30 Best Albums of 2018 -

Welcome to our Best of 2018 series, in which we explore the year’s best albums, songs and extended plays.

Albums continue to be thriving bodies of art, critical vehicles through which we see ourselves for who we really are and learn from the past in an effort to gallop valiantly into an uncertain future. Regardless of musical makeup or heritage, songs connect us all to one another, on such basic foundations as love, integrity, empathy. Through a smoke screen of doubt, regret, pain, anger, sadness, many of the best albums of the year are indebted to life’s lowest of lows. But, of course, we can’t ignore how utter joy can evoke stunning fragments of songwriting and soul.

Below, B-Sides & Badlands has chosen the 30 best albums of 2018.

Mariah Carey, Caution (buy)

Genre: Pop/R&B

Label: Epic Records

As a true lamb, I was ready to support the elusive chanteuse’s most recent release regardless of public opinion. With Caution, the fifteenth album of Mariah’s 28-year career, however, there was no need to deludedly defend her. While 2014’s Me. I Am Mariah relied on being versatile and musically non-conforming, Caution switches directions and comes together as one of her most cohesive bodies of work to-date with Mimi allowing her stellar songwriting skills to be the driving force behind the record. The “Hero” vocalist also showcases her ear for clever collaborations through the select choices in producers and co-writers (Dev Hynes on “Giving Me Life”; Bibi Bourelly on “GTFO”; and Gunna on “Stay Long Love You”). Mariah proves once again that an artist of her longevity can continue providing quality work by trusting her talents and not giving in to gimmicky industry trends to stay relevant. – Galvin Baez

Lori McKenna, The Tree (buy)

Genre: Country

Label:

“To thine own self be true” is a phrase coined by William Shakespeare in his landmark play, Hamlet. Polonius offers these words to his son Laertes before his departure for Paris. It’s a simple statement but one which is a timeless token of insight from which we can all draw understanding and courage. Accomplished storyteller Lori McKenna employs the phrase in “You Won’t Even Know I’m Gone,” a cut from The Tree. “Gone” imparts ripened wisdom of a mother letting her children fly into the world, and through detailing even the little, mundane tasks she undertakes in her daily routine (like folding laundry, cutting fray strands from the kitchen towel and mailing bills), she processes the unavoidable change washing over her life. The Tree is built with plenty of such observations, of a woman who has made great sacrifices for her children, her husband, her own life. It’s a stunning work of art and also features such astounding pieces as “People Get Old,” musing on the rush of time’s march, and “Young and Angry Again,” a wish to relive her glory days. – Jason Scott

Emily Warren, Quiet Your Mind (buy)

Genre: Pop

Label: Independent

Emily Warren has been masterfully pocking holes in mainstream pop music for years. She’s got credits with Dua Lipa, Shawn Mendes, Jessie J and countless others, shattering the glass ceiling every songwriting session and lyrical turn-of-phrase at a time. With her debut album, Quiet Your Mind, she plants a flag directly into our veins, proclaiming dominance with insightfully complex matters of the heart and exposing our swollen raw nerves. “I’m gonna need something to hold onto,” she whispers in exasperated hushes, while on “How It Ends,” she swaggers out the front door with a slinky, slippery, savory slice of pop craftsmanship. “As Long as I’m Alive” vibrates with cutting guitar licks, bathing the skin in unsure misery, and “Paranoid” quakes with a choir of finger snaps before dropping into a dizzying elixir of vocoder. Warren recovers her strength as a woman in the face of heartache and the male attitude, wandering between the halls of classic pop tricks while in effect busting down boundaries on her way into the hallowed halls of splendor. – Jason Scott

Lucie Silvas, E.G.O. (buy)

Genre: Blues/Country

Label: Thirty Tigers

Lucie Silvas comes out swinging with her new record, an expressively volatile follow-up to 2015’s Letters to Ghosts. Spinning webs between dusty saloon rompers and searing delicacies, the album “extends the musical ambition she set out to accomplish three years ago for a record that’s propulsive, vulnerable and soaring. ‘Kite’ burns down the house around her in witchy magnificence, while ‘Smoking Your Weed’ slides into cheeky pontificating about learning other’s true intentions. After ‘First Rate Heartbreak’ grooves hard and long into the night, the second half pulls back the reins rather abruptly for a sequencing that’s as personally cathartic as it’s timely and crucial for the current state of the world.” [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Jonathan Something, Outlandish Poetica (buy)

Genre: Alternative/Rock

Label: Solitaire Recordings

Jonathan Something slithers his body in the soil somewhere through the blurry lines of funky psych-rock, firebrand folk music and hypnotic doo-wop. He then bends time and space with a flick of his tongue and twists the frayed ends in his fingertips to reassess his placement in this world. Outlandish Poetica uncages his most nightmarish panamoras of love and loss, intertwining teardowns of break-ups and slathering on plump images of mental mayhem and the slow decay of the body. Waves of twinkling ivories and metallic bangs and pops are tethered to his frank, unfussy vocals, often feeling as journal-like meditations at the end of one’s journey than sweeping, layer-peeling, ever-vivacious fables. “Out on Death Row,” a lilting collapse of soul and spirit, is a nearly eight-minute epic of one’s spiraling out of this life and their soft wails for relief from this suffocating mortal coil. Jonathan Something doesn’t play any tricks across his sense-numbing nine tracks, choosing to recast the sun as a barely visible crescent moon. – Jason Scott

Pistol Annies, Interstate Gospel (buy)

Genre: Country

Label: Sony Music

Ashley Monroe, Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley have been put through the wringer ⏤ squeezed of their bones and organs and skin and any trace of humanity. Tabloid headlines will do that to you. But in their craft, a towering, scuffed-up, 14-song manifesto of post-heartache tales, they shake off the anger and resentment of ex-lovers and dangerously distorted truths of fairy tales and castles. They resurface like floating, glowing sirens at the river’s edge, tossing up soul-cleansing baptismals and seeking redemption in sisterhood. As you make your way down the countryside, the greenery clipping at your heels, you can’t help but answer the call. Interstate Gospel is a layered on thick on what it means to be a woman today, skinning back their purple scar tissue (“Best Years of My Life,” “Leavers Lullaby,” “When I Was His Wife”) but never forgetting they are fearlessly unorthodox and self-sufficient (“Got My Name Changed Back,” “Sugar Daddy”). In due time, such suffering shall pass. It always does. – Jason Scott

Lily Allen, No Shame (buy)

Genre: Pop

Label: Parlaphone Records/Warner

Britain’s favorite smart-mouthed pop star Lily Allen returned with her fourth effort, No Shame, this year, a title that seems like an appropriate way to describe her approach to music. The shamelessness jumps out the most on tracks such as “Family Man” and “Everything to Feel Something,” where Lily sheds any fear of opinion and allows her most honest emotions to be released. Lily leans into her hip-hop influences and pushes her sound in a further urban direction to complete the sonic evolution from the quirky indie-pop with which she rose to prominence. Although Lily Allen has always shared her opinion on social subjects with a no-fucks outlook, it’s refreshing to see her apply the rule to her own life, resulting in her most introspective album yet. – Galvin Baez

Rue Snider, City Living (buy)

Genre: Pop/Rock

Label: Independent

Rue Snider captures the spellbinding, sticky magic of New York City rather unapologetically on his new album. City Living rocks and rolls with the sweltering adrenaline of running to catch the Q train, of the high of twilight on a rooftop somewhere in Bed-Stuy, of the scorching sands strewn along Coney Island one muggy August afternoon. Snider measures out melodies in intoxicating ounces, and you can never seem to get enough. Songs like “Hot Summer Nights,” “Pretty” and “Wouldn’t Be Summer” paint a rosy snapshot of making out in the rain and imbibing a little too much. His voice is thick and muggy, adhering to the ’80s-powered production like a high industrial adhesive. “Dear Friend” is an immobilizing, fear-stricken ode to faded youth, while “Run Away with You” is a warm swatch of neon stretched over the skin. “Life in the city is the best,” he sings, scruffy and cutting. That kind of intensity is a prime feature of the new record. It’s a relentless roster of remarkable tunes, reconfiguring what it means to grab life by the horns; Snider’s living his best life, and there’s no other option than to join in on the fun. – Jason Scott

Jamie Lin Wilson, Jumping Over Rocks (buy)

Genre: Americana

Label: Independent

Jamie Lin Wilson is the light at the end a tunnel. With a voice as smooth and as gentle as silk, she awakens each of the senses with alarming tenderness. It’s been a few very, very, very long years since her last studio record, the excellent Holidays & Wedding Rings. Stepping into the sun, her cheeks flushed by not only the sudden exposure but in confessing her insecurities of the open road (“The Being Gone” a particularly hand-dealt block of lonesomeness) or the unavoidable gamble of “Death & Life,” she stretches the scope of her songwriting and vocal prowess. But she makes damn sure to adhere to the craft of the heart and the style that has cemented her as so tremendously unique and crucial to the Americana scene. Her reworking of Guy Clark’s “Instant Coffee Blues,” alongside Jack Ingram, is outstanding and brims with the kind of deep-chested sorrow not many endure and live to tell the tale. Wilson is a masterclass storyteller, and you feel the brunt of emptiness of fading love, of life’s most dire states, of the choices we must make (and live with). Jumping Over Rocks carries with it ever shade of misery this world has to offer, painting a rich snapshot of American life, the struggles, the pain, the heartache. Don’t go another day without Wilson as your guide. – Jason Scott

Sister Sparrow, Gold (buy)

Genre: Soul/Pop

Label: Party Fowl Records/Thirty Tigers

Sister Sparrow (real name Arleigh Kincheloe) flutters upon a gently spinning disco ball of gloriously shiny soul, teased to Jesus with big band theatrics and a merciless power vocal. She operates under whimsically-stirred genre-busters, from the funkadelic buzz of “Ghost” to the crystalline shimmer of “Matter of Time” and the fairy-dusted “Plastic Paradise.” In marrying classic torch singing with glittering melodic confection, Kincheloe is poised ever-so gracefully on a luxurious, diamond-encrusted throne of sheer pop majesty, beckoning the listener into a state of nirvana and allowing her voice to rain down like a rejuvenating waterfall of delicate blue gemstones. “There’s no secret to please me / You make it harder than it needs to be,” she smirks with the titular cut and prime album opener, setting the stage of a record of wondrous sexual and emotional liberation. – Jason Scott

Brandi Carlile, By the Way, I Forgive You (buy)

Genre: Country

Label: Elektra Records

Brandi Carlile is no joke. In galavanting through the wreckage of this tiresome life, earning her own starburst bruises, scraps and bloody wounds along the way, the accomplished vocalist commits herself to being a light in a cold, dark, barbaric world. With the Grammy-nominated “The Joke,” a finger-blistered ballad for those underdogs just trying to survive till sunrise, she scatters archaic beliefs to the unrelenting winds and extends her hand for a moment of compassion. Stories of suicide (“Fulton County Jane Doe”) and addiction (“Sugartooth”) are etched into her mind, too, and so, her voice remains battered and broken, as she then mixes the ashes into a syrup of hope. “We came into this life with nothing / And all we’re taking is a name,” she warbles on “Fulton County Jane Doe,” an astonishing and urgent entry into her songbook. In exposing the truth, she dismantles a system of hatred, and we all could use a little of Carlile’s plucky charm and strength in our lives these days. – Jason Scott

Ariana Grande, Sweetener (buy)

Genre: Pop

Label: Republic Records

Being the massive pop star that she is, Ariana Grande could have easily let the big industry producers and songwriters create an album for her to get in the studio and half-heartedly record while running into the sunset with her millions of sales. However, after the horrific incident at her Manchester concert last year, Ari decided to get her hands dirty in the process and craft her most polarizing album yet. The dangerous woman enlists the help of mega-producer Pharrell to scratch what her sound has become and build something new in a successful effort to push the pop needle forward. The most inspiring piece of the puzzle is Ari’s focus on radiating love and positivity despite the sometimes-dark world we live in, reminding us that if we just keep breathing, it will all get well soon. – Galvin Baez

Maggie Rose, Change the Whole Thing (buy)

Genre: Soul/Pop/Country

Label: Starstruck Records

The world is going up in flames, but Maggie Rose remains firmly planted, lock-jawed, her heels digging into the rubble and parched, burnt earth beneath her. Employing acrobatic vocal routines, pouring over melted soul, blues and pop melodies, she seeks to slay each slippery-scaled dragon in her way. In crafting Change the Whole Thing, her first full-length in five years, she displays an ache in her soul so potent and warrior-like, she’s downright unstoppable. She’s one of the most criminally underrated interpreters of the human condition, and across such vital cuts as “It’s You,” “Magic Man” and “Hey Blondie,” she shakes off genre stigmas and whisks the listener away for tales of love, loss and freedom from the powers that be, who are probably shaking with snakes in their boots right now. Rose is a one-of-a-kind vocalist that won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Beware. – Jason Scott

Jeff Kelly & the Graveyard Shift, Self-Titled (buy)

Genre: Americana/Blues/Rock

Label: Independent

Blues-rocker Jeff Kelly, of Jeff Kelly and the Graveyard Shift, heaves exasperated breaths in and out onto yellowed notebook paper. The band’s debut long-player unpacks the most harrowing confessions of his heart, skin-shocked electricity flowing outward from his pen and finally flying free in gravelly, throat-clogging wails. He handles tattered images of love and loss with cool, brazen recklessness, and you never once get a chance to catch your breath. Kelly masterfully brandishes his voice in bright extremes. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Amy Shark, Love Monster (buy)

Genre: Pop

Label: Sony Music

Amy Shark (real name Amy Billings) finally issues her first proper full-length, which executes a daring trapeze act in a sparkling spread of hip-hop and indie-pop. “I’m just getting started,” she pledges with lead single “I Said Hi,” a nimble underdog anthem positioning the record as a hypnotizing and miraculous pinnacle of the year. “You can only put your heart into something for so long and get nothing back before you start redirecting your focus,” she expressed in a radio interview. Blessedly, the stars have aligned, and Billings is leaving her imprint in lavish strokes worthy of the highest order. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Alina Baraz, The Color of You (buy)

Genre: R&B

Label: Mom+Pop

Resident cool girl Alina Baraz perfected her laidback vibe on her latest release. The Color of You manages to be the sexiest release of the year (and not only because Alina is jaw-droppingly stunning). The heavy drum-led beats and over-filtered vocal effects from her last project Urban Flora are mostly gone, which leaves plenty of room for her fluttery voice to hypnotize you in conjunction with the ethereal guitar and light snares that perfectly complement her sultry aesthetic on this melody-driven record. Let the breezy tunes on The Color of You whisk you to its palm tree and beach-wave paradise, and you’ll come to understand the magic of this record. – Galvin Baez

Whoa Dakota, Patterns (buy)

Genre: Pop

Label: LunaSea Media

A Nashville transplant, by way of Little Rock, Arkansas, Jess Ott promises her journey has been a somewhat healing one, necessary even, to her independence and understanding of herself and the world. Under the moniker Whoa Dakota, Ott records in great, unrestricted detail of an expedition that’s both worn her down and empowered her to keep plowing through the mud. Her debut album Patterns lifts [author Jean Shinoda] Bolen’s work for several of the album’s spoken word entries. The aforementioned inspection of self-perception is extracted for “[home],” which is recited by one of Ott’s best friend Natalie Carol, lead performer of Los Angeles band Valley Queen. From the outside looking in, Carol’s cadence is one of sharp sweetness, urging Ott to come closer to enlightenment. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Brandy Zdan, Secretear (buy)

Genre: Rock

Label: Tallest Man Records

Rocker Brandy Zdan (formerly of The Trishas) keeps her heart close to the chest with her sophomore record, Secretear, a Spanish word which roughly translates to “whisper” or “to talk secretively,” hammering home the album’s general beat, drawing lines between intimate relationships that have gone down in flames and her own enlightened self-love. “Cold and knocked out on the floor / The fears are always at my door / All that I hide kept me up in the night,” she sings on “Secret Tears,” bruised and caked over with fractured electric guitar. She wields her voice in splintered reverence, a stormy quiet branded in a furiously dire mental state. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Ronnie Eaton, The Hand That Mocked Them and the Heart That Fed (buy)

Genre: Americana

Label: Independent

Ronnie Eaton, originally from Post, Texas, just south of Lubbock, draws upon his personal life for a concept album titled The Hand That Mocked Them and the Heart That Fed, which illustrates a marine’s return home after war and inevitable conflicts with family, friends and himself. Initially intended as a collection of acoustic-style demos, the meager nine-track record reverberates off the narrator’s tortured memories, needled through stark production choices, mostly of guitar, oscillating drums and penetrating piano chords. Producer Aaron Dick (who also plays keyboard throughout) slams the listener with subtly, exchanging shrill rock uppercuts for gentle swerves and refined layering. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour (buy)

Genre: Country

Label: UMG

Comprised of only 13 songs, Kacey Musgraves’ Grammy-nominated third album Golden Hour makes for a cohesive record that is encompassing of her musical talent. The magic of Golden Hour lies in how easy each song is to digest while still managing to be conceptually and lyrically beautiful, a simple lyric such as “You give me butterflies” followed by use of the word “chrysalis” or a love song that compares a relationship to the inexplicable wonders of the world keeps the record intelligent but genuine. Additionally, Kacey boasts her knack for melody writing on songs such as “Velvet Elvis” and “High Horse,” which will keep you from taking the needle off the record due to their addictive nature. – Galvin Baez

Courtney Marie Andrews, May Your Kindness Remain (buy)

Genre: Americana

Label: Fat Possum Records

Courtney Marie Andrews, who also rises out of the Arizona dirt from a city called Phoenix, just over 100 miles away from Linda Ronstadt’s birth place, cultivates a sprawling, thimble-pierced set with May Your Kindness Remain, a timely reminder never to discard our humanity. Trapped inside a pressure cooker of cultural, social and economic affairs, aggravated by fake news, photo shop hoaxes and disastrous policy changes, Andrews’ withering southern drawn and adept song craft offer a bit of solace, sun-baked from years of endless highway blacktops, grimy dive bars and couch hopping. She wraps her caramel-smattered voice around blazing torch ballads, often weighted with generous doses of misery. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Erik Dylan, Baseball on the Moon (buy)

Genre: Country

Label: Independent

Erik Dylan is a modest singer, painting with clarity and precision and allowing the words to culminate in a vivid, breathtaking landscape. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and that forthright approach hangs ceremoniously onto his songwriting. “You know I wear my heart on my sleeve / Under a flannel shirt and this factory / Like my daddy did and his dad before / Building trains and planes and welding things through every single war,” he sings on “Funerals & Football Games,” unmasking a song that not only depicts the brutality of adulthood but also scratching into the roles of parents and their children. Dylan’s reflections of life and death, the ephemeral that gives us glee or nightmares, ebb and flow throughout Baseball on the Moon, which Dylan self produced, along with Paul Cosette as tracking engineer and Chad Carlson on mixing. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Big Little Lions, Alive and Well (buy)

Genre: Folk/Pop

Label: Far Flung/Blaster Records

The world is in shambles, and while everyone is fleeing, even the leader of the free world, Big Little Lions gallop directly into the fire. With their third studio album, Alive and Well, the folk-pop pair ⎯⎯ Helen Austin and Paul Otten ⎯⎯ maneuver to rally the world for one common objective: the resistance. Embellished with their classically-warm pop veneer, which often borrows from the Peter, Paul & Mary textbook, the 13 tracks wield a genius juxtaposition of acute songwriting and jaunty, chewy arrangements. With every turn, they are steely-eyed and determined, allowing the spew of venom to slide off their skin like oil. “I’d walk a mile in your shoes,” they avow in glossy grandeur with “Come This Far,” and then “Our Turn” fuels their resolve to never give up, never give in. “Broken” depicts their exhaustion with humanity, a fragile composition adorned with trembling piano and tight-bound, haunting harmony work. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Gin Wigmore, Ivory (buy)

Genre: Pop/Alternative

Label: Island Records

Gin Wigmore could not have asked for a better visual representation of the album’s 12 groove-inflected tracks, which are so visceral, at times rather gutting, that it’s as if she is re-staging a Trump Era hellscape, timeless and boundless. “It’s not what you say or do / It’s all the many ways that you break us,” she sings on “Odeum,” soaked in spacious vocal distortion, calibrated as an “open letter of sorts to the misogynist that still believes it’s okay to act so poorly towards women,” she explains. Note for note, Wigmore is a monstrous storyteller. Her fearless intent is evident right from the start. Ivory is a merciless, explosive and altogether blistered pack of confessionals. Wigmore is nearly always manic, triumphing over misogynistic handlers who vowed to break her spirit in the most bloody of ways. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Inara George, Dearest Everybody (buy)

Genre: Folk

Label: Release Me Records

That day lives buried in her bones. “I live off the earth,” Inara George warbles quite serenely, in between crinkles of paper on “Crazy,” excavating the day her father, Lowell George, founding member and frontman of Little Feat, died ⎯⎯ for one last glance, a final adieu before settling into the middle years of her own life. Dearest Everybody is her first solo record since 2009, an intimately-hewn, lovingly-scrawled farewell letter to her father, whose story remains “sweetly intertwined with mine and yours and mine,” she parses on “Everybody,” its delicate edges twisted and broken against the swell of guitar. “I’ll just keep living and dying and living,” she holds steadfast, not in mourning but wiping the cracked tears away and looking up into the the wide, pool-like eyes of her three hopeful children. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Fickle Friends, You Are Someone Else (buy)

Genre: Pop

Label: Polydor Records

Natti Shiner, who fronts synth-pop troupe Fickle Friends, doesn’t have anything to prove. She’s a fearless daredevil, navigating the toxicity of a music industry and her own mind with acrobatic precision. “In My Head,” packing on the heart-throbbing misery, opens up her excursions through the haze and torment of mental health. It’s a sobering and downcast and rather strained ballad, allowing Shiner to expose every laceration. “She,” “Hard to Be Myself” and “Paris” heave out a similarly evocative mood, plastered on the inside of her skull and filtered through frigid modulations and sending a remarkable subtlety to the veins. Then, such standouts as “Glue,” “Wake Me Up” and “Hello Hello” rely heavily on Cyndi Lauper-eschewed rhythms and melodies, hooking your eardrums like a rainbow trout lurking in the shadowy depths, fated for something greater. “Heartbroken,” allegedly about the band’s record label pulling them into tired circles, is the crown jewel ⎯⎯ owed in large part to Shiner’s cheeky vocal inflections and the beat’s pummeling drive. – Jason Scott

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, Years (buy)

Genre: Americana

Label: Bloodshot

Sarah Shook is a locomotive engine barreling down the scorched and rusted tracks, full-steam ahead, of some abandoned mid-western town. Her lyrics are tempered in steel casings, conserving musings on pain, regret and lonesomeness. An LGBTQ+ figure, Shook has more guts than most, as you’ll hear on “Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t” and “New Ways to Fail,” in which a relationship sends her into an emotional spiral (“I need this shit like I need another hole in my head,” she hisses). Underneath her tough exterior, she has a heart that beats just as our own, and she bares those inner-workings with songs like “Parting Words,” “The Bottle Never Lets Me Down,” “Over You” and “Heartache in Hell.” Simply put: Years is an exemplary collection, a true Americana original. – Jason Scott

Laura Benitez & the Heartache, With All Its Thorns (buy)

Genre: Americana

Label: Copperhead Records

When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840, she wore white not as a token of her purity but because she loved the color. It was a simple gesture but one which sparked a trend spanning centuries. A white wedding dress signifies commitment, adoration and virtue ⎯⎯ attributes which are stripped and varnished in the very capable hands of Laura Benitez & the Heartache, who rearrange the solemn symbol of piety into a staggering and boozy revenge fantasy. “In Red,” aching with pedal steel from Ian Sutton, electric and acoustic guitar from Bob Spector and chilling drums from Steve Pearson, cuts into the skin, as Benitez recounts the day she (stepping in as narrator) kills her husband. Playing on red stains on a white dress ⎯⎯ from wine in the first verse to his oozing blood in the last ⎯⎯ Benitez stitches together one gruesome story-song, which serves as a prominent fixture of the band’s third studio album, With All Its Thorns. [Full review here] – Jason Scott

Gretchen Peters, Dancing with the Beast (buy)

Genre: Americana

Label: Scarlet Letter Records

Amidst a flurry of grim solitude, which serves as a shattering reflection of real life, Gretchen Peter’s new album is gilded with softness, almost hopeful in its savory nuances. “Wichita,” named one of our Best Songs of 2018, is entrenched in southern gothic folklore, a story song about a young girl’s murderous revenge, and signals the comprehensive tone of the record. “Disappearing Act” sketches a woman who’s lost too much to care about appearances, a grisly but gorgeous moment; “Lowlands” is a reaction to the ghastly 2016 presidential reaction, a harsh reality we can’t escape; and “Truckstop Angel” sees her choking on regret. Seven albums deep now, Peters continues sacrificing bits of herself to write such stunning and profound portraits of mankind in exhaustive, radical detail. – Jason Scott

Caitlyn Smith, Starfire (buy)

Genre: Americana/Blues

Label: Monument Records

Caitlyn Smith cuts her teeth on the best songwriting of her career with Starfire, whose embers are effervescent and keep her vocals warm and feathered. “This Town is Killing Me” unravels the weight of being a working musician in Nashville, lost and forlorn to her own devices just to make ends meet, and “Scenes from a Corner Booth at Closing Time on a Tuesday” is a raspy and devastating snapshot of a diner in middle America. Smith’s perspective is striking and beautiful, fashioned from an outpouring of despair. “Before You Called Me Baby” is a soul-pop detonation, where songs like “Cheap Date” and “Tacoma” are hushed and incisive. – Jason Scott

Honorable Mentions: Better Land by Fox and Bones; TriumAvium by VoxEagle; Girl Going Nowhere by Ashley McBryde; Desperate Man by Eric Church; and Dying Star by Ruston Kelly