::Cracks knuckles:: ::stretches:: ::yawns:: Ohhh hey, we’re back! Welcome to 2019, and all of the greatness a fresh year can provide! I’m more than pleased to kick off the year with an extended edition of Pick Your Poison, which is just a roundabout way of saying you get song downloads AND streams in one gigantic mixtape of sorts. Let’s get started with mp3s from Autechre, Blake Banks, Memory Keepers (covering Brian Eno), and Young Hunting. In the Soundcloud section after the jump, you can stream more songs from Black Pistol Fire, Craig Brown Band, Good Gas (ft. 0k.Caash, G.U.N & FKi 1st), Jhené Aiko, Manics, Mark Diamond, MIKE, Miss Grit, Spielbergs, Valee (ft. DRAM), Yoste, and Young & Sick.
BVFFF – Where Did We Go Wrong/a>
Autechre – sinistrail sentinel
Memory Keepers – Third Uncle (Brian Eno cover)
Sail By Summer – Facing Dullness
The Waitress – Somebody Mentioned Christmas
Time to close out 2018 on a high note. While it’s been a pretty rough year overall for a number of different reasons, I’d like to think this was one of the better years in recent memory for quality music. There’s been a really rich array of artists coming into their own by exploring new ideas and sonic territories, while some of the “old guard” either took a break or released material that might best be regarded as sub par. It’s been a thrill watching brilliant songwriters like Mitski and Janelle Monae hit new career highs in terms of acclaim and popularity, while Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, Noname, Cardi B, and Kali Uchis all came out with strong debut albums that fulfilled their early promise. If you didn’t find a whole lot of new music to love this year, you weren’t looking hard enough. Maybe this list of Top 50 Albums can help! My sincerest hope is that you discover at least one new artist or record below that you hadn’t heard of or listened to before today, but even if you don’t, feel free to hand write me letters about how wrong these rankings are and all the great albums I somehow “missed” this year. Seriously though, I do love your feedback, so feel free to comment, email, or use the old social media to get in touch and share your thoughts! Oh, and before I forget, here’s some other year-end list things you might want to check out:
There were a lot of really great songs released in 2018. Actually, there are a lot of great songs released in any given year, and definitely more than a list of 50 can fully contain. But I’ve got to try anyway. The 50 songs in the list below feel like a relatively comprehensive chronicle of what it was like living through 2018, though I suppose if it were truly accurate there’d be a lot more depressing shit that’d turn most people off. Overall I’d say this is a strong balance of mood, tempo, style, and genre I sincerely hope will leave you feeling satisfied. The most fascinating thing to me about this year’s list is that the top two songs are not currently part of any full-length album. As for the unofficial “rules” behind the selections for the Top 50 Songs, there are only two: the song must have been officially released by an artist or band in 2018, and no artist is allowed to be featured more than once (for diversity’s sake). While there are audio streams and in some cases videos to accompany each song (apologies for the couple of live videos, as album versions were unavailable), you can also stream the entire list (minus one song) via the Spotify embed at the bottom of this post, or by going to 
