Some bands think about product before emotion. Some bands think about the end destination, rather than the journey. Some bands get too caught up on what the final outcome might look or sound like.
There was a bit of news last week that may have been overlooked. Warner Music Group announced its roster of newly signed artists for the coming year. On there already were the usual staples: Coldplay, Madonna, etc. But there was one signee that trailed off from the others – an algorithm generator. But as far as news goes, no one batted an eye.
There seems to be a trend going on the music world today, but this one has no signature sound. No trademark looks, face tattoos, or use of auto tune. In fact, it’s a movement to kind of not be recognizable at all, but to be minimalistic in approach. Less is always more. It bears no similarities to the genres that came before it, nor does it try to reinvent the wheel. They’re simply tunes that can be played with no more than a piano and an 808 drum machine. One critic might call it the “music of the future.”
There’s been a musical revolution going on in the past year. Young hip-hop artists have been gaining notoriety for their “bad boy” images and excessive lifestyles. It’s a new form of punk rock, some people call it, where all the resources needed are available to them and all that’s required is just a little attitude and emotion.
It was around this time a year ago when it was announced that FYF (Fuck Yeah Fest) was done for in Los Angeles. But not only that, Texas’s Day for Night and Free Press festivals had also gone out the window, all as a result of their founders and festival runners being accused of sexual assault. For music fans in those areas, it was a deal-breaker – a heartbreak from what were probably the most eclectic music festivals in the U.S.
Brooklyn has always been a hot bed for multi-cultural pop, ever since the tech-boom of the early 2000s which caused a mass migration across the East River. And back then, the bands didn’t focus on one type of music. It wasn’t all one sound, but they were all different sounds, focused around one idea.
It was May, 2006, in Indio, CA when the landscape of live music performance changed. Two Frenchmen cladded in robot attire were carted to the Sahara dance tent where they would put on their first show of the new millennium. No one had actually seen them in their new personas before, only in promotional material, but as they made their way to the tent, with the crowd chanting “DAFT PUNK, DAFT PUNK” heard from a mile away, they finally took the stage to a starving audience after a thirty-minute delay, and continued to blow everyone’s minds and the world with the most psychedelic LED light show ever produced.
To be honest, I couldn’t compile this list in any easy way other than choosing what was worthy. To me, there was no clear winner, there’s no favorable album over another. 2018 didn’t feature the juggernaut artists like we’ve been treated to in the past few years. But for the better, because it allowed young, new artists like Snail Mail, Parquet Courts, Kasey Musgraves, Yves Tumor, and Playboy Carti to allow them to cement themselves atop of critics’ year-end lists, a year that introduced us to new artists to prove that the next generation of musicians truly doesn’t suck.
Here are the top 10 albums of 2018.
It’s funny to think that, given the amount of tours, one-off shows, reunions, and festivals this year, that this list would seem kind of arbitrary. Could he possibly have seen every live show this year? Is he making this list out of a vacuum? Well, of course this list has not come out of a vacuum, and naturally, I couldn’t have seen EVERY SINGLE live event from 2018. But with ambition, confidence, and enthusiasm for discovering something new and memorable, I did my best. Here are the best live acts of 2018.
It’s been asked and echoed for almost two decades now. And yet, the conversation has yet to leave the table. Hundreds of musicians have declared it so. Even Gene Simmons, the epitome of “rock icon,” has officially declared Rock ‘n’ Roll dead.