2018 Albums of the Year

If there is a theme to my favorite albums of 2018 it would be: surprise. Six albums make up my Album of the Year list. Three of the bands who are on the list are bands who I have known of for many years but who I was never previously a fan. One of the bands I read about in the first fanzine I ever purchased back in 1995. Another is one that I saw open for Green Day back in 2001 but hadn’t listened to since then and yet another I heard for the first time on a Heineken commercial back around 2008 and even used that song in my wedding but never heard another song by since then, until now of course. Brevity is not my strong suit but I promise to keep each album description to a single paragraph. And I’m no good at reviewing albums and telling you why they are good, I can only tell you how they fit into my musical journey. So here are my favorite albums of 2018 in order of release date.

 

Matt Witte: Ol’ Boy – 01/05/18

Being a superfan sometimes has its perks and I had the pleasure of getting my hands on Ol’ Boy, the first solo album from Coach N’ Commando’s Matt Witte, months before it’s January 2018 release date. By the time it was officially released this album had already cemented itself deep inside my brain. Contained within these 10 songs is some of the most mind blowing finger-style guitar work I have ever heard that perfectly compliments Witte’s storytelling which ranges from tortured songs of lost love to tales of deceit and murder that will speak to fans of The Louvin Brothers and Johnny Cash. This is a perfect folk album that finds its way to my speakers each and every time I need a break from distorted guitars and power chords.

 

The Fratellis: In Your Own Sweet Time – 03/16/18

The Fratellis are a band that I heard back in 2008 when their undeniably catchy song Chelsea Dagger was used in a Heineken commercial that seemed to run about every 10 minutes. My wife and I used the song in our wedding as walk-out music for our wedding party but after that I didn’t hear or think much about The Fratellis until I randomly stumbled across their 2016 masterpiece, Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied, and fell head over heels in love with the Scottish power trio. While I was busy devouring that album I had noticed that they were releasing singles for their upcoming release, In Your Own Sweet Time. I hadn’t even gone back to digest their back catalog yet so they were still quite new to me and the falsetto voice that Jon Fratelli was using and the dance-like vibe on the new singles had thrown me for a loop. I could not wrap my head around this record until I heard this. Then it all clicked. In Your Own Sweet Time is a very different album than its predecessor and even more different from the album before that and so on. That is the beauty of The Fratellis. Their growth from album to album is stunning, almost as incredible as the amount of hooks that they have within each of their songs. I’ve only been digesting their catalog for a year so I don’t know if I can say that they’re the catchiest band I’ve ever heard, but I can say with confidence that they are as catchy as any band I’ve heard before. I could not love this band and this album more than I do which is made abundantly clear by my Spotify 2018 Wrapped Results: my Top 5 listened-to songs of the year are all by The Fratellis (4 out of those 5 are from In Your Own Sweet Time) and I spent 192 hours listening to them (which doesn’t take into consideration all the hours I spent listening to them on vinyl. Obsess much?!?

 

The Interrupters: Fight the Good Fight – 06/29/18

The Interrupters are a band whose name I’d been hearing for quite some time but I had never bothered to check out. Both my brother and my buddy Rob had been suggesting that I listen to them so I gave them a half-assed try and wrote them off as a Rancid …And Out Come the Wolves-era clone upon listening to all of a song and a half (if that). It’s strange that I didn’t give them more of a chance being that I’m a massive Rancid fan (their album Troublemaker was atop my Best of List of 2017). It wasn’t until I heard two of the members on the Turned Out a Punk podcast that I decided to give them a true listen and it didn’t take long for me to realize I had made a big mistake by being so quick to write them off. Fight the Good Fight, the third full length by The Interrupters, is a feel good, anthemic album that takes the best parts of both punk and ska and mashes them together, not unlike Rancid and Operation Ivy. It is an album that I have not stopped listening to since giving it its fair shake back in October. The songs are fun, extremely well written and incredibly catchy. This is a wonderful album that I’m glad my stubbornness didn’t prevent me from discovering.

 

Former Member: Old Youth – 07/13/18

Former Member is the new musical project of Jason Shevchuk who is known for his work in Kid Dynamite and None More Black. As much as I love Kid Dynamite, to me he’ll always be Jay from Bound who were the first local band I ever held onto as my own. Back in 1995 I was a kid who liked Green Day and Rancid (still do) until my older brother’s friend, Don, played me a demo tape by a hardcore band called Vision of Disorder which lead me onto a journey into the underground hardcore music scene. Don took me to my first show in December of 95 and the second band to play that day was Bound. The energy of their set and the fact that we had been chatting with Jay shortly before they played made a lasting impact on me that still has me going to shows to this day (perhaps with less screaming these days but still in the 100-300 people range). After Bound disbanded Jason went on to front Kid Dynamite who I loved and saw play a handful of times and then he formed the more melodic None More Black who weren’t my cup of tea but who I always rooted for because of how much I respected Jason as a musician and as a  hometown hero of sorts. When I read that he had released an album entitled Old Youth under the moniker Former Member (such a great, clever name) in which he’d handle all of the instruments except for drums I had myself a listen. By the second song I had jumped over to Bandcamp and bought the thing and didn’t listen to anything else for the next 3 weeks. The album has everything- great lyrics, tons of hooks, excellent production, etc. It’s pretty awesome that the guy who was blowing my mind up on stage at Middlesex County College has just put out one of my favorite albums of the year twenty three years later.    

 

The Living End: Wunderbar – 09/28/18

My mom was the music lover in my family. She had music playing nonstop and during my childhood she was into the modern rock of the time- Rick Springfield, Bryan Adams, The Outfield, etc so that’s what I liked as well. Then at 13, the band that made music an obsession of my own was Green Day. A few years later when I joined my first band, the two guys in the band were big fans of The Police and turned me onto them. While I have no way of knowing this, listening to Wunderbar, the latest album by The Living End, it sounds as if they may have had a similar musical upbringing. I’ve known of the Australian 3-piece for quite some time. They had a massive single, Prisoner of Society, that played non-stop when I worked at Skechers back in the late nineties. It was one of those songs that was so catchy that it was hard not to like and then it got played so much that it was impossible to enjoy anymore. In 2001 I saw them open for Green Day in Asbury Park, NJ. They were very entertaining and quite talented. I remember being mystified by their bassist who played an upright bass and climbed on top of it while playing but their brand of punk-rockabilly just wasn’t my thing. Earlier this year I noticed that a new single of theirs, Don’t Lose It, popped up on my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify and decided to give it a try. By the end of that song I was salivating to hear more. It would be a few months before their album Wunderbar was released but it was worth the wait. The Living End have grown into rock n’ roll powerhouse. Their punk and rockabilly roots are still in there but it’s clear that the sound that they’ve grown into over the years is just as influenced by the best parts of 80s rock. The common thread between the bands I grew up listening to and The Living End is that they all know their way around writing a well structured pop/rock song. Wunderbar is a damn near perfect album that will be in my rotation for years to come.

 

Sick of it All: Wake the Sleeping Dragon! – 11/02/18

Is it me or does it seem like law that record stores must play the absolute worst music at the loudest possible volume at all times? Every time I’ve been inside of one, which is a lot, the most god awful music is blaring and I’m left wondering if they’re trying to get people to leave. Maybe I’ve just seen Empire Records too many times. There’s an exception to every rule and on the night that I walked into my beloved Vintage Vinyl Records in Fords, NJ (a shop I’ve been frequenting for nearly 25 years) to pick up my special ordered copy of The Living End’s new record, the most powerful hardcore music was coming from the store’s speakers. At first I thought “who is this…Sick of it All?!?” but then I decided it couldn’t have been because I’ve never been a SOIA fan and here I was, roaming the aisles pretending to flip through records that I had no intention of buying just so I could hear more of this music. By the second song I had to open Shazam and sure enough, it was the new Sick of it All album, Wake the Sleeping Dragon! SOIA has been around forever and I’ve always had much respect for them but they’ve just never been my thing. Their shows always seemed too violent and I preferred a little metal in my hardcore so it just never clicked for me. But after I retrieved my special order I hopped in my car, queued up Wake the Sleeping Dragon! on Spotify, blasted it down the Garden State Parkway and had one of those perfect rides home that I never wanted to end. Wake the Sleeping Dragon! is an excellent record by a band that has been doing their thing for many years who I not only deeply respect but now am a fan.     

 

Death Ray Vision: Negative Mental Attitude – 11/30/18

First off, what an amazing album title! How has this not been used before? And I say this as a guy with a PMA tattoo on his arm and a PMA button on his jacket. I’m all about the positivity but I love the sarcasm and meanness of the title Negative Mental Attitude, especially for an album as hard hitting as this one. Death Ray Vision is a band that was comprised of 3 out of 5 members of the Massachusetts metalcore pioneers, Overcast. One of my all time favorite bands, Overcast played a brand of heavy music that, at the time, seemed to be too metal for the hardcore kids and too hardcore for the metal kids. That blend is the perfect balance for my ears and my other two favorite heavy bands of all time can be described in exactly the same way, those being Vision of Disorder and Candiria. On this, Death Ray Vision’s second full length, singer Brian Fair is no longer with the band. His replacement, Jeff Gard, has some big shoes to fill and does a hell of a job. He’s got a more “classic metal” voice as he sings in a higher register while Fair implemented his signature guttural screams mixed with his melodic, almost Hetfield-like singing. While no one could fill the shoes of one of my all time favorite vocalists Gard does as good a job as anyone could hope to do. Having Jeff Gard as the new vocalist of Death Ray Vision is what I imagine it’s like to have a really great stepdad move in while your, also awesome, dad moves out of the house. Both are rad dudes and if it can’t be your dad as the one living with you, you’re happy it’s this guy. Despite my truly awkward analogy, Negative Mental Attitude is an aggressive, in your face album that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go for the full 38 minutes.   

 

I Fucked Up in 2017

Michael Scott once said “It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong…and I am that big man.” It’s funny and awesome, to me, that music is all about timing. The following two albums were released in 2017 and I was too damn stupid to realize how great they were at the time:

 

Quicksand: Interiors – 11/10/17

Man, I really missed the boat on this one. Quicksand has been one of my favorite bands for a long time. I went into this, their comeback release, with mixed feelings. They had only released two albums, 1993’s Slip and 1995’s Manic Compression, and both were perfect. Their lifespan as a band was so short that they didn’t have time to make a misstep. It was a lot like the part in Good Will Hunting where Will wanted to break off his budding relationship with Skylar because she was perfect at that moment so he wanted out before he could discover her imperfections. When Quicksand began playing shows again I was that cranky old guy who refused to go see them because I knew the shows would be sold out and people would be singing all the damn words and I didn’t want these people ruining this perfect band for me. So when I found out they were releasing a new album I went into it with hesitation and a feeling that it could never live up to their past efforts. I had seen Walter Schreifels enough in the past 10 years either solo or with Rival Schools to know that his voice and demeanor was different now (not necessarily a band thing as I love me some Rival Schools, I’m just pointing out that it’s a very different band than Quicksand). I was sure he couldn’t recreate the impassioned yelling/singing of 1990s Walter and it turns out I was right about that. Interiors doesn’t have the angst and bite that those other records had, so I listened to it once or twice and wrote it off. Guess what? I am an idiot. Why would Quicksand reconvene all these years later if they were just going to pick up right where they left off (when they were more or less kids) rather than grow as a band and put who they are now into this new album? What they’ve created with Interiors is a Quicksand album that sounds perfect to my 38 year old ears. I still love Slip and Manic Compression and I always will but they’ve breathed new life into their sound. Instead of their aggressive groove they play a more dreamy, spacey groove that comes off just as heavy, just a different type of heavy. Walter’s voice is much more fluid which goes perfectly with the playing of Sergio Vega and Alan Cage, who make up one of the best rhythm sections of all time. It may have taken me a year to realize the brilliance of Quicksand’s latest album, but much like Will Hunting…I eventually got it right.

 

Jeff Caudill: Reset the Sun – 04/21/17

I’ve been a fan of Jeff Caudill’s songwriting since I first heard his band, Gameface, back in 1995/96. In Gameface he wrote catchy, heartfelt punk songs that always hit the spot for me. Then he began releasing solo albums sometime around 2006 that leaned more towards the alt-country realm and those were perfect to my ears too. That’s why it’s so curious that I didn’t latch onto this 6 song ep until a full year after its release. The only reason I can think of is that there’s so much music out there that it’s easy for an album to get lost in the shuffle along the way. One of the many great things about music is that once its released it’ll always be there and, like with most things in life, timing is everything. Reset the Sun is chock-full of great lines that Caudill has been churning out for decades (Tears in my ears and Live fast and live young are two of my favorite examples from this one), excellent guitar playing and tons of catchy hooks that will be the worm in your ear for weeks. Jeff Caudill never disappoints and as long as he keeps putting out records, I’ll keep listening.  

 

Rediscovery of the Year

 

The Police

Rediscovering an old favorite of mine, The Police, has everything to do with my favorite albums of 2018. As I was getting into The Fratellis and reading about their history I saw that they supported The Police on some shows for their comeback tour back in 2007. Then while listening to Former Member I noticed some definite influences of The Police on there (most notably the backups and guitar lead in Mendoza Line). The Interrupters will, more often than not, be labeled as a ska-punk band but they’ve got an evident reggae influence as well which surely goes hand in hand with ska but also to The Police as nobody mixed reggae with rock better than they did. And The Living End has an obvious love of The Police which is heard on Wunderbar but even more so on their excellent 2016 release, Shift. This made me go back and listen to this old favorite of mine and I’m so glad that I did. The first real band I played in while in was with two older kids from the town over from mine. They were only one grade ahead of me but these guys had driver’s licenses, which I did not, and were in a real band that had demo tapes and that played shows so it seemed like a whole lot more than a year that separated us. I was a baggy pants-wearing hardcore kid and they were more into punk but they also shared a great affinity for The Police. Because I thought they were cool and I wanted to be into what they were into I started listening to The Police and I also started wearing more well-fitting pants. Back then it was mostly their faster songs that I grasped onto, songs like Next to You, Fallout, Truth Hits Everybody, etc. Sure I liked So Lonely and The Bed’s Too Big Without You as well but I mostly stuck to their amazing Live! double cd. Just now, at 38, with years in between listening to them, am I able to truly appreciate the brilliance of their ability to blend raw, early punk with reggae and a perfectly written pop song all rolled into one. When I was young I thought playing fast was the sign of a good musician, and sometimes it can be, but as I got more experienced as a player and also as a music listener I came to realize that the true challenge is being able to play slow (and soft) when the song called for it. The Police did all of those things and they did all of them well. This year was very much about discovery for me as nearly all of the albums on my 2018 Albums of the Year list are from bands I hadn’t been a fan of previously but also one of the true highlights was rekindled (and at the same time brand new) love of a band from my early days of discovering music.