Top 50 Albums Of 2019, 20-11

50-21 | 10-1

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What was once an easy and objective thought - pinpointing what exactly defined the year in music - is now invariably difficult due to the throng of curiosities from every sphere of influence. Do not overlook or be ungrateful of the fact that, thanks to the Internet and its globalist, all-inclusive agenda, music has never been more diverse and distinctive. Every genre up until now, and more created seemingly on a bi-yearly basis, exists in 2019. All it takes is a dash of inquisition, a search bar, and valuable resources to live in musical nirvana.

That is all to say, who knows what 2019's main calling card will be. Previous influencers like Kanye West, Chance The Rapper, and Mac DeMarco fell off gracelessly, while others like Lana Del Rey, Angel Olsen, and Lightning Bolt experienced a much-needed resurgence. Social commentary came as aggressive, in instances like JPEGMAFIA's All My Heroes Are Cornballs, as it did humbling and sympathetic, as seen on Kate Tempest's Books Of Traps & Lessons. Transformations took shape, like the perennial about-facers Tyler, The Creator and King Gizzard, while others doubled down on their rigid aesthetic, like Horrorcore enthusiasts clipping. or demented prophet Lingua Ignota. Newcomers joined the fray, especially in the world of U.K. Rock with artists like black midi, FONTAINES D.C., Black Country New Road, and The Murder Capital all releasing transformative statements on the genre perpetually in a state of decay.

2019 had it all, and was consequently my biggest year yet in terms of listening habits. Nearly 200 albums - many of which reviewed in DoD's revamped Listening Log series - and 2,000 songs have been whittled down, competed against, and subsequently written upon to formulate these lists. Welcome to list week, please enjoy Dozens Of Donuts' Top 100 Tracks and Top 50 Albums of 2019.

And don't forget about the past. Take a look back at the Best Of:
2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

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20

James Blake | Assume Form

Alternative R&B | Listen

It's been sorely forgotten due to the poor January slotting, but James Blake's formal transformation into traditional Alternative R&B musings could not have gone better on Assume Form. While maintaining the sparse refinement and meditational beauty of Blake's early work, Assume Form guided the Singer/Songwriter towards wider audiences through not only trend-worthy feature spots ('Mile High,' 'Tell Them,' 'Barefoot In The Park') but aquatic beauty that aligns swimmingly with Alternative R&B's darkened recesses. The best efforts - excluding the now-customary Andre 3000 takeover ('Where's The Catch?') - all came from Blake himself, be it 'Assume Form' and 'Into The Red's' crashing piano medleys that gently scratch his Glitch influence, or 'Can't Believe The Way We Flow' and 'Don't Miss It' which reflects and emphasizes his past work in soft Glitch Hop with transmuted vocals and ariose bouts of emotional elasticity.

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19

Avey Tare | Cows On Hourglass Pond

Neo-Psychedelia | Listen

In retrospect, Animal Collective's canonized demise came as a result of reprieved ambition gone wrong. The ideas of, say Painting With or Avey Tare's Eucalyptus, convened at oddly specific aesthetics, razing the free-wheeling exaltation that made classics like Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post Pavilion wondrous. Excluding Deakin's Sleep Cycle, which acts like an outlier from AnCo's elective outlier, nothing this decade achieves the expansive growth and childlike whimsy of Cows On Hourglass Pond. Here, Avey Tare combines the skeined Psychedelic Folk that he's grown fond of in recent years, while elevating the Pop elements he's lost. Tracks like 'What’s The Goodside?,' 'K.C. Yours,' and 'HORS_' frolic in waterlogged swamps, the kind that Avey Tare would previously succumb to with languor. Drifting vocals, innocuous acoustics, and a tether to Animal Collective's renowned psychedelics define Cows On Hourglass Pond's success.

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18

Girl Band | The Talkies

Noise Rock | Listen

Formulated dissonance, a made-up term Girl Band incidentally adheres to religiously. Here, in their shrill version of schizoid Experimental Rock, the Dublin rejects forgo traditional structuring and mood palates for something more discomforting, brute, and diabolical. The Talkies is, essentially, satanic Doom Metal without the plainspoken bravado, choosing instead to highlight the depravity and evil twisting like knots inside us all. Comparisons aren't opaque - with obvious connections to Liars, Daughters, Contortions, and more - but there's something unromantic and sobering with every Dara Kiely line that fails to appear elsewhere. Picture Buffalo Bill toying with a victim for 44 minutes, using varying forms of torture as entertainment. Tracks like 'Going Norway,' 'Shoulderblades,' and 'Salmon Of Knowledge' gasconade around rambunctious, full-frontal impalement, while others interject in unexpected ways like 'Akineton' and its visceral lobotomy or 'Laggard's' chainsaw samba. Fear without death is fun, and The Talkies exploits that philosophy to the utmost degree.

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17

Swans | Leaving Meaning.

Experimental Rock | Listen

If I could pinpoint a single album that confronted my perception on art - and therefore instigated my desire to appreciate challenging music - it would be Swans' To Be Kind. Instead of shunning a particularly gruesome, headache-inducing two-hour experience, I trudged through Michael Gira's storied discography to find greatness. And in doing so, found Noise, dissonance, and rancor gratifying given the right circumstances. For Swans' fourth iteration, Gira found symmetry in opposites. Leaving Meaning paired Swans' recent Post-Rock trilogy with their 90's admiration of Gothic Country and Neofolk, using each to demarcate a mentally unstable man battling the incoherency between conspiracy theories and the real world. Beauty pours from tracks like 'Annaline,' 'It's Coming It's Real,' and 'What Is This?' before being usurped by the salivating desire to dismantle established norms with depraved rants and cultish mantras on 'Hanging Man,' 'Sunfucker,' and 'My Phantom Limb.' Leaving Meaning is a disorienting, 93-minute journey not intended for the weak of will, for it personifies that who is at their tether's end.

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16

FONTAINES D.C. | Dogrel

Post-Punk Revival | Listen

There's something about the machismo of United Kingdom lads that strikes me as intriguing. Their rebellious tenacity, mixed with a quizzical determination to progress, overwhelms institutionalized religion and crumbling patriarchy. IDLES are at the forefront of this movement, most notably with their striking track 'Samaritans,' but FONTAINES D.C. looks to be right on their heels. On Dogrel, the Irish outfit subvert the country's long-held norms by making old drinking songs ('Dublin City Sky'), sardonic language ('Too Real'), and traditional quips ('Liberty Belle') about the modern hardships many choose to neglect. On top of all that - like the U.K. bands who've come before them in the Post-Punk scene - there's a great sense of playfulness, congeniality, and acceptance in FONTAINES D.C.'s music. Transplant The Strokes' Is This It to the land of kings and queens and you have Dogrel. A spiked punch to the preservers who lament change.

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15

Weyes Blood | Titanic Rising

Baroque Pop | Listen

Over a decade into her strange, eclectic career and Weyes Blood finally hit gold. Dark Ambient didn't do it. Neither did Avant-Folk or Hypnagogic Pop. In fact, it was a curious conglomeration of the three, resulting in a whimsical, Baroque Pop edifice erected with misery and sacrilege. Titanic Rising captured a moment - detached from reality, ephemeral and fleeting - where music matters most, not the semantics surrounding it. Soaring vocals elevating Alt-Country demure to fanciful majesty unravels itself on tracks like 'Andromeda' and 'Everyday,' before the underbelly of discontent eats away at Weyes Blood on the desperate gasps of 'Movies' and 'Mirror Forever.' Her versatility, or rather the discovery and management of one's own setbacks, causes Titanic Rising to find new voices, new angles, new hope as it teeters towards fulfillment. The lavish, theatrical element can't be understated either, especially with the self-aware peak of 'Movies' depicting what's lies at the heart of a failed artist. 'A Lot's Gonna Change,' 'Wild Time,' and 'Picture Me Better' further exemplify this stagehand heartache, with the bathetic tragedy of Shakespeare hedged into the fold.

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14

sonder | Plainsongs For Bunmak Interim

Progressive Electronic | Listen

This is the music of a maniac obsessed not with sadistic deviance or misanthropic brutality, but rather sparkling euphoria wrapped in future-proof, Industrial machination. sonder's Plainsongs For Bunmak Interim is a 109-minute epic, incorporating every possible avenue of Electronica. From The Orb ('Drug Me With Kindness, So I Can Pretend I Exist') to Fuck Buttons ('Sugar & Opium'), Coil ('Bastard Property') to The Chemical Brothers ('Crown Shyness'), sonder maneuvers elegantly through decades of established genres, some not even created yet. The two most impressive examples of this, 'Give Me A Kiss & Forget The World' and 'Hate & Fear Bore Death,' for strikingly different reasons despite each having no equal. The former, equip with nauseatingly-addictive Futurepop pressed into a Trance shredder, the latter, a genre-disintegrating monument that toys pitilessly with 'Little Drummer Boy.' There's no end to Plainsongs, and even when that time does arrive - with bonus track 'Megan Dragonfly' - The Caretaker's indefinite consciousness sedates with tropical, VR bliss.

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13

Blanck Mass | Animated Violence Mild

Electro-Industrial | Listen

Imagine, if you will, the systematic depression of mass factory farming taken to a utopia where strict rules and regulations for sterility and scrupulousness apply. That's Blanck Mass' genre-driving Animated Violence Mild in a nutshell, an Electro-Industrial powerhouse that maintains the breakneck production of current factory standards with a glossy sheen that removes the rust, dust, and mire from the automated mechanics churning consumer products faster than they're retired. For a genre that typically preoccupies itself with dark recesses and irascible behavior, Blanck Mass' third LP is a breath of fresh air, one that highlights max saturation through campy panache. Nowhere is that seen better than standout 'House Vs. House,' an odyssey into the future of Pop where melodies are only overtaken by a universal language that all can savor. 'No Dice,' over its disjointed, robotic grooves, reaches that same, indecipherable promised land, while closer 'Wings Of Hate' bombards the listener with Uplifting Trance that forecasts a zealous Internet stream forever consuming those it encircles.

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12

The National | I Am Easy To Find

Chamber Pop | Listen

There comes a time in a successful bands career where even they get bored of the standardization involuntarily present. For The National that came around Sleep Well Beast, a great album by any metric but one that lacked exposure within their stout catalogue. I Am Easy To Find did not fall victim to that same fate, becoming the band's most ambitious record at 63 minutes and 16 tracks. But beyond that it was the robust feature list, guest starring a slew of female vocalists to play off Matt Berninger and his exhausting quest for romantic fidelity. The petrifying duality helped instill the cycle we all endure for love. Suffice to say the lyrics, as is always the case with The National, was written with a sophisticated pen, best seen on standouts 'I Am Easy To Find,' 'Not In Kansas,' and 'Rylan.' The latter, one of The National's all-time best songs, also helped introduce a new layer into the band; Indietronica. Seen elsewhere on 'You Had Your Soul With You' and 'The Pull Of You,' the tantalizing new direction still paled in comparison to The National's textbook Chamber Pop if 'Where Is Her Head,' 'Hairpin Turns,' and 'Light Years' we're any indication.

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11

Thom Yorke | ANIMA

Glitch Pop | Listen

As far as unique perspectives go, few cumulate more interest than Thom Yorke's. Even - or especially, considering respective quality this decade - as a solo artist, the Radiohead frontman's delight in inventing worlds lingers to the point of infection. ANIMA tracks Yorke's obsession with our collective dreamscapes, using his now-textbook Glitch Pop - brandished here with the unnerving Jungle pulsation brought on by his work with Four Tet and Burial - to transpose a dystopian reality through intelligible measures. See the outstanding short film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, in which a somniferous Yorke breaks loose of the daily grind in order to experience something unnatural, for a lucid retreatment of ANIMA's aesthetic. Tracks like 'Traffic,' 'Twist,' and 'Not The News' set IDM on a course for the stars, conflating the hypnotic emancipation of dreams with an onset of anxiety, discontent, and regret brought on by nightmares. All while agilely contorting danceable rhythms like the body, as machine, would were quandaries present. Though nothing quite aspires to climax 'Dawn Chorus,' a marvelous moment of respite where reverie overtakes all. A fantasy situated dead center inside a fever dream.

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50-21 | 10-1 | Top 100 Tracks