Music: 2018 in review

MUSIC

I felt a disconnect to music in 2017, but happily things improved in 2018. While I didn’t listen to that many new releases I did listen to a lot of older music (mostly from familiar artists) that I either hadn’t heard or hadn’t connected with before and for a while I got pretty obsessed with music again, which was a great feeling. So while the bulk of the albums I listened to this last year were actually not released in 2018 there was some great current stuff in there too.

Here’s a collection of some of my favourite music from the last year, informed by my listening data from last.fm.

A L B U M S

I was really looking forward to Interpol‘s Marauder and it didn’t disappoint. I played it obsessively for about 2 months after it came out. In fact repetitive and obsessive replays is what all my favourite albums have in common this year.

Backtracking from Marauder’s August release: I spent the earlier months of the year still stuck in a bit of a rut of musical indifference and was struggling to connect to anything. I was re-listening to a lot of old favourites but they weren’t really doing the trick. While I wasn’t actively looking for recommendations I kept seeing people talking about A Perfect Circle’s Eat the Elephant. As it was the band’s first album since 2004 it was newsworthy but moreover people seemed to like it.

I’d never been a fan, for the simple (and uninformed) reason that my only exposure to APC had been the eMOTIVe album. Fifteen year old me had found it pretty boring (admittedly twenty-nine year old me agrees though some of the songs have grown on me) and being uninspired to look further into the band I dismissed them as “a covers project from Tool’s vocalist”. I honestly didn’t know their other 2 albums existed…so when I went to listen to a few of the new singles and then went back and heard the older stuff I was hooked pretty much immediately.

It’s really weird because I’ve never been a huge Tool fan either though Parabola has been one of my favourite songs forever and I listened to 10 000 Days a lot in high school…again, for whatever reason, I just never really looked any further into much of it until recently.

I spent about 6 months going deep into a Maynard James Keenan appreciation voyage, revisiting a lot of stuff I knew and discovering the rest for the first time. It was awesome. And it really got me excited to be (obsessively) listening to music again for the first time in ages. Objectively Eat the Elephant is not an amazing album in my opinion, but I did listen to it a lot and it served as a kind of musical gateway for me and for that I’m gratefully awarding it a top slot.

The other 2018 release that made a notable impression on me was Medicine Boy‘s Lower. It’s a gorgeous album and another one I had on repeat solidly for a month.

Favourite albums:

Others I enjoyed, in no particular order:

Albums I missed in the past and really enjoyed last year:

Drab Majesty — The Demonstration (2016)
The Raveonettes — In and Out of Control (2009)
Alice in Chains — Dirt (1992)
Nightmare Air — High In The Lasers (2013)
The Constructus Corporation — The Ziggurat (2003)

A R T I S T S

Adding this section because I got very obsessed over several artists this last year and proceeded to play their back catalogues to death, so this was neater than listing all their albums. None of them are new to me but I was hearing the bulk of their music for the first time:

A Perfect Circle
Tool
Dead Can Dance
Puscifer
The Raveonettes

T R A C K S

Favourite track:

A Perfect Circle — Get the Lead Out

Others I enjoyed, in no particular order:

Tracks I missed in previous years and really enjoyed last year:

The Raveonettes — Gone Forever
A Perfect Circle — 3 Libras
Dead Can Dance — Opium
DRAB MAJESTY — 39 by Design
Interpol — The Depths
Tool — Schism
Familjen — Sångerna Handlar Om Oss
Puscifer — Cuntry Boner “Disco Viagra Mix”
Gleemer — Gauze
Francois Van Coke — Toe Vind Ek Jou (feat. Karen Zoid)

L I V E

Most enjoyable gigs I’ve attended this year:

I was incredibly lucky to see some unforgettable shows in 2018.

The year kicked off with a string of impressive international acts in Cape Town: Incubus in February, Myles Kennedy’s first show in his world tour in March, a beautiful evening at Kirstenbosch with Morcheeba in April and God Mother’s amazing show at ROAR (the final one for me at the iconic venue) in May.

At the end of May until mid June I traveled across Scandinavia* and saw some of my all-time favourite artists as well as some others who also blew me away. While in Oslo my mom and I saw a shared favourite of ours: Danish rockers Nephew. It was such a cool show at a venue (John Dee) that reminded me of the Assembly back in the day (only smaller!) and standing front and centre for a band that sells out Copenhagen stadiums and headlines festivals like Roskilde was an amazing experience.

Mid-June while in Denmark I attended 2 days of the NorthSide Festival in Aarhus. It was also a really unforgettable experience and full of highlights. Top of the list had to be watching The National. I cried, a few times. And went full fan-girl when Matt Berninger climbed out into the crowd right in front of me (and I was able to walk along side him for a while till the crowd swallowed him up). Unreal.

Then there was A Perfect Circle. As I mentioned earlier, this year brought me new appreciation for this band and I thoroughly enjoyed their set, which included 2 older favourites of mine, The Hollow and The Package. Hearing Maynard sing live was damn near spiritual.

Those two performances alone were worth attending the festival, but NorthSide continued to provide memorable experiences: watching Björk was surreal. The first CD I ever bought was a second hand copy of Post, and growing up she had a big impact on me (I once even recreated her iconic swan dress for a fancy dress party). I never ever thought I’d get the opportunity to see her live, and though the performance wasn’t the best, the experience was incredible.

I also got to watch QOTSA, Body Count, Aurora, Cigarettes after sex, Liam Gallagher and NERD…people overseas really are spoilt when it comes to festival lineups. I wrote a review about the festival for TATC over here, and have some pics up over here.

The latter half of the year was dominated by stand-out local performances:

Texx and the City’s After Dark series at the Aquarium was lovely and I look forward to the second series later this year. I didn’t have a great time at Oppikoppi but watching Hellcats destroy the top bar made the weekend for me. Francois van Coke en Vriende at the Sun Arena in Pretoria was such a special show and a truly world-class production. While it really felt like a once-in-a-lifetime kinda show, if there was to be a Cape Town edition I’d be super stoked to see it again.

Endless Daze was lovely as ever and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The line-up was great and while the locals held their own, American headliners A Place to Bury Strangers were particularly hypnotic, and provided one of the most entertaining performances I’d seen all year.

And on the subject of highly entertaining performances, Die Antwoord put on a super slick show at the Biscuit Mill at the end of December, which closed off the year nicely.

– – –

Happy new year and happy listening in 2019!

* I’m getting slower and slower at processing and posting travel pics so I have no idea when I’ll get around to doing the Scandinavian ones…but some pics from NorthSide are up over here and there are some other travel pics up on my Instagram in the meantime

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