Have you ever talked to your parents about what it was like to live through the late ’60s? National leaders were gunned down right and left. Entire generations were asserting themselves loudly. War was erupting, and nobody seemed quite certain why. People were walking on the moon. Hippie cults were chopping people up. A few years later, those same parents witnessed the swift dissolution of a corrupt presidential regime, learning the names of aides and functionaries and reporters while watching the entire thing swirl the drain. It must’ve been disorienting — a whole world coming unmoored, offering no sense of what might come next.
We don’t have to ask our parents about that era anymore, since we’re living through one of our own right now. The news has turned hallucinatory, phantasmagorical. We’re constantly confronted by roiling blasts of global insanity, incoherent culture-war battles, petty grievances aired out on the biggest stages. One moment, Roseanne Barr emerges from the wilderness and suddenly has one of the most successful shows on TV. The next moment, she’s throwing around racist epithets on Twitter, and she’s banished back to the wilderness, leaving even more fighting in her wake. It’s fucking nuts. And we don’t just see this when we glance at morning newspapers, the way our parents might’ve done. All this shit is constantly erupting on our phones, every day. We can’t hide.
2018 isn’t halfway over yet. We know that. We’re barely five months in, even if it’s already felt like an eon or two. But we’re still taking a moment to recognize the music, maybe the only thing that’s been dependably great this year. Some of the year’s best albums have been the ones that work as soothing balms: The pop-drone blissouts, the space-country wanderings, the fuzzy DIY meditations. Some have been cathartic exorcisms: The brash-elder rap throwdowns, the grimy postpunk wallows, the center-of-the-mind metal odysseys. Some of them have been engines of pure delight: The Cardi B album. A few have been all of those things at once.
All the albums on this list were picked by the votes of the people on your Stereogum staff. Any LP released between the beginning of January and the end of June was eligible, excluding the ones that we haven’t heard yet. It’s unlikely you’ve heard every album we picked, and there is every chance that you will find something on this list that you needed to hear, something that will make the rest of this godforsaken year a little more bearable. —Tom Breihan
50 Jeff Rosenstock – POST- (Quote Unquote / Polyvinyl)
The DIY pop-punk baron and former Bomb The Music Industry! frontman Jeff Rosenstock surprise-released his third album on New Year’s Day. It’s a document of the fucked-up year that had just happened, and it might serve as a warning of the possibly-even-more-fucked-up year that would follow. In his furious nasal bleat, Rosenstock sings about being young and broken and numb and terrified and distracted in a newly fascist America, fretting about families at rest stops and TV stars who don’t care about who you are. And he somehow translates all these anthems into fiery, bouncy punk anthems that, in their spirited catchiness, begin to reveal the possibility of hope, or at least catharsis. —Tom
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
49 Playboi Carti – Die Lit (AWGE / Interscope)
Have y’all heard the probably apocryphal rumor about Playboi Carti and the soup? As the story goes, on a first date, “Carti ordered two different bowls of soup and mixed them together one spoonful at a time before eating both bowls mixed together as one soup.” Maybe this is why when I listen to Die Lit I hear soup — multiple flavors of computerized bisque and stew dutifully spooned together by producer Pi’erre Bourne for Carti to swim in. As is his custom, Carti mostly luxuriates, lazy river style, never seemingly trying very hard but apparently enjoying himself quite a bit. Take a dip with no expectations and maybe you will too. —Chris DeVille
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music
48 Screaming Females – All At Once (Don Giovanni)
Marissa Paternoster’s voice is the relentless force and central instrument that drives Screaming Females’ All At Once. Her howling vibrato doesn’t necessarily outshine the fired-up shredding or evocative lyricism. Rather, it makes those elements feel that much grander. The expression “I’ll make you sorry” never sounded as sly and, frankly, believable as it does coming out of Paternoster’s mouth. A sense of restless intensity translates stylistically, too. All At Once is a feverish rock n’ roll album, pieced together with power-pop grooves, punk progressions, indie-rock melodies, and even a hint of ska. But as ever, Paternoster is the star. When she sings, “The sun destroys me,” on “Agnes Martin,” it doesn’t sound hyperbolic; it sounds as if she’s on the verge of melting. —Julia Gray
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
47 Jean Grae & Quelle Chris – Everything’s Fine (Mello Music Group)
“Everything’s fine” can mean an infinite number of things and mask any emotion we feel as humans. Artful veterans Jean Grae and Quelle Chris have managed to capture the enormity of that deceptively standard response on this tag-team offering. They pulled off such a feat with a deft mixture of dark comedy, astute satire, playfulness, and rare but biting seriousness. If they had done it any other way, it could easily have been written off as another trite response to 45’s first year. But the adroitness in their approach in combination with their dynamic as a duo — Grae’s tongue-twisting density offset by Chris’ smooth simplicity — make this a canny study of what it means to be well right now. —Collin Robinson
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
46 Hot Snakes – Jericho Sirens (Sub Pop)
It’s not quite a comeback of A Tribe Call Quest proportions, but like LeBron James, the Hot Snakes are at the top of their game 14 years later. Some people are quick to say amp music is long dead and gone, but never has the slithering ones’ ominous imagery, layers of guitar, and seemingly bottomless low-end felt more fit for the times. The controlled, rhythmic chaos of Jericho Sirens is a great soundtrack for a moment when things feel downright apocalyptic for damn near everyone for the first time in a long while. Maybe punk has just gone so aloof that it has come full circle. Who knew? —Collin
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
45 Frankie Cosmos – Vessel (Sub Pop)
“Can you tell anyone this stuff?” Greta Kline sings at one point on Vessel. For years now, she’s been telling us this stuff, gifting us her innermost thoughts and feelings packaged into bite-sized indie-pop gems. Vessel might only be Frankie Cosmos’ third full-band studio album and first for Sub Pop, but counting the project’s DIY Bandcamp roots, it’s the 52nd release overall. In that time, Kline’s built up a musical language all her own, the wry, disarmingly honest observations spilling from her mouth surrounded by charming, melodically direct indie rock. And even as she sings about the messy, unpredictable realities of life, the band behind her sounds tighter and cleaner than ever. —Peter Helman
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
44 Now, Now – Saved (Trans-)
Six years is a long time in between albums, but KC Dalager and Brad Hale were putting in the work. It’s clear from the abundance of razor-sharp hooks on Saved — Now, Now’s first album since 2012 — that their revamped sound and attitude was both deliberate and hard-earned. Gone is the insular handwringing of their early work, much of it recorded in their teens and early 20s, replaced with spirited songs about unrequited loves and the loss of faith in others and yourself. It’s an album about being an adult that feels youthful and fresh, rejuvenated by the freedom of creative expression. —James Rettig
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
43 MGMT – Little Dark Age (Columbia)
In which MGMT return from the brink of coherence to deliver the weirdo synth-pop album some of their fans have been waiting a decade for. The first words you hear on Little Dark Age are “Get ready to have some fun. Alright, here we go!” The band may have sampled those words in jest — they’re from a workout video, on a song called “She Works Out Too Much” — but the album lives up to the promise anyway. The festival-rocking grandeur of Oracular Spectacular is never coming back, but the playful, melodious new wave we get instead here is one of 2018 music’s most pleasant surprises. —Chris
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music
42 Caroline Says – No Fool Like An Old Fool (Western Vinyl)
No Fool Like An Old Fool is Caroline Sallee’s second LP under the moniker Caroline Says. The Austin-via-Alabama singer-songwriter’s debut 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong reflected on loneliness, love, and home after embarking on a West Coast road trip and returning her to her hometown. She recorded it in her parents’ basement. With her new album, Sallee is in a similar state of mind, again after having visited her hometown. She recorded this one in her apartment, careful not to disturb her landlord who lives upstairs. A quiet sensitivity persists, owed in part to those circumstances. Her old-soul perspective is felt in retrospective meditations on small-town life. The sonic atmosphere is thick and gentle like fog. Textured melodies swirl into hypnosis, looping in psychedelic folk and melancholic bossa nova. Sallee might be stuck recording on the bottom floor, but she sounds anything but restrained. —Julia
HEAR IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp