Final Quarter Review 2019

My Top 15 Albums Released October through December

4 min readJan 5, 2020

By mid-November of 2019 there appeared the usual flurry of “Best of” lists from all publications from every direction, like clockwork. But this time around, I was shocked to find that they were not the usual Best of the Year lists. “Best of the Decade?” I thought, like a weirdo. “Oh yeah, I guess that’s true.” I think I had been so focused on 2019 that I forgot how much people love the symbolism of the turn of a decade. Indeed, I forgot that, because I am in love with reflection and nostalgia, I love the symbolism of a decade as well.

During 2018’s Final Quarter Review, I reflected that in 2019 I’d like to get a little less obsessed with keeping track of all the new music and dive more deeply into some music that I already know and love as well. I’d say this went… well during January and February. Then by March or April — when the volume of albums being released went up significantly — I fell into old habits of poring over release lists and deciding what to pay attention to rather than deepening my relationships with albums I had already fallen in love with. Then, in November, when “Best of the Decade” lists started coming out, I kind of excitedly dropped everything to work on my own Favorite Albums of the Decade list, and wow have the last six weeks been an excellent reminder of how rewarding it can be to listen to old loves. For the first time in over two years, the majority of my music listening time in November and December was spent listening to albums that did not come out in the current year. I became reacquainted with old albums by all my faves (Beyoncé! Kendrick! Poliça! The National! Kishi Bashi! Joanna! there are so many!) in order to compile and fine-tune my own beloved list. (You have that to look forward to soon enough.)

Because of this, I gave less attention to new music in 2019's Final Quarter. But, for the sake of tradition, below are fifteen lovely albums I deeply recommend, even if the bottom half of the list is mostly based on a single listen each.

I really did listen to the top 3 quite a bit, and I think these are really special albums that will be important to me for the rest of my life. Most magically, I became acquainted with a dear Austin, TX, band called Hikes, who seem to be enchanted forest beings on top of being talented musicians and good people. They create extremely intricate, jaw-droppingly technically stunning, sometimes surprisingly funny but always emotionally transparent — folk rock ballads. Plus, they are really cute friends with each other!

Anyway, thanks for all the great music, 2019!

1. Hikes — Mahal Kita