hey-have-you-heard

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey, have you heard these 50 songs from 2024

Here it is: 50 of my favourite songs released in 2024. As always, limited to one song per artist and songs are listed in alphabetical order.

Listen to the playlist here

and check full list of songs below the fold!

Hello Mary - 0%Hello Mary are a new band to me, but this track caught my attention immediately. It’s a frantic, urgent and unexpected blast of noise and creativity. HEALTH ft. Lauren Mayberry - ASHAMEDWhen it comes to choosing collaborators HEALTH never miss. CHVRCHES vocalist Lauren Mayberry sounds like she was made for this, the darker witch housey tone the perfect compliment to her ethereal vocals. Orla Gartland - Backseat DriverThe flourishes of percussion and guitar counter melodies are so delightfully playful on this track, I defy anybody to put this on their headphones whilst out for a walk and not instantly find a little extra dance in their step. 

Gaffa Tape Sandy - Body In The Water This ones for the fun lovers. Stand By Me in song form, with sing song melodies, beautiful harmonies and a full raucous sound expressing nostalgia with every beat.

Destroy Boys - Boyfeel

O’ gender, you ever vexing foe. 

Linkin Park - Casualty

I don’t know what it says that my favourite track on the new Linkin Park album is by far the least they sound like Linkin Park, but this absolutely fucks, Emily’s voice sounds so good on the screams and every time the drums come back in for the chorus is euphoric.

underscores - CCTV

Here it is folks, my SONG OF THE YEAR. I’ve listened to underscores Wall Socket (Directors Cut) possibly in the hundreds of times at this point* and I still get chills everytime I get to CCTV. It’s a beautifully unsettled and haunting song, cryptic and amorphous in its sound. I don’t have the words to fully describe my feelings for this song, they exist outside of language. *Please listen to this album in its entirety, it’s honestly one of the best things I’ve ever heard and I’m not being hyperbolic.

Fat Dog - Closer To God

Ever since BC,NR dropped Opus I’ve been wanting more Klezmer infused chaos. Well Fat Dog are here to deliver in a big way, Closer To God goes hard on both the klezmer AND the chaos. It’s bouncing, it’s thumping, it’s klezmering, it’s Fat Dog BABY!

Glass beach - coelacanth

Coelacanth is prog-rock perfection, building upon a central theme with various perspectives and extrapolations of ideas. Building those ideas into a thesis that pulls together growing to an immensity far beyond the sum of its parts. Nothing is wasted here every beat, every frequency, vital to the cohesion of the whole. An absolute monster of a track.

Architects - Curse

Architects are a band who I always appreciate them trying something different. it, doesn’t always work for me, but always feels like they do it with sincerity and put everything into it. Curse is one of those occasions where it REALLY works for me. There’s elements that sound like All  Our Gods Have Abandoned Us era Architects and then Sam come through with those really nice clean high vocals in the chorus. The juxtaposition is great and really makes the track stand out for me. Great breakdown as well.

Projector - Don’t Give Anything Up For Love

Chorus of the year. Huge chorus. Love it.

Jane Remover - Dream Sequence

Dream Sequence is beautiful slab of gooey shoe gazey goodness wiith a slight hyperpop tint. Definitely one to listen to with headphones, feel all of its gorgeous layers wash over you and ask yourself “if you could go anywhere, would you want to stay here?”

The Cure - Endsong

THEY’RE FUCKING BACK! Endsong fits amongst some of The Cure’s greatest work, it’s a perfect culmination of everything The Cure are and everything they mean to me, and those lyrics... FUCK, those lyrics! You just know when Robert Smith has you holding out over 6 minutes for his first syllable, you’re going to get some absolute gold. Excuse me whilst I sit here and have a little listen and a big cry.

FKA twigs - Eusexua

FKA twigs describes Eusexua as a "sensation of being so euphoric" that one could "transcend human form". When the beat dropped, I fully understand what she meant by this. The suspense built through the first half of the track is released in waves by a pulsing bassline that pushes the track higher and higher. Extra points to FKA Twigs for also creating the music video of the year with Eusexua/The Drums of Death.

Soft Play - Everything and Nothing

I had a real time of it choosing which Soft Play track would make it on this list. On a different day it could have very easily been Worms on Tarmac, but the heart won out on this one. The line “I see your smile in other peoples faces” destroys me every time I hear it. A beautiful, touching song.

Speed - The First TestThe First Test sounds like a solid hardcore track, then the flute hits. Yes, we have flute hardcore.

Better Lovers - Future Myopia

It’s no secret Greg Puciato is one of my favourite vocalists in heavy music and he is on top form here, also the chorus of Future Myopia may be the first song where Better Lovers didn’t sound like somebody mashing together TDEP and ETID* but instead became their own thing entirely, and what that thing is, is GOOD. 

*(don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved God Made Me An Animal)

Lambrini Girls - God’s Country

You can always rely on Lambrini Girls to put things bluntly and succinctly. “Sorry bestie, but it’s giving austerity”. Another banger from some of Brighton’s best.

Heriot - Harm Sequence

I went to a festival a couple of years back where I spent a morning doing about an hour of yoga in a forest and then found myself in a circle pit at 10.30 in the morning while Heriot were playing. I’ve never felt the spiritual peace of yoga leave my body so quickly. This track is pummeling, Vocalist Debbie Gough sounds straight up demonic, and oh when that guitar solo rips in. This is what metalcore should be striving for more.

IDLES - Idea 01

I will stand by Brutalism being Idles greatest album, but Crawler is a close second and Idea 01 carries across many of it’s greatest strengths. Joe Talbot’s contemplative croons, the tape loops and ambient soundscaping, and the way it builds, oh the way it builds.

Lip Critic - In The Wawa (Convinced I’m A God)

I think I’ve called Show Me The Body “If Death Grips were a hardcore band” in the past. Well Lip Critic are like “If a hardcore band were Death Grips” (it makes sense, honest). In The Wawa also feels like it pays just as much to the playfulness of the B-52s or their zoomer counterparts 100 Gecs. It’s an oppressive high energy anxiety inducing noise that you can’t help but smile through. A perfectly executed contradiction.

Charli xcx - I think about it all the time

Confession time - I thought BRAT was kinda mid. I really didn’t get the hype on this one, How I’m Feeling Now was a far superior album. I don’t even think this track is that good, it’s pretty shit from a songwriting perspective, but its inability to make its point with any finesse is kinda why it’s on this list. I have at this point been asked hundreds of times if I am ever going to have, or would ever want, children. My answer is and always has been resolute, I never want to be a parent. That shit ain’t for me. But hearing someone else grapple with these ideas in such a matter of fact, open and honest way it hit me like a gut punch and by god did I have one hell of an existential crisis after listening to this song on loop a few times. So yeah, kinda shit song but it made me feel something, so good art? (Sympathy is a knife is actually the best song on BRAT)

Girl Scout - I Just Needed You To Know

Oh man I just love the drums in this one, the way they skitter around in the verse and the push into the chorus, it’s good stuff. Also you hearing those funky little guitar sounds and that wacky solo? Pure joy.

Kesha - JOYRIDEGet in the clown car motherfuckers, it’s time for a joyride BEEP BEEP. She is finally free and this is a victory lap, she’s earned the right to be like this.

Slotface - Ladies Of The Fight

What would it sound like if Fight Club was a feminist pop punk song? Maybe not a question you’ve ever asked but one you’ve now got an answer to. It sounds like this, it’s fun, it’s tongue in cheek and it’s a bop.

The Armed - Martyr Song

The Armed continue to surprise at every turn, Martyr song starts lives on the more accessible side of The Armed’s repertoire, it’s a nice change of pace almost sounding like a slightly fucked Queens of the Stoneage track, or maybe even The Killers. Then the trumpets come out and things get a bit zany, a bit screamy, and a bit loud, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

High Vis- Mob DLA

High Vis rally their hardcore spirit to let out a vital scream about the state of a government and country that neglects the people most in need and deserving of it’s support. Marginalised communities left to fight for their own survival, simultaneously victimised and villainised whilst the rich keep getting richer and more powerful.

Geordie Greep - Motorbike

Motorbike is a fascinating study of maximalist lyrical and music storytelling. As our narrator falls into a midlife crisis the soundtrack clatters around him, it’s pace increasing with his panicked state growing and building breaking into something new as he envisions his freedom upon a motorbike, free from his life, from his responsibility. The reality crashes back in along with his panic as the guilt of his escapist ideas catch up to him. Cue a swans-esque cacophony.

Oneohtrix Point Never - My Dream Dungeon Makeover

Daniel Lopatin knows how to make sounds that scratch my brain in exactly the write way those beautiful harpsichords, the scratchy scrabbly electronics, those soft pads and that weird feedback guitar noise… it all folds together so beautifully like a delicious noise soup that I just want to dip myself into like a freshly baked roll and soak it all up.

Doechii - Nissan Altima

If you haven’t watched Doechii’s Tiny Desk COncert, go add it to your watchlist. This track is just a sample of the high energy fun she delivers on that performance. It’s cheeky, it’s playful and it is insanely talented.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD

I am constantly in awe how GY!BE manage to be one of the most politically loud bands around without any vocals. They are able to paint such vivid pictures with their music, of emotions and feelings but also of fully realised scenes that burst to life in the listeners mind. Raindrops  cast in lead starts dismal and apocalyptic beforepulling together to promises of a better future if we all work towards it. The field recording at the center of Raindrops pulls everything together and gives the composition a beautiful sense of place.

Bob Vylan - Reign

Reign is such a genius switch up for Bob Vylan, just when I felt their sound was starting to wear thin for me, Humble As The Sun changed everything. Some great lyrics here as well and ooh that beat change at the end, it goes so hard.

The Marias - Run Your Mouth

Some gorgeous chilled out pop music, that bassline is delicious, could listen to it all day. Really catchy guitar hook. This song is exactly what I want from a pop song.

Knives - Sadness

Knives manage to blend elements of a post punk and hardcore in a way I’ve never quite hard before, it’s an exciting and intriguing listen. Off kilter and engaging punk full of emotion.

GEL - Shame

There’s a lot of hardcore and hardcore adjacent music on this list, but that’s because it’s one of the most exciting spaces in music right now. Bands like Gel continue to push it in new and interesting ways whilst keeping the spirit alive, Shame sounds so vibrant, as separate elements pop out in the production to bring extra body to the track. 

Vower - Shroud

I’ve never seen so many men crying in one space as at Palm Reader’s farewell performance at 2000 Trees this year. It was beautiful and poignant, and I was crying alongside them. Josh McKeown has my favourite voice in metalcore and Palm Reader were a top 10 band for me. The sadness of Palm Reader’s breakup was tempered by the announcement of a new band Vower featuring McKeown alongside ex-members of Toska and Black Peaks and yeah, it’s pretty damn good. Maybe a future without Palm Reader aint so bad when we still get music like this.

Karen Dio - Sick Ride

This one just got stuck in my head for about 3 months. There’s nothing new or particularly special about this imo, but sometimes a good hook is just a good hook and that’s all you need.

Du Blonde & Laura Jane Grace - Solitary Individual

I am a solitary individual and Laura Jane Grace is something of a personal hero of mine, so when she’s singing words that could’ve come straight from my own head over a really damn catchy chorus it makes me very happy. 

Fontaines DC - Starburst

Yeah this one is very very good, there’s so much character so much depth, the way the metaphors and allusions pile up on top of each other with Grian Chatten’s deft lyricism, that tonal shift in the bridge, those visceral gasps in the chorus… it’s perfection.

WILLOW - Symptom Of Life

I’m a sucker for a 7/4 time signature on a pop song. There’s so much interesting stuff going on musically on this track, some gorgeous chords and achromatic notes and a lot for me to love as a bass player.

Magdalena Bay - That’s My Floor

This track has one of those crunchy guitar tones that kinda makes it sound like your speaker’s broken. I love that. Every single choice on this song is wild and unexpected I had no idea what I was listening to from one moment to the next, great stuff.

Amyl and the Sniffers - U Should Not Be Doing That

More saxophones in punk please, it sounds so good. We promise we won’t just compare you to X-Ray Spex…

Shelf Lives - Uncle Fred

Shelf Lives are insane in the best way. 2 minutes of fun frenetic nonsense. Also nice Shaun of the Dead reference.

Calva Louise - Under The Skin

Calva Louise’s evolution since Rhinoceros has been fascinating. At one point it looked like they were going down the muse symphonice space rock route, then they pulled out the harsh vocals and now they are something entirely of their own. Under The Skin is PACKED with fresh ideas. Classical piano, djenty guitars and a scifi narrative all get blended together.

CLT DRP - Until You Showed Me

It wouldn’t be a end of year list of mine if Clt Drp didn’t show up somewhere… Until You Showed Me is a lover letter to gender non-conformity and to being seen through others eyes, to feel that pure love and validation. It’s beautiful.

Xiu Xiu - Veneficium

Jamie Stewart’s vocalisations are wonderfully melodramatic, that buzzing bass tone roots itself at the base of the skull, the unsettled call and response guitars… everything here pulls together to create a piece of goth noise excellence

Blood Command - We Could Be Heaven

I never know what Blood Command will release next. We Could Be Heaven is a pop punk banger with more than a touch of Andrew W.K. to it and it is SO MUCH FUN. 

Dreamcar - We Rats

Davey Havok’s vocals may be my favourite sound in the world and he is having a ball on this track alongside members of No Doubt. A brooding intro bursts into a great poppy chorus about everyones favourite furry little rodent.

Bring Me The Horizon - Youtopia

This track is mainly on my list because it scratches a very weird nostalgia itch. The melody is almost identical to Hikaru Utadu’s Sanctuary (the opening song to one of the best video games of all time, Kingdom Hearts 2) mixed with some deftones. It’s so close I feel it must be a deliberate musical reference, both songs are absolute bangers.

Black Dresses - ZERO FANTASY

This very well might be Black Dresses final release (actually for real this time). If it is, LAUGHINGFISH feels like a fitting send off including some of the bands most accessible and heart-rending material to date. ZERO FANTASY straddles the space between pop song and the weird noise sphere black dresses normally sit in reelng in their more esoteric tendencies to deliver something that is still notably Black Dresses but could also pass for a radio ready alt-pop tune. There’s a great synth melody that comes in at the climax of the track over these tumbling snares and thrumming bass that encapsulates the sound perfectly.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey, Have You Heard These 50 Tracks from 2023?

Another year comes to a close and the music lover pulls up their trusty spotify playlist to document the high points of their year in music. You know the drill by now but in case you're new here... Songs are in alphabetical order (there is no internal rating to the 51) but if I had to choose a single song for everyone to listen to, it would be "Why Am I Alive Now", please listen to that track if nothing else. A Spotify playlist of the included songs is linked below for your listening pleasure

Fontaines DC - ' Cello Song Kicking things off with the only cover song on the list, Grian Chatten and band spin Nick Drake's song into something entirely their own, paying homage to Nick Drake's songwriting whilst pulling in the intricacies of their own unique sound and appeal.

Boygenius - $20 Screw star-signs and wizard school houses, which member of Boygenius do you align yourself with? I'm a Julien Baker stan but I adore them all, especially when their voices and styles are weaving in out of each-other in rapturous noise like this.

XL Life - Baby Steps Hardcore and punk has had a great year, a really great year, and XL Life have been a standout part of that. Backed up by a guest verse by Bob Vylan's own Bobby Vylan, Baby Steps is bursting with soul and emotion, driven by breakneck drums and heart-on-sleeve positivity

100 Gecs - Billy Knows Jamie 10,000 Gecs (the much anticipated follow up to 2019's 1000 Gecs) truly gave us the as-promised 10 times as many gecs, if a Gec is a unit of measurement for what can only be referred to as wild-genre-fuckery. Billy Knows Jamie gives us full on Bizkitesque nu-metal, including record scratches, a bass line Fieldy would be proud of and a rapid descent into utter chaos.

Algiers, Billy Woods, Backxwash - Bite Back Bite back is a masterpiece of ever-building tension, Carpenterian synths weave the track together as one musical idea gives way to another. With every new phrase and trade-off between vocalist, the threads pull tauter and tauter. The switch up at 3:10 still gives me chills every time I hear it.

Glass Beach - the CIA My favourite theatre kid emo's are back and doing what they do best, which is whatever the hell they feel like. You know when all the 70s prog rock bands fell into the 80s and needed to get radio-play so they fell into this weird sort of choppy watered down down art-pop sound (e.g. Yes)? This feels like that, but there's no actual need to conform, so Glass Beach are still free to get as weird with it as they want, whenever they want.

Blood Command - Decades Deccades is a very bad representation of Blood Command as a band (at this point I'm unsure if a good representation of the band exists), but it's a very good song. Hardcore and "Death pop" is out, R&B is in. Reverb soaked synths and horns, skittery hi-hats, layered vocals and lyrics about lost love and the Heavens Gate cult.

Liturgy - Djennaration I'll be the first to admit that Liturgy are an acquired taste (the first time I saw them live it made me feel physically ill), but if you can put on some headphones, turn up the volume and lose yourself in Liturgy's "Transcendental Black Metal" there is no other feeling quite like it in music.

Kesha - The Drama The continual evolution of Kesha's sound has been a fascinating thing to watch ever since Tik Tok put her on the brat pop map back in 2009, each album cycle has seen her stripping back elements of character, delivering ever rawer and more honest depictions of self. The Drama pulls away from pop almost entirely, what starts as a Lorde-like slow ballad tumbles into a nightmare-collage of upbeat synths, a circus show of theatrical excess as Kesha's desparately laments on a loss of faith in humanity and self. The song ends on an absurd mix of housecats and Ramones, oh the drama of it all.

Fever Ray - Even It Out Even It Out may not be the technically best song on Radical Romantics, but the idea of Karin Dreijer teaming up with Trent Reznor to make a gleefully unhinged song about violently attacking a child is just too funny to me. The rest of the album is also incredible and well worth a listen.

Follow You - Saint Agnes Oh, hey, speaking of Trent Reznor, Saint Agnes channel Nine Inch Nails on the massive distortion drenched choruses of this stand out track from Bloodsuckers. Lead singer Kitty's vocals soar over wailing guitars and crunching bass, this is the sound of a band triumphing through adversity.

Johnny Booth - Full Tilt I remember seeing a comment when this first released that summed up how ifelt about it perfectly. "This has slap fucks". Yes, selppin2, I couldn't of put it better myself. Johnny Booth have been consistently hitting it out the park for the past few years and this is no exception, absolutely brutal stuff.

Creeper - Further Than Forever Creeper's Sanguivore is an album to be devoured in it's entirety, I couldn't choose a single song so this is merely a goth-punk-opera overture. A nine minute long homage to the theatrical tendencies of Jim Steinman. If you enjoy any part of this, Sanguivore is a must listen for you.

Crosses - Ghost Ride Chino Moreno swaps out the rumbling wall of guitars of Deftones for pulsing bass synths and sparse electronic drums with the second album from his side project with Far's Shaun Lopez. Ghost Ride is a sultry slow build that crashes into industrial-pop(?) choruses.

Idles - Grace Idles (to my surprise) were my most listened to band of last year, and if Grace is a sign of things to come on Tangk, they're in with a shot for 2024 as well. Grace finds Joe Talbot swapping out the political battering ram of a growl he's employed previously for a soulful tone, a message of peace and love, and its hauntingly beautiful to behold. No God, no king, love is the thing.

BENEE - Green Honda You may remember BENEE from tiktok's 2019 supahit Supalonely, she's still writing bops. Two middle fingers up, leave you in the rearview, bops.

Free Refills - Grounded What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good bassline, and this is a great bassline.

Pendulum, Bullet For My Valentine - Halo (Matt Tuck Rework) On his rework of Halo, Matt Tuck keeps all the energy of the original mix but ups the aggression. This is the sound of Pendulum at their heaviest and best.

Tokky Horror, Scottish Gabber Punk - HAMMER 2 THE FACE (Scottish Gabber Punk Remix) Speaking of energy and aggression... it doesn't get much more energy and aggression than this, hammer 2 the face is a fitting title for the brutality of this track.

MSPAINT - Hardwired MSPAINT are a hardcore punk band with a notable lack of guitar, the instrumentation instead filled out with colourful synths. The result is a unique and engaging sound unlike anything else in the genre.

Empire State Bastard - Harvest ESB are my kind of supergroup, formed of Biffy Clyro's Simon Neil, Oceansize's Mike Vennart and Slayer's Dave Lombardo (yes, you read that right). Simon Neil is delivering career best vocal performances, Mike Vennart is stirring up unholy hell on guitar and Dave Lombardo is doing what Dave Lombardo does best.

Alice Longyu Gao - Hëłłœ Kįttÿ I didn't think we could get more unhinged than last years MONK, with it's thrash metal guitar and vib ribbon solo, but here we are in the year of our lord 2023 and I'm listening to car clown horns. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.

Bob Vylan - He's a Man Do y'all remember the Lindsay Lohan Freaky Friday movie? There was a great song in it called Take Me Away... anyway, I forget why I mentioned that, but this song is really fun.Great cheeky lyrics and love that guitar riff.

Fall Out Boy - Hold Me Like A Grudge This may just be a nostalgia pull, but that intro transported me back to hearing Dance, Dance for the first time. Hold Me Like A Grudge does a masterful job of pulling together elements of FOBs classic sound and their more recent poop sensibilities that has had me enjoying their sound in a way I haven't since Infinity On High

Evie Enby - Homies Oops, how did this get in here? Please appreciate the one note guitar solo.

FIZZ - I Just Died My general lack of enthusiasm for The Beatles is fairly well documented by this point, but one of the best things they did for pop music was use the clarinet on When I'm Sixty Four. Well good news, I no longer have to listen to The Beatles to get my clarinet fix. Now that the Beatles reference for this year's list is done.. I just died is a song about an absolutely mortifying experience delivered with great mirth. It's a fantastic, sing-along-in-the-shower bop, and have I mentioned the clarinet solo?

CLT DRP - I Put My Baby To Sleep (It's pronounced Clit Drip) What can I say, another explosive, genre defying, track by one of the best bands in the world. Now go listen to the entirety of Nothing Clever, Just Feelings.

Orla Gartland - Kiss Ur Face Forever Joyous, peppy and "let's play a game of emotional monopoly, in the name of monogamy" may be the best couplet I've heard this year. It's just fun, so much fun.

Bring Me The Horizon - LosT When LosT first dropped, I referred to it as the geccification of BMTH, I meant that in the best possible way. I really enjoy how the hyper-pop elements lift this track up. "The next time that I open up to someone will be my autopsy" is one of the finest Oli Sykes-isms we've had in a long time.

Swans - No More Of This Okay, so the actual Swans track that should be on this list is The Beggar Lover (Three) but apparently putting an uncompromising, nigh impenetrable, 43 minute long epic in the middle of a playlist is terrible for retention, and I'm a coward. But if you have a spare 50 minutes, go give it a listen.

Pupil Slicer - No Temple Pupil Slicer continue to prove themselves to be one of the most exciting bands in Mathcore. Pushing against the boundaries of genre in a genre where pushing against boundaries is a core philosophy, No Temple is, according to the band, the heaviest song they've ever written. The bass guitar work is an exceptional standout for me here as it pushes against the rest of the song.

Carly Rae Jepsen - Psychedelic Switch With every CRJ album project comes a B-sides album, and with every B-sides album comes an absolute banger. Psychedelic Switch is undoubtedly this for the Loneliest Time/Loveliest Time project. You'd be forgiven for thinking Daft Punk themselves reunited to produce this french disco flavoured bop.

Soft Play - Punk's Dead Who the fuck are Soft Play? Sound like a bunch of lefty snowflakes. I've missed these boys, doing this kind of thing. The Robbie Williams feature is inspired.

Chappell Roan - Red Wine Supernova Red Wine Supernova is sexy, self-assured, feel-good, sapphic fun. It's a testament to how good a song is that lyrics like "I heard you like magic, I've got a wand and a rabbit" doesn't detract from it, but actually elevates it's effortless charm.

JAAW - Rot JAAW are an industrial metal "supergroup" formed of members of Therapy, Three Trapped Tigers, Sex Swing and Biglad. That is likely mostly gibberish to the average music listener, but to a niche few, it's a very exciting prospect. What it sounds like is swelling, tumultuous walls of noise, tortured screams, screeching guitars and pulsing distorted bass. Catharsis through noise.

Better Lovers - Sacrificial Participant More supergroup! Greg Puciato teams up with ex-members of Every Time I Die and Will Putney (of Fit For an Autopsy). I was devastated by the split of ETID, (off the back of the phenomenal Radical adn jsut before I was due to see them live), but Better Lovers is one hell of a silver lining. Puciato's energetic vocals bounce wildly off of the erratic musicianship that was the cornerstone of ETID's sound. It's a perfect match on record and is even better live.

Architects - Seeing Red Bless Architects. They're a band that are truly a victim of their own success, as they've tried to pull their sound and ethos in new directions it's been met with a huge amount of negativity from their own fanbase. Seeing Red is a reaction to this. "You want heavy? Here's heavy. Are you happy now?". Blegh.

Teen Mortgage - Sick Day Sick Day is a 2 minute punk blitz about how you are worth so much more than your labour and how having a cute cat you want to look at is a perfectly valid reason to stay at home. Capitalism 0 - Cats 1.

Purity Ring, Black Dresses - Shines Purity Ring and Black Dresses are both Canadian electronic duos and that's about where the similarities stop, but that just makes this collaboration all the more interesting. There's so much going on here, the chaotic harsh frenetic noise of Black Dresses, Ada Rook's screams, the twinkling synths of Purity Ring and sing-song melodies of Megan James. Somehow it pulls together to create something of true beauty in its own weird way.

Dream Nails - Sometimes I Do Get Lonely, Yeah Dream Nails take on the rising issue of incel culture and red-pill ideology, with grace and empathy. Pointing fingers not at individuals but at the systems and powers that enable and create these pipelines to hatred and bigotry. It's a bold and challenging idea, executed superbly.

Baby Dave - Sounds Good When a fan sends you an unhinged voice message out of the blue offering you a bite suit and dogs to shoot a music video, obviously the thing to do is make a song out of it, then take them up on their offer and use it as the video for that song. There's a great OPM era The Streets vibe to this track that plays off nicely of the grounded reality of its subject.

Sleep Token - The Summoning Sleep Token do the impossible, they make prog-metal (the unsexiest of all genres) , undeniably sexy. Nowhere is this clearer than on The Summoning, a 6-and-a-half minute epic of a track with multiple time signature changes and tonal flips, that somehow still oozes with a swaggering sexuality throughout it's runtime. The out-of-nowhere funk switch up on the end of this track is perfection.

Lambrini Girls - Terf Wars Love those Lambrini Girls, they say what I'm thinking, and they say it loud.

Ezra Furman - Tether This one had me in floods of tears from the first listen. A classic string-laden piano ballad about inescapable pasts and the desire to cut yourself free from who and where you've been.

The St. Pierre Snake Invasion - That There's Fighting Talk This track does two things it builds and it STOMPS, like real "put on your heaviest boots and then strap lead weights to them because they need to be heavier" stomps. An industrial-mathcore floor-filler, the song crescendoes then continues to crescendo into ever greater insanity. Get Stomping.

Calva Louise - Third Class Citizen Calva Louise's sound has evolved so much since I first fell in love with the band listening to their 2017 debut single Getting Closer. Third Class Citizen has elements of Muse in it's bass-lines, stadium-sized guitar riffs and fizzing production. The vocals and lyrical content make it something altogether its own though, the palpable fury in vocalist Jess' voice as she demands "Respect, motherfucker" is real and visceral.

HEALTH - Unloved Off the back of their genre spanning, multi-release collaboration project, DISCO4, RAT WARS sees HEALTH back in a focused mode and delivering their heaviest album to date. Unloved is a moment of relative respite on the album though, a Depeche Mode tinged track, soaked in 80's reverb and ready for the goth club. HEALTH pull you into their world of misery and beauty with catchy hooks and pulsing bass.

Anohni and the Johnsons - Why Am I Alive Now This year saw the release of "My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross", Anohni's first studio album with her band since 2010's Swanlights. The abrasive electronics of her solo albums are traded in for warm soulful tones and a raw almost live-feeling instrumentation. It's a beautiful, deeply emotive, and incredibly present sounding album. Feeling as if you are being drawn into the recording process itself, Why Am I Alive Now? is an existential lament on finding purpose in a purposeless world, in navigating through suffering to find hope and love. On learning why to be, when it feels like the world is set on stopping you from being.

HMLTD - Wyrmlands THE WORM IS HERE! Wyrmlands is an example of one track on an album that should be listened to in its entirety. The Worm is a concept album at its most conceptual, eschewing genre and at times structure entirely in favour of narrative and ~vibes~. It's a dizzying disorientating listen, that will leave you' with more questions than answers, but thankful for making an attempt 're mind awash with unanswered questions and fresh ideas.

Billy Woods, Kenny Segal, Danny Brown - Year Zero Year Zero refers to an apocalyptic cultural reset. Society has reached a breaking point and we must start from scratch, everything before was for nothing. Billy Woods and Danny Brown play two different sides of the same coin. Woods, stony faced and deadly serious "My taxes pay police brutality settlements" is the herald of the end "Burn it down with us inside". Danny Brown, the manic joker, revelling in the freedom of a new world, rhyming Good Will Hunting with Cool Runnings and dropping bars about ice cream machines. It's a compelling way to deliver a narrative.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey, Have You Heard These 50 Tracks from 2022

As is the tradition around these parts I have once again compiled a list of 50 tracks from this year that I felt worthy of highlighting for one reason or other. Some incredibly strong releases this year meant I had to make some brutal cuts to the list, but I’m happy with what I narrowed it down to in the end. As always songs are in alphabetical order (there is no internal rating to the 50) but if I had to choose a single song of the year it would be Gendering Teddy by The Narcissist Cookbook, please listen to that track if nothing else. A Spotify playlist of the included songs is linked below for your listening pleasure.

Spy — 1-800 Let’s start this list with a bang. Spy has been consistently making some of the most to-the-point, brutally efficient hardcore in the scene of late, and this year was no exception. No nonsense, viscerally malevolent fun.

Blood Command — A Questionable Taste in Friends Blood Command released their first full-length with ex-pagan vocalist Nikki Brumen this year. And it is a delight. Tasty pop hooks, groovy instrumental sections, and it isn’t afraid to get disgustingly heavy when it needs to. I could have easily put any track from Praise Armageddon on this list, but the woo-oos here win it for me.

CLT DRP — Aftermath (CW: SA/abuse/gendered violence/trauma) So, ummm… content warning… things might get heavy on this list. This is a song about SA/gendered violence, and it doesn’t shy away from the subject in any way. CLT DRP strip back the fury and energy of their usual sound for a deeply personal rumination on generational trauma caused by existing in a patriarchal society where harassment is seen as a routine part of life and abuse could come from anywhere. “I’m just as afraid of the men I know as I am of these strangers.” It’s about how, in a post-me-too world, as men are starting to find their repentance in confessing to their faults, women and non-binary people are still left picking up the shattered pieces of our lives left in their wake.

ZAND — Battery Acid (CW: abusive relationships) It’s a coincidence that this landed next to Aftermath on this list, a coincidence but a fitting one. A bittersweet queer story about escaping from an abusive relationship and finding strength and solace in the arms of someone new. The sparse instrument here is beautiful, letting the storytelling take centre stage. The change of lyrics in the final chorus is such a triumphant moment as the narrator overcomes the hold their boyfriend has on them and gains the inner resolve to end things.

Carly Rae Jepsen — Beach House That’s enough deep stuff for now. Back to fun songs — and who else can do fun like CRJ!? Beach House is a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek pop song about the woes of trying to date men. It’s full of great character and charisma.

Brutus — Brave Everything that makes Brutus so exciting is on full display on Brave. Starting at a breakneck pace before effortlessly dancing between elements of hardcore punk and post-rock. Drummer-vocalist Stefanie Mannaerts is a force to be reckoned with as their voice switches from gravelly shouts to ethereal choruses as the track never lets up.

Enter Shikari — Bull (ft. Cody Frost) Hey, Enter Shikari, more of this, please. Cody Frost brings a raucous youthful energy back to Shikari’s sound. Everything that always made them so interesting is working here, but there’s also that extra element that pushes this into being something special. This is going to be incredible live.

Evie Enby — Christmas Fears Oh shit how did this get in here? Look, this is my list, and I’ll use it to pat myself on the back if I want to. While I’ll be the first to admit Christmas Fears doesn’t deserve a space on this list through any technical merit; writing, recording, producing and releasing a song was an insane personal achievement for me, helping to pave the way for what I’m planning for 2023 and so it is personally one of my top tracks of the year.

Baby Dave — Clarence’s Dead Dad Isaac Holman of Soft Play [formerly Slaves] swaps punk attitude and drums for personal storytelling and synths for his solo project, Baby Dave. Clarence’ is a song that just gets weirder the longer it goes on, buoyed along by Damon Albarn’s masterful production, adding to the weirdness.

HEALTH & Lamb Of God — Cold Blood This is the most I’ve enjoyed anything Lamb Of God related in a while, HEALTH have a masterful ear for collaborations (just look at everybody they’ve worked with throughout their career) and the balance they strike against Randy Blythe’s iconic growled vocal timbre is nothing short of sublime.

Andy Morin & Backxwash — Dig Yourself a Grave Speaking of great collaborations… Andy Morin may be best known as one of the people who makes noises in Death Grips, but he makes a strong claim to be known on his own merit here. The production is huge as Backxwash’ ‘s always brilliant bars cut across layers of heavily distorted synths and fog horn stabs of noise.

Whitmer Thomas — Don’t Have a Cow This song is so sweet. A three-chord, post-breakup lament. Reflecting on how people and relationships change, about the impacts we leave on the people whom we invite into our lives. I adore how the sparse indifferent instrumentation gives way to a swelling cacophony of emotion in the final moments. It feels almost cinematic.

100 Gecs — Doritos & Fritos Something about eating burritos with Danny DeVito? I have no idea what’s going on here, but it SLAPS (do the kids still say slaps?) The punchy bass that could be straight out of Feelgood Inc., the Sonic Youth guitars. It’s a romp.

Petrol Girls ft. Janey Starling — Fight For Our Lives Fight For Our Lives carries a desperate urgency that is so tangible in Petrol Girls’ live performances but rarely translates this well to record. This is the sound of anger. This is the sound of direct action. This is the sound of a fight for survival.

Zeal & Ardor — Firewake Up until last week, I had a totally different Z&A track on this list. Then Firewake was released as a part of Subpop’s record club and I had to reassess everything. There’s so much going on here and I love every second of it. The mournful opening, the military drums that morph into hellish machine gunfire, that bass melody that punches through in the chorus, Manuel Gagneux’s germanic black metal screeches about a war for everything. Metal songs about war will never beat Metallica’s Disposable Heroes, but this comes close.

Teenage Halloween — Floating Sometimes, a lyric rings so true that it hits you right at your core, and you have no choice but to put it in your top songs of the year list. That’s what happened here. It’s not even that brilliantly formed a lyric. It just struck me with its brutality and simplicity.

Cancer Bats & Amy Walpole — Friday Night Friday Night is a party anthem for the misfits. Joined by Witch Fever’s Amy Walpole (more on them later) Cancer Bats smash through a refreshingly sincere ode to celebrating who you are and shaking off the haters as Tay Tay might say.

The Narcissist Cookbook — Gendering Teddy Okay, this isn’t just an essay about the history of mathematics. Stick with it. I don’t want to say too much, because discovering this track for the first time was one of my favourite music moments of the year, and I want you, dear reader, to share in that experience.

Creeper — Ghost Brigade Of course, new Creeper is going to make this list… after a sold-out show at Camden Roundhouse, Creeper announced that they were signing to Spinefarm Records, their current era was coming to an end and a new single had been released. Ghost Brigade feels like a return to their roots, full of punk energy with more than a splash of their signature theatricality. When the bells first rang out in the chorus, my heart sang.

Ada Rook — Gravity Weapon Hold on to your fuckin balls, this is gonna kill you.

Asunojokei — Heavenward I think a big part of what drew me to this track this year is how fascinating its production is. At its most frenetic moments, everything gets muddled together into a maelstrom of noise before a single element is flung outwards to the listener. It’s that same sense of dense layered noise that made Deftones so captivating on their best records, but here applied to a post-black-metal, shoegazey, math-rock behemoth of a track.

Electric Callboy — Hurrikan Not to spoil the ride, but strap in, this may be the wildest thing you hear all year.

Kid Kapichi — I.N.V.U Kid Kapichi are one of the bands ensuring that the new wave of British post-punk that was first bought to the mainstream consciousness with bands like Idles last decade isnt going to stagnate anytime soon. I.N.V.U brings a laddish 90s britpop swagger to the genre and the result is thoroughly entertaining.

Witch Fever — I Saw You Dancing I told you we’d get back to Witch Fever. I love this piece as a companion to The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There”. Turning John and Paul’s sweet ‘love song’ into a horror story, a commentary on the implicit entitlement and ownership men feel over women’s bodies. The way vocalist Amy Walpole repeatedly screams “Oh, my how you’ve grown” is as nightmare inducing as any slasher, as the song is driven along by a disgustingly sinister bassline.

Fontaines D.C. — In ár gCroíthe go deo Any song that gets you deepdiving into a legal case regarding language used on a gravestsone has to be doing something right. In ár gCroíthe go deo (which roughly translates to ‘in our hearts forever’) is a song that speaks of being away from home in a place that tries to erase your heritage. There’s a sense of deep anxiety to the mechanically rigid Joy Division style bassline, the drums skitter uneasily and there’s a trembling fear to frontman Grian Chatten’s voice as it slowly rises in intensity to the climax of the song. A remarkable opener to a remarkable album.

Annie DiRusso — Infinite Jest When the dams of this song break in all of their reverby garage rock glory, its an unmatched moment of fantastic cathartic release… but the build up to get there is just as good.

Orville Peck — Kalahari Down I’m not generally a fan of country, but theres some intangible element to Orville Peck’s work that just gets to me. It’s like… it’s clear he’s doing country as a ‘character bit’ but it’s not pastichey, its not played for comedy, its sincere and honest. Apparently the artist behind Orville Peck used to be in a punk band, and I think that punk approach to music comes across in spirit if not sound here. Anyway, I’m rambling… this is just a brilliantly crafted, emotionally honest song and I love it.

Nova Twins — K.M.B. Nova Twins channel a mix of Destiny’s Child and their own inimitable sound into a gleefully violent revenge fantasy.

Ezra Furman — Lilac and Black My love for Ezra Furmans music is well known, her journey of gender identity has closely tracked with my own and her music has been a constant source of comfort to remind myself I’m not alone at my darkest moments. I needed this rallying cry — this call to action — this year and as always, Ezra delivered.

The Hellp — meant2be This is just another fun one, I’m a sucker for somebody yelling WOO through a vocal distorter and this song brings me a lot of uncomplicated joy.

Taylor Swift — Midnight Rain Ever since Lorde’s Pure Heroine turned the pop world on its head in 2013 (wow, I feel old), there’s an argument to be made that the slow Antanoff-ication of pop music is a bad thing. But then it will turn out a track like this and we have to ask ourselves, is that really such a bad thing?

Alice Longyu Gao — MONK Okay, so you know earlier when I said that Hurrikan may be the wildest thing you’d hear this year? I lied.

L.S. Dunes — Permanent Rebellion Emo is well and truly back baby! Featuring members of MCR, Circa Survive, Thursday and Coheed and Cambria, L.S. Dunes is the supergroup of my formative musical years and if this track is anything to go by they are not fucking around.

Bob Vylan — Pretty Songs Bob Vylan are arguably the most important band in the UK right now and no punches are being pulled here. Pretty Songs is as straightforward as punk gets, a simple message, we’re here to fight for what we believe in.

The Garden — Puerta de Limosina Puerta starts off with what I affectionately like to call a “the drummer fell down a flight of stairs” intro and things just get more chaotic from there. This one won’t be for everybody, but I revel in its insanity. Also, the bass tone, delicious.

Ibraki ft. Gerard Way — Ronin Gerard Way doing black metal vocals? Yes please. Ibraki is the project of Trivium frontman Matt Heafy, who can be heard putting in tremendous effort to not be totally overshadowed by the aforementioned Way here. Even outside of the phenomenal vocal performances, Ronin is a formidable track, a 9 minute long black metal epic with guitar work from Emperor’s Ihsahn, telling the story of an ancient japanese warrior bent on vengance.

Paledusk ft. Hideyoshi — Slay!! Slay!! defies genre with such reckless abandon it seems pointless to write a description. I love the jazzy guitar lick that crops up throughout this track before getting absolutely bulldozed by some fresh new idea. Its impossible to guess where the song could go from moment to moment and I could wish for no greater entertainment.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs & Perfume Genius — Spitting Off The Edge of the World Karen O has long been one of my favourite vocalists, but I never truly clicked with the musical direction Yeah Yeah Yeahs went after their debut. This though, this i really like. That soft, analog Perfume Genius sound mixes perectly with Karens vocals. Beauty within doom. A perfect soundtrack to the end times.

Johnny Booth — Storyteller God damn, this slaps. Hard. If you like Dillinger Escape Plan, you’ll love this. Breakneck, hundred riffs a minute, mathcore. It’s exciting, it’s energetic, and it feels so wonderfully fresh.

My Chemical Romance — Foundations of Decay Here it is boys. The big one, the reunion we’ve all been waiting for. I didnt know if new MCR was anything we were ever going to get and even if we did, if it would be something worth having. Let me tell you, IT IS WORTH HAVING. The lofi production speaks more to their debut than the more commercial sounds of their later works, its been leveled as a criticism of the track by some but personally works for me. This is the sound of a band rediscovering, re-igniting their flame in the best way possible, I cant wait to see what’s next from the my chem boys.

Ithaca — The Future Says Thank You If you haven’t been watching Ithaca up to this point, its time to start watching. They’ve probably been one of your favourite metal musicians favourite bands since the release of their debut in 2019, and 2022 was their year. Their knack for blending a killer hook with absolutely brutal genre blending metal violence is second to none.

Paramore — The News In case this list hadn’t quite made it clear yet, 2022 was the year to herald the return of emo. Not only with the reformation of My Chem, but with new material from Paramore. The news recaptures the angst iin Hayley Williams vocals present in their earlier work while throwing in a more current decade twist to keep things modern. If i have one complaint here, I just wish that the production leaned sligjtly heavier, it’s a minor gripe though.

Pupil Slicer & Cara Drolshagen — Thermal Runaway Pupil Fuckin Slicer. Holy shit. Just when I thought there was no way they could top their 2021 debut, Mirrors, they release this absolute monster of a track. Featuring guest vocals from The Armed’s Cara Drolshagen, Thermal Runaway smashes everything before it out of contention. Special mention to that satisfying af bass solo before everything descends into total brutality in the breakdown.

Let’s Eat Grandma — Two Ribbons Two ribbons is a song about grief, its about how grief affects relationships, its about a desire for connection, its about mending things that have been broken for too long. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Black Dresses — u_u2 Devi McCallon and Ada Rook continue to make some of the ,ost uncomprising and relentlessly distressing music possible under the Black Dresses name. u_u2 is a song that bristles with the internal torture of gender dysphoria. It’s aggressive, confrontational and sounds incredible.

Sam Smith, Kim Petras & Nova Twins — Unholy (remix) I wanted to like Unholy, I really did. A hit collaboration between a trans and non-binary artist? Kim Petras in the charts? Of course I wish I could stan. But the original song just felt toothless to me, I needed it to have more bite. Then along came Nova Twins with a veritable treasure trove of teeth (this metaphor got away from me). Anyway, Nova Twins inject the energy that was always missing from Unholy for me, and now I cant stop listening to it.

The HIRS Collective & Shirley Manson — We’re Still Here “This collective, a version of therapy, for ourselves and anyone who feels the need to scream their lungs out for one more day of living. We’re still here.” A-fucking-men to that.

Architects — When We Were Young Architects’ “The Classic Symptoms of a Broken Heart” was met with a mixed reception upon release, but I was there for the album launch show and let me tell you, the new stuff goes hard live. Especially this track, the almost Refused like punk energy at the heart of the track propels the band into a different tone from their previoous work but its one they suit surprisingly well.

Muse — You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween “Halloween” asks the question, what if Matt Belllamy listened to a shit tonne of Ghost, the answer is pure camp delight.

Poly-Math — Zenith What’s a top 50 list without some chaotically dark unhinged jazzy math rock to close things out? Fortunately Brighton-based mainstays for this particular niche have us well and truly covered. The sax work by Chris Olsen on Zenith is of particular note as it spirals off into total insanity in the final movements.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey, have you heard these 50 songs from 2021?

2021 has been a truly impressive year for music if nothing else, the quality and quantity of new releases throughout the year has been staggering and honestly a little overwhelming at times. There are tracks that back in March I thought would for sure be some of the best releases of the year but were just utterly steamrolled in the last few months.

As is now tradition I've collated a playlist of my personal 50 favourite tracks of the year (limited to one song per artist) and explanations for each tracks inclusion can be found below.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2hYQ14m6R0VDA5b2mVQYuy?si=18fe3bfea3504a11

Peter Talisman - The Absolute Scene At Stanton Drew

Let us start this list as we mean to go on, with something absolutely fuckin' weird. Peter Talisman is a multimedia project by electronic musician Slugabed and Samuel Organ (of The Physics House Band). I can't get enough of this stuttering otherworldly sound, it's so delightfully unusual, just when you think you can pin it down it goes off in an entirely new direction.

Sleep Token - Alkaline

A few tracks on this list are going to be influenced by the most important thing to happen to me this year, the return of live music to my life. Sleep Token were one of the first few bands I saw live post pandemic and I fell in love instantly. there's such an overblown theatricality to their music, it's captivating. The blend of radio friendly pop vocals and hooks with djenty guitars and drum fills really works for me, Alkaline may be their finest example of this formula.

Bo Burnham - All Eyes On Me

Bo Burnham's Inside was a triumph that I would recommend to anybody. Performance art for the pandemic years, a deeply personal, introspective look at the creative process at the cost of ones own mental health and the place of comedy in a world that is falling apart around us. All Eyes On Me is the emotional cornerstone of the project, a Kanye inspired meditation on ego, identity and the desire to be seen within the slow oblivion that envelopes us all.

Evan Greer - Back Row

This track released almost exactly a year after I last went to see a live band and it totally destroyed me, it made me feel like I was back there, in amongst a crowd of people connected by a love of music. It's such a beautifully evocative, yearning love letter to every aspect of live music, and to that feeling of belonging to something bigger that only a gig can bring about. Also "There were nights when toxic masculinity couldn't even ruin the moshpit" is such a wonderfully specific lyric that I love it.

SION - The Blade

I don't have a huge amount to say here other than I didn't realise how much I'd missed Howard Jones fronted Killswitch until I heard this song. His clean vocals are just unparalleled and the harsher vocals go so unbelievably hard here paired with the fantastic technical guitar work of Jared Dines, it's just a delight to listen to over and over again.

Maude Latour - Block Your Number

This sounds really rubbish, but I think the main reason this track has made it onto the list is because I was so underwhelmed by Lorde's third album. This scratches so many of the same itches I wanted that record to scratch. The bittersweet breakups, the storytelling journey, the lyrics that sound almost too clever for their own good, the layered vocals and harmonies. It's all very Lorde, but then there's this high energy chorus that punches through and really makes it stand out as it's own thing.

Royal Blood - Boilermaker

I've always been a bit cold on Royal Blood in the past, but this track has an undeniable level of swagger. It's such a groove, like a cross between QOTSA and Muse in the best way, straightforward fuzzy feelgood rock music.

Black Dresses - Bulldozer

I remember seeing a comment where somebody described Bulldozer as WAP for intellectuals and that's absolutely ridiculous but I also love it. The sound design here is exquisite, confrontational and disconcerting. Nothing in the track quite sits right lyrically or sonically, there's an emptiness to the sound, a feeling of irreparable brokenness, of something reconstructed but without spirit. Damn I love Black Dresses.

Slayyyter - Clouds

"I always drink to the sound of a drum"... This is the most upbeat song about severe depression and alcohol dependency I've ever heard. The juxtaposition of musical and lyrical tone, europop dance beats paired with lyrics like "I don't wanna think, pour another drink, so I don't have to deal with anything", hit in such a particular way that accentuate both elements brilliantly.

Olivia Rodrigo - deja vu

Who doesn't love a good break up song? There's such a cold, disconnected, bitterness to deja vu. It's like a Gen-Z You Oughtta Know, blending synth pop and alt rock sounds for a tone that's almost too cool to really care about the ex who's the subject of the track.

The Physics House Band - Drifter

The Physics House Band are back babyyy! This is their first outing without bass player Adam Hutchison and while I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the driving basslines, their absence has opened up the bands sound in some really interesting ways. Drifter is a sprawling prog-jazz odyssey and a perfect opener to the bands fourth LP as it drifts between tones of Tarkus era ELP and 1960's free jazz.

Rolo Tomassi - Drip

Rolo Tomassi never disappoint and Drip sounds downright evil in the best way, Eva Spence's vocals have gone from strength to strength ever since their debut and this is a new high as far as I'm concerned. The way the synth tones cut through the heaviness in the latter half of the track is beautiful.

AFI - Dulcería

Dulcería sounds like nothing else AFI have ever done before, which for a band as chameleon-like as AFI isn't really that surprising. Dulcería also sounds nothing like you'd ever expect an AFI track to sound like. Hunter's bass line underpinning the song is just so cool here and we get to here a totally new side of Davey's vocal style. For a die-hard AFI fan this song was a unexpectedly fresh take on the band.

Halsey - Easier Than Lying

When I heard that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were going to be producing Halsey's latest album I was excited, but nothing prepared me for just how hard I fell for the album, it's honestly some of my favourite Nine Inch Nails adjacent music and Easier Than Lying is a particular standout, showcasing how well Halsey's voice works alongside the singular tone that Trent and Atticus are able to evoke.

Poppy - EAT

There's one huge reason why EAT is here, it's weird hearing a song deal so openly with eating disorder issues like this and it really struck me just how much that spoke to me. That aside though, as a song EAT slaps, it feels like a further evolution of what Poppy was doing on I Disagree, whereas that album felt like a homage to various genres of metal, EAT feels like Poppy taking metal sounds and making them her own instead of just mimicking other bands.

Drumcorps - For The Living

I love the use of chiptune sounds on this track, gives me some real oldschool chipcore vibes but with some more modern grindcore production technique and sensibility. Some really great high energy fun.

Dying Wish - Fragments of a Bitter Memory

Dying Wish came out of nowhere for me this year with this single and quickly became one of my most anticipated album releases. There's such an astronomical emotional heft to Fragments, from the opening lyrics right to the fading moments of the breakdown that closes the track, I was utterly gripped on first listen and have been for every repeat since.

The Muslims - Fuck These Fuckin Fascists

Sometimes do you just need to say "Fuck These Fuckin Fascists"? Well The Muslims have the perfect track for you.

Creeper - Ghosts Over Calvary

The continual evolution and adaptation of Creeper from album to album is something fascinating to me, especially when it means more lead vocals for Hannah Greenwood. Ghosts is such a fantastic bit of 80's goth rock, resplendent with Creeper's penchant for theatricality. The spoken word section and lead into the solo is one of those musical moments that makes me grin with just how playful it is.

Rebecca Black - Girlfriend

If you had told me a decade ago that my 2nd most listened to track of the year was by Rebecca Black (you know, Friday) I'm not sure what exactly I'd do, but utter disbelief would be a big part of it. Girlfriend is fantastic though, an iconic queer bop with such a sugary sweet moreishness that I can't help but come back to it over and over and over again.

Frank Carter - Go Get A Tattoo

Seeing Frank Carter perform this live with Lynks was one of the highlights of my year. It's such a feelgood piece of sing-along rock and truly I think we can all agree that we "Never want to lockdown again".

Press To MECO - Gold

This sound is not generally what I expect from Press To MECO, I am very much not complaining though. This manages to simultaneously sound incredibly fun and also absolutely so fucking sinister. I'm a sucker for "the bit where the riff comes back but slower" and it's done so well here.

Architects ft. Simon Neil - Goliath

While I have my issues with Architects "For Those That Wish To Exist", one thing it really has going for it is that it sounds HUGE. As you'd expect from the title Goliath is the pinnacle of this, every aspect of the track sounds absolutely massive. Simon Neil's guest vocals are a delight on this track as well, it is often these days you get hear him completely let loose like he does on the breakdown here. More harsh vocals in future Biffy, Simon, pls.

CHVRCHES ft. Robert Smith - How Not To Drown

I always felt that CHVRCHES are at their best when indulging their gothier tendencies, and you don't get much more goth than a feature by Robert Smith. I absolutely adore how the track opens up after the bridge and basically becomes a Cure song for the last minute, such a great blend of sounds.

Backxwash ft. Ada Rook - I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES

God, this goes so unbelievably hard. Ada Rook's screams sound possessed and I've already mentioned my love for Black Dresses production. Then you add Backxwash's anxiety laden verses and this track is pure nightmare fuel.

The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die - Invading The World of the Guilty as a Spirit of Vengeance

...and the award for longest band name and song title goes to... But in all serious this is a really beautiful piece of emo post-rock. "I crave more luxury disposables, a beautiful gym to have a heart attack in", whilst lyrically utterly bleak, the guitar lines are so emotive and energetic and the vocal lines delivered so well this song is infinitely relistenable.

Lil Nas X ft. Jack Harlow - INDUSTRY BABY

Those trumpets!!! Lil Nas X continues to be one of the most interesting musical artists on the planet, everything about this track and accompanying video is so perfect, how Lil Nas X appropriates a hyper masculine form of brag rap and then converts into an anthem of queer celebration, juxtaposed with Jack Harlow's excellent verse. Art.

Pom Poko - Like A Lady

Like A Lady features my favourite moment in music this year, at the 1 minute and 45 second mark there's a guitar lick that comes in and it's the most fantastically overblown bit of prog nonsense, it makes me laugh every time I hear it. Outside of that though, Like A Lady is a fantastic bit of turned-up-to-11 art punk that wears it's influences proudly on its sleeve.

Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen - Like I Used To

The first of two Sharon Van Etten duets to feature on this list, this is such a perfect dream collaboration. Both artists vibes work together so well complimenting each other while giving each other space to add their own individual tone to the track.

Big Lad - Maaaate

Just absolutely wild chaotic energy. Big Lad's breakcore but with live drums is a shot of pure adrenaline, and Maaaate is a track I absolutely can't wait to see them play live in the future.

IDLES - MTT 420 RR

This for me is the best IDLES have sounded since Brutalism. Forgoing their usual blunt force approach to post punk MTT 4420 RR is a dark, ominous, bleak track that slowly builds into a melancholy maelstrom of anxious anticipation and leads into the rest of Crawler beautifully.

Voronoi - The Nauseator

Oh hey, we've managed to get over halfway through this list before I drop a 10+ minute track on you! The Nauseator is an epic journey filled with the sort of mathcore you'd hear from the likes of Dillinger Escape Plan but through the lens of contempary jazz. It's a sound that almost defies explanation and just needs to be heard to be understood.

Haru Nemuri - Old Fashioned

Old Fashioned is another immensely creative track from Haru Nemuri, a rage filled banger full of experimental punky instrumentation and lyrics that reference the existentialism of Sartre and Beauvoir.

The Hell ft. Jeremy Lonsdale (Jamie Lenman) - The Open Road

Well this is just fun. The Hell's tongue-in-cheek approach to hardcore has always been particularly amusing to me and I'm not sure I've ever not been delighted by Jamie Lenman. Hearing the Lenmeister channel washed up star "Jeremy Lonsdale" is a joy. Not to mention that the breakdown on this track unironically slaps.

Black Country, New Road - Opus

Another end of year list, another entry for Black Country, New Road. I've already gone over so much of why I love this band in previous lists and all of that applies here, but Opus sees them add elements of klezmer to their sound and it is absolutely wild.

CLT DRP - Ownership

The first new track to drop from CLT DRP since last years Without The Eyes, Ownership, a track about the claims we purport to have over another's time and energy, is filled with a seething anger that bursts forth in a full bodied assault of noise in the songs chorus. I had the good fortune to see the track performed earlier this year, and it hits so hard in a live environment.

SQUID - Pamphlets

UK Post Punk is truly having a resurgence at the moment and Squid's Bright Green Field may be its finest moment to date. There is such a fantastic frenetic energy to vocalist Ollie Judge's delivery on Pamphlets as the listener is carried through an ever shifting tableau of paranoia and misinformation.

Pupil Slicer - Panic Defence

Taken from wikipedia: The gay panic defense or homosexual advance defence is a legal strategy in which a defendant claims to have acted in a state of violent, temporary insanity, committing assault or murder, because of unwanted same-sex sexual advances. The trans panic defense is a closely related legal strategy applied in cases of assault, manslaughter, or murder of a transgender individual with whom the assailant had engaged in or was close to engaging in sexual relations with and claim to have been unaware that the victim was transgender, producing in the attacker an alleged trans panic reaction, often a manifestation of homophobia and transphobia. It's a brutal vile ugly thing, something Pupil Slicer's merciless mathcore catches expertly.

Every Time I Die - Post-Boredom

That bass intro. Post-Boredom is about transformation of the self through the vessel of death, both death of the body and death of the ego. It posits the question what would you do with a clean slate, to pull the trigger and start over. It's unusual to find ETID quite this introspective, but Post-Boredom doesn't let up on the riffs and energy the band excel at.

Zeal & Ardor - Run

Run sees Zeal & Ardor add elements of industrial metal to the bands usual blend of black metal meets gospel and soul. The result is a thunderous track of nightmarish intensity as Manuel Gagneux screams "Where's your fucking god, When your about to rot?" with demonic fury.

Xiu Xiu ft. Sharon Van Etten - Sad Mezcalita

The second in our series of Sharon Van Etten duets, Sad Mezcalita is a hauntingly delicate track. In turns moody and despondent and wistfully dreamlike as Jamie Scott and Sharon van Etten spin a scene of relationships doomed to failure.

Coheed and Cambria - Shoulders

I'm not sure there's any other song I've had as much pure enjoyment out of as Shoulders, every single second seems to be crafted to be the epitome of sonic exuberance. Claudio Sanchez's vocals sound so good and the riffs in Shoulders are killer.

Crossfaith - Slave of Chaos

This is the heaviest thing I've heard from Crossfaith in a long while. Taking more cues from hardcore punk than on previous releases Slave Of Chaos is absolutely punishing in its intensity, while continuing the bands penchant for blending in some really entertaining electronic elements into their sound. The pits for this one are going to be immense.

Placebo - Surrounded By Spies

I hate to use the phrase "a return to form", but this is a return to form in every way for Placebo. For one thing, they finally sound like the band I fell in love with again, instead of the watered down rock act they had become. Surrounded by spies is a paranoid thriller in song form, a fearful narrative that builds to a crescendo of distrust and confusion.

***Lucy Dacus - Thumbs***

Lucy Dacus has an incredible skill as an artist and performer for expressing relationships and emotional complexities in a really direct way that throws the listener right into that headspace. It's why Night Shift is one of my all time fav songs and Thumbs is up there with it. This is undoubtedly my song of the year.

Eskimo Callboy - We Got The Moves

Time for a wild gear change. I wasn't sure that Eskimo Callboy would be able to repeat the batshit insanity of Hypa Hypa, but 'Moves' is all that and a bag of chips. Just absolutely ridiculous irony drenched feel good summer nonsense with a breakdown that unapologetically slaps.

Bicurious - We're All Totally Fucked

We're All Totally Fucked is like Biffy Clyro and And So I Watch You From Afar had an incredibly pessimistic baby and it inherited all the greatest elements from both bands. Bicurious are one of my favourite 'guitar bands' to emerge in recent years and this track makes it clear why.

Tom Morello & Pussy Riot - Weather Strike

What if Rage Against The Machine but Pussy Riot? An absolute rager of a protest track with some fantastic riffs being laid down by Morello.

Orla Gartland - You're Not Special, Babe

You're Not Special, Babe is one of those songs that found me when I needed it most. I've long been a fan of Orla's frank and emotionally open approach to songwriting, but this feels like something different. A song about the collectiveness of the human experience, a call to get out of your own head and understand that we all have shit we're going through.

PROJECTOR - Zero

Finishing this list with one of my favourite new discoveries this year. I saw PROJECTOR as part of a one day festival back in September and was totally blown away by seeing this song performed live. There's such a chaotic untamed power to it, the way the chorus punches through. The production on this recorded version really doesn't do it justice, but I'd be remiss not to put a track that had given me so much joy on here.

So there we have it, 50 songs from 2021. There are so many songs that missed out on inclusion by the narrowest of margins, but I'm pretty happy with these final 50. One thing that's surprised me this year is the lack of apparent thematic throughline present, in past years I've been able to point a particular subject or tone that runs through most of the list but 2021 has been - in most respects - all over the place. Maybe this reflects on a need to cling to anything that brings joy or a grounded emotion of any description, or maybe it's just been a weird year.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey Have you heard about AK/DK's 2021 hometown show?

AK/DK.

Honestly, the worst thing about the band is the name... No, they're not an AC/DC tribute act, they're much better than any AC/DC tribute act could ever be. Heck, personally I'd rather go to an AK/DK show than see AC/DC, I understand I may be alone in that though. AK/DK is Ed and Gee, a twin headed machine designed to make you headbang and dance in equal measure with their self-styled "disco punk" (or what I once tried to drunkenly explain as "mad computer bleep bloops and rad as hell drumming".

I first saw AK/DK on the 16th September 2013. They were supporting Anamanaguchi at The Haunt in Brighton and I fell in love with them instantly, a high energy mix of disco-sequencing sequencers and synths and a pure punk attitude to drumming with not one, but two drumkits be beaten the hell out of simultaneously. Here we are almost exactly 8 years and a month later and oh how things have changed!

Firstly The Haunt itself is a transformed being, now going by the name Chalk. What was once a small, cramped space has been opened up and expanded, it feels more like a scaled down arena venue now and tonight it is packed. This is a hometown show for AK/DK, the first headline show since the release of their third album and in this humble concert-goers opinion an event long overdue.

Since that first AK/DK experience I have seen them numerous times, either at their own shows, in festival lineups or as a support act (there are actually a few gigs I've been to purely on the basis of getting to see a support set from them, that's how much I love this band). Throughout these many shows they have consistently got better and better, as the years playing to better strengthen the Pacific Rim-worthy synchronicity displayed between the two band members, and as their repertoire grows and the audiences love of their music deepens and deepens. By now AK/DK are a god-tier live act.

They are a band that fundamentally live and breathe on the energy of their audience and tonight the audience are only too happy to give every joule of energy they have. Brighton is a city of people that adores their local talent, and they are out in full force tonight to shower that adoration on these local heroes. AK/DK are only too happy to respond with an unbridled energy of their own as they comment 4 tracks into their set how this is the first time they've ever played a lower tempo track live, just so they can give themselves and the audience a breather before plunging back into the frenetic madness of synth, noise and drums.

The set list itself is a thing of wonder a mix of tracks off the new album and old favourites that the crowd go absolutely wild for (honestly, watching an entire room of people go off to Battersea is a thing of wonder). While AK/DK were already my favourite live act prior to tonight, this show has put them on an almost unstoppable pedestal. A true force of noise, and a band absolutely not to be missed.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard these 50 other songs from 2020

I know I’ve already done a top 50 songs of 2020, but there was so much music from 2020 that deserved a mention which I couldn’t fit into the original 50 songs. So as there’s nothing better to do right now, here I am again with another 50 songs which absolutely deserve a listen.

Spotify playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4KswoBQbApbWevU1lfSKQO?si=r4EZ0fEWQD6YyOzRRX-oXw

and as always... explanation for each songs inclusion below the fold

Floral Tattoo - (My Life Fell Apart This Year) Okay let's get the obvious out of the way, released three days into 2020, (My Life Fell Apart This Year) is almost humorous in it's portentous title. Digging in however, rather than an omen of things to come this track is a heart wrenching rumination on loss, grief and picking yourself back after the world falls out from underneath you.

A.G. Cook - A-Z There's a blistering energy to the scattershot drums that  open A.G. Cook's goliath of a debut album that can't help but pull you into the PC Music creator's world of maximalist pop and throwback dance music. The percussion heavy A-Z never settles jumping between drum machines and spaced out synths, hopping from one rhythm and sensation to another with wild abandon, it's an exhilarating ride.

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - Ancestral Recall Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou are both incredible artists in their own rights, when you combine the two, wow, just wow. The trade off between ERR's grungy vocals and Bryan Funck's demonic screams is sublime. The blending of the doomy verses and clean melodic choruses creates a fantastic new sound.

At The Door - The Strokes The last thing I heard The Strokes vocalist, Julian Casablancas, on was the Daft Punk track Instant Crush, his vocals vocodered to oblivion but still instantly recognisable. Those inimitable vocals are back in full force here. At The Door is in no hurry to go anywhere, a lush track underpinned by a slow pulsing synthesizer bassline and filled with soft playful instrumentation, fuzzy strings, bells, muted strumming. It's a really striking sound and a long way from the indie guitar rock they made their name with.

Backxwash - Black Magic The sinister production, the vocal performance, the bitingly dark lyrics. Backxwash is really something special, and it's easy to see why her 2020 album "God Has Nothing To Do With This..." turned so many heads in the metal community. Everything about this track pushes it forward with a singular intensity; the gothic piano chords, the thumping bass, the driving beat, Backxwash’s bars spat with a life-or-death aggression, and those guitars.

Area 11 - (Break) In Case Of Emergency Area 11 are an old favourite of mine, there's something about their sound which just takes me back to more carefree days, they're music that makes me happy. It's easy to see why when they're delivering hooks like this, that chorus melody is ridiculously good. That moment when the chorus kicks back in after the bridge, it's fist in the air joyous.

Ghostemane - Calamity The industrial pulse of the first half of this track absolutely rips, then half way through you just get this anticipation building bass before the whole track completely explodes. I just think that's kinda neat.

YUNGBLUD - charity This is sort of like if you crossed Parklife with Flagpole Sitta, there's that clever or original about this, but it works so well it's impossible not to like. The character that Yungblud puts into his vocal performance is really charming and completely sells what could otherwise come off as quite a hacky conceit.

nothing,nowhere - death I really like the production on the drums here, how up in the mix the live drums are and then you have the electronic stuff back in the mix on the verses. It brings a real viscerality to the track.

Health & Xiu Xiu - DELICIOUS APE This is one of those tracks that openly defies any genre or description. Menacing, ethereal, atmospheric, anxious. So many musical and emotional avenues are exlpored across this track it is truly astounding. The building arpeggios that make up the final act of this piece are jaw dropping in their intensity, this feels like an utterly unique piece of music that could only come from the minds of these artists.

Perfume Genius - Describe As the lead single off 'Set My heart On Fire...' the strength Describe comes in with is suprising, especially if you're used to Perfume Genius' soft vocals and slow building passages of music. However the stronger, more forceful instrumentation still works wonders, providing an arresting contrast against the smooth angelic vocals, the latter half of this track is back on familiar ground building a serene atmosphere of sound to wind the track down.

Every Time I Die - Desperate Pleasures ETID are back! Heck yeah! The energy, the chaos, the refusal to sit on one musical idea for more than 30 seconds, this is everything I love about Every Time I Die condensed into one messy noisy package.

Otoboke Beaver - Dirty Old Fart Is Waiting For My Reaction One minute, that's all Otoboke Beaver need, one minute of absurdist punk noise. Brilliant.

Danny L Harle & Lil Texas - Dreaming I just love how ridiculously hard this goes, it's absolutely mental, those metallic percussion sounds the quntuplet measures chucked in occasionally on a drop. This is simultaneously some of the most "stupid" and "intelligent" hardcore I've heard and I'm not even sure what that means, BASS.

Cheekface - Emotional Rent Control Nobody can make comedy of the mundanity of everyday living with the severity of living every day quite like Cheekface, their Minutemen-esque sing-spoken lyricism is heavy with a wry cynicism and heartfelt wish to just get through this. "Venmo me when you get home so I know that you're safe" is just a brilliant line.

Alice Gas - Ferrari THE DROP. THE. DROP. T H E. D R O P. Seriously tho, the drop.

Greg Puciato - Fireflies As the frontman of Dillinger Escape Plan, Greg Puciatio is one of the most intense, exciting performers I've seen (insert photo of him 20ft up some scaffolding diving into the audience) so it's interesting to see a different side to him. This track from his multigenre solo record "Child Soldier: Creator of God" shows a sleek depechemode-esque synth pop track, all broody vocals, massive snares and glissando strings, it's a great sound for him.

100 Gecs, Fall Out Boy, Craig Owens & Nicoledollanganger - hand crushed by a mallet (Remix) It's been 17 years since Take This To Your Grave but I'm still a sucker for Patrick Stump belting out some vocals over a punchy Pete Wentz bassline. The fact that they're doing it on a Gecs track is utterly bizarre, but I'm not complaining. True to gecs though, the track has more than one trick up its sleeve.

Tropical Fuck Storm - Heaven Heaven is a top 5 Talking Heads/David Byrne track for me, and I love what TFS have done with it here, stretching out every moment and filling it with tortured emotion. Gareth Liddiard's vocals are at career best here across a wall of dense plaintive instrumentation, this is basically a dream cover/band matchup for me.

Guerilla Toss - Human Girl There's a real fun energy to this and really everything Guerilla Toss do, energetic drums, funky bass line, bright poppy vocals and so many little flourishes. It's impossible not to groove along to. This production also kind of reminds me of Friendly Fires and that's just a nice throwback memory.

Rosa Walton - I Really Want To Stay At Your House So this videogame came out this year called Cyberpunk 2077, it was kind of a big deal but also kind of a disaster. It kept getting delayed, the PR leading up to release kept flirting with transphobia, the company developing it forced their workers into crunch and abusive work conditions and then when it released it was a broken buggy mess that literally bricked some peoples computers. HOWEVER there is a silver lining, because on the soundtrack to that game was a track by Rosa Walton. Now in case you don't know Rosa is one half of pop duo Let's Eat Grandma, their album "I'm All Ears" is absolutely phenomenal and I've been waiting for new music from them ever since. This will tide me over, the intro is characteristically Let's Eat Grandma, sparse instrumentation and clear vocals. Then it all goes fantastically synthwave before disappearing into a fuzzy autotuned driving track, the vibe on this is incredible and has me oh so excited for more Let's Eat Grandma stuff.

Sody & Cavetown - Is Your Bedroom Ceiling Bored? The raw vocals on this just really hit. The mellow, somber bedroom pop is mixed with a gently encroaching dance beat that keeps this track fresh as the emotion builds. There's some really beautiful harmonization in there as Sody and Robbie’s voices play off against each other.

Kero Kero Bonito - It's Bugnax! Talkin' 'bout bugsnax! Okay some context for the unaware. Bugsnax is a video game about bugs that are snacks? To be honest; I dont care, but the theme song absolutely slaps. KKB should just do the theme tune for everything really. Bright fun instrumentation, Sarah Bonito's singsong vocals, that spoken word expositional bridge.

Bring Me The Horizon & Babymetal - Kingslayer Next up on collabs I didn't know I needed in my life... BMTH may be at their career best know blending elements from across their entire catalogue to create this absolute monster of a tune accompanied by the pop-metal giants that are Babymetal. The size of the choruses, the brutality of the breakdown, the blending of styles... it's all so good.

Deerhoof - Love-Lore 1 A cover album of sorts, "Love-Lore" sees Deerhoof tying together ideas and lamentations of the future and past with everything from Krzysztof Eugeniusz Perendecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima to Kermit The Frog's The Rainbow Connection (yes, I'm serious) in a single live in studio recording. This opening track blends sections of Ornette Coleman's In All Languages, J.D. Robb's Excerpt From Spatial Serenade, Voivod's Macrosolutions To Megaproblems and Earl Kim's Earthlight... heady stuff. Side note, check out the incredible artwork for this album.

THICK - Mansplain Bitingly sarcastic feminist punk from THICK, you love to see it.

XVOTO - Mommy Can't Sleep Mommy Can't Sleep is like if you took Billie Eilish's Bury a friend, filtered it through Kanye's Yeezus and then used it as a vessel for Satan themself. Dark, energetic and as a debut release (outside of a feature on HMTLD's Flex) this has me excited for what else we could see from XVOTO.

Dorian Electra - My Agenda (ft. Village People and Pussy Riot) So right off the bat you have possibly the best combination of featured artists ever committed to record. Dorian's manifesto for a queer world order is fantastic. Completely over the top, over produced, flamboyant. It's a glorious excess.

The Physics House Band - ObeliskMonolith (Metropolis live session) I don't know if you can technically call this a track from 2020 but it's my list and I'll talk about my favourite bands if I want to to. A reinterpretation of a track off of TPHB's debut album Horizons/Rapture, this performance of ObeliskMonolith was part of a live in studio session recorded last year, it brings together everything I love about The Physics House Band. The bass performance is some of Adam's best, the newly added saxophone in the arrangement brings a new life to the piece and the energy is absolutely electric.

Spanish Love Songs - Routine Pain I'm not sure the last time a song hit me as hard as this. I'm crying just writing this and thinking about it. It's such a lucid and precise depiction of living with depression and just fighting to get by. Brave faces everyone...

Blood Command - Saturday City Okay, something happier. BLood Command describe themselves as "Deathpop" and yeah that works. Big chorus on this and I love the punchy bass in the prechorus, they make a brilliant high energy, bright sound that is still notably metal, lots of fun.

Black Country, New Road - Science Fair I'm still awaiting an album, but I'm almost convinced Black Country, New Road can do no wrong. This another slice of fantastically written, densely lyrical noise rock from them. Isaac Wood's vocal performance here reminds me of Jarvis Cocker on This Is Hardcore, bemoaning his own inadequacies with a leering sexuality. Also the instrumental midsection on this one is great, a chaotically off the rails duel between sax and guitar.

Frank Iero & The Future Violents - Sewerwolf Sewerwolf sounds like a cross between ETID and Cancer Bats slower moments. Huge swagger filled rock and the chorus absolutely barrels in on this track, it just gets heavier and heavier as the song picks up momentum.

AK/DK - Shared Particles Brighton electro-punk boys AK/DK are a personal fave of mine and are an absolute top 10 live act. 3 albums in, it's great to see that they're still expanding on their sound whilst remaining true to what made them so exciting in the first place. The drumming is as tight as ever the synths are wonderfully full bodied and the introduction of some cleaner vocals that for once aren't vocodered beyond recognisabilty make this one of their best tracks to date.

Bad Cop, Bad Cop - Simple Girl This sounds like some Coral Fang era Distillers but with a cleaner poppier production, you can't fault that.

Sløtface - Sink or Swim In my original top 50 of 2020 I mentioned how Braids' Snow Angel plays on the anxieties and worries of the 21st century. Sink or swim does a similar thing but with a much sharper focus on climate anxiety, that final refrain of "it's not politics, it's sink or swim" really hits.

Zheani - Skin Walker Mixing prodigy-style dance with noise rock and metal elements, Zheani has created something really cool with Skin Walker. Neat production here, it brings a real menace to the track whilst still making for some great high energy alternative dance music.

Ada Rook - Someday (Dear _____) - World Doesn't Come Apart The quantity and quality of work put out by Ada Rook this past year is astounding, whether as part of a Black Dresses or on solo projects such as Crisis Sigil and 2,020 Knives, everything has been incredible, so full of emotion and creative ingenuity, this song is only one example of his and I can't urge you enough to go and check out more of her stuff. Also as addressed on the Spotify release of this song, Spotify really kinda sucks for artists, I use it for these lists as it's the best way to collate and create playlists. But buying music (when possible) is super important for a lot of independent artists, especially at a time when gigging isn't viable.

Sorry - Starstruck That 'ugh' in the  chorus completely makes this song, it's been a near constant earworm for me since its release in March.

Rina Sawayama - STFU! Of the many, many acts jumping on the weird trend of blending nu-metal and pop at the moment, I think Rina Sawayama may pull it off most convincingly. The blending of Crushing guitar riffs with 2000's Britney Spears style production really works and Rina's voice is powerful enough to carry the song without getting over taken by the instrumentation.

Gorllaz & Robert Smith - Strange Timez The Gothfather himself lends vocals to Gorillaz on this weird piece of alt-pop. Smith's vocals come hauntingly across the production as if astral projected from another dimension. The track builds brilliantly over time as bass guitar and layered synths come in to create a wall of sound that ties together despite its disparate parts.

Model/Actriz - Suntan Suntan is like if Daughters were really into dance music, the choppy groove in the first act of this song grows and grows until it falls in on itself and becomes a nightmare of chaotic noise. pounding drums and anguished vocals, and that's only the first couple of minutes.

Oranssi Pazuzu - Taivann portti Finnish band Oranssi Pazuzu serve up something straight up demonic on Taivann portti ass you're plunged headfirst into maelstrom of evil itself, dense, unsettling, completely unrelenting black metal. This is music that you just have to sit down with a good set of headphones and absorb completely.

Oneohtrix Point Never - Tales From The Trash Stratum Daniel Lopatin's most notable work this year was probably his anxiety inducing soundtrack that created the backbone of the Sadfie brother's Uncut Gems, but I think this may be his most special. Pulling together a cornucopia of noises and snippets of melody, he pulls together a beautiful delicate patchwork that inspires all manner of colour and vision, gracefully hinting at emotions with a handful of harpsichord notes or a blast of radio static, it's masterfully put together soundscaping by an absolute genius of music production.

Jockstrap - The City There's something about The City that just really hits. It's a weird piece of music, starting with an arrangement of piano and soprano vocals it soon blends into a glitchy elctronic beat that absolutely and pitch shifted spoken word, it fascinated me on first listen and holds up on repeat hearings.

Enter Shikari - THE GREAT UNKNOWN Now 13 years since the release of Take To The Skies, THE GREAT UNKNOWN pulls together all of Enter Shikaris strentgths across their various iterations into one track.

Carly Rae Jepsen - This Love Isn't Crazy It is a truth universally acknowledged that CRJ will never again release anything as good as Run Away With Me, but that doesn't mean she can't release some BOPS.

Anamanaguchi - Vancouver Sticking to their chiptune meets emo punk roots Anamanaguchi deliver on a high energy blast of nostalgia. The drum fills here are absolutely brilliant and bring a life and vivacity to the performance, I was meant to be seeing Anamanaguchi this past year, really gutted I didn't get to hear this live, but fingers crossed for the future.

Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion - WAP What is their to say about WAP that hasn't already been said? As a pre-surgery asexual trans woman. I have very little to relate to on WAP, but I know good comedy when I hear it and this is GOLD. The bit about a uvula, comparing someone's nose to a credit card, the cartoonish beep after the truck in a garage line, the onomatopoeic notion of the title, macaroni in a pot... need I go on? This track is so much fun to listen to because you can tell how much fun they had performing it, it's so unabashedly free and joyful. Also that beat is so damn good.

Kitten - What Year Are We In Speaking of fun songs, the tongue in cheek way this track gradually shifts between musical eras is absolutely brilliant, the idea of being trapped in some sort of time vortex where we're just living out the past few decades of pop culture without pushing forward in any meaningful way is hugely relatable. It's also particularly pertinent this year where huge chunks of time spent in stasis of some kind or other has messed with everyone's temporality.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard these 50 songs from 2020

2020 eh? It’s been a year, there’s no doubt about that. As has now become tradition for me it’s time for my end of year write up on the songs that have stood out to me and I want to talk about for one reason or other. I’ve stuck to one track per artist to keep things from getting cluttered.

Before I get into it, it’s worth mentioning that I use Spotify for this list and so there are a couple of notable omissions for artists that aren’t on Spotify. I will post links to their albums at the end of the list.

So without further ado: here’s my top 50 songs of 2020:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7yRj41PhUFWlLOCoFZUvR8?si=m6LBBMUoSkWFpXGyAYloWg

Explanations for each tracks inclusion below the fold...

Blaqk Audio - 1948 You give me Davey Havok doing anything and I'm pretty damn happy, you give me Davey Havok channeling the absolute darkest that Depeche Mode have to offer and I may just be the happiest girl in the world. With Jade's production of brooding, pulsing bass and glassy synths and Davey's vocals switching between half whispered verses and iconic higher-register choruses, this is Blaqk Audio at their absolute best, a sultry gothic throwback act by two of my favourite performers in the business.

Grimes - 4AEM I love the energy of this track, Grimes' ethereal vocals are accompanied by some old school drum and bass and Middle Eastern melodies for a fantastic mix of weirdness and nostalgia.

Envy - A Step in the Morning Glow Some powerful shoegazey post-hardcore from Japan here, the ebb and flow of the track is exquisite as the guitars build a breathtaking backdrop that is routinely sledgehammered into oblivion by wrought emotional passages of pure torment.

Trivium - Amongst The Shadows & The Stones Do you remember Trivium? They're back baby. Once maligned by the wider metal community for being part of the metalcore community and off the back off a few albums where they have struggled to find their sound and place in modern metal. This is a triumphant return. Heafy's vocals are stronger than ever and the production is delightfully punishing. They still have the huge hooks that made them stand out on albums like Ascendancy and Crusade but it's backed up by a much more robust sound than they've sported before.

Charli XCX - anthems Anthems bristles with the anxious energy that has defined this year, with it's crackly synths and aggresive percussion. Charli's abrasively autotuned voice expouses the mental and physical distress that a lockdown of society has put us under before breaking into a chorus that longs for late night partying and excess.

Liturgy, LEYA - Antigone Liturgy are a real hit-and-miss act for me, a lot of their stuff doesn't click at all but when it does, it really does. The harp pieces scattered throughout this track are absolutely beautiful and the entire soundscape is a breathtaking demonstration of chaos and disorder.

The Weeknd - Blinding Lights The chunky bass, the 80s synth lines, the big snares... it's a sound I've been obsessed with ever since watching Drive and The Weeknd manages to capture it perfectly and also turn it into a top tier pop song. It's a song that you can get completely lost in letting those gentle glissandos and earworm melodies take you to a neon lit road as you cruise into the horizon. Bliss.

Dua Lipa - Break My Heart While it's my opinion that CRJ may have taken the crown for the monarch of pop last decade, this deacde is off to an absolutely stunning start already. This is no clearer than on this exquisitely produced disco banger. That bassline goes straight to the soul, the stabs of strings are used to absolutely perfect effect and Dua Lipa's performance is a tour de force, jumping between powerful almost gravelly vocals and breathy whispers, to deliver a multifaceted and emotional story.

Hayley Williams - Cinnamon What an absolute bop. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from a Hayley WIlliams’ solo project but it wasn't this. I love the minimal instrumentation here and how it builds through the song with those over processed vocal samples. the bass groove is exquisite as well.

illuminati hotties - content//bedtime The build up of this track is so great, the tension in that guitar intro, then how the drums kick in before the track does a full 180 and turns into some sort of demented indie rock jam, complete with call and response section.

Neptunian Maximilism - Daiitoku-Myōō no Ōdaiko Neptunian Maximalism's debut Éons is a deliciously dense work, coming in at just over 2 hours long and pulling in a range of cultural influences from around the globe touching on drone metal, free jazz, prog rock, psychedelia and more. It's an unstoppable and otherwordly force and when it draws you in it's hard to stop listening to see where it will go next. So much so it was impossible for me to choose an individual track to list for here, the whole thing just works as a single piece, as such you have the first track on this playlist, because starting at the beginning is a very good place to start.

The Dirty Nil - Doom Boy 90s Boy Band charm and thrash metal meet in this wonderful blending of genres, the feelgood waves just keep emenating of this track with it's tongue and cheek lyricism and surprisingly earnest emotional core. Then the breakdown happens and it's clear just how doomy these boys are.

Salem - Doomed (for each other) Not content with releasing one Album Of The Year contender with Creeper, Will gould also released Salem's selftitled EP. I could have easily picked any track from it for this list, every song is finely tuned, high energy, singalong gothic punk, the choruses are brilliant and the whole EP is a hell of a lot of fun.

Biffy Clyro - End Of 'mon the Biff! Remember that scrappy, mathy rock band that screamed about Jaggy Snakes? They've been away for a while, replaced with a more radio compliant version of rock music, but my goodness are they still in there somewhere. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the overdriven bass and sporadic stabs of guitar that open End Of, it's the hardest I've seen Biffy go for a while and I welcome it openly, that said they still manage to keep their stadium sized singalong choruses here for a gargantuan song which is going to absolutely rip live. "This is not a love song, that was just a phase" indeed.

Anaal Nathrakh - Endarkenment This track is absolutely ridiculous, black metal mixed with choruses that Sabaton would be proud of. There is such a great positive energy bleeding out of theis track despite it's frankly nightmarish sound.

Crossfaith - Endorphin I think I may have said in a previous end of year list that nobody brings the party like Crossfaith (or words to that effect), that remains 100% true, blending 90's club music with just agressive af party metal. Crossfaith was the last gig I went to in what looks like it will be  quite a while, and honestly, what a high to go out on. Just absurdly good fun.

Fiona Apple - For Her I think this one speaks for itself, go listen to the entirety of Fetch The Bolt Cutters though, there's a reason that album's been so heavily lauded this year.

Machine Gun Kelly, Halsey - forget me too It's quite a suprise how well MGK has transitioned to pop punk, backed up by veteran drummer Travis Barker and with an absolutely brilliant guest turn from Halsey this track shows off what he can add to the genre.

Protest the Hero - Gift Horse Gift Horse is the most I've enjoyed a PTH song since Volition. All the hallmarks of what made their early sound so much fun are here. The boundless energy that runs through the frenetic guitar lines, the verbose story driven lyrics carried by Rody's astonishing vocals and layers upon layers of technical virtuosity. Flourishes like the bass run that introduces the first chorus and how the vocals build to that scream in the final lines push this over the edge to being a top 5 Protest song for me standing amongst giants like Tapestry and Plato's Tripartite. God I love this band.

Phoebe Bridgers - I Know the End This is quite possibly the most beautiful song I’ve heard this year, starting with a gentle and morose soundscape as Bridgers evocative words paint a landscape of being out of place and out of time. The song slowly builds to a earth shatteringly apocalyptic anthemic crescendo of facing the inevitability of all things. The exhausted screams that close the track are utterly haunting and give me goosebumps every time I hear them, this is how you close an album, this is how you close a universe.

Coheed and Cambria, Rick Springfield - Jessie's Girl 2 Okay this is just stupid big fun. You remember Jessie's Girl? Yeah well Rick Springfield should've left that monster in the 80's. In a move absolutely nobody saw coming C&C teamed up with Springfield, for a twisted sequel to the original song, a tale in which Jessie's Girl turns out to be the proverbial monkeys paw. The song is mostly carried by an absolutely HUGE chorus that is almost impossible to resist singing along with Claudio Sanchez's soaring vocal lines. It's a song that harks to simpler times, and we could do with some of that this year.

Dogleg - Kawasaki Backflip  Those opening bars kick so much arse. The way the rhythm switches up when the drums and bass come in is ridiculous, one of those moments that just makes me burst out laughing at how much fun music can be. This right here is how you start an album. It helps that the rest of the track is great as well, barreling along at 100mph with some early At The Drive-In flavoured punk.

Dream Nails - Kiss My Fist This is a song about the fetishisation of queer identities and women’s bodies and how that translates to violence and abuse. It rages against misogyny and LGBT-phobias and holy shit I love it so much. Dream Nails are already a top 10 live act for me and that EAT YOUR BRAINS shout along is going to be so good live.

Tigran Hamasyan - Levitation 21 Jazz piano with elements of prog rock, djent and Arnenian folk music. A blistering display of virtuosity that manages to mantain a degree of beauty throughout it's wild-eyed ferocity. Every movement and tempo change strikes me to my core. A frankly astounding piece of writing and performance.

HMLTD - LOADED LOADED sounds like if you were to cross Frankie Goes To Hollywood with Nine Inch Nails, I don't have much to say other than that. I've been waiting for HMLTD to release their debut album for what feels like years now, and it did not disappoint.

Miley Cyrus - Midnight Sky Miley Cyrus continues to go from strength to strength as her career progresses. She sounds fantastic here, bringing out some of the rockier tones to her voice over a wonderfully 80's sounding track.

Taylor Swift - Mirrorball Tay Sway surprised absolutely everybody this year by releasing a good album. I jest, but Folklore came out of nowhere, a carefully considered album of complex interwoven narratives and character studies, gone were the cringingly cheap appeals to popstardom that have littered Taylor's past few albums. Mirrorball is probably the starkest of songs on this more "grown up" Taylor Swift album, it reads as examination of her place within the music industry, a confession of her reinventions in the vain attempt to maintain relevance. Continually tearing up the very core of herself, to appease an industry that just wants produce and consume, a sad indictment of fame and the human desire for validation. Of course it's easy to ignore all that and just take this at face value, a stunningly beautiful song with it's shimmering guitars and soft vocals. While I quite like her work I never thought I could be this impressed by a Taylor Swift song.

Left At London, Chuck Sutton - My Friends Are Kinda Strange They are, and they are also awfully sweet. This one gets me in the feels in the best way, a celebration of outsider culture and companionship, about finding people you can be yourself around. On a musical level the way the guitar solo comes in over the drum and bass percussion is ridiculously good.

Billie Eilish - My Future I'm sorry to force narratives into songs where they don't exist, but my god if 'My Future' doesn't have the biggest "accidental trans energy" going, all I have to hear is "I'm in love with, but not with anybody here, see you in a couple of years" and I am crying, damn if that doesn't hit me like a truck, intentional or not.

Creeper - Napalm Girls Part brit-pop, part Los Angeles glam punk, Creeper have evolved into something else entirely from their debut album. The Johnny Marr-esque guitar lines on this track are divine, as are the over the top theatrics that lie across the entirety of Creeper's Sex Death and the Infinite Void. The chorus hits like an explosion of colour and beauty with a gothic mask on and by the devil is it utterly bewitching.

Mortality Rate - Nerve Damage I wasn't sure about adding this one, what with it being a rerelease of an old album, but the mastering quality on this is such a step up it deserves another go round. A tight 1 minute and 40 seconds of punishing hardcore, it goes so hard and I am here for it. The pounding drums, the chugging guitars, the throat tearing vocals and the anguished lyricism. This feels deep and primal, this is music that absolutely must be heard.

Deftones - Ohms The way that riff crashes in like waves upon waves, Chino Moreno's voice strained with emotion. It's Deftones at their best. Can't wait to see this track as part of a Deftones live set at some point when that can be a thing again.

VIAL - Or Die A lowfi reworking of 'DIY' off of 2019's 'Grow Up', Or Die ups the agression to deliver a searing takedown of the gatekeeping and misogyny that infests even the more "inclusive" niches of the music industry. The track practically sizzles with indignant energy as KT sneers through lyrics like "I'll get a tattoo on my arm so that you'll think I'm punk enough, Or am I not punk enough for you?", you love to hear it.

Employed To Serve - Party's Over I'm living for the use of tambourine here and that groove in the riff. While it lacks some of the complexity and depth of ETS's earlier work there's something undeniably fun about this. You know how when Refused released New Noise it was just like this perfect song? Like every element is exactly where it needs to be, how it is the best possible version of itself? That's how I feel about this. While I know there is other elements I want from ETS, I'd be very happy with a track like this every once in a while.

Tallah - Placenta Do you like Korn? Did you like Korn before they went all dubstep and began messing with more electric elements? Well Tallah may be for you. This is an absolute rager of a song, the vocal delivery is top tier like Davis at his most unhinged but with pig squeals thrown in, there's an absolutely mental guitar solo, and oh my, the drums on this. The drummer is actually Max Portnoy (son of the legendary Mike Portnoy) and apparently drumming is genetic, because damn.

100 gecs, Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Kero Kero Bonito - ringtone (Remix) Just look at that list of artists, it doesn't get any better than that folks. A remix of Gec's Ringtone, each feature brings something of their own unique character to the song, whether it's Charli's unmistakable autotune drenched millennial vocal fry, the creepy-cute song speak of KKB's Sarah Bonito as she blends the lines between cartoon and horror, the powerful soundcloud rap of Rico Nasty or 100 gecs own genre defying production that brings the track to a close in inimitable style. Safe to say I love every aspect of this track.

Adam Neely & Kate Steinberg - Run Away With Me I tend to avoid cover versions as much as possible on these lisst, preferring to champion original music, but... Come on, it's Adam Neely arranging the greatest pop song of our generation. For those not in the know Adam Neely runs a youtube channel where he creates educational videos on music and performance, he's also a giant jazz nerd and you can guarantee whatever he does, it's going to be interesting, whether it's microtonal christmas tunes or jazz accompaniment to Jay Z rapping the "Navy Seal" copypasta. This is something extra special though, along with featured vocalist Kate Steinberg they bring a completely new dimension to CRJ's phenomenal track, from dubstep drops, heavy metal riffage an off the charts sense of scale and a top tier sax solo, this truly has everything I could want from a cover.

Sharptooth - Say Nothing (In the Abscence of Content) Sharptooth display the subtle art of turning nothing into something with pointedly vacuous lyrics and generic statements pointing a finger at anyone that refuses to use their voice for anything important, or really just anything at all. THis is made particularly amusing by the fact you'd likely have to take time to look up the lyrics to everything being said, or rather everything that isn't being said. It's the best use of this device since Jim Sterling's "100% Objective Review: Final Fantasy XIII".

Gulch - Self-Inflicted Mental Terror 50 seconds into this track and the only vocals are some guttural throat noises, whats more, anything after that is almost as unintelligible and I think that's kind of great. Just brainless fun hardcore here. Gulch's intention is clear and their execution is perfect. Even in a time where there are no pits to open, they will open the pit in your heart.

Poppy - Sick of the Sun The entirety of Poppy's I Disagree reads as a love letter to metal music rather than a metal album in itself as she moves between styles and subgenres matching the tones of various landmark artists. Unfortunately this doesn't always pan out, Poppy's vocal style an odd match for what is often demanded by the tone of the music. This couldn't be less true for the Deftones inspired Sick of the Sun though. A dreamy slow ballad, awash with reverb laden guitars and layered vocals. It's an uncannily good match and just makes me wish she would do a whole album in this style.

Braids - Snow Angel With its hypnotic spiraling melodies and counter melodies and nightmarish stream of conscious lyricism, Snow Angel is the anxieties of modern day writ large. Etched with loneliness, isolation, climate grief, privilege and guilt. Raphaelle's words take us on a journey inside the mind of a person struggling with weighing up the injustices brought about by late stage capitalism and what exactly their place in it all means. This is without a doubt my favourite song of the year, an incredible work of art.

clipping. - Something Underneath There's nothing else quite like clipping. A combination of Daveed's world class vocal performances and an outside the box approach to production and sound design put them above everything else. The entirety of this year's Visions of Bodies Being Burned could have appeared on this list, but the mix of accapella vocal lines and the pure noise instrumentation are astounding on this track.

WARGASM - Spit.  Just listen to how stupid that big dumb riff is, it's like blunt force trauma. It may be gimmicky but I really like all the little production quirks across this track as well. The trading off of vocals between the two members works really well and the emotional heart of the bridge is surprisingly effective for a song which starts with such brutish energy. Wargasm are a band I'm going to be watching closely next year and eagerly await an album release.

Jeff Rosenstock - State Line The way the chorus is teased out in this song, the first verse ending in a small promise of the chorus to come before it explodes into being, a technicolour force of nature. It feels perfect.

Jamie Lenman, Illlaman - Summer Of Discontent (The Future Is Dead) It's rare I'll have an end of the year list without Jamie Lenman appearing somewhere. There's something about his no nonsense approach to rock music which is just endlessly enjoyable. The feature on this works brilliantly and the subject matter is utterly relatable,

The Mountain Goats - The Wooded Hills Along The Black Sea Simplistic and haunting, recorded by a single person on an old boombox, this track is taken from a wider narrative chronicling the persecutions of pagans in the 5th century. The sense of isolation and vulnerability underlined by the stark casio melody and steady drumbeat. Torn away from his band by the circumstances that have shaped this year, Josh Darnielle has still managed to create something very special.

Zeal & Ardor - Tuskegee As the name suggests, Tuskegee is about the Tuskegee Syphillis Study, Manuel Gagneux's signature blend of black metal and soulful blues bring to life a nightmare of atrocities and injustices. It's an astonishingly arresting track from an EP that feels like essential listening this year.

The Fall Of Troy - We Are The Future I'll always have a soft spot for TFOT, 2005's Doppelganger introduced me to a whole new world of music where prog didn't just have to be something your Dad listened to. With it's angular melodies and disjointed rhythms this feels like a continuation of that albums spirit. Full to the brim with expressive riffs and fiddly drum breaks.

Baby FuzZ - We're all Gonna Die So that 2020 eh? Yeah it's been quite the time for existential dread so it's a good job Baby FuzZ is here to remind us all how ridiculous it is and that embracing the absurdity is all part of what makes our time on this planet our own. Starting with the lyrics "Johnny's got coronavirus / Billy's got AIDS / Titus meningitis / And Louis got the plague" Baby FuzZ bring the "We didn't Start The Fire/End of The World as We Know It" formula into the 21st century with dance breaks and a punk rock breakdown. It's goofy infectious fun with a darkly comic center.

CLT DRP - Where the Boys Are One of the most exciting live bands I've seen, CLT DRP  blend guitar wizardry and pure aggression into a maelstrom of electro punk rage. Where the Boys Are is fantastic song about being yourself, celebrating strong women  and holding a middle finger up to feminist gatekeepers and TERFs.

So there you have it, as mentioned at the top, there were a couple of artists I wanted to put on here that weren’t on Spotify namely Black Dresses and Backxwash heres links to both their respective bandcamps, they’re well worth a listen.

https://backxwash.bandcamp.com/

    https://blackdresses.bandcamp.com/

[hey-have-you-heard]

Blackstar - David Bowie (2016)

It is hard to separate Blackstar from the context of its release and what it subsequently came to mean. Blackstar was released on the 8th January 2016 and was quickly hailed as the beginning of a new era of Bowie's career, a re-invigoration of his sound and opened a lot of questions about what sort of music he'd create going forwards, moving away from the pop and rock sounds he was known for. Then on the 10th January, just 2 days later, the headlines were reporting that Bowie was dead, he had been fighting a private battle with cancer throughout the creation of Blackstar. Suddenly a lot of the cryptic, faux-mythic lyricism of Blackstar took on new meaning, of an artist grappling with the paradox of being both startlingly mortal in body and transcendentally immortal through the art they place in the world.

If you'll excuse the sentimentality, Blackstar felt like Bowie's final gift to the world, rendering his very soul into the music so he may live on forever with us. I know it sounds like I'm talking about David Bowie like some kind of Christ-like figure, but honestly he is one of the closest things I have to that. I'm not a religious person, music is the closest thing I hold to a religion, an abstract idea I have an undying devotion to, and my reverence for David Bowie within that is second to none. My earliest memory of truly appreciating music outside of it just being pretty melodies and funny words, was hearing Jonathan Ross play 'Oh! You Pretty Things' on a Saturday Morning on his BBC radio 2 show. It blew my tiny mind.

So, as a contextual piece of art, Blackstar is hugely significant to me. Removed from its context, it is still just as important though. Blackstar is like no other album I've heard, tender and soulful with a fragility that pulls at the seams of every note, yet it has this driving beating heart that keeps it going from one splintered moment to the next. Both Kendrick Lamar's 'To Pimp a Butterfly' and Death Grips have been cited as influences on the album and with it's free form jazz instrumentation and defiance of expectation it's easy to see how. Each movement is mercurial as the tone constantly shifts, at times within the course of a single track, Bowies soulful voice the constant that ties it all together. Blackstar is an exceptional album from an exceptional artist, one which exercises both the heart and the mind and dares to be different.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard, Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz (2015)

Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz is the sound of an artist in open rebellion against the stardom they have found themselves in. Following the big label platinum selling Bangerz**, Dead Petz was independently released on Mileys own label with little to no fanfare.

It's an odd beast, spanning over 90 minutes, the album is occasionally meandering, disjointed, sloppy or immature but always refreshingly raw and honest. It's an artist doing whatever the fuck they want with whoever they want. There is no desire to write a hit here, or even to write something deliberately profound, just to write what she wants to, irrespective of audience or success. It's incredibly self indulgent and a total vanity project but, at least for me, it works. Apparent through the album, is the influence of Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips (who provide instrumentation throughout) some tracks sounding like they could have been straight off of 'Yoshimi'. A weird mix of psychedelic rock and pop swirl throughout the album as production is handed back and forth between live instruments and electronic synths and drum machines. It's an album which defies categorisation constantly throwing in new musical twists and curveballs.

Put simply its batshit insane and a total mess from a standpoint of artistic consistency. That said it's still an album of the decade for me. To see an artist who had been so 'manufactured' in the past do something so weird and individual made me start looking at pop music more. It made me further open my musical horizons, and to start looking at mainstream pop with a less cynical eye, to try to better see the artists behind the producers and labels. In short, Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz fundamentally shifted what I chose to listen to in the latter half of this decade, that's why it's one of my albums of the decade.

**Just an aside on Bangerz, Wrecking Ball is for my money one of the best number 1 singles of the decade.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard, the albums that defined my decade

10 years is a long time. I was playing with the idea of an AotD list for a while, but couldn't even begin to comprehend how to put it together. I was 16 when this decade started and while I can clearly point to 2006 as the year which made me appeeciate music and defined the sounds of my formative years (seriously look at 2006, that year was absurdly good) it was in the 2010s where my musical tastes began to branch out and I found the sounds that made me love contemporary music as an artistic form. That's a lot of music to try to distill into a concise format. So I thought I'd do what I set this up to do in the first place. Write about things I love whenever I just need an outlet for them. So I'm going to keep this #aotd tag open for just that, then I'm just going to keep adding stuff about whichever albums were the 2010s to me as I get round to them. So yeah this tag will kind of serve as an unordered, unlimited best of the decade list for me. Enjoy.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Desert Golfing, Disco Elysium and the joy of living with your mistakes

"Make glorious, amazing mistakes." These are the words of Neil Gaiman, and they're good words, they're inspiring and empowering. But, I can't help but think to myself as I watch my ball clip off the side of hole 54 and painfully make it's way down the side of a dune and off the screen, mistakes aren't always glorious, sometimes they aren't even amazing.

Sometimes they're foolish little things we could have done better, a slightly misjudged calculation, a poor dice roll, jumping into a decision we couldn't possibly anticipate the result of. Sometimes they're so catastrophically bad that you feel your stomach drop and you pray to Gods you dont believe in that none of this is real and you're going to wake up in a minute, safe in the knowledge that this will never actually happen.

The ball sails clean over the hole this time, and a +1 is added to the shot count at the top of the screen, a testament to human error, a permanent record of my failure in this moment.

There is a great freedom to most video games, the freedom to be free of consequence in the face of failure. Maybe you'll lose a life, or be set back a few beats in the game but ultimately, the most common response to a failure in the game is a reset of the state to before the failure happened, allowing a player to carry on along a perfect path as if no mistake was ever made. This is comforting, this is satisfying. It allows us to play without stress and fear, a blissful, risk free existence.

Disco Elysium is a game that could be played this way, saving the game and reloading in the face of failure. It shouldn't be though. Trust me, trust Neil, make mistakes. Disco's greatest strength lies in its embracing of its protagonist's failures, whether bodging a dice roll or misjudging an interaction, every wrong move in the game is still a move, a branching, intricate web of actions, every one worthy of seeing through. My protagonist was a miserable failure of a man, at one point he punched a tree and came within moments of dying. He was heavily dependent on the kindness of others and was basically useless by himself. All of this was because of a series of mistakes I'd made throughout the games opening act. But he was *my* protagonist and he was good, well he was at least trying to be good with the cards that I'd clumsily dealt him.

Disco Elysium allowed me to embrace an imperfect existence. To trip and fall so many times and wear those scrapes throughout the entire narrative. It added an extra level of character to the game and it made me care. What drove me through Disco Elysium was confronting my failure in much the same way that what keeps me coming back to Desert Golfing is the shot counter.

I think there is a comfort to these games, as in life, in knowing that while you're journey isnt perfect it's your journey and it doesn't have to end just because you screwed up. In fact it's those failures that make it all the more worth seeing through. So make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make the best mistakes you can, because they're all yours to make.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard these 50 songs from 2019

I really enjoyed this last year so going to give it another go for ‘19. I put quite a lot of thought into what actually a ‘song of the year’ for me when I was first constructing and then heavily editing the playlist that came to be my Top 50 of 2019. I think the most important thing is that above all it’s a track that I’m glad exists, sometimes this is because of the songwriting or composition, sometimes the performance, sometimes the lyrical importance and sometimes just because it sparks joy.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6bFJOjL8b8Zc2s5r1oJbsk?si=UJdqSXOTR3SQ8D3IwcmV2g

Explanations for each tracks inclusion below the fold…

100 gecs - 800db cloud 100 gecs channel a mix of Crystal Castles and Sleigh Bells with a Death Grips level appreciation for noise. It’s an absolute rush and that outro is just absurd.

Natalie Evans - Always Be Natalie Evans soft melody and sing song vocals are sublimely sweet on this heartfelt track of lost love, longing and nostalgia.

Petrol Girls - Big Mouth “If you fight back or disagree you’re the one with the fucking problem” this hits home, hard. Big Mouth is a rallying cry to speak out against oppression and discrimination, to raise you’re voice and be heard, not to be controlled.

Charli XCX ft. Lizzo - Blame it on your Love Charli has a midas touch when it comes to pop, combine that with Lizzo who has just about been the most fun thing in music this year and you’ve got a 10/10 banger.

Poppy - BLOODMONEY Poppy’s music just keeps going further down the rabbit hole. Originally playing with blending elements of nu-metal with bubblegum pop, she now seems to have transcended genre altogether to create whatever BLOODMONEY is, it’s absolutely ridiculous and I love it.

Body Hound - Bloom Get on that GROOVE! So proggy it hurts, this track from Body Hound is a technical wonderland of metamorphosing rhythms, gargantuan riffs, and just the tastiest of chord progressions.

Can the Sub_Bass speak - Algiers Word of warning, this is not an easy listen. A freefall tumble through genre and tone accompanies a stream of consciousness monologue full of racism, prejudice and political and artistic critique.

Elohim - Buckets Buckets is an onslaught of trap influences, emotional outbursts and aggressive distortion. I’m a big fan of this sound.

VUKOVI - C.L.A.U.D.I.A I know very little about VUKOVI as a band, but that riff is absolutely massive and this track has been a constant throughout my year on that basis alone.

Show Me The Body - Camp Orchestra Apparently more hardcore bands should use Banjos, because this is a damn good sound. Slowly building from a single bass line this track builds into a powerful demolishing force.

clipping. - Club Down Having thoroughly proven themselves able to do afro-futurist scifi on the Hugo nominated Splendor and Misery, clipping. now turn their considerable talents to horror core and unsurprisingly nail it. Daveed’s flows are tight as ever as he brings to life a decaying city backed by tortured screams.

Dream Nails - Corporate Realness YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB. WORK IS NOT YOUR LIFE. YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU MUST DO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. Dream Nails are great and exactly what we need right now.

ControlTop - Covert Contracts This track positively bristles with an anxious energy. A fitting sound for the subject of the information overload we find ourselves locked into everyday.

Cherry Glazerr - Daddi There’s an icy coolness to ‘Daddi’, a disconnected sarcasm that falls away to reveal the anger and torment in the chorus, it’s a masterful bit of emotional storytelling through musical tone.

The Physics House Band - Death Sequence I Listening to Physics House latest release, the Death Sequence EP feels like a physical journey. This opener is a perfect example of this, as you’re plunged straight into a heady and disorienting mix of rhythms and counter-melody’s, the Sax guiding you through the turbulence until you land in a placid midsection, before that bass riff drags you forward through rhythmic breakdowns into an absolutely absurd brain melting saxophony and then it just keeps on going from there…

Witching Waves - Disintegration I saw WW back in the early summer, they were a bassist down so it was just a guitar and drums duo. They started with this track and it was one of the most pure punk things I’ve experienced, drummer/vocalist Emma Wigham bashing the absolute shit out of her kit . A great no-nonsense lo-fi banger.

Lingua Ignota - DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR Another, not particularly easy listen here. DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR is a dark and angry brooding track, building in intensity to release the primal rage, fear and horror of the abused. Its deeply chilling and instantly arresting. This track and the entire CALIGULA album stands as an absolute must listen.

Carly Rae Jepsen ft. Electric Guest - Feels Right I love the instrumentation on this one, those chunky piano chords and screaming guitar lift the track out and make it the highlight of an already great album to me.

Orla Gartland - Figure it out Dialing back the intensity slightly, Orla chronicles the frustrations of having to deal with someone in your life who you’re done with. The choruses burst forth in beautifully fuzzy explosions of noise. That vocal flair at the start of the final chorus is chef kiss.

Battles - Fort Greene Park Battles are at their best when they keep things simple. This is evident on 2019′s Juicy B Crypts which features some incredibly cluttered moments, but this just makes Fort Greene Park stand out all the more. A delightfully spacious piece of math rock, from some of the best in the business.

Dogleg - Fox Boy howdy, do I love me some midwest emo. Catharsis in musical form, it just makes me want to mosh my troubles away like I’m 16 again.

Tørsö - Grab A Shovel Tørsö go hard, I can appreciate that. An absolutely brutal track about the destructive power of depression and self-loathing.

“Pijn & Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands” - High Spirits “We were like, are we Pijn and Conjurer, or are we Curse These Metal Hands? I think we’ve settled with ‘we are Pijn and Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands’ …whatever that means!“ what it means is one of the most joyously triumphant pieces of metal music I’ve ever heard. Some of the guitar lines in this absolutely soar.

Lizzo - Juice Lizzo has won 2019, her message of self love, acceptance and body positivity has won her both critical and cultural acclaim and permeates her music in a way that makes it impossible to not love.

COLOSSAL SQUID, AK Patterson - Kick Punch Colossal Squid is the name given to Three Trapped Tigers drummer, Adam Betts’ experimental project. After a solo album of percussive wizardry Betts has now teamed with vocalist AK Patterson to give us something else entirely.

Evan Greer - Liberty Is A Statue Evan Greer uses the a folk punk sound to deliver an essay on the damaging influences of cis-normativity and social inequality. Of course I like this one.

Taylor Swift - Lover I wasn’t on board with this song for a fair while, but then I kept listening to it and kept coming back to it because of a roughly 50 second section which ties the track and the whole album together. Yeah, this is on here purely for the bridge, which is just beautiful.

Dodie - Monster Monster is an incredibly well written and delivered study on how perception changes with resentment and it makes me cry.

The Y Axes - Moon Moon is a delightfully dreamy piece of pop that glitters with infectious melodies, it’s lyrics a blissful embracing of cosmic nihilism, need I say more?

Ezra Furman - My Teeth Hurt My teeth hurt is a song about tooth ache, about that pain you carry with you everywhere and can’t get rid of, that ruins your days and and is one hell of a mood. Yeah it’s about gender dysphoria.

Nervus - No Nations Speaking of things being a mood, this track hits the nail squarely on the head.

Cultdreams - Not My Generation "Everyone ignores me Unless I’m on a stage talking Because they put me on a pedestal And pretend I’m just performing“ Lucinda Livingstone calls out the misogyny in our culture with a singular ferocity.

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road If there’s one song that’s dominated 2019 this is it right here. Who ever had the idea of putting that NIN Ghosts sample to a trap beat and cowboying over the top of it is an absolute genius.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Planet B It’s impossible to predict where King Gizzard’s sonic influences are going to take them next I doubt even they know half the time. Whatever they turn their hand to though they do it as if they mastered the sound decades ago Planet B is an all out thrash track with a strong environmental message.

Kesha - Rich, White, Straight Men Okay, I’m about to compare Kesha to John Lennon here but HEAR ME OUT… As ‘Imagine’ asked us to consider a world without conflict or capitalism, Kesha now posits that we should tear up our conceptions of our society based on its formation by a privileged group and imagine what kind of utopia could be built if we gave the underprivileged and minority groups a say.

Allie X - Rings A Bell The chorus here sounds like it could have been off Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, and I’m all about that sound. Combined with Allie X’s dreamlike vocals make this a certified bop.

Poly-Math - Sensors in Everything Sensors in Everything is a beast of a track spanning over 14 minutes of absurdly dense prog. Having recently enlisted keyboardist Josh Gesner. Polymath make use of the new sounds and textures available to them, at times imitating a sort of Hammond sound not unlike John Lord to the chaotic maelstrom of noise.

Calva Louise - Sleeper Big hooks on this one. Sleeper has a confident swagger to it’s sound which stands apart for the bands previous work. It’s an absolutely huge track.

Slipknot - Solway Firth Slipknot didn’t disappoint after the tease of 2018′s “All Out Life”, following up with an album which blended old and new aspects of their sound to create one of their best to date. Solway Firth is a perfect example of this matching the punishing heaviness of Iowa with the melody driven sound of All Hope Is Gone.

Clt Drp - Speak To My Seeing Clt Drp perform live was one of my highlights of the year. The filthy guitar tones, powerhouse vocals tight as heck drumming and the _grooves. _Absolutely like nothing else I’ve seen. Just an incredible band that deserve so much more recognition.

Black Country, New Road - Sunglasses Black Country, New Road released two tracks this year and now I just want more. Dense wordy lyricism plays off against ever evolving instrumentation to present a raw cut of emotional storytelling.

Her Name Is Calla - Swan Her Name Is Calla are a band that have always been on the edge of my radar, my Dad is very fond of them and saw them live a couple of years ago, but never went back to relisten to any of their stuff, then they started an album with this. I was sold instantly.

black midi - Talking Heads Talking Heads (the band) are an obvious inspiration on this track. Both David Byrne’s vocal style and the Talking Heads penchant for sharp angular melodies are on show here. But given an extra ounce of chaos through Black Midi’s delivery.

Amanda Palmer - The Ride The ride is ten minutes of bundling up all your fears and anxieties of where we are and where we’re going and just, accepting them as part of the ride. Written off the back of a prompt from Amanda asking her fans what they were afraid of right now.

Kim Petras - There Will Be Blood Okay, let’s have some out of season spookiness. Love the squelchy synths on this, there’s a huge amount of energy on this track and with it’s commitment to the horror conceit it makes for a super fun bop.

Kate Nash - Trash Kate Nash’s sound is like bathing pure nostalgia,here she spins the toxic-relationship narrative central to her work to deliver a bigger story about humanity’s, quite literally toxic relationship to our planet.

American Football & Hayley Williams - Uncomfortably Numb The other side of the “midwest emo” coin. A melancholic song built on a soft bed of arpeggiated chords and clean harmonics, Uncomfortably Numb is a heartbreaking track of losing everything and of cycles persisting thorugh generations. Employing the clever metatextual trick of referencing Pink Floyd’s comfortably Numb to mirror the generational similarities.

Glenn Branca - Velvet and Pearls Disclaimer, Glenn Branca was a musical hero of mine, his approach to music and composition being solely responsible for influence a vast number of my favourite bands. Released posthumously, Velvet and Pearls is taken from a live performance by Branca’s ensemble and perfectly captures the sense of sonic disorientation, conjuring aural illusions through an assault of intricately crafted noise. It’s an exhilarating piece that should be played as loud as humanly possible.

Brutus - War The raw emotional strength of Stefanie Manneart’s vocals instantly made me pay attention when I first heard this track. Then the song exploded into a barrage of riffs and breakneck drumming.

Valiant Vermin - Warm Coke Another slice of throwback pop, Valiant Vermin proved with “Online Lover” how much of an ear she has for pop and has proven it once again with Warm Coke. Is a real good bop.

———

Welp there it is, 50(+1) songs, I had to limit myself to one track per artist in the main 50 because according to Spotify I listened to [checks notes] 1082 new artists this year. There are a small handful of tracks I wanted to highlight from the same artists though as they offer something quite different to the tracks in the playlists, so here they are quickly with 3 word descriptions.

Petrol Girls - Skye (dead dog, sad) Amanda Palmer - Voicemail for Jill (Talk about abortion) Ezra Furman - I Wanna be Your Girlfriend (Trans Torch Song) Battles ft Jon Anderson & Prairie WWWW - Sugar Foot (Batshit Prog Insanity) Poppy - Choke (Dark Minimalist Pop) Show Me The Body - Forks and Knives (Anxious nightmare punk) Lingua Ignota - CALIGULA (the whole album.)

———

Closing Statement

Cultdreams - Statement

There has been a shadow over the entertainment industry the latter half of this decade. Whether film, music, TV or video games, the late 2010′s are filled with stories of people coming forward to bravely tell their stories about being abused and manipulated by men in positions of power. The #metoo movement as it’s come to be known has been a powerful force in giving marginalised people a voice and the ability to call out oppressors and in starting the groundwork to root out the misogyny in the seats of power, but this is a battle far from won.

While there are thousands of stories out there I want to focus on one in particular.

In 2016 a number of women spoke out about various forms of abuse by a well-known musician in the punk scene. It’s now over three years later and this group of women are in the midst of a long fought claim of defamation from this musician. If this case goes through it sets a precedent for silencing marginalised voices in the industry. They have been fighting for so long and with no legal aid available for the case they have had to finance their defense from their own pockets.

This is where Solidarity Not Silence comes in. Solidarity not silence is a crowdfunding effort to help take the case to trial without the women bankrupting themselves entirely so that they don’t have to give in to this mans demands.  You can read more about Solidarity not Silence and make a donation (if you feel so inclined) here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/solidaritynotsilence/

You can also follow them on twitter here https://twitter.com/solnotsilence

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey, have you heard: Body Hound

If in some parallel universe I’m in a band, I hope it’s a band like Body Hound. Not necessarily in terms of sound (although I’ll get on to just how much I love their sound in due time) but in terms of the love, energy and fun they bring into making and performing their music. I first saw them live playing a mid-afternoon festival slot (ArcTangent 2015) and they tore up the stage like they were headlining. The pantomime theatrics of ‘playing metal’ giving way to huge grins on their faces as they blasted through a woefully short but absurdly high quality oeuvre of tracks. I’ve seen them 4 times since that first show and every gig has lived up to the benchmark that first one set for me.

I don’t know if you, dear reader, are familiar with Rolo Tomassi (the previous band of 2 members of Body Hound) and in particular the song Unromance from their 2010 album Cosmology? If not, before you go on, have a listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McXWsmGqCzQ  (the first 30 seconds will do, you can stop when the vocals come in). Now, I’m fairly certain that opening riff that comes crashing in over the drums is one of my favourite riffs ever written. The chaotic swagger as it bounces between time signatures, always slightly off kilter, building tension from bar to bar... It’s what first ignited my love for Math Rock/Math Core/whatever sub-genre you care to mention.

From the first notes, Body Hound’s debut ‘Rhombus Now’ (2014) brings this back in a BIG way. Album opener Vector Approaching is a maelstrom of poly-rhythmic, atonal aggression- like Yes played by Idles, a heady mix of Highbrow Art and Caveman Brutalism. This is followed by my favourite track: Systems, a frantic piece akin to malfunctioning Robotics. It’s a frenetic ride, filled with rigid order followed by harsh sporadic licks. Of particular note is the section from 45 seconds in, the whole band are pulling away from each other to such a point that it seems that the track is going to fall apart completely, rhythms fall over and a new level of dissonance is reached, before being bought back together on the last possible beat. It’s a beautiful moment. As is the extended drum-fill at 2:30 that gives way to chords with so much voicing you can feel the emotion emanating from the sound waves.

Track 3, Void, presents us with a short breather after the whirlwind of the first two tracks; A calm, steady bass line in 4/4 is slowly built on with drums and sparse guitar, picking out the essence of a melody. Like it’s namesake void draws you in though, and before you know it the pace has picked up and the Jazz is back, dragging you along with it. Each measure seeming to bring it with it new ideas and a whole new set of directions the track could take you next all the while never straying too far from that rolling bass-line that drew us into this carnage.

I’m not going to write a moment to moment analysis on every track, but suffice to say that the album keeps up its pace and creativity throughout its second half, presenting more ideas in a half hour, six track EP than most musical artists will have in their entire career.

Momentum, true to it’s word, set’s off at a blistering pace and doesn’t let up until the last beat. Perseus Arm let’s the rumbling apocalyptic Bass guitar take center stage and eponymous album closer Rhombus Now takes every thing we’ve learnt over the previous 5 tracks and takes it all up to 11, flitting between technical wizardry, crushing riffs and open space with reckless abandon.

It’s clear that these fellas know their stuff as throughout the dissonant chaos they never fail to inject meaning into their music and allow every instrument room to breathe when required, a singularly impressive feat for such a tempestuous act. You can listen to Rhombus Now here if it tickles your fancy: https://bodyhound.bandcamp.com/album/rhombus-now . The band also recently went back into the studio so we can expect new and exciting things from them this year.

For all the gushing I’ve done over this, it’s worth saying that as incredible as this album is, nothing compares to Body Hound’s live show and if you like this, you should really do yourself a favour and keep your eyes peeled for when there next playing near you, you won’t be disappointed.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard about my experience through 2018

2018 was most certainly a year, there's no doubt about that. At times it felt like multiple years wrapped into one it was so much of a year, like a year that had so much year in it that it could not be neatly packaged into a singular annualar unit. It's a year that has most certainly been here and has left an impression on me, that is indisputable. When I look back at the year 2018 I tend to think to myself 'woo boy, that's a year that's over now'. But what was it about 2018 that made it 2018, certainly being the 2018th year since the alleged birth of our alleged lord and saviour Jesus Christ is a strong contender as a logical reason for it being the year that it is. But what I really want to know is what made 2018 what it was culturally and emotionally. Obviously, dear reader, my emotions are different to yours, well at least I hope they are (side note: what if we all lived in a world where we share the same emotions like there's some sort of universal emotional load balancer everybody is happy at the same time, everybody is sad at the same time, would that be a better world, probably not). So this will be a very personal review of my year, looking at the cultural touchstones which highlighted the bits of 2018 that I shall look back on and say, yes that was 2018, it was indeed most certainly a year.

Without further ado let's take a look at some stuff that went down:

FILMS

So one of the first things to jump out at me from the year was The Best Films I Saw This Year. I think technically both are counted as 2017 films but cinemas are a bit slow around these parts. The first, Three Billboard Outside Ebbing Missouri, was a bleak, blackly comic film, filled to the brim with a burning rage palpable in Frances McDormand's performance. The second, Lady Bird, was a perfect counterpoint, a heart-breakingly thoughtful coming-of-age story executed and performed perfectly. Both of these films have stuck with me throughout the year. Also the most fun film of the year for me (because let's face it, neither Billboards or Lady Bird are thrill rides exactly, and sometimes that's what you want from a flick) was Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. It was an absolute blast, like 10/10 on making the most absurd brainless blockbuster imaginable, with some pretty snazzy cinematography to boot. Yes the plot was kind of a mess, but it was a great one to just switch off your brain and go along for the ride with.

POLITICS

It's impossible to talk about 2018 in Britain without talking about politics and what must have been a high point in this time of national division; when the electoral commission found vote leave to be breaking electoral law and that, due to their illegal spending along with the absurd lies told to voters in the run up to the referendum, decided the only reasonable course of action was to have a second vote with all the information on the table and everybody understanding what they're actually getting themselves in for: a Peoples Vote on the actual outcome we've found ourselves thrust into by illegal and immoral activity. --- Oh hang on... that didn't happen? We're still leaving the EU? Okay then I guess the high point of politics this year would be the time cockney 'actor' Danny Dyer accused former Prime Minister David Cameron of 'scuttling off to Nice and relaxing with his trotters up' before calling him a twat on a live TV chat show with Jeremy Corbyn and Pamela Anderson. Politics eh?

A NALBUM

The second quarter of 2018 was pretty damn wretched for me, but music (and work) was there to keep me going and there was one album in particular which I latched onto like a lifeline and let it tow me through the choppy emotional waters. Through a spectacular array of sonic landscapes Ezra Furman's Transangelic Exodus touches on Love, loneliness, longing, gender dysphoria, religion, existentialism, bigotry, self-loathing and sexuality. It really brought it altogether for me.

THE THEATRE

I saw a lot of plays this year and appeared in a couple myself. By a total coincidence the two plays I was a part of both revolved around the death of a young boy (make of that what you will), I call it my 'Dead Kid' phase. One of these plays, originally a half hour long piece, is being revisited by the author and turned into a full length play for which I will be reprising my role (mourning Brother) in the Brighton Fringe next year, so that's nice isn't it.

There is one play I saw this year that stood out above all others (yes even the ones I was a part of) and that was 'The Watsons' written by Laura Wade and directed by Sam West, I can't go into why it was so good without MASSIVE SPOILERS so click HERE(coming soon) if you don't mind that sort of thing.

A SONG

Different to my album of the year, the song of the year is a much shorter-form expression of emotion. Whereas Transangelic Exodus was a prolonged examination of introspection and rhetoric. My song of the year tore me to pieces entirely in the space of 6 and half minutes. The song in question 'Night Shift' by Lucy Dacus is unusual in a choice for song of the year because I don't relate to the songs protagonist (at least much less so than on some other picks from my top 50 of the year), rather I relate moreso to the antagonist of the piece. The other, who is causing these tumultuous feelings in our heartbroken hero. It's a song that has helped me to explore my feelings around the events of the year and challenged me to observe things from angles other than the one that offers the easiest emotional route for myself.

VIDEO GAMES

I bought myself a current gen console this year (the first I've owned since the gamecube) and it was awesome. While my heart still lies with PC gaming, the low entry-point for development and publishing making it a creative hotbed for indies which simply can't be rivaled, it has been great to play some of the current-gen big name releases as my poor PC could never hope to keep up without a major overhaul. Now, the big question is What is my GOTY (game of the year to the uninitiated), I've already done a write-up of my favourite games from 2018, deliberately unranked for one simple reason: I can't possibly choose a game of 2018 there have been to many great games that have been great in too many different ways. If forced I'd have to say both 'The Hex' and 'God of War' in a single breath so as to make it seem like they are just one game. Of course they aren't one game, they are kind of two sides of the same coin to me though. Both undeniably linked to their creator's own journey. Read more about my thought on both here.

LIVE MUSIC

Wow did I see some bands this year, I've managed to tick off a handful of bucket-list gigs this year and seen performances that go way beyond comprehension and explanation, the clear highlight for me however was seeing Dresden Dolls at the Troxy on the night of Halloween. A perfect storm of time, place and community. I've never felt both audience and performer living, breathing and existing as one as much as one as I did in that venue. For context this was the first set of gigs the Dolls have played in the UK in over 10 years and they're a band with which the term 'cult status' fits nicely. The evening was a celebration of individuality and otherness, a much needed escape from day to day reality.

YOUTUBE

As the years roll on it is becoming more and more apparent that Youtube, once considered a haven for cat videos, screaming gamers and vlogs, is actually a more and more vital source of Meritable Artistic Content a good portion of the media I've digested this year has been from youtube so it seems only right that in summary of the year I highlight siome of the creators and videos I've appreciated most.

## Hbomberguy - 'Harris Bomberguy' has been notable for the insane production and dedication that has gone into his videos this year. Particularly of note are: 'CTRL+ALT+DEL | SLA:3' a nightmarish deepdive into a comic the internet can't let go of and an analysis of analysis itself and Outsiders: How To Adapt H.P. Lovecraft In the 21st Century.

## Contrapoints - Natalie Wynn's love for a e s t h e t i c and soundtracks by Zoë Blade make her videos endlessly watchable. Her sharp scripts and self aware comedy tied with important social commentary are why she's on this list though, watch Pronouns to see what I'm talking about.

## Lindsay Ellis' Autopsy trilogy on The Hobbit films was one of the best documentaries I watched this year, the rest of her stuff is fantastic popculture analysis, but these videos in particular went above and beyond.

## This video by Polygon - the punchline broke me. Also the entire 'unravelled' series is gold.

Something to take into the new year...

This year has been one where I have learnt a lot professionally, personally and in useless trivia. But if there is one learning which could sum up the year for me it is this:'Don't compromise your sense of self for someone else'. Just don't, no matter who they are, no matter what they mean to you. There's no way it can possibly turn out for the best. This is something I've no doubt learnt the hard way but something I'm very glad to now know. Also newts used to be known as ewts, but over time the 'n' from 'an ewt' was rebracketed, fun eh?

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey, have you heard about the best games I’ve played this year...

There are a fair few games I played this year, having come into the possession of not one but TWO consoles (PS4 and WiiU). Most of these games were not released in 2018 so please don't take this as a 'Best of 2018' list, it's more personal than that relating to my specific experiences in the past 12 months.

The best games actually from this year

God of War(2018) - Santa Monica Studio

I was never really one for God of War, so when I bought a PS4 back in April and it came bundled with *gasp* a new God of War game, I was fairly ambivalent. Then I started seeing features about the game blowing up online, then I started playing it. Of all the things the game excels at; the weighty combat, the incredible pacing the fantastic Voice Acting, character design and stunning graphics, my favourite has to be <spoilers> the fact you don't play as the main character. </spoilers> It's an interesting and subtly used story telling device and one I would be interested in seeing more of.

The Hex - Daniel Mullins

The less said about The Hex the better. If you've played Dan Mullin's other major release, 'Pony Island' (which I highly suggest you do) you'll kinda have a rough idea of what to expect.... If you like your gameplay experiences to be interesting this is definitely one for you.

Catastronauts - Inertia Game Studios

Catastronauts is very poorly named, it is not a game about "astronauts who are also cats" as the title would have you believe. What it is though, is a finely blended mix of FTL and Overcooked and that's just about it, but what it may lack in originality it more than makes up for in execution. For me, the game is a better version of what overcooked tries to do, the balance of mechanics feels much more likely to bring a team together than have them ripping each others throats out than it's kitchen based bretheren. I may be biased though because I get flashbacks to working in a pub kitchen over Christmas every-time I play Overcooked...

Dead Cells - Motion Twin

Dead Cells' dodge roll is a serious contender for mechanic/gameplay-thing of the year, it feels so damn good. The weight of it when you smash through a door stunning your opponent before rushing in, back stabbing them for crit damage with your assassins dagger and watching them explode before you... exhilarating. No game can rely on a single mechanic for greatness though and Dead Cells backs up its killer rolling with an astonishingly well balanced arsenal of weapons and gadgets, provided to you at random to keep you switching up your play style frequently, and a souls-like approach to world-building and story-telling that keeps you pushing forward and improving run by run.

Slay the Spire(Technically a 2019 game) - Mega Crit Games

A masterpiece in making numbers fun. Many smarter people than me have written essays on how exactly Mega Crit's Deck-building roguelike can turn such simple numbers into so much fun, what I do know is that the key to it's success as a deckbuilder lies in it's format as a roguelike, a short form adventure which win or lose is going to be around for an hour before your deck is lost to the ravages of time. There's no point in spending hours getting hung up over which cards to keep and which to throw because it ain't gonna last that long. The game play can be split into two distinct sections: the early game where every fight is a puzzle to lose the minimum amount of damage with a limited hand of defends, attacks and a couple of skills and then the bulk of the game, a moment-to moment game of optimisation trying to make the most broken build you can, chaining together ludicrous skills in the hopes of besting your enemy. It's not unusual to stumble upon a combination of cards that is so aweinspiringly broken that the rest of the run is a breeze, but it doesn't matter because the rest of the run is only going ot be 20 minutes tops, then you're back to square one. It's a wonderful loop which never gets boring and has kept me playing for literally hours at a time, just seeing what mathematical delights the game is capable of. Mix in some FTL style events which will have you gambling resources, health and cards on random outcomes, daily challenges and customisable run modes, and you've got a roguelike with absurd amounts of replayability.

Return of the Obra Dinn - Lucas Pope

I completed Obra Dinn in one magical sitting, enraptured by it’s astonishing visual style and ability to make me feel like one of those great detectives written by Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie. A mystery wrapped in an enigma, Lucas Pope starts his tale at it’s end; an abandoned ship and a list of missing crew of which you are tasked with discovering their identities and fates. Obra Dinn weaves a fantastic non-linear narrative giving you just enough information at every turn to keep you exercising your little grey cells and extracting what you need from each exquisitely realised scene. The fact that the entire thing was put together by a single person is somewhat astonishing. -- a side note on the story, I made a very silly mistake and missed something in the first 5 minutes of the game, which while making it somewhat trickier for a fair portion also gave me the most perfect ending imaginable. I can see why this wasn’t left until the end deliberately, but wow did it make everything hit home. 

The best games I've played this year (not from this year)

Superhot VR - SUPERHOT Team

f you wanna feel like a fully-fledged, dual-shotgun wielding, katana-waving, bullet-dodging badass. Then this is the experience for you. Superhot has been one of my favourite games ever since the 7DFPS gamejam version and this VR realisation of the title does everything you'd expect it to. The game never feels weighted down by VR’s limited room for maneuverability working it into a feature of the gameplay.

Horizon Zero Dawn - Guerrilla Games

Yeah I'm late to the party on this one, super late, but I picked up a PS4 this year so I had some catching up to do. Horizon has my standout punching-the-air-in-triumph moment of the year. It was the arena-style fight against a Thunderjaw (the real big lad with missiles and lasers and all of that nonsense), the sense of scale on these things is frankly absurd, it's a real David versus Goliath match-up and my health was hammered in the opening minutes of the battle, it was the first time I'd come across one of these ferocious robo-beasties and I was sorely under-prepared for what I was walking into. BAM! ROCKETS. BAM! LASERS. BAM! TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT. At this point I decided I needed to concentrate more and what followed was the most intense fifteen minutes of dodging, exploding, trap setting, precision shooting, and on-the-fly crafting imaginable. There were tears in my eyes from how intensely I was tracking the peripherals of the screen, I knew at any moment a single hit would set me back to the beginning of the fight, so badly had I been punished by lack of preparation, but the longer the fight went on the more determined I became not to let that happen. Eventually the titan fell and oh the elation I felt. Now many games are able to create a challenge that requires concentration but what made this standout was that throughout the entire encounter I was juggling a half dozen tasks in a firework factory, and the game's UI handled it seamlessly. I could have put the game down then and there and been perfectly satisfied with everything, but it  still had so much more to give. Horizon's story is a smart sci-fi tale which does a rather neat job of not falling into tropes and tells a fresh and exciting story that kept me guessing what exactly was going on until the end.

Neir: Automata - PlatinumGames

Speaking of smart sci-fi stories... Hey guess what, "Neir: Automata is the Citizen Kane of video games", fight me. Okay that's a needlessly inflammatory way of saying it but I kind of mean it... In the same way that Citizen Kane blew the doors wide open for film as art with a self-referential meta, Yoko Taro uses Neir's form as a videogame as a method of storytelling in itself. It's not something that hasn't been done before, but I haven't seen it attempted with such ambition and scale before. Every moment is masterfully put together to both tell a story and provide a narrative underneath that story, it's an utterly astonishing feat that completely made me rethink how I generally look at games. Also the Platinum gameplay mix of bullet-hell and hack and slash is super fun, so that's a bonus.

The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Nintendo

Again... super late to the party... so late I reckon everything I could possibly say about this game has already been said a hundred times over. So I'll take this opportunity to explain why one of the games most frequent criticisms is the standout feature to me, let's talking about weapon degradation! I absolutely love the fact that for the majority of the game you can’t rely on a single weapon for too long, it constantly puts you on the back-foot, looting the gorgeous environments for anything that will serve you through the next handful of fights. It reinforces the fact that the world you stand in, while beautiful, is  a broken one, one the edge of total calamity. It pushes survival to the forefront, keeping you resourceful and thoughtful, forcing you think outside the box at times and that exactly where Breath of the Wild want’s you to be, because that’s where it excels. In summary: I believe the weapon degradation is a perfect microcosm of everything that’s great about the game and while I understand that taking on it’s own it could be considered frustrating I believe that if you go in with the understanding that ‘these are the rules of this universe and this is why they’re here’ it can be a deeply rewarding mechanic.

Trackmania Turbo - Nadeo

Trackmania Turbo’s Double Driver mode is one of the purest forms of cooperative teamwork I’ve experienced, it’s so perfectly balanced and unlike anything else I’ve ever played that the game gets place on this list just for the feeling of triumph when you’ve been working perfectly in sync with somebody to shave seconds off your PB and get that gold medal.

Antimatter Dimensions - Hevipelle

Hey, do you like watching numbers go up? I do. I've found something deeply satisfying about the incremental/clicker genre ever since Orteil brought it to the mainstream consciousness with Cookie Clicker. But no other game of the genre has captured me quite as wholly as Antimatter Dimensions has. The game is balanced perfectly, feeding you progression at just the right rate to keep you playing without getting fed up. The real star of the show however is the multiple layers of prestige that are worked in. Prestige (for the uninitiated) is where the game offers you a chance to reset ALL of your progress for a small incremental bonus, feature or perk to take through into your next run. Hevipelle layers these in such a way that takes that would previously take days to complete will now fly by in a couple of seconds. It's oh so satisfying.

The games I really should have played from this year (a to-do list)

Frozen Synapse 2 - Mode7 Games

Same on me for not getting round to this one. The original Frozen Synapse is one of my all time faves and it sounds like Mode7 have done some great things to improve on the formula.

Into The Breach - Subset Games

Basically what I said about FS but FTL. I’ve had so many recommendations for Into The Breach and I know I’ll absolutely love it but just haven’t got round to it for some reason.

Spider-man - Insomniac Games

I’ve got too many big open worlds to finish before I can start on another one, but can’t wait to get web-swinging across the skyline.

Celeste - Matt Makes Games

Again, love the developers previous game, Towerfall, and have heard nothing but praise for Celeste.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard, these 50 songs from 2018

Here it is my top 50 songs of the year a mixture of everything tha’s kept me going in 2018, I’ve limited myself to a maximum of two tracks from any given artist in the name of keeping this interesting but two albums you should defintiely listen to all the way through are Ezra Furman’s Transangelic Exodus and Let’s Eat Grandma’s I’m All Ears, there’s not a bad track on either.  https://open.spotify.com/user/sammisonfire/playlist/7BdylZB9DC6Lxwv0v6u1cw?si=IXHIxPFITFS7nIoytj4oDA Explanations for each tracks inclusion below the fold...

Slipknot - All Out Life This is the most excited I’ve been since Vol. 3 and the best they’ve sounded since Iowa. The power and anger behind Corey’s vocals coupled with the breakneck riffs, it feels like coming home. Area 11 - All your Friends I’m a real sucker for this sound, the layered synth and metal guitars, like a toned down Crossfaith with a great sing-a-long chorus.

Orla Gartland - Between My Teeth I feel like Orla’s really hit on something special here, you have the raw brutal honesty of the lyrics, then that punchy bass comes in on the hook, it feels so damn good. Zeal & Ardor  - Built On Ashes Love the vocals on this one and the way the track just builds and builds and intensity to that shattering climax. Crossfaith - Catastrophe I don’t think I’ve found another metal band who bring the party like Crossfaith, it’s just all out extreme to the max nonsense and I love it so much. Also the breakdown starting at 2:15 is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard this year in the best way possible. Ninja Sex Party - Danny Don’t You Know Well this is so danged wholesome, written as a message to his younger self, Dan Avidan’s anthem to self confidence and being yourself is everything we need in 2018, also the video is pretty danged great. IDLES - Danny Nedelko “Joy as an Act of Resistance.” isn’t just an album title, it’s a mission statement one that couldn’t be clearer than on “Danny Nedelko” an anthem of Unity, Solidarity and Community, a call to arms to fix a broken Britain. Anna Calvi - Don’t Beat the Girl out of My Boy I love everything that Anna Calvi is saying with hunter and it’s non-traditional look at gender roles. But this tracks beautiful plea against institutionalized gender stereo types sits as a highlight of the album to me. Let’s Eat Grandma - Donnie Darko This right here is 11 plus minutes of pure masterpiece. Using every second of it’s expansive playtime perfectly, the way it drops between languid guitar and sharp lyricism all the while a host of synths build lusciously in the background. Then the keys that have served as the heartbeat of the track up until that point break through into the foreground and the whole thing takes off in an entirely new direction you'd never expect. I could easily write paragraphs on this track and never do it justice, there’s just so much brilliance going on.

Architects - Doomsday For a little context Architects lost their Guitarist and Songwriter Tom Searle to cancer 2 years ago, it’s something that lies heavily across the entirety of their first album since his death and the album feels like a fitting tribute. It’s an album wracked in grief, exemplified on Doomsday, the sound of the band navigating this tragedy which has changed them as people and artists, and making the best damn art in his memory at the same time. Talons - The Drowning The album opener of Talons’ 2018 album “We All Know” comes out the gates comes out the gates like Godspeed You! Black Emperor turned up to 11 before devolving into a dirty overdriven bass riff before the string and distortion build back up around to a point of euphoria, it’s exactly what I want from my post-rock. Amanda Palmer - Drowning In The Sound Originally written back in the Summer of 2017, Drowning In the Sound was an experiment in crowd-sourcing lyrical content. A host of people wrote in expressing their fears of the moment and what resulted is a melting pot of peoples worries and insecurities set to the backdrop of Hurricane Harvey. John Congleton’s production on this studio version adds to the anxiety of the sound brilliantly. SOPHIE - Faceshopping Less of a song and more a discordant symphony of noise and voice, SOPHIE’s approach to music production is anything but orthodox. Bringing to mind Trent Reznor’s more experimental moments, Faceshopping captivates me in a way can’t entirely describe. Rolo Tomassi - A Flood Of Light Rolo Tomassi are doing everything I normally love them for here but on an absurdly huge scale. From the pulsing synth that is cut through by the harsh vocals of Eva Spence, before being blown wide open by a wall of explosive noise, through to the rolling bass lines in weird time signatures and the anthemic climax.This is a band at their best yet. AFI - Get Dark Everybody’s favourite goth-punk’s are back (well mine at least) coming in at under 3 minutes this track puts a pretty bow on the AFI package in a way not dissimilar to Sing The Sorrow’s Dancing Through Sunday, blasting through verses, choruses and solos at a breakneck speed.

Mitski - Geyser Forgoing traditional song structure Mitski’s Geyser builds and builds and builds moving from passage to passage tying together ideas and sounds in a beautiful that lasts long past it’s relatively short runtime. Nine Inch Nails - God Break Down the Door Channeling David Bowie, Trent Reznor croons his way through a mix of high energy synth, clattering percussion and off-kilter saxophone. It’s uniquely NIN sound whilst still sounding like nothing else they’ve ever done. Cancer Bats - Headwound Headwound sounds like a Cancer Bat’s best of album distilled into a single song, which is absolutely in no way a bad thing.

Let’s Eat Grandma  - Hot Pink Produced by Sophie, this track ties together the best parts of both artists. The clever songwriting of Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, giving way to a harsh chorus of shattering glass and incessant percussion. It’s worth mentioning at this point that I could easily of put the entirety of “I’m All Ears” on this playlist. David Byrne - I Dance Like This I’ll keep this one short and just say, what a chorus. Byrne’s still got it. Jamie Lenman - Irrelevant The former frontman of Reuben shows his lighter side with a wry rumination on cosmic nihilism and the importance in a lack of importance. The Wombats - Lethal Combination I have a soft spot for The Wombats, there music hearkens back to a time which isn’t now. Singing about the simple things in life in a jubilant carefree way that seems lost on the rest of the world, nowhere clearer than in this anthem to binge drinking and using alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Jamie Lenman - Long Gone The former frontman of Reuben shows his heavier side with this punishing 2 minute long attack of tortured guitars and searing vocals. Orchards - Luv You 2 It starts with a WOO! Oh, also Orchards blending of math rock with a pop aesthetic is masterful, blending brilliant tecnical guitar work with lead singer  Lucy Evers’ perfect for pop vocals, you’d be a fool for not bouncing along when the hook hits. Ezra Furman - No Place “I found out on a Monday, the city I love doesn’t love me, in fact, fuck that, they’d rather see me dead”. It sounds like anxiety, it sounds like losing your faith in humanity, it sounds like the end. If ever there was a song that sums up the current climate it’s this one. On a lighter note, “babble on in exile”, may be the funniest lyric I’ve heard this year. Ariana Grande - no tears left to cry I don’t often use the term banger often but that’s what this track is, undoubtedly. Those sharp synth lines, Ariana’s defiant vocals. Everything about this track feels slightly weird and outside of what a pop song should be, but that’s what makes it great. Ezra Furman - Maraschino-Red Dress $8.99 at Goodwill Borrowing heavily from Talking Heads sounds this track uses a mish-mash of sporadic instrumentation as the backdrop to a tale of religion, self-discovery and self-loathing. Perfect. CHVRHES - Miracle (Hansa Session) CHVRCHES may be the band that I have tried the hardest to get into this year with absolutely no luck. It’s a shame because I like there songwriting, I like the vocals but the production was just grating to me. Then they released this EP of stripped back, acoustic, strings backed versions and it’s absolutely beautiful. Robyn - Missing U Robyn navigates heartbreak in a way only she can, making you want to dance and break down in tears at the same time. “Can’t take all these memories, don’t know how to use them". 

Amanda Palmer, Jasmine Power - Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now Presented with only a single comment, watch the video for this one. And So I Watch You From Afar - Mullally This track is just 4 minutes of guitar led fun, play loud, air guitar liberally. Sons Of Kemet - My Queen is Harriet Tubman Sometimes I’ll forget how good Jazz can be, then I’ll hear a track like this, something that translates political ideas and history into melody and rhythm in such an effortless way.

Courtney Barnett - Nameless, Faceless Courtney Barnett paraphrases a quote by Margaret Atwood to serve as the chorus for the track, one similarly borrowed on IDLES track mother, it’s an unabashed look at misogyny, something we can’t be talking about enough right now.

Lucy Dacus - Night Shift If there were to be an MVP for this list, it would be this track. It absolutely destroyed me the first time I heard it, the heartfelt emotion behind the lyrics is almost overbearing, you can feel it swelling and swelling until it comes forth in cathartic blast of noise. “In five years I hope the songs feel like covers, dedicated to new lovers“

Kero Kero Bonito - Only Acting I had no idea what to make of this track the first half dozen times I heard it then all of a sudden it just clicked with me, it’s absolutely crazy joyful noise.

Iceage, Sky Ferreira - Painkiller If there’s one thing Iceage do well it’s melodrama, and it’s quite strange hearing those familiar tortured guitars and drawled vocals juxtaposed with such an upbeat brass section. Strange, but not at all unwelcome. The usage of Sky’s vocals to create an interesting take on a duet is also inspired here.

of Montreal - Paranoiac Intervals/Body Dysmorphia Love that bassline, love just how weird this track is, there’s not a lot more to it than that.

Carly Rae Jepsen - Party For One The production on CRJ’s tracks has always been sublime and that‘s true here. An anthem of self-love, it’s what I needed when I needed it.

Florence + The Machine - Patricia Florence Welch’s voice absolutely soars on this homage to Patti Smith, reminding us just how much of a vocal powerhouse she is. Poppy, Grimes - Play Destroy Who knew Poppy and Grimes would be making weird nu-metal crossover music in 2018, it’s total absolute off the wall batshit insanity but I can’t help but love it.

Daughters - Satan in the Wait A dark and twisted thing is Satan in the Wait, starting as a tale of extremist world views and the evil it lets into our lives, the second half of the track descends into a Swans-like noise of what we have to come. Petrol Girls - Sister “We must not weaponise theory against each other, We must allow each other rage, and fear, and mistakes, Sisterhood is the give as well as the take”. A rallying cry for feminism in the face of the patriarchy, Sister is a beautiful track by one of the most important punk bands you should be listening to right now.

St. Vincent - Slow Disco (piano version) I love this version of the song, stripping back what was already a fairly sparse track, elevates the lyrics even more. It’s real tearjerker of a song, performed brilliantly.

Childish Gambino - This is America Yeah I don’t really have to say anything here do I, we all know exactly how important this song is and how damn good it is.

Parquet Courts - Violence Violence comes across like a mix of Funkadelic and Rage Against the Machine, a cautionary song about, you guessed it, violence. There’s some great lyrics in this track all pulled together with those fantastically groovy basslines.

Grimes, HANA - We Appreciate Power Following up from her decidedly metal production on Poppy’s “Am I a Girl?“ Grimes dropped this track, with a mix of NIN guitars, Depeche Mode synths and lyrics about “a Pro-A.I. Girl Group Propaganda machine who use song, dance, sex and fashion to spread goodwill towards Artificial Intelligence” . It’s a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. Oh also, that outro, fantastic.

Art Brut - Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out! Eddie Argos just wants to have fun and I can’t say I blame him, he makes a good case for it at least. Art Brut’s no frills approach to writing punk has always been rather endearing and this anthem to irresponsible partying is it at its best.

YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN Yamantaka // Sonic Titan released a new album this year and while nothing on it quite reaches the high point of their debut for me, this track comes damn close. A nightmare trip of dirty bass grooves, grotesque imagery and all encompassing noise.

Tropical ‘frick’ Storm - You Let My Tyres Down There’s something about this track that just sounds pained, every moment is drawn out and stretched to a near breaking point, the guitars sound tortured and abused and Lilliard’s Nick Cave-esque acerbic vocals threaten to tear the whole thing down at any moment, it’s a sound I absolutely love.

LITE - Zone Lightning fast technical guitar work is the order of the day here, as it so often is with Lite. A particular highlight of the track to me is the drum fill at 1:05, math rock genius.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Yeah I know you more than certainly have heard about this one, but wowie was it so much more than I’d expected. First and foremost the animation is really something else here. It’s so damned stylized. The whole thing feels like stepping into a comic book in the best possible way and how they marry together the different characters artistic styles is sublime. Also the finale has some animation to match Ghibli which is something I didn’t think I’d ever say about Spider-man. The writing and story doesn’t fall far behind the animation in terms of quality either, the level of self-awareness and meta-textual referencing is exactly what you’d expect from a Lord and Miller film and the comedy hits all of the right spider-man notes. Behind all of this there is a touching emotional character drama in the origin story of Miles Morales, a refreshing change of pace from seeing Uncle Ben get shot for the umpteenth time. It’s a film I’d certainly recommend seeing on the biggest screen possible for the impact of animation, but there is much more going on than spectacle alone. Also it features the best after credits gag I’ve seen possibly ever, so hang around for that.