My favourite music from 2019

Lists
Written By Akhil Srivatsan

Every year, I assiduously list down albums I believe to be the best from the year. This exercise serves two purposes. One, to document the music that moved me, both for myself and others. Two, to announce to a faceless audience, here’s how amazing my taste in music is; you should take my taste in music very seriously, take this list very seriously, and on a side note, don’t I have an interesting writing voice? 

For the past few years, I couldn’t articulate that I was making these lists for these reasons, but with age comes self-awareness. Armed with this new self-awareness, I hope to make 2019’s list with a focus entirely on the first, and not at all on the second. Of course, I don’t expect to entirely succeed, but the least I hope for is that I share this music with an open heart, with authenticity. More broadly, I hope that with repeated practice I can write about the things that matter to me with fewer pretensions.

Top tier

  • Puppy - The Goat

  • Prabh Deep - K I N G

  • DIIV - Deceiver

Great albums

  • Bon Iver - i,i

  • CHAI - PUNK

  • Lifafa - Jaago

  • These New Puritans - Inside The Rose

  • Gum Takes Tooth - Arrow

  • Helado Negro - This Is How You Smile

  • Leif - Loom Dream

  • Sturgill Simpson Presents Sound & Fury

  • Deerhunter - Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?

  • Russian Circles - Blood Year

  • MORTIFERUM - Disgorged From Psychotic Depths

  • Crumb - Jinx

Really good albums

  • Fontaines DC - Dogrel

  • Caterina Barbieri - Ecstatic Computation

  • Torche - Admission

  • Lana Del Ray - Norman Fucking Rockwell

  • Powder - Powder In Space

  • Denzel Curry - ZUU

  • Yu Su - 泉出通川为谷 / Roll With The Punches

  • black midi - Schlagenheim

  • Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow

  • Matmos - Plastic Anniversary

  • Big Thief - U.F.O.F. and Two Hands

  • Florist - Emily Alone

  • Employed to Serve - Eternal Forward Motion

  • Pile - Green and Gray

  • Tim Hecker - Anoyo

  • Rian Treanor - ATAXIA

  • Cult Of Luna - A Dawn To Fear

  • Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿

  • FEELS - Post Earth

  • Sandro Perri - Soft Landing

  • Black Marble - Bigger Than Life

Albums I’m still trying to pin down

  • Fat White Family - Serf’s Up

  • slowthai - Nothing Great About Britain

  • Thom Yorke - Anima

  • Flying Lotus - Flamagra

  • Teeth Of The Sea - Wraith

  • Deathspell Omega - The Furnaces Of Palingenesia

  • Metz - Automat

Special mentions // Not strictly albums, but top-tier music-related discoveries

Akhil Srivatsan
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