Final Quarter Review: October-November 2018

5 min readJan 9, 2019

Some Year-End Reflections

Thanks for following my favorite albums of the year! Since the coming of a New Year is all about reflections, I wanted to share some thoughts regarding this 2018 project before I share the final review of the year with you.

First of all, let the record show that I listened to somewhere between 300 and 400 newly released albums in 2018, which is probably double the amount of new music I have ever listened to before in a year — and that’s just the ones I listened to all the way through. Even so, as I’ve looked over other top album lists from other respectable sources, I’ve been extremely overwhelmed by the number of albums on there that I have not yet listened to, and even the number that I haven’t heard of at all(!). So, as a tribute to all the great music I didn’t listen to this year, I wanted to shout-out 10 special albums that deeply impressed or intrigued me based on 1–2 listens but with which I don’t feel enough depth of relationship to rank yet. They are:

The 1975 — A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
Brandi Carlile — By The Way, I Forgive You
Earl Sweatshirt — Some Rap Songs
J.I.D — DiCaprio 2
JPEGMAFIA — Veteran
Leikeli47 — Acrylic
Rosalía — El Mal Querer
Screaming Females — All At Once
SOPHIE — Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides
Suuns — Felt
Yowler — Black Dog in My Path

Secondly, like any good Millennial, I aim to “achieve balance” in my life, and that includes which sounds I pump into my ears. While it was really fun to listen to so much new music this year, I also feel that it largely precluded a balanced ear-life. There are still so many gaps in my knowledge of music from past decades, and I made virtually no progress filling those gaps this year. Also, when you’re focused on “new” rather than “good”, you end up listening to a ton of music that neither challenges nor pleases you. We usually call this type of music “boring” or, in our laziest moments, “bad.” In an effort to avoid more bad music in 2019, I will also be focusing on deepening my relationship with bands I already love, including some that weren’t really on my radar until this year, such as Mitski, Hop Along, and BROCKHAMPTON, but also including artists I’ve loved for many years whose extensive discographies I have not fully explored, such as Lil Wayne, Neko Case, and Tegan and Sara. So, while I promise I will never stop listening to new music, this year you can expect me to write about music that is less new, too.

In an effort to put into the world more of the knowledge and feelings I have accrued from new music this year, in the coming weeks I’ll also be releasing my final (maybe extremely long?) Top Albums of 2018 list, and probably also some kind of “lyrics round-up” because there are a lot of hilarious, crushing, and otherwise stunning lines that have stayed with me.

In the meantime, below are my favorite albums from October and November 2018. (As a reminder, December releases are excluded from this list because I believe in waiting at least a month from my first listen before I make a judgment.)