore to metal to rock so gradually I almost wouldn’t have noticed… if it weren’t for fans constantly complaining about it. While I don’t mind the musical pivot, it’s always fun when the band dips back into their hardcore roots whether it’s concert medleys or screams ironically directed at those fan criticisms. Needless to say, when I heard the tight-as-shit breakdown on the Death Stranding one-off “Ludens,” I lost my mind. More specifically, I got full-body goosebumps and my eyes began to water. It’s a flash of old school BMTH that made me feel like I was right back in high school again, even if it was just for 45 seconds. 

Runner-up: Summerbruise “Fricked”
“Well I only get this way after a rough day or if I’m drunk… Well, every day is rough and I’m always DRUUUUUUUUUNK.”

Most Unorthodox (But Noteworthy) Album Rollout

Winner: Bon Iver - i,i
Justin Vernon is an enigma. He puts out albums when he feels like it, and this year’s i,i was no different. Preceded by a bizarre trailer, the album released in-full almost a month before it’s announced date, but that’s not even the weird part. Vernon & Co. decided to upload the album to streaming services one song at a time. Releasing one song each hour, it gave the album drop a notably more communal feel. Instead of rushing through the first listen, Bon Iver gave fans something new to talk about each hour before finally piecing the record together as a whole. 

Runner-up: Lucy Dacus - 2019
Coming off releasing one of the best albums of 2018, Lucy Dacus kept busy this year by putting out a song every month or two. First it was a Spanish cover song, then a song for mother’s day, and finally culminating with a Christmas song, and capped off with an absolutely fantastic original track. Then she was kind enough to wrap up all these singles in a nice little EP for fans. Once again, it’s interesting to see an artist eschewing a traditional “album drop” and opting for one-off loosies every now and then. The difference here is that these weren’t just singles because, in the end, they were all collected in one place for easy listening. This kept Lucy Dacus top of mind throughout the year, and I probably ended up revisiting Historian even more because of it. 

Best Concert Video

industry folk: “what’s a band we should check out”

me: “@macsealband”

industry folk: “nah i doubt they can sell any tickets”

macseal: pic.twitter.com/DJrFxiR2ni

— Counter Intuitive🚀🖼 (@CIRecs) June 23, 2019

Winner: Macseal performing “Next To You” live at East Coast Customs
Live music is inherently hard to translate to any other medium. Sure, you can snap a picture or take a video of a band, but rarely do those snippets capture the energy felt in the room as the songs were unfolding live… Yet this video of Macseal is some of the most contagious energy I’ve seen all year. 

Runner-up: Dogleg performing “Calling Collect” live at Fauxchella III
As I mentioned in my profile on them earlier this year, this video was taken during the performance that single-handedly turned me into a Dogleg fan. It was aggressive, thrashy, and lead guitarist Alex Stoitsiadis capped it all off with a goddamn handstand. After making the rounds on DIY twitter, this video has since been a centerpiece in the band’s Pitchfork Best New Track, hopefully converting thousands more to Dogleg fans. 

Best Headline of the year

Winner: Alex G clarifies he is not Beto O'Rourke, did not piss himself.
Midway through the summer at the preliminary height of the democratic debates, some right-wing nutjob posted a picture of who they thought was Texas senator Beto O’Rourke pissing himself (because I guess that’s the best they can do to bring down Democratic candidates). It turns out the blurry photo was not Beto O'Rourke, in fact, it happened to be indie-folk musician (Sandy) Alex G, who had just released his brilliant album House of Sugar not even one week prior. In a bizarre turn of events that only 2019 can string together, all of this came to light within the space of 24 hours and became the talk of indie water coolers the nation over. What a goofy timeline. 

Runner-up: Celine Dion begs Drake NOT to get a tattoo of her face. Offers to go out with him, do a song together, and hang out with his mother in order to avoid him getting a tattoo of her face.
This headline is runner-up only because this was paraphrased via the /r/hiphopheads subreddit, but still worth mentioning here because it’s an emotional rollercoaster of a sentence.

Porch Beer Album of the Year

Winner: The Berries - Berryland
To be a “Porch Beer” album, you need a few things. Number one: jangly guitars. Number two: a laid-back rhythm section. Number three: a relaxed vocal delivery that pairs perfectly with a warm summer night and a cold beer. All of these elements are found on Berryland in spades. It’s simply a pleasant record; laid-back indie with a twinge of country that makes for a perfect listen on warm summer’s night.

Runner-up: (Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar
More fitting for the time of the night when you stand up six PBRs deep and the porch starts spinning, Alex G’s House of Sugar is a jaunty indie record that’s occasionally glitchy, jazzy, wandering, and wonderous.

Best Sample of the Year

Winner: Knocked Loose “In The Walls”
The Kojima-helmed PT may have died in development hell, but luckily “In The Walls” makes use of one of the game’s eerie world-building radio broadcasts so that we may never forget. 

Runner-up: 2 Chainz “I Said Me”
I guess this is a good a place as any to admit that The Sound of Music is my favorite movie of all time. Needless to say, when I heard 2 Chainz's “I Said Me” sampling Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things,” I geeked out more than I probably should have while listening to hip-hop about drug dealing and drive-bys. 

Greatest Addition to the Christmas Canon

Winner: Taylor Swift “Christmas Tree Farm”
While she had already made a fabulous contribution to the Christmas Cannon back in 2008, a lot has happened to Taylor Swift in the past eleven years. “Christmas Tree Farm” is a nostalgic original Christmas song that shines with the polish and primp of a 2019 Taylor Swift coming off her sugary-sweet Lover. It swells with a mix of orchestral flourishes, sleigh bells, and harmonized background vocals as Swift waxes poetic about the ideal holiday season that lives in her heart. It’s lovely, cinnamony, and smile-inducing, just like the holidays. 

Runner-up: Phoebe Bridgers “7 O’Clock News / Silent Night”
Now three years deep, it’s officially safe to call Phoebe Bridgers’ Christmas songs a tradition. Following up 2017’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and 2018’s “Christmas Song,” this newest addition to the dour Bridgers Christmas catalog finds her assembling a Mount Rushmore of indie. Enlisting Fiona Apple and The National’s Matt Berninger, the three craft an updated cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “7 O’Clock News / Silent Night,” which Bridgers dedicated to “everyone whose family has been literally or figuratively torn apart by Donald Trump. And to my racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, hypocritical family members, fuck you.” 

Reissue of the Year

Winner: The Beatles - Abbey Road (Super Deluxe Edition)
Abbey Road is my all-time favorite Beatles album, and that makes this year’s reissue even more exciting. Featuring a full-album remix and over 20 tracks of demos and alternate takes, the Super Deluxe Edition of Abbey Road only gives me more reasons to return to one of the greatest classic rock albums of all time. 

Runner-up: The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed (Deluxe)
This year I discovered that my favorite Beatles album (Abbey Road) and my favorite Rolling Stones album (Let It Bleed) both came out in the same year. Mind-blowing timelines aside, that means that two of my favorite albums both got 50th-anniversary reissues this year. While the deluxe edition of Let It Bleed came with fewer bonus goodies than Abbey Road, hearing my favorite Stones album remastered was a beautiful experience to behold. 

Most Slept-upon Release of the Year

Winner: Virginity - With Time
I’ll admit I first checked out Virginity only because of their name, but With Time is so great that they don’t even need a gimmick. Clocking in at a whirlwind 25 minutes, With Time is a punchy, clever, and self-deprecating bout of pop-punky emo most reminiscent of Jeff Rosenstock. I don’t care how many streams the album has on Spotify or how many followers the band has on twitter, whatever it is, it’s not enough.

Winner-up: He Was An Artist, She Was A Carpenter - I'll Never Be As Happy As I Was Last Summer
Self-branded as “zoomer emo,” He Was An Artist, She Was A Carpenter is a band that just happens to tick all of my hyper-specific boxes. Clever song titles? Check. Obscure pop-culture samples? Check. Catchy, twinkly, and nostalgic emo? Triple-check. I'll Never Be As Happy As I Was Last Summer is already a fantastic emo album, but it also happens to be the single most promising release I’ve heard all year. Now’s the time to get up on this band before they’re the next big thing in DIY.

That’s Why You Don’t Publish an Album of the Year List in November

Winner: Georgia Maq - Pleaser
Single-handedly proving why it’s a fool’s errand to publish a (supposedly comprehensive) list of the best albums in November, Georgia Maq surprise-dropped her synth-pop debut on Run For Cover this December. Famous for Camp Cope, where she defiantly fronts one of the best pop-emo groups in the southern hemisphere, Pleaser sees Maq swapping her guitar for a synth and shedding her anger to don the persona of a pop artist who’s fallen deeply in love. Still bearing her trademarked Melbourne-accented croon, Pleaser is unexpected not only in that it’s a surprise release but also in that it’s one of the best-constructed pop albums of the year. Should be an easy contender for many last-minute album of the year lists. 

Runner-up: Short Fictions - Fates Worse Than Death
This December also saw the release of one of the best emo albums, Short Fictions’ sophomore record Fates Worse Than Death. Bearing horns, impassioned vocals, and tight choruses, there’s a good reason why Fates has been making the rounds on emo twitter, even this late in the year. 

Best Interpolation

Winner: We Came As Romans “From The First Note” 
We Came As Romans was one of my first real concerts. I use “real” in the sense that it was the first concert I went to with people who were my age and not just my parents. To this day, I distinctly remember We Came As Romans taking the stage and playing the first song “To Plant A Seed.” Midway through the song I’d fought my way through the crowd, braved the moshpit, and made my way to the first few rows of fans before the end of the song. The track concludes with a powerful group chant that found the entire band lining up at the front of the stage harmonizing with the crowd. There’s a snapshot in my mind of that exact moment, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Kyle Pavone’s passing in 2018 was a loss for both the band and the genre, but I think that he would be happy knowing that memory will live on forever in me. And now, thanks to “From The First Note,” that feeling has been bottled up for the rest of time. In this song, the group sampled their own song ten years later in memory of their fallen frontman, and it’s absolutely chilling. “From The First Note” is simultaneously catharsis for the band and a reward for longtime fans. Nothing will ever replace the loss that Kyle’s friends and family felt in August of 2018, but this song will forever act as a beautiful memorial. 

Runner-up: Summerbruise “Bury Me At Penn Station” 
Imagine this; you’re already 12 minutes into a fantastic emo EP, vibing out to the last song when suddenly the unmistakable words of Drake Bell’s “I Found a Way” shoot through the front of your speakers. No, this isn’t a dream, you’re just listening to Summerburise, and it’s beautiful. 

Live Album of the Year

Winner: Vulfpeck - Live in Madison Square Garden
Simply life-affirming. 

Runner-up: IDLES - A Beautiful Thing: IDLES Live at Le Bataclan
Gripping, dynamic, and explosive. Exactly what live music should be.

Nastiest Bass

Winner: Russian Circles - “Arluck”
With a bassline that can only be described as “evil,” Russian Circles came out strong in the first half of the year when they released “Arluck” as the lead single to Blood Year. Much like the band’s previous work “309,” “Arluck” features a demonic bassline that thumps through your speakers, rattles the fillings out of your head, and makes you want to set everything around you on fire. 

Runner-up: Varials “Romance”
In what’s essentially a two-minute interlude from a brutal onslaught of metalcore, Varials gave their audience a breather with this Nine-Inch-Nails-interpolating track that allows for some of the most chunky and destructive bass lines of the entire record. 

Biggest Come Up

Winner: Lil Nas X
I think it’s safe to say that no one in the entire world had a better 2019 than Lil Nas X. If his story is to be believed, this time last year he was living on his sister’s couch with less than zero dollars to his name. He bought a $30 beat online and then posted it on Tik-Tok until it became a meme. From there, the story of “Old Town Road” is mostly public knowledge. The song transformed from meme into social cause when Billboard said the song did not “merit inclusion” on the Country charts only for Billy Ray Cyrus to come to the song’s rescue, giving Nas the assist (and legitimacy) to push forward to the top of the charts. Now “Old Town Road” has become the longest-charting song of all time, spending a grand total of 19 weeks at #1. Lil Nas X came out as gay at the height of the song’s popularity and has gone on to chart with songs like “Panini” and “Rodeo.” Now the world waits to see what the 20-year-old wunderkind will do after making the single most defining song of the year. 

Runner-up: Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish was a known entity long before 2019; however, this year marked the release of her debut album, her first #1 song, and countless sold-out shows on a year-long worldwide tour. Not only that, Billie managed to release a legitimately-great album that crossed boundaries and proved pop music doesn’t need to be traditional, sexy, or “normal” to be commercially successful. She’s the face of a new generation, and this year solidified it. 

Cozy Album of the Year

Winner: Great Expectations - Figures of Speech
Sometimes an album just feels cozy. As if it’s made for the express purpose of staying in, wrapping yourself in a blanket, and sipping on a hot cup of tea as you listen to it. Great Expectations' Figures of Speech is one of those albums. Filled with lush folky instrumentation, subdued Owen-esque arrangements, and softly-whispered vocals, it feels like the musical equivalent of sitting by a warm fireplace and looking out the window as the snow comes down in blankets outside.

Runner-up: Jack M. Senff - Good To Know You
I guess Michigan bands just know how to make cozy albums because ex-emo frontman Jack M. Senff’s debut solo album is a wholesome and comforting record seemingly designed for easy-morning Sunday listening.

Best Remaster

Winner: Dance Gavin Dance - Acceptance Speech 2.0
Post-hardcore mainstays Dance Gavin Dance have spent a better part of this year releasing instrumentals versions of their entire catalog. That instrumental avalanche (alongside one-off singles, acoustic tracks, and side projects) has kept fans more than satisfied. Not only that, but this year the group also revisited their 2014 album, and my personal favorite, Acceptance Speech for a “2.0 version” that makes the mix less muddy, the instrumentals more full, and the vocals even sharper. Acceptance Speech 2.0 gives fans a welcome reason to revisit the humble beginnings of the band’s current era.

Runner-up: August Burns Red - Constellations (Remixed)
Following up last year’s remaster of their best album, August Burns Red continued forward, touching up 2009’s excellent Constellations to sound much more clean and modern. 

Best Song Title

Winner: closure. “Alien vs. Predator vs. Brown vs. the Board of Education”
Filed under both “songs names I wish I’d come up with” and “joke that would have popped off on twitter,” the discography of closure. tends to lean into ridiculous over-the-top song titles, but “Alien vs. Predator vs. Brown vs. the Board of Education” takes the cake.

Runner-up: Proper. “A$AP Rocky Type Beat”
In a brilliant and culturally-aware meme-worthy move, Proper. turned a search term into a song title. Not only that, this song title fits into the group’s ethos calling into question the space between “emo-ness” and blackness. I can only hope that this song got the band got some runoff streams from confused hip-hop fans.

Split of the Year

Winner: Portrayal of Guilt / Soft Kill
There’s an art to a split. Bands have to find another group that they get along with well enough to coordinate an entire release (even if it’s less substantial than a full-length). Generally speaking, your music would line up stylistically, but that’s not the case with Portrayal of Guilt and Soft Kill’s split from this summer. Instead, we have a brutally-fast deathcore track followed by a synthy 80’s throwback jam making for one of the weirdest, most whiplash-inducing one-two punches of the year.

Runner-up: Niiice / Gully Boys
Here we see two massively-underrated Minnesota artists team up to help the world realize that they should be overlooked no longer. From the emo horns and dreamlike breakdown of Niiice’s “Caffeine” to the post-punky goodness of Gully Boys’ “Little Brother,” this split offers an excellent entry point into both of these band’s already-fantastic catalogs. 

Song of the Year

Winner: The National “Light Years”
I can only describe “Light Years” as achingly beautiful. Written at the same time as “Carin at the Liquor Store” off of 2017’s Sleep Well Beast (probably my favorite song of that year), “Light Years” is a song that adapts itself to whatever emotion you bring into it. Grief? Longing? Heartbreak? “Light Years” is malleable and applies to each and every one of them. Centered around a heavenly piano line and Matt Berninger’s remorseful delivery, the song hits like a ton of bricks and captures raw emotion in a way that very few songs seem to. 

Within the space of three and a half minutes, the song builds from those two core components and slowly starts building a near-imperceptible emotional weight. Gradually new elements begin to emerge as the song wears on. A background singer joins in for the first chorus. A subtle string section accentuates the song’s second verse. By the song’s second chorus, kaleidoscopic swirls of ambient noise in the background subsume the listener, lifting them up into the air. The track ends with a meditative instrumental outro where the piano, strings, and hushed vocalizations give you the sensation of floating off into space as you sink deeper and deeper into your emotional state. It’s nothing short of masterful. 

Runner-up: Slaughter Beach, Dog “Anything”
Closing tracks are hard, but Slaughter Beach, Dog seems to have a knack for them. Whether it’s the breathless one-two punch of their debut album, the wholesome love found on 2017’s Birdie, or the raw humanity seen on the band’s newest record. 

“Anything” takes an entire lifetime and compresses it down into a four-minute song. Jake Ewald jostles the timeline around like a Tarantino movie and then presents this journey to us as a wondrous and awe-inspiring tale. The song begins capturing minor frustrations like car troubles and running out of smokes, then moves on to more substantial looming discomforts like drifting away from friends and loved ones as Ewald flashes forward from ages five, ten, nineteen, and eighty-four. After a short instrumental interlude, the vocals return as Ewald pleads with the listener to swim out to him, finally ending with a message that beams with hope and optimism “Anything you want to know, you can find out / Any place you want to see / I can promise I will be a friend to you / If you will be a friend to me.”

Most Anticipated Release of 2020

Winner: Charmer - LP2
There’s a lot to be excited about in 2020. Long-awaited follow-up albums from indie darlings like Phoebe Bridgers and Japanese Breakfast. Debut albums from promising up-and-comers like Beach Bunny, and Dogleg. Big moves from personal faves like Retirement Party and Just Friends, and The Wonder Years. And of course, big-name releases from people like Fleet Foxes and Tame Impala.  Yet with all of that new music coming at us within the next calendar year, the album I’m most excited to hear is Charmer’s sophomore effort. As mentioned above, within the space of one year, the band’s debut became my second-most played album of the last ten years, so it’s safe to say I’m a fan. I’m both excited to see what the band comes up with next and anxious to see if it connects with me in the same way that Charmer did. Perhaps that collection of songs was just lightning in a bottle, but I’m holding out hope that the group’s new album will surpass it.

Runner-up: Stars Hollow - Debut Album
This year I had an unabashed love affair with Stars Hollow. I fell in love with the group’s 2018 EP, I saw the band live three times, and I even interviewed Tyler earlier this year because I had that many questions about his music. The group is comprised of some of the sweetest and most talented people I’ve ever met in the music scene, and I sincerely believe they will go far. As I (also) talked about above, if “Tadpole” is anything to go off of, the group has a long and fruitful future of goosebump-inducing emo that somehow has a direct line to my emotional core. The prospect of a full album from these guys already has me excited for the next year to start. 

Swim Into The Sound’s 10 Favorite Albums of 2018

All Hail The Algorithm

If there was any sort of theme to 2018, it was Discovery. Discovery on a personal level, discovery on a professional level, and (most importantly) discovery on a musical level. This year I landed a new job, moved across the country, and started a new life three thousand miles away from everything I’ve ever known and loved. I met people I would never have crossed paths with otherwise and experienced things that only this opportunity could have afforded me. 

On the blog front, I kept up to date by writing about new releases each month. I conducted my first interview, got paid actual money to write reviews, and hit dozens of other landmark firsts that made running this blog feel like a fresh, rewarding, and challenging endeavor all throughout the year. 

As 2018 ticked on and my album of the year list began to take shape, an interesting trend emerged: most of my favorite albums of 2018 were from band’s I’d never listened to until this year.

Discoveries can be found in the most unexpected places, and sometimes coming into something entirely fresh leads to the most impactful results. Whether it’s discovering a band live in-concert, reading a compelling review, or hearing them pop up in a Spotify playlist, there’s something rewarding about that feeling of discovery. 

These are the albums that helped me. The projects that brought me joy, sorrow, pain, and everything in between in a year when emotions ran high, and everything seemed bound for cosmic change. These albums are the soundtrack to the development of my life. A year in flux and a life in motion. These are my favorite albums of 2018.

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10 | Advance Base - Animal Companionship

On some level, it’s easy to make songs that anyone can relate to. The biggest pop songs in the world are all about falling in love, or breaking up, or hanging out with your friends. Those are universal experiences. They’re songs written so broadly that’s you have to go out of your way to not connect with them. What’s more difficult than that is instilling that same feeling of connection through a life that the listener hasn’t experienced. To convey a sense of empathy through a portrayal so specific that, while not experienced first-hand, it loops back around to being relatable. That’s what Advance Base has done with Animal Companionship, and it’s a marvel. 

A loose concept album centered around pets, Animal Companionship finds Owen Ashworth rumbling through a series of ten tales all depicting a handful of ordinary Midwesterners. While their stories would sound bland being told in any other way, the Chicago folk singer has a way of delivering them which such gravitas and specificity that they become extraordinary. His vocals never rise above a steady barrel-chested hum, but emotions run high throughout the record.

Often accompanied only by keys or a solitary drum machine, Ashworth’s voice (and words) are almost always front and center for the listener to ingest and ruminate upon at their own pace. The tales are crystalline, realized, and lived-in as if Ashworth himself has lived all of these disparate timelines and experiences of the album’s fictional characters. Whether it’s running into an ex’s dog tied up outside of a coffee shop, or a friend who still has an answering machine just so they can leave their pet voicemails, every word is measured and impactful. It’s a frigid-sounding record that, yes, is sad, but is also sprinkled with moments of hope and even joy. It’s a portrayal of humanity framed through the animals who, through their proximity to us and our lives, make us a little more human in the process.  

9 | Hop Along - Bark Your Head Off, Dog

I’ve spent about three years trying to understand the appeal of Hop Along. Between the time they released 2015’s Painted Shut and this year I’ve listened to every one of their albums multiple times and even seen them live, but for some reason, the band never stuck. Right when I was about to write them off telling myself “you don’t have to like everything” the group released Bark Your Head Off, Dog and everything finally clicked into place. 

While it took me a while to figure out, my biggest problem with Hop Along has always been that Frances Quinlan’s vocals are so good they overshadow everything else in most of their songs. There’s nothing wrong with the group’s instrumentals; I would just rather hear Quinlan sing over something that rivals her intensity. 

I gave Bark Your Head Off a few cursory listens before the final stretch of three songs began to sink their teeth into me. They were biting, fast-paced, and had enough ornamental flourishes that they rewarded repeat listens. They felt emotional and heartfelt while still retaining the personable stories Quinlan is known for. In short, the final three songs on this record were everything I’d been waiting to hear from Hop Along for years. 

Something about those three tracks must have opened my eyes because I eventually found myself listening to Bark Your Head Off, Dog front to back and being captivated by every track. I now realize the fault in my prior attempts was not the band, but me. I was looking for aggressive smoldering pop-punk songs, but in truth Hop Along is crafting loving (if not a little damaged) indie rock with a folk bent. It’s the musical equivalent of a glass of red wine, and either my taste was not refined enough to enjoy it before, or I came into their music thirsty for a cheap beer when I should have been savoring the complicated notes. Bark Your Head Off, Dog is a triumphant and passionate record that’s beautiful, rich, and worth savoring.

8 | Turnstile - Time & Space

Clocking in at a grand total of 25 minutes, the longest song on Turnstile’s Time & Space is three minutes and 15 seconds. With every other track hovering between 46 seconds and two minutes, the album ends up feeling like an exercise in violent minimalism.

Making a name for their photogenic live shows, engaging crowds, and hard-hitting songs, Time & Space vaulted Turnstile to the forefront of the underground rock scene. The record itself is picture-perfect hardcore and irrefutable proof that you don’t need anything more than a solid riff and a driving chorus to make great music. 

Not only that, the band’s sophomore effort proved to be surprisingly-accessible, gaining them coverage, accolades, and glowing reviews from dozens of mainstream publications. Walking an intoxicating balance of punk and thrash, Time & Space is an outpouring of emotion. It’s barebones, straightforward, and efficient. It’s artistically-fulfilling, temperamentally-satiating, and even surprisingly catchy at times. It’s everything hardcore needs in 2018, and proof of what it can one day be.

7 | The Wonder Years - Sister Cities

When I saw the Wonder Years back in May, lead singer Dan Campbell took some time between songs to make sure everyone had heard their newest album. After the resounding swell of voices quieted, he went on to explain a bit about the concept behind Sister Cities, specifically how the opening track “Raining in Kyoto” embodies many of the LP’s recurring themes. “It’s a record about connectivity, commonality, and empathy” Campbell explained to the rapt Portland audience. 

Sister Cities is a record about distance, but it's also a record about lack of distance. It's about the commonalities of man and the universal things that bind us as a race, about how little the physical space between people really matters when it comes down to it. Sister Cities is an album about human connection on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level.

While it's reinforced by music videos and lyrics throughout this album, this concept of connectivity is exemplified best by the record’s 6-minute closer “The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me.” In the song, Campbell uses the ocean as a stand-in for multiple important entities in his life. At first, the ocean is spoken of literally as a physical body of water that we're all attached to in some form or another. As the song plays out, the ocean becomes a metaphor for the brotherhood of humanity and the salvation we can find in our loved ones. 

Thematically, “Ocean” ties back to the opening track by referencing the passing of Dan's grandfather, but even that specific event is just a larger allusion to life, death, regret, and other inescapable human feelings that bond us together. The final verse of the song discusses illness and religion (two recurring topics for the band) but quickly moves onto real people in Dan's life. He talks about finding support in others when he needs it and learning to embrace that. Before a grandiose swell of music carries the record to a close, the final message of the album is a vital one: humanity is everything. Campbell explains there’s no fault in feeling defeated or asking for help. In fact, learning to give in when things are out of your control and growing to rely on those around you is an important part of life because sometimes that’s all we have.

6 | Mom Jeans - Puppy Love

If you were to ask Eric Butler what type of music Mom Jeans makes, he would simply answer “pop.” Not emo, not indie, not pop-punk, but straight-up pop music. In truth, Mom Jeans is a little bit of all these things, but if you go into Puppy Love with an honest heart and an open mind, you’ll quickly understand exactly what he means. 

The band’s sophomore album is a release that appears unassuming on first listen. You might hear it a few times and think nothing of it. Then you may find yourself humming a melody that subconsciously embedded itself somewhere in your brain. Then on a relisten, a chorus from a deeper cut will grab you, and you’ll find yourself queueing that song up too. Then you find yourself identifying with a lyric from the opening track about staying in, eating Cheetos, and drinking chocolate milk because that’s exactly what you were doing this weekend too.

Puppy Love is my most-listened-to album of 2018, and that’s because Mom Jeans truly are creating pop music. It’s pop-punk perfected. It’s catchy, melodic, relatable, and keeps you coming back for more. Whether it’s screaming about moving out of your parent's house, or getting confessional with your dog, Mom Jeans have found a way to get to the heart of it all.

5 | Lucy Dacus - Historian

Historian is the soundtrack to a life in decay. Opening track “Night Shift” starts calm and collected as a slow-moving folky jam extending a middle finger to evil exes. Gradually, the song builds without the listener realizing it, and suddenly Dacus is belting out the track’s namesake in a piercing Julien Baker-esque cry that pulls on your heart like an anchor. It’s a stunning moment that commands your attention and rips you into the reality of the song, if only for a moment. 

This jaw-dropping performance is just one of many surprises packed on the follow-up to Dacus’ impressive debut No Burden. Topics range from relationships in collapse to the imperfect nature of the self. It’s as disquieting as it is engaging, every word hinged around expert instrumentation and melodies that alternate between lying bare and exploding to life.

“Pillar of Truth” is the record’s monumental penultimate track, an ode to Dacus’ dying grandmother who faced the unknown head-on with level-headed composure. The song peaks with a volcanic guitar solo that paves the way for the more pensive title track which acts as the record’s thesis statement and end credits. Historian is an album about failure. About collapse. About annihilation. More importantly, it’s about finding the power to recover from those feelings even when life leaves you feeling ragged and profoundly-alone… which is more of an inevitability than any of us would like to admit.

4 | Caroline Rose - Loner

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that rock music is supposed to be fun. And throughout all of 2018, I found no single album that embodied “FUN!” (caps, exclamation point and all) than Caroline Rose’s Loner. 

Loner is an album about being your uncool self and learning to embrace it. About saying ‘fuck you’ to the people that tell you to smile when you don’t want to smile. About sexism, bad decisions, and menial jobs. About being the one person at the party without a cool haircut. It’s a blend of hyper-specific yet universal songwriting that hits home for me, all of which is packed in an easily digestible 30-minute record. 

While the album itself is a wonderfully-varied and full-throttle romp, Caroline Rose’s live show adds a different level onto the proceedings entirely. From executing a flawless Macarena on-stage during an instrumental break to a rockin’ recorder solo, and even a loving cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” I’ve never seen a band have this much fun on stage making music, and that’s something we could all use more of in 2018. 

3 | Bambara - Shadow On Everything

You wake up. A light breeze has blown the covers off of your body. You reach out to grab your sheets and pull them back up, but as your eyes open you notice you’re no longer in your room. You sit up, look around and see the horizon in every direction. You’re in the middle of a desert. It’s 3 in the morning, and you don’t know how you got here. That’s what listening to Shadow On Everything is like. 

Rumbling, snarling, and demonic, Shadow On Everything is a post-punk record with a southern twist. Described by the band as a “western gothic concept album,” it only takes one listen to see what that means. From front to back, Bambara’s sophomore effort is a morbid, disorienting, and dream-like exploration of humanity’s dark side. 

Shadow on Everything sounds like an episode of True Detective come to life, complete with all the violent self-destruction, overwrought sentiments, and foreboding imagery. Each song serves as a disturbing vignette, bonded together only by the ever-present sense that something horrible is lurking in the shadows just out of sight. It’s terrifying, engaging, and striking in a way that grips your attention and punishes you for looking away. A character study of humanity’s dark side and we have no choice but to stare into the reflection. Unforgiving desolation and absolute obliteration of the soul.

2 | Haley Heynderickx - I Need To Start A Garden

We tend to measure our lives based on major events. When we tell ourselves our own story there are act breaks and demarcation points that signal a new phase of our ongoing story. While it feels like we’re perpetually in the most “important” period of our own existence, not everything is that life and death. Sometimes directionlessness and absence of action are just as harrowing as loss or heartbreak, and that sort of millennial malaise is the exact sentiment at the heart of I Need To Start a Garden.

The abundance of choice that comes with the first phase of adulthood is overwhelming. The sprawling omnidirectional decisions can feel endless, and sometimes failing to take that first step can lead to a cataclysmic avalanche of self-doubt and paralysis.  

Garden is a folk album. It’s instrumentally-simple, lyrically straightforward, and emotionally-bare. Despite the simplicity of its base components, the end result feels like something much more complex and grand than the sum of its parts. 

I first heard of Haley Heynderickx one week after her album was released, and even then I felt immediate guilt of not having listened to it even earlier. That’s how badly I needed this record in my life in 2018. I turned around a full review of the album within a month of its release, but Heynderickx’s messages of listless 20-something pain cut a path directly into my heart at a time when I was experiencing all of these exact feelings. To hear these struggles put to music was not only reassuring, it was spiritually-affirming. 

I now realize the difference between childhood and adulthood isn’t a feeling of assurance or confidence in your actions because that fear of the unknown never truly goes away. I may have felt listless, disheartened, and directionless this spring, but now having moved across the country, starting a new job, and embarking on new artistic endeavors, I’m just as unsure of myself as ever before. Adulthood is not knowing what you’re doing with one-hundred percent certainty. Adulthood is knowing that feeling of uncertainty is always going to be there, acknowledging it, and being okay with it as much as you possibly can.

1 | Fiddlehead - Springtime and Blind

Sometimes music is the only thing that makes sense. Even when the world is changing, even when nothing works the way it’s supposed to, even when life throws everything it has at you, music is always there. Music has no judgments and no preconceived notions. It’s an objective outlet that exists to execute, quell, accentuate, or invert whatever mood you’re feeling at that time. There’s music for happiness, music for long drives, music for love, and sometimes there’s music for grief. 

Some of the greatest records of all time deal with insurmountable pain. 40-minute voyages into an artist’s psyche in the wake of a great loss or seismic shift of their day-to-day existence. Alums like Carrie & Lowell, A Crow Looked At Me, and Skeleton Tree are not only albums about death, they also happen to be some of the best in their respective artist's discographies because they feel the most human. While Springtime and Blind might not initially sound as “sad” as any of those records listed above, it deals with the same topic from a unique perspective that ends up making its message all the more powerful.

Springtime and Blind begins with a slowly-mounting drumline that’s soon joined by a grief-ridden cry of “YOU LIE AWAKE / to pass the time / Lose all your love? / Want some of mine?” Allegedly improvised in the album’s recording session, this first message bears the brunt of the record’s emotion and ignites the path for the remaining twenty-some minutes.

They’re not the same genre, but if I were to compare this album to anything, I’d name Japanese Breakfast’s 2016 breakthrough Psychopomp. Both records are under 25 minutes, segmented by meditative instrumentals, and waste no time jumping straight into heart-wrenching lyrics. Just as Psychopomp is an album about a daughter losing her mother, Springtime is an album about a son losing his father. They’re inverted experiences, yet still one and the same; two alternating approaches to the same universal experience of grief and loss that we will all must go through at some point. 

On some level, screamed frustration is a more accurate depiction of loss than sad, reserved folk music. Not to discount the inherent beauty of Carrie & Lowell, but everyone experiences loss differently, and Springtime and Blind offers a very authentic and genuine version of loss that I identify with. 

Sometimes change is a choice, but more often than not life forces change upon you. You’re forced to adapt and overcome or risk collapsing in the process. Some things can’t be changed or reversed, and all that’s left is to pick up the pieces and cling tightly to what’s left. That’s what Springtime and Blind offers. A family recovering. An explosion of grief followed by the first step of many toward recovery. It’s the sound of everything happening at once. The sound of birth and death. Of love and life. Of spirit and demons. And then it ends.