{"id":1253997,"date":"2019-12-11T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1253997"},"modified":"2019-12-11T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T11:00:00","slug":"the-best-rock-albums-of-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1253997","title":{"rendered":"The Best Rock Albums of 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lists & Guides<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Best Rock Albums of 2019<\/h1>\n
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From Big Thief\u2019s twin masterworks to Brittany Howard\u2019s bold solo debut, these were the guitar records we loved most this year.<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Pitchfork<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Illustration by Drew Litowitz. Images via Getty Images.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The following list, sorted alphabetically, includes rock albums found on Pitchfork\u2019s main year-end tally as well as an additional 14 LPs that did not make that list but are just as worthy of your time.<\/p>\n

Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.<\/p>\n

Check out all of Pitchfork\u2019s 2019 wrap-up coverage here.<\/p>\n

(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)<\/p>\n

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Jagjaguwar<\/p>\n

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Angel Olsen: All Mirrors<\/em><\/h2>\n

With each record, Angel Olsen\u2019s music grows grander and darker, and on All Mirrors<\/em>, she spreads her leathery wings and nearly blots out the sky. Her most dramatic release yet, All Mirrors<\/em> telegraphs to us in Andrew Lloyd Webber-sized gestures: When Olsen’s voice ascends an octave on \u201cLark,\u201d the accompanying drum resounds like a cannon aimed at a fortress, and the dive-bombing glissandos from the orchestra mimic debris streaming around her. Over the album\u2019s inky expanse, Olsen tries out an entirely new, gothic corner of her record collection: The Cure\u2019s Disintegration<\/em>, Cocteau Twins\u2019 Heaven or Las Vegas<\/em>, Siouxsie and the Banshees. Even at its gauziest, however, Olsen\u2019s music still thrums with anxiety; her version of dream-pop is unsettled by existential terror, which prickles to the surface of \u201cToo Easy\u201d and \u201cWhat It Is\u201d like fever sweat. \u2013Jayson Greene<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Big Thief: Two Hands<\/em><\/h2>\n

By the time Big Thief released U.F.O.F.<\/em> this past May, you might\u2019ve thought they deserved some time off: It was their third album in four years. But not five months later came Two Hands<\/em>, which is as much an exorcism as its predecessor. Violence ripples through these songs like a vein of quartz\u2014\u201cRock and Sing\u201d might be a children\u2019s lullaby about lost souls, \u201cThe Toy\u201d an intimation of great evil. Warmed by humming amps and the presence of four bodies pressed in close, the album unspools as effortlessly as a campfire session\u2014stray counterpoints, offhand vocal harmonies, tiny details dancing like shadows on the treeline. At a time when it feels like no patch of ground is immune from either flood or fire, Two Hands<\/em> draws a circle and creates a refuge there. \u2013Philip Sherburne<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Big Thief: U.F.O.F.<\/em><\/h2>\n

Like white light refracted through a prism to reveal an array of colors, ordinary words and phrases\u2014wrinkled hands, silver hair, clear water\u2014take on new meanings when sung by Big Thief\u2019s Adrianne Lenker. U.F.O.F<\/em>, the first of two stellar albums the band released this year, sounds at once exploratory and wise, as if they are both seeing the world with fresh wonder while explaining the way things have always been. On bulked-up folky rock songs like \u201cJenni\u201d and \u201cBetsy,\u201d Lenker\u2019s winding voice twists through a dense weave of vine-like guitars and brittle drums, acting as a sonic anchor while the rhythm swirls around her. The lyrics are elliptical yet striking, so successful at filling you with what feels like an ancient longing that it sometimes feels like you\u2019re discovering a new language entirely. \u2013Vrinda Jagota<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Black Belt Eagle Scout: At the Party With My Brown Friends<\/em><\/h2>\n

Katherine Paul, aka Portland\u2019s Black Belt Eagle Scout, creates rock music in delicate soft focus. Her second album, At the Party With My Brown Friends<\/em>, offers a serene glimpse inside her world\u2014or at least a serene-sounding<\/em> one. Led by a majestic vocal melody, opening track \u201cAt the Party\u201d celebrates the strength inherent to Indigenous peoples while still mourning the marginalization that makes it so. \u201cYou\u2019re Me and I\u2019m You\u201d pays homage to her mother\u2019s open heart and Native Alaskan heritage, with close-mic\u2019d vocals and brushed drums adding to the intimate feeling. Not every song on the album is as clear in its intention\u2014Paul\u2019s half-finished thoughts provide a dreamy sense of stasis throughout\u2014but all are deeply felt. \u2013Eric Torres<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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black midi: Schlagenheim<\/em><\/h2>\n

In 2019, black midi taught a new generation of indie kids that prog and punk aren\u2019t as different as sometimes advertised. The London quartet\u2019s debut album, Schlagenheim<\/em>, juggles flashy technical sophistication and raw fuck-you energy in a way that sometimes inspires older listeners to draw up lists of comparisons. And black midi would be impressive enough if they were \u201cjust\u201d this year\u2019s answer to Public Image Ltd.-Slint-Deerhoof-Battles-These New Puritans-Your Example Here. But form-defying freakouts like \u201cbmbmbm\u201d sound so certain they\u2019re the future of guitar music, you\u2019ll probably want to believe it, too. With touches of synth, drum machine, and accordion, Schlagenheim<\/em> shows these young masters of the herky-jerky starting to grow into their studio-wizard potential. \u2013Marc Hogan<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Bon Iver: i,i<\/em><\/h2>\n

In form and function, Bon Iver\u2019s fourth album is an act of protest. You can see its vision of egalitarianism across the LP\u2019s inner gatefold, which shows obscured portraits of the 52 people who helped create the record. You can hear its selflessness in the myriad tones, instruments, voices, and happy accidents that come and go, subverting ego while sidestepping excess. Even the title i,i<\/em> nods to the Rastafarian idea of \u201cI and I,\u201d of oneness. Of course, Justin Vernon\u2019s elastic howl will always be the catalyst that transforms Bon Iver from just another experimental indie rock project to a quasi-religious cult of emotion, but on i,i<\/em>, he sounds like he\u2019s simply flowing through a slipstream, his load lightened.<\/p>\n

The songs follow an elusive\u2014and affecting\u2014dream logic. With its queasy synths, snatches of stray trumpet, and gas mask imagery, \u201cJelmore\u201d conjures a landscape from a not-too-distant future that\u2019s been left desolate by climate change. \u201cSh\u2019diah\u201d\u2014which Vernon began writing the morning after the 2016 election, with a title that stands for \u201cshittiest day in American history\u201d\u2014fights the ugliness of modern politics with an understated call for rationality. \u201cU (Man Like)\u201d is a piano ballad that urges men to do better. \u201cPower has come to me,\u201d Vernon said earlier this year, \u201cbut it\u2019s not fun to wield by yourself.\u201d i,i<\/em> is the solution, a collective effort as endless as it is empathetic. \u2013Ryan Dombal<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Boy Scouts: Free Company<\/em><\/h2>\n

\u201cEmpathetic\u201d is a word that often gets tossed around with music like Oakland\u2019s Boy Scouts\u2014catchy indie rock with simple but thoughtful lyrics and a casual ease to the sound. But real empathy comes from a deeper place: the personal growth that necessitated the songs\u2019 existence. Boy Scouts\u2019 Taylor Vick called her latest album Free Company<\/em> because she thought of its songs as her company during a rough patch after a breakup. And it\u2019s clear Vick is deeply emotionally invested in the company she keeps: the album highlight is \u201cGet Well Soon,\u201d a masterful nudge to a recovering, possibly-in-denial friend. \u2013Jillian Mapes<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Brittany Howard: Jaime<\/em><\/h2>\n

Brittany Howard named her debut solo album after her older sister, who died when Brittany was eight years old. While there\u2019s no song explicitly about her on Jaime<\/em>, there is urgent advice about how to live with the time we\u2019re given: by refusing hatred and spreading love in fractious times; by dismissing inattentive partners and acting on desire. That immediacy pervades the sound of Howard\u2019s solo debut, which is less wedded to genre than her work with Alabama Shakes and Thunderbitch. When the spirit calls for sparkling old soul, it\u2019s there, as on the perennially festive \u201cStay High\u201d; when Howard addresses a racist attack on her mixed-race parents, she doesn\u2019t smooth over the stumbling piano refrain, nor her stunned delivery. The magnetic scrappiness doubles as a bracing alert. \u2013Laura Snapes<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Cate Le Bon: Reward<\/em><\/h2>\n

While writing the songs that would become her fifth album, Welsh singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon spent a year studying furniture-building at an English architecture school, living alone in a cabin in England\u2019s rural Lake District. On Reward<\/em>, Le Bon proves herself to be a canny architect of another kind: one gifted at making dense sonic arrangements feel somehow weightless. These songs are intimate and personal, with Le Bon carefully leveraging a broader, deeper palette of instrumentation than on past work. Elastic, off-kilter guitar lines carry the prickly \u201cMother\u2019s Mother\u2019s Magazines,\u201d while \u201cSad Nudes\u201d floats along slack percussion and metallic adornments. Her layers of guitars, synths, saxes, and more make Reward<\/em> feel lavish but never overstuffed. With everything in its just-right place, Le Bon’s precise touches on Reward<\/em> are prizes in their own right. \u2013Allison Hussey<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Chai: PUNK<\/em><\/h2>\n

PUNK<\/em>, the second album from Nagoya, Japan\u2019s Chai, is as anthemic and glossy as it is insurgent. Throughout the record, the quartet subtly distort their sugar-pie group vocals, whisking them into frenzied disco-grrrl guitars, hectic brass bleats, and fluorescent electro blips. They pierce the conformist pressures of contemporary Asian femininity without clich\u00e8s or sloganeering: \u201cToo much makeup\/Just lips and eyebrows all set,\u201d chirps frontwoman Mana in Japanese. \u201cGlossy yellow skin\/Have nothing more than this.\u201d Looking like what society demands of you isn\u2019t weakness, they seem to say\u2014it just means you can start your fire within its walls. \u2013Stacey Anderson<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Charly Bliss: Young Enough<\/em><\/h2>\n

Young Enough<\/em>, the second album from Brooklyn alt-rockers Charly Bliss, is a vibrant chronicle of personal recalibration. Across 11 arena-ready tracks, singer\/guitarist Eva Hendricks and her close-knit band turn an abusive relationship and the attendant fear-shame spiral into a kiss-off masterpiece, glittering with hope and spiked with synths. Like a lot of great pop music, the details are sharp but the songs strive to feel universally cathartic. \u201cWe\u2019re young enough\/To believe it should hurt this much,\u201d Hendricks sings on the cinematic title track, knowing just how wrong that notion is now. \u2013Jillian Mapes<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Control Top: Covert Contracts<\/em><\/h2>\n

The first album from Philadelphia\u2019s Control Top works with brutal efficiency. Taking cues from the insistent rhythms of the Slits and the bright riffs of new wave, the trio\u2019s strident yet melodic post-punk is an antidote for anyone feeling oppressed, exhausted, or just plain stultified by modern life under a capitalist patriarchy. Bassist\/singer Ali Carter\u2019s lyrics fuel the kind of motivating anger that cuts through political disillusionment with surgical sharpness: \u201cWe\u2019re in a black hole\/Of our own making,\u201d she screams on \u201cBlack Hole.\u201d \u201cWe have solutions\/Yet no one\u2019s debating.\u201d The point of Covert Contracts<\/em> isn\u2019t that Control Top have all the answers, it\u2019s that they know something is very wrong\u2014and they\u2019re willing to stay pissed about it. \u2013Anna Gaca<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Crumb: Jinx<\/em><\/h2>\n

Crumb\u2019s debut LP has some hallmarks of a band that would<\/em> be popular in 2019: jazz-influenced psych rock with crisp drums that brace an otherwise warbly, lo-fi aesthetic, complete with honeyed vocals dripped into the mix. But listening past admittedly excellent singles like \u201cNina\u201d and \u201cFall Down\u201d reveals a group with greater ambitions than simply summoning a vibe. Fakeouts and knotty grooves abound on \u201cThe Letter,\u201d while the languid pace and haunting atmospherics of \u201cAnd It Never Ends\u201d feel calmly oppressive, like King Krule taking a stab at Kid A<\/em>. The Brooklyn quartet may flirt with modern stoner rock tropes, but Jinx<\/em> doesn\u2019t let you just relax. \u2013Noah Yoo<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Deerhunter: Why Hasn\u2019t Everything Already Disappeared?<\/em><\/h2>\n

Deerhunter albums have always reflected the changing state of frontman Bradford Cox. The band\u2019s first album in four years\u2014and first since the 2016 election\u2014finds the famously mercurial singer in a contemplative mood: \u201cWhat happens to people?\u201d he asks. Apparently everything, and nothing, all at once. Culled from recent writing sessions as well as drafts from the Microcastle<\/em> and Halcyon Digest<\/em> eras, Why Hasn\u2019t Everything Already Disappeared?<\/em> features the sort of intricate, expertly recorded indie rock we\u2019ve come to expect from Cox and co. Though co-producer Cate Le Bon\u2019s dramatic hallmarks are present in the horn flourishes of \u201cNo One\u2019s Sleeping\u201d or the pointed marimba on \u201cTarnung,\u201d they never overpower the band\u2019s long-simmering chemistry. Nothing is masked by reverberant textures; with every wry turn of phrase, you can feel the music shifting to meet Cox\u2019s new outlook. He\u2019s evolved, in his own way, and Deerhunter have too. \u2013Noah Yoo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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DIIV: Deceiver<\/em><\/h2>\n

The first time Zachary Cole Smith tried to make an album about getting sober, the DIIV frontman wasn\u2019t ready to be honest\u2014with fans, with the people around him, or even with himself. A year after releasing 2016\u2019s beloved Is the Is Are<\/em>, Smith re-entered treatment for heroin addiction. A stretch of radio silence followed, before more and more tour dates gave way to this summer\u2019s announcement of Deceiver<\/em>. Recorded with producer Sonny Diperri, who previously engineered for My Bloody Valentine, DIIV\u2019s third album draws deeply on the gossamer textures and double-tracked vocals that define shoegaze. Gone is the surface-level catchiness that drew listeners into the first two DIIV LPs, replaced by intricate songwriting that reveals itself further with each listen. With Deceiver<\/em>, DIIV seek to reinvent themselves for themselves, and nobody else. \u2013Noah Yoo<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Girlpool: What Chaos Is Imaginary<\/em><\/h2>\n

On What Chaos Is Imaginary<\/em>, Girlpool\u2019s Avery Tucker and Harmony Tividad push past any lingering codependent habits from their teenage years of writing together. Following two fairly lo-fi records of eerily intertwined introspection, they find their own distinct voices within heavier soundscapes of emo-tinged slowcore and distorted dream pop. Though their songwriting continues to be veiled in poetic abstractions, they dig deeper into surrealism and careful uncertainty here. \u201cCreate the vague you need,\u201d Tucker murmurs on murky closer \u201cRoses,\u201d doing just that. \u2013Quinn Moreland<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Jenny Lewis: On the Line<\/em><\/h2>\n

As West Coast fabulists go, Jenny Lewis is in a league entirely of her own, with two decades\u2019 worth of music that pulls back the velvet curtain on California\u2019s most lovable weirdos. On her finely wrought fourth LP, the former Rilo Kiley leader spins more novelistic tales about stragglers, addicts, and heartbreakers. It\u2019s her boldest album to date, not only because she recruited a who\u2019s-who of players\u2014including Beck, Ringo, Don Was, and more\u2014to help her craft a lush backdrop of vintage rock, country, and soul, but also because she knows how to write directly to the chest. Lewis reveals the human nature at the core of her characters even when it\u2019s unseemly, never judging people\u2019s vices or decisions. She has better things to do anyway, like raising a glass while the world burns in \u201cHollywood Lawn.\u201d \u2013Eric Torres<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Julia Jacklin: Crushing<\/em><\/h2>\n

Fresh out of a long-term relationship, Sydney singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin funneled a series of small epiphanies about how to be<\/em> into her second album, Crushing<\/em>. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be touched all the time\/I raised my body up to be mine,\u201d the folk-rocker declares on the upbeat highlight \u201cHead Alone.\u201d A number of the songs beautifully capture what it\u2019s like to inhabit your own (single) body again, or suggest how to convert love felt for an ex into something else (eventually), always with a focus on Jacklin\u2019s warm-milk voice. Honest and nuanced, Crushing<\/em> ends up being a fortifying declaration of self-possession. \u2013Quinn Moreland<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Kim Gordon: No Home Record<\/em><\/h2>\n

After rewriting rock\u2019s rulebook with Sonic Youth, establishing herself as a star in the art world, and writing a memoir, Kim Gordon finally got around to making her first solo album. For No Home Record<\/em>, she worked with producer Justin Raisen, whose credits include the Kim-indebted brooder Sky Ferreira and experimental shapeshifter Yves Tumor, and the pair conjure a dissonant, avalanche-sized sound. \u201cMurdered Out\u201d is three-and-a-half minutes of a patient bass loop being continuously, relentlessly sandblasted by one thing after another: distorted guitar, encroaching noise, and Gordon\u2019s roar, the strongest blast of all. \u201cGet Yr Life Back\u201d sits uneasily atop tensely arranged found-sound; \u201cSketch Artist\u201d seems to be tearing itself apart; \u201cPaprika Pony\u201d rides a minimal toy-piano rap beat that sounds like it was created by the world\u2019s most sinister toddler. No Home Record<\/em> shows that the 66-year-old Kim is still hellbent on chasing new musical ideas, wherever they may lead. \u2013Katherine St. Asaph<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Mannequin Pussy: Patience<\/em><\/h2>\n

For their first album with legendary pop-punk label Epitaph Records, the Philadelphia quartet Mannequin Pussy swap fuzz-heavy thrashers for melodic, grand anthems of heartache and regret. On \u201cDrunk II,\u201d a raging post-breakup lament, frontwoman Marisa Dabice drowns her hurt in alcohol and wry jokes, but there\u2019s no mistaking the depth of her emptiness. The pop-forward \u201cWho You Are\u201d finds Dabice tackling self-loathing, settling on a kind of acceptance that sounds simple but is anything but. And she sings of a fledgling romance on the closing \u201cIn Love Again,\u201d which wraps around her like a pair of arms while guitar riffs shoot off fireworks\u2014a surprise happy ending to an album that turns anguish into high drama. \u2013Madison Bloom<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Ghosteen<\/em><\/h2>\n

You become a parent with the wish that your kids outlive you. But what happens when that hope is suddenly dashed? Nick Cave confronts this reality on Ghosteen<\/em>, the first album he wrote and recorded in full after the tragic accidental death of his teen son, Arthur. It\u2019s a record unlike anything else he\u2019s made with the Bad Seeds across the last 35 years.<\/p>\n

On “Hollywood,” the double LP’s 14-minute closing track, Cave viscerally summarizes his broken heart. “The kid drops his bucket and spade\/And climbs into the sun,” he murmurs before the track\u2019s steady bassline suddenly glitches, as if the needle of a turntable has hit a bad groove, and Cave begins to keen in falsetto. Ghosteen<\/em> abounds with stark moments like this that reveal the raw heart of grief. To sit with it can be almost unbearable, and yet Cave\u2014with the same talent he\u2019s loaned to many other dark topics\u2014takes the harshness of life and uses it to cleave his way to the truth of being human. Singing his sorrow so nakedly, with so little reserve, Cave asks the world to bear witness to the love he\u2019s shared and his cavernous, neverending loss. \u2013Sasha Geffen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Nil\u00fcfer Yanya: Miss Universe<\/em><\/h2>\n

Nil\u00fcfer Yanya plays her guitar the way some people pick at their nails\u2014as if she wouldn’t know what to do with her hands if she stopped. Along with her rich voice, Yanya\u2019s fidgety guitar is one of the few binding threads tying together her virtuosic, post-genre smear of a debut. With the poise of Sade\u2019s Love Deluxe<\/em> and the zapped attention span of Pavement\u2019s Wowee Zowee<\/em>, Miss Universe<\/em> triple-axels between silky soul, smoldering jazz, and ripping alt-rock\u2014and then adds hybrids like \u201cTears,\u201d a song that seems to imagine what Timbaland might have sounded like if he made \u201980s new wave records. It\u2019s an album that never stops openly wondering how cool it might be if it tried to be something completely different. \u2013Evan Rytlewski<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Oso Oso: Basking in the Glow<\/em><\/h2>\n

\u201cI got two souls fighting for the same spotlight,\u201d Long Island emo hero Jade Lilitri sings on the opening track of his third album as Oso Oso, Basking in the Glow<\/em>. One soul seems devoted to self-pity and the other to splendor, and throughout the album, this internal battle plays out via guitar rock that\u2019s marked by a dappled radiance. \u201cPriority Change\u201d swaggers with shy pride in its chord changes, while Lilitri complains of \u201cbeing trapped in binary code.\u201d \u201cDig\u201d gets the balance just about right, with a gloriously smeared chorus in which he\u2019s \u201cstill reeling from the mess I made.\u201d Gems like \u201cImpossible Game\u201d find drama in the effort to invest meaning in well-worn metaphors of open roads and unknowable partners. It\u2019s self-conscious stuff, to be sure, with highlight \u201cWake Up Next to God\u201d reveling in the G-force of self-torment. But Lilitri shows why that spotlight\u2014that glow to bask in\u2014is worth fighting for. \u2013Jesse Dorris<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Peaer: A Healthy Earth<\/em><\/h2>\n

Midway through their third album, the members of Brooklyn trio Peaer briefly imagine a peaceful alternate reality. \u201cIn another universe, we have a healthy earth, we understand the worth of a life,\u201d warbles frontman Peter Katz on the slow-building \u201cMultiverse.\u201d It\u2019s a nice daydream, but it\u2019s ultimately not where the math-rockers reside. They spend their time wrestling with quandaries small and large, from a confusing kind of romantic attraction to feeling crushed by the relentless pace of the world, all the while exploring similar leaps of scale sonically. Tightly-knit slowcore reveries swell into post-punk explosions, barely-there melodies tangle to the point of dissonance. Incisive and meticulous in nature, Peaer make the case that even a kind of shitty life is worth examining. \u2013Quinn Moreland<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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PUP: Morbid Stuff<\/em><\/h2>\n

The third full-length from Toronto foursome PUP is, in many ways, a modern pop-punk classic: packed with simple but hyper-energetic riffs, unafraid to marry an irreverent pun like \u201cBloody Mary, Kate and Ashley\u201d with a demand to know whether the supernatural might be real. At the same time, the album is almost unbearably self-aware. When lead singer Stefan Babcock runs into an ex-girlfriend at the supermarket, on \u201cSee You at Your Funeral,\u201d he asks how she\u2019s doing, then quickly retreats: \u201cNot that it\u2019s any of my business\/But you know me, I\u2019ve always been a little masochistic.\u201d And when he sneers, \u201cJust \u2019cause you\u2019re sad again, it doesn\u2019t make you special at all\u201d in the chorus of \u201cFree at Last,\u201d he\u2019s addressing himself as much as anyone else. Tragic and hilarious and self-absorbed and cathartic all at the same time\u2014that\u2019s PUP for you. \u2013Anna Gaca<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Purple Mountains: Purple Mountains<\/em><\/h2>\n

We\u2019re used to confronting a work of crushing sadness after the artist who made it has reached a better place. Stories of depression and despair are easier to take with full knowledge of the happy ending. Purple Mountains<\/em>, the final album of new music from David Berman, released 26 days before he took his own life at age 52, offers no such luxury. A number of lines and song titles\u2014\u201cThe dead know what they are doing when they leave this world behind,\u201d from \u201cNights That Won\u2019t Happen,\u201d or \u201cNo way to last out here like this for long\u201d from \u201cAll My Happiness Is Gone\u201d\u2014seem to point at what was to come, and to hear them in a certain mood is to be emotionally overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s important to remember what Berman\u2019s friends at Drag City said following his death: His music didn\u2019t predict his death; it was written despite<\/em> his depression. The best way to hear these songs now is to listen to them in that spirit\u2014to assume Berman was fighting fire with fire. He searched for the perfectly turned phrase to articulate pain because it helped him feel less of it; he added jokes because the absurdity of life is funny. His parting gift turned out to be one of his very best records. \u2013Mark Richardson<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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(Sandy) Alex G: House of Sugar<\/em><\/h2>\n

Since first emerging as a prodigious one-man songwriting machine earlier this decade, Alex Giannascoli has remained tapped into an ever-flowing stream of idiosyncratic excellence. House of Sugar<\/em> is his most ambitious and immersive album yet. Moving beyond the haunted Americana of 2017\u2019s Rocket<\/em>, these 13 songs offer meticulous portraits of addiction, greed, and obsession. Inescapable spirals of desire\u2014whether for control, companionship, or instant gratification\u2014are manifested as voids desperate to be filled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Giannascoli\u2019s tendency to enshroud his vulnerabilities in warped guitars and pitch-shifted vocals makes the straightforward candor of album standout \u201cHope\u201d all the more devastating. As he laments the overdose and subsequent death of a good friend, he reaches a humble conclusion: \u201cWhy write about it now?\/Gotta honor him somehow.\u201d This quiet tribute to the darkest of realities crystalizes what makes Giannascoli\u2019s songwriting so poignant: a resounding humanity. \u2013Quinn Moreland<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Sharon Van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow<\/em><\/h2>\n

After the lonesome folk of her 2009 debut, Sharon Van Etten\u2019s subsequent albums mostly offered modest tweaks to a familiar strain of heartland-flavored indie. But Remind Me Tomorrow<\/em> cracks her style open like a geode: The roadhouse soul of \u201cYou Shadow\u201d is halfway between Motown and Massive Attack; \u201cSeventeen\u201d arrives decades too late for the John Hughes closing credits it deserves; \u201cJupiter 4,\u201d titled after a vintage Roland synthesizer, sounds like a gothic take on slowcore. It all makes for a fitting soundtrack for starting over. Among all the record\u2019s big themes\u2014the brush with death recounted on the album\u2019s opener, the closing letter to her child\u2014it\u2019s the little details that stick out, like a line of dialogue that gives \u201cComeback Kid\u201d the feel of a finely turned short story. Like a freshly polished lens, the album\u2019s eclectic production only pulls Van Etten\u2019s songwriting into sharper focus. \u2013Philip Sherburne<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Sheer Mag: A Distant Call<\/em><\/h2>\n

Sheer Mag crashed into the indie consciousness five years ago with surly abandon, thanks to their Thin Lizzy-style anthems and their true punk heart. The Philadelphia four-piece\u2019s latest album, A Distant Call<\/em>, feels as storm-tossed as ever, only now with more old-school-metal riffs and some unexpected fine-tuning. The production quality is less lo-fi and the arrangements are more multi-dimensional, resulting in the sharpest-sounding Sheer Mag release yet. Tina Halladay\u2019s shredded howl remains the group\u2019s North Star as members shift between barnburners and slow-builders, often fueled by present-day ills. They throw a light on the refugee crisis in \u201cUnfound Manifest,\u201d rail against fat-shaming on \u201cThe Right Stuff,\u201d and put a name to widespread government corruption with \u201cThe Killer.\u201d \u2013Eric Torres<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Vampire Weekend: Father of the Bride<\/em><\/h2>\n

Vampire Weekend ambled away from the spotlight for a half-decade or so, but even as the delays mounted for the follow-up to their 2013 masterpiece Modern Vampires of the City<\/em>\u2014and even as Rostam Batmanglij, long thought to be their behind-the-scenes mastermind, left to pursue other projects\u2014they returned on Father of the Bride<\/em> as if they\u2019d just stepped out of the country club for a breath of sea air. Nothing, it seems\u2014neither time, nor age, nor a shifting cultural landscape\u2014can chip away at their self-delighted gleam, their garish sophistication, their heartbroken contentment.<\/p>\n

Seasoned experts at locating the expanding borders of \u201ccool\u201d and then working just outside them, here Vampire Weekend decide that they are a jam band, with all of the fretless bass and weightless Jerry Garcia guitar solos this implies. Of course, they sound goofy at first. And of course, when the surface dressings fall away, Ezra Koenig is writing as searchingly as ever about lasting happiness, low-grade fear, and the certainty that if bad times are here, worse times are on the way. No matter how long they go away, Vampire Weekend will always return perfectly out of time. \u2013Jayson Greene<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n

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Weyes Blood: Titanic Rising<\/em><\/h2>\n

Titanic Rising<\/em> is vintage-sounding music for people who don\u2019t want to live in the past. On her fourth album as Weyes Blood, L.A. singer-songwriter Natalie Mering coos laughably old-fashioned lines like \u201ctreat me right, I\u2019m still a good man\u2019s daughter\u201d while referencing the cosmic loneliness of modern dating. You can parse out the weight, hope, and humor of Mering\u2019s poetry, or you can sit back and let her dulcet tone and excellent taste in George Harrison-esque slide guitar wash over you. But even going the comfortable route, she is constantly disrupting her own \u201970s soft rock pastiche with sounds that represent the future\u2014space-age synths, satellites trying to connect. This simultaneous backwards-forwards vantage point leaves Mering well-positioned to consider our current moment\u2014even if she sounds almost nothing like it. \u2013Jillian Mapes<\/p>\n

Listen\/Buy:<\/strong> Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/features\/lists-and-guides\/best-rock-albums-2019\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lists & Guides The Best Rock Albums of 2019 From Big Thief\u2019s twin masterworks to Brittany Howard\u2019s bold solo debut, these were the guitar records we loved most this year. By Pitchfork December 11, 2019 Illustration by Drew Litowitz. Images via Getty Images. The following list, sorted alphabetically, includes rock albums found on Pitchfork\u2019s main […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1253997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1253997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1253997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1253997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1253997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}