Indiecisive’s Top 20 Tracks of the Year, 2018

Indiecisive’s final post of 2018, and the final end-of-year list for the year is here – my Top 20 Tracks of 2018. Thank you to everyone who’s read Indiecisive in 2018, I hope you’re looking forward to new content and most importantly new music in 2019 as much as I am.

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20) Interpol – Number 10

Coming from the band’s sixth album ‘Marauder’, Paul Banks describes ‘Number 10’ as ‘the loosest, most spontaneous and unpolished track on the record’ and you can definitely hear that. This sounds like classic Interpol, from the delay-heavy intro to when the first verse bursts in with a driving rhythm reminiscent of ‘PDA’ from their debut, and it proves that among the band’s more recent polished-sounding material, they can still pull out something that echoes their New York club gig roots.

19) Arctic Monkeys – Star Treatment

As discussed in my Top 10 Albums of 2018, Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino’ was one of the most divisive albums of the year, and this is the track that heralded the band’s complete shift in sound. ‘Star Treatment’ is, to put it simply, Arctic Monkeys doing lounge music. Led by some gorgeous, elevator-music organs, Alex Turner rambles poetically about fame, in what are likely some of the best, if most bizarre, lyrics he’s written. Completely surreal to hear the Arctic Monkeys in such a different musical context, but it’s a welcome change.

18) Pusha T – If You Know You Know

This year, over the course of five weeks, Kanye West treated us to five quickfire, sub-30 minute albums that he produced – the first of these was Pusha T’s ‘DAYTONA’, and the combination of Kanye’s famously excellent production with Pusha’s flawless flow makes for something that exceeds the quality of Kanye’s own material from 2018. ‘If You Know You Know’ lands somewhere between the classic Kanye ‘chop up the soul’ sound and his more recent, chaotic sound debuted on ‘The Life of Pablo’, and it makes for an incredibly infectious beat – the best hip hop track of the year.

17) Flyte – Moon Unit

After releasing one of the best albums of 2017, Flyte treated us to a double A-side single early in 2018 with ‘Moon Unit’ and ‘Victory Girls’. The first of these tracks feels like a mid-step between the pure, Beatle-esque sound shown off on the band’s debut ‘The Loved Ones’ and something more spacey – 60’s-tinged indie pop, impeccably well written and with some wonderful harmonies, Flyte still stand tall as one of the best bands to emerge this decade.

16) Mitski – Two Slow Dancers

Mitski’s ‘Be The Cowboy’ has been topping Best Album charts all over the place this year, and while it just missed out on being included in Indiecisive’s, I can’t not talk about the beautiful ‘Two Slow Dancers’. One of the most gorgeously melancholy tracks released in 2018, Mitski’s lyrics hit home all-the-harder with the stripped back instrumentation that’s a little reminiscent of Radiohead’s ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ in its dreaminess.

15) Sons of Kemet – My Queen is Doreen Lawrence

London jazz group Sons of Kemet’s third album ‘Your Queen is a Reptile’ tackles the idea that the British monarchy doesn’t represent black immigrants – each track on the album is named for a different influential black woman, from the great grandmother of one of the group through to Angela Davis, and the album as a whole is thought-provoking, infectious and a great example of modern jazz at its best. The closing track of the album ‘My Queen is Doreen Lawrence’ features poet Joshua Idehen performing some profound lyrics about not only Doreen Lawrence’s story, but also about the bigger picture of institutional racism in the UK today. A remarkable piece of music.

14) Oh Sees – Sentient Oona

Oh Sees at their very proggiest, ‘Sentient Oona’ is the opening track of their latest album ‘Smote Reverser’. Centering around an uncharacteristically quiet bass riff, ‘Sentient Oona’ quickly explodes into some truly cacophonous organs, drums and guitars, which bring to mind giants of prog rock like King Crimson. Oh Sees’ double drummers make the jammier parts of this track absolutely dizzying, and it almost escalates to a full on garage psych track in the middle – the dynamics this band showed all over ‘Smote Reverser’ are excellent, but this is another level.

13) St. Vincent – Slow Slow Disco

‘Slow Slow Disco’, comes from St. Vincent’s ‘Masseducation’, an all-piano reimagining of her 2017 album ‘Masseduction’. The complete stripping back of the track, much like the aforementioned ‘Two Slow Dancers’ by Mitski, allows St. Vincent’s voice and lyrics to shine through and hit even harder than they did on the original track. With this new version, ‘Slow Disco’ has been revealed to be one of the very best tracks that Annie Clark has written.

12) Shame – Friction

2018 has been a fantastic year for post-punk fans. Releasing right back in January, Shame’s debut album ‘Songs of Praise’, along with IDLES’ ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance.’ have started a real return to the mainstream for British post-punk at a time when some kind of punk scene is more needed than it has been in decades, with both albums receiving mass critical acclaim. Crunchy, almost surf music-esque guitars make ‘Friction’ perhaps the catchiest track from Shame’s debut, and I’m stunned it hasn’t been given the full single treatment.

11) Clean Cut Kid – Emily

Liverpool’s Clean Cut Kid have a serious knack for writing brilliant, classic-sounding indie pop, and ‘Emily’ may be their best yet. Pulling from the sound of the band’s debut album and taking a couple of leaves from the Fleetwood Mac playbook, ‘Emily’ should have been one of the biggest singles of 2018. It’s an instant classic and if it’s a sign of things to come for Clean Cut Kid, they’re going to have an incredible 2019.

10) Father John Misty – Just Dumb Enough To Try

Father John Misty’s deeply introspective album ‘God’s Favorite Customer’ was one of my favourites of 2018, and ‘Just Dumb Enough To Try’ is the perfect example of what made the album so special. In this track, Josh Tillman speaks of all his accomplishments, but how despite them all he knows so little about love – this is made even more powerful when you find out that the album was written almost entirely during a two month period of heartache where Tillman was living in a hotel room due to his ‘life blowing up’. While Tillman has yet to speak explicitly about the events that led to him writing the album, you can really hear the raw emotion in both his lyrics and his voice. One of the best songwriters of our time.

9) Childish Gambino – This Is America

Without a doubt, the most important track released in 2018. Along with its striking, symbolism-packed music video, ‘This Is America’ tackles points about racism, discrimination and gun violence which few other artists can do on such an elevated platform as that held by Donald Glover. ‘This Is America’ started and increased discussion throughout the Western world of the issues mentioned within it, and this song will go down as something of a time capsule of the USA in 2018. While just one song can’t make that much difference, the ripples it sent across both America and the music industry will be remembered for some time to come.

8) Nine Inch Nails – God Break Down The Door

Releasing as the lead single to the band’s ninth album ‘Bad Witch’, ‘God Break Down The Door’, to me, feels like Trent Reznor’s tribute to David Bowie. The track feels like a continuation of the sound debuted on Bowie’s final album ‘Blackstar’, complete with a free-form saxophone breakdown, frantic synthesisers and some haunting, crooning vocals that sound almost a little too like Bowie in the second half of the song. Eerie, exhilarating and absolutely brilliant – Reznor never ceases to experiment.

7) Parquet Courts – Total Football

As well as being one of the overall best-sounding tracks of 2018, ‘Total Football’ does an amazing job at kicking off the new Parquet Courts album ‘Wide Awake!’ with a bang. The album is relentlessly political, and this opening track uses the metaphor of football tactics as a call for people to rise up against oppression. The lyrics are witty, cynical and remarkably clever, plucking from the history books in what they reference – not your average punk track, that’s for sure.

6) Christine and the Queens – Goya Soda

A pop song inspired by Goya’s ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ isn’t exactly something you’d expect to be one of the best tracks of the year, but Christine and the Queens’ ‘Goya Soda’ is easily one of the best tracks on the whole ‘Chris’ album. Pairing an 80s-tinged pop production with some cryptic, yet evocative lyrics, the track builds in an intensely satisfying way in the second half as more layers of synths, guitars and piano gradually phase in before the final chorus, which is rounded out by a lovely piano outro. Truly blissful pop that only Christine and the Queens can pull off.

5) Car Seat Headrest – Bodys

Will Toledo’s new version of his 2011 album ‘Twin Fantasy’ is chock-full of fantastic tracks, but the best one of those when it comes to standing alone from the album is almost certainly ‘Bodys’, which is quintessential Car Seat Headrest. It’s frantic, it’s loud, it’s self-referential and most importantly it’s so poignant. Will Toledo’s lyrics are a reflection on teenage love and the innocence of youth, and the fact that they were written when he was a teenager himself and reworked all these years later makes them more moving than ever.

4) Thom Yorke – Suspirium

When it was first announced that Thom Yorke would be scoring Luca Guagagnino’s remake of ‘Suspiria’, I didn’t think for a second that we’d get any traditional ‘songs’ from the soundtrack. What we got in the end, however, not only included some full vocals from Yorke, but also one of his most haunting ballads yet – ‘Suspirium’. The track is a waltz that dances around Thom Yorke’s ostinato piano and it plays with the idea that ‘all is well as long as we keep spinning’, an idea that Yorke similarly explored on 2016’s ‘Present Tense’, Indiecisive’s track of that year. Thom Yorke was already stripping his emotions bare on the majority of Radiohead’s ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’, but with this track his emotions feel more naked than ever.

3) Hop Along – How Simple

Hop Along’s ‘Bark Your Head Off, Dog’ is Indiecisive’s Album of the Year for 2018, and picking a track from it to go in this list was an incredibly difficult decision. In the end though, it had to be lead single ‘How Simple’. The track shows off everything that’s brilliant about Hop Along – Frances Quinlan’s poetic lyrics, which the band weave the music around seamlessly, her truly breathtaking voice (even moreso live), and the band’s remarkable ability for crafting a brilliant chorus. Few bands have songs that are as simultaneously thought-provoking and catchy as Hop Along do – listening on the surface level, they seem like catchy indie rock tracks, but go a level deeper and Quinlan’s lyrics open up a whole different can of worms.

2) Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Hunnybee

Once in a while when you’re listening to an album for the first time, you hear a track that you just know is something special. Almost immediately after the release of their fourth album ‘Sex & Food’, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s ‘Hunnybee’ sailed to the top of their most popular tracks on Spotify, and with good reason. Much like ‘Emily’ by Clean Cut Kid further back in this list, ‘Hunnybee’ is an instant classic. Blending Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s laid back psych rock with a slight disco flair, the track is equal parts danceable and relaxing, and it’s absolute perfection.

1) Another Sky – Forget Yourself

There is no doubt in my mind that Another Sky are going to be something huge, and little says this clearer than the title track from their debut EP – ‘Forget Yourself’. Skittering electronic drums, beautiful loops and piano gradually build up over the length of the track, which feels like a safe space of calm in a chaotic storm. Catrin Vincent’s vocals are otherworldly and elevate the powerful instrumental to level of emotion that I’ve seen few bands pull off. As I said in my previous review of the track – this is materful, truly beautiful music. Not only is it a must-listen track, but it’s my track of the year by a rather long way.

Thank you for reading! Be sure to check out Indiecisive’s Top 10 Albums of 2018 HERE and our Top 10 Gigs of 2018 HERE – see you in 2019!