Mal's 25 Favourite Songs Of 2018

Well, 2018. It was a year. Honestly whether it was a good or bad one depends what lens you're looking at it through but it was definitely a year that'll be etched into the history books. Fortunately it did produce quite a bit of good music, which I'll document here in the form of my favourite tracks released.

Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa: One Kiss
Calvin Harris makes his return to more traditional dance music with this silky smooth cut. Dua Lipa continues to exude the effortless cool that's become her trademark of sorts, the instrumental has some lovely 90's house vibes I'm a sucker for, the true big song of the summer.

Vein: Virus//:Vibrance
Vein are one of the hottest bands in hardcore at the minute, and this song is more than sufficient justification for that. They've taken the white-hot aggression of their early EPs, and teased it out more into an almost sickeningly forceful groove, losing none of the power but far more refined. It's as catchy as it is heavy with the best uses of the Amen break since Slipknot dropped Eyeless back in 1999 (god I wish I wasn't three years old at that time). Go stream Errorzone right now if you want fresh and exciting heavy music.

Mitski: Nobody
Mitski goes disco. Well it's a wryly self-aware yet deeply poignant take on loneliness, one of the standout tracks off her excellent Be The Cowboy. But the disco part is v much a major selling point, the harsh dissonance with musical form that's intended to be communal butting heads with lyrics about being lonely. It's built on some lovely delicate keys, a groove conjuring images of dancing alone in your living room, and Mitski's beautiful vocals, both knowing and resigned yet fragile and searching at the same time.

Portrayal Of Guilt: Your War
Pretty much the entierity of Let Pain Be Your Guide could have been listed here as it's some of the finest dark, dissonant screamo released in years. However I decided to pick this song to show Portrayal Of Guilt's command of dynamics. Delicate yet frenzied picking gives way to their typical thrashing yet they've a melodic verse, with clean yet still very tortured vocals. Dylan from Full Of Hell guests on this song, giving us guttural roars and harsh electronic noise to ring out the track.

Soccer Mommy: Your Dog
This is one of those songs where the sound honestly just speaks for itself. Though the parts can be held up under a microscope and examined for what makes em work so well, sometimes a song just hits right. The main riff is just one of the finest breezy slacker guitar parts never written by Built To Spill, Allison's vocals have a sweetness and bite making them strangely compelling, it feels like a genuine indie anthem as opposed to just a song that came out in 2018 that's kinda cool.

American Pleasure Club: This Is Heaven And I'd Die For It
Much like the previously discussed track, sometimes the indie rock just be hittin'. Sam Ray's on familiar form with a massive, blissful noise pop riff underpinning lyrics of teenage excess, yet this one doesn't sound like it was recorded through a laptop microphone. A truly lovely grungy weed music banger.

Svalbard: Revenge Porn
A lot of noise was made about Idles' Joy As An Act Of Resistance, but the superior punk album capturing the spirit of 2018 in my opinion came from a different Bristol band. That band was Svalbard, the album was It's Hard To Have Hope. The soaring, black metal meets shoegaze guitars are grounded with pummelling drums, yet lyrically is where the song shines. A furious condemnation of revenge porn, it doesn't use metaphor or abstraction, it is a powerful affirmation of the humanity of its victims, making it all the more powerful in its bluntness.

Earl Sweatshirt: Nowhere2go
Earl resurfaces for the first time in three years with a full project, the unambituoysly titled yet very sonically ambitious Some Rap Songs. This first single is its finest moment, Earl's fractured, fragmented flow being complimented with a beat that merges the dreamy electronics of a Clams Casino beat with the fragmentation of a Madlib beat. Despite the quite mournful tone, there's an undercurrent of hope in the lyrics, a light at the end of the tunnel, it's a stunning song from an equally stunning project, stream it right now.

Alice Kiernan: Running Now
A rather more straightforward pop song from the Lorde school of thought, I went into it more out of curiousity and the desire to support a friend's work rather than being super enamoured by the sound. But it's got a great driving pace, a chorus guaranteed to get stuck in your head, and some wonderful vocals, defiant yet with a self assured cool to them. One of the finest additions to the anti-fuckboy songs canon, I'm definitely eagerly awaiting more from Alice.

Charli XCX: 1999 feat. Troye Sivan
I was way too late getting into this song, but it's such a fuckin tune, isn't it? An infectious chorus, some Eurodance keyboards, more about the feeling than 90s specific reference points sonically, it's the perfect song to be blaring while you're cruising with the boys. Not much else to go into in terms of dissection, it's just a wonderful fun pop banger.

Rolo Tomassi: Aftermath
The balance of light and dark, harsh and soft has always been part of Rolo's sound, but in the past the light has suffered, being used more as a point of contrast than standing up in its own right. They have very much struck that balance and then some on Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It, making some truly beautiful and ferocious music. Aftermath is Rolo Tomassi fully embracing the light, a beautiful, glacial indie-pop number with a soaring crescendo, well able to stand up alongside the likes of M83.

Maxo Kream: Go
Maxo Kream is a rapper who's had success but not nearly as much as he should. A student of the Pusha T school, he's got the cool, infectious smooth flow of Houston, his home city, modern, interesting production, and a way with punchlines and storytelling to draw in the oldheads. Tracks like Roaches and Grannies off Punkem show off the storytelling better, but I've jammed Go more, with its cold, punchy trap beat, and lines like "wrinkled-ass tee, even though he got the iron on him".

Eve Belle: Til I Fall Asleep
A really lovely, moody yet propulsive indie-folk track. Eve might be young, but her voice carries a weight far beyond her years, her mournful guitar being aided by a surprisingly gritty bassline. Lyrically damaged yet defiant, it's a brilliant song and a sign of so much future potential.

Camp Cope: The Face Of God
Calling tracks "songs for the #MeToo generation" is often a hacky, lazy journalist technique, but with The Face Of God, Camp Cope have been able to capture it more than a thousand think pieces. They capture the ways sexual assault play out, the lonely aftermath, the way the abused are thrown aside because "they say your music is too good". Georgia's vocals, alternating between resigned and ferocious, are what truly make this probably the most important song released in 2018, a fact I don't say lightly.

Birds In Row: I Don't Dance
French screamo heroes Birds In Row came back in 2018, more restrained, but with the same Cursed meets Orchid fury they had before, which they fully unleash here. The serenity and tension builds into violent blasts of noise, ebbing and flowing, an intricate dance between fragility and ferocity, a blend I'm an absolute mark for.

Counterparts: Monument
Even on the songs that don't make it onto the albums, Counterparts are still better than pretty much every other metalcore band out. This song has the jagged technical structure, mournful lead lines, anguished vocals and crushing breakdowns we've come to love from Hamilton's finest sons, all delivered under two minutes but doing more than what most bands do with twice that length.

Girlfriend.: Spitkissing
I was put onto this band by a very good friend of mine, and I'm so glad they showed me them, because Girlfriend. absolutely crush. Spitkissing is sung by the entirety of the band, giving it the feeling of an incantation until the song builts to an explosive crescendo most post-hardcore bands would kill to write. These are definitely a bunch to keep a sharp eye on.

awakebutstillinbed: floor
Awakebutstillinbed released one of the best emo debuts this year, so choosing a song to include was quite tough. However I went with floor, an ode to the death of a toxic friendship. As Shannon's vocals careen from softly sweet to piercing screams, the band veer from the tension in the verses to the squealing, crunchy guitars and organ of the chorus. The deadpan manner in which she sings "you were my best friend, but you fucked up my life" is particularly chilling.

Daughters: The Reason They Hate Me
Daughters came back after 8 years with an album largely built on atmosphere and tension, but that tension has to be released. The release of that tension comes on the stomping, vicious The Reason They Hate Me, Alexis shouting maniacally over searing guitars and a drumbeat resembling a march into the gates of hell. What a band.

Slowthai: doorman (produced by Mura Masa)
Slowthai emerged as one of the most interesting artists to come out of the UK, blurring grime, punk and hip hop into, a vicious, messy but utterly compelling kaleidoscope. On a surprisingly abrasive production by Mura Masa, he delivers rants of a night out gone wrong, perhaps the closest he's gotten to punk sonically. Hopefully we get a full length in 2019.

Peggy Gou: It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)
Dance music is quite interesting in that it's made up of all these elements which you see visualised on a DAW, but often defies intellectualisation and being dissected. It just exists, makes you move your feet. It Makes You Forget (Itgehane) is just a great house song, fresh, sleek, some lovely understated vocals, an infectious melody, a good time had by all.

JPEGMAFIA: Baby I'm Bleeding
Don't compare him to Death Grips. Though they both trade in very abrasive, boundary pushing hip hop, Peggy is a lot more tuned into the way Throbbing Gristle referred to their music as being more like journalism. Yet Peggy's more a creature of the Internet, in the chaotic nature of his music and the way he pushes buttons, from threatening to shoot Donald Trump to calling out the hypocrisy of his contemptaries. Go stream Veteran right now lads, it's a great album.

The Xcerts: First Kiss Feeling
Sometimes you just want a song that feels nice. Like the "movie kiss" Mitski sings about on Nobody, that's a feeling being channeled by the Xcerts on First Kiss Feeling. Drawing from Simple Minds, Tom Petty and the immortal spirit of John Hughes, they've created one of the loveliest songs of 2018 that just needs to be heard by everyone.

Cult Leader: I Am Healed
Sometimes you just want a song that smashes your head into tiny pieces. Cult Leader's latest album did an amazing job of blending their grindcore assault with dark, doomy, gothic passages, but with I Am Healed, they're going full throttle. It's claustrophobic, chaotic, and by the end it seems to collapse into itself.

Yung Beads: Tsundere Bitches
Even though the producer of this song has me blocked on twitter for some reason, I couldn't make an end of year list without including the best anime rapper since Robb Bank$, Yung Beads. Is it the woozy, phonky beat? Is it the chorus? Is it the fact "epic for the win" is a line? Well truthfully it's all those things. Yung Beads up next 2019 y'all heard it here first.

Honorable Mentions (stuff I loved but cba doing a paragraph cause I want to get this piece out soon)

Invader Slim: Mothership
Gouge Away: Only Friend
Unearth: Incinerate
Machine Girl: Congratulations
SOPHIE: Ponyboy