Top 20 Albums of 2018

Well, this is a bit of a weird post. For one thing, it's exceptionally overdue - seriously, who posts their end-of-year albums chart NINE MONTHS into the following year? Well, the reason is pretty complicated. Without going into too much detail, things in my personal life got pretty much as low as they possibly could get; it started toward the end of 2017 and I only recently got over the worst of it. So yeah, posting on this blog was pretty far at the back of my mind. I suppose this also explains the absence of a 2017 list... will I do one? Probably not at this stage. I guess the other thing that's contributed significantly to my lack of motivation to continue to post on this thing as that I don't use it to engage with people as much as I used to. Back in the day, my friends would literally tell me, following a gig, that they looked forward to reading about in the next few days, but now... Anyway, I could go on about this, but I just want to post this to get it out there, so there's some sort of record that I did indeed consider what albums rocked my world in 2018. As awful as my personal life was, one thing stayed the same; no prizes for guessing that was. Anyway, nobody's even reading this, so let's just do it:

20. Dead Letter Circus - Dead Letter Circus (AUS)
19. Joyride - Sunrise Chaser (AUS)
18. A.A.L. (Against All Logic) - 2012-2017 (US)
17. Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel (AUS)
16. Spiritualized - And Nothing Hurt (UK)
15. DZ Deathrays - Bloody Lovely (AUS)
14. Confidence Man - Confident Music for Confident People (AUS)
13. Ihsahn - Àmr (Norway)
12. Press Club - Late Teens (AUS)
11. Joyce Manor - Million Dollars to Kill Me (USA)
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10. Dead Can Dance - Dionysus (AUS)
9. Sleep - The Sciences (USA)
8. Daniel Avery - Song for Alpha (UK)
7. Tropical Fuck Storm - A Laughing Death in Meatspace (AUS)
6. Tiny Little Houses - Idiot Proverbs (AUS)
5. A Perfect Circle - Eat the Elephant (USA)
4. Luca Brasi - Stay (AUS)
3. Tiny Moving Parts - Swell (USA)
2. Basement - Beside Myself (UK)
1. Pianos Become the Teeth - Wait for Love (USA)

That's it. No honourable mentions or EPs or singles. To be honest, due to it being so overdue, this has been my least thought-out chart. My thought process here was just instinct. Anyway, it's done. Hopefully next year I'll post a more carefully considered, and indeed TIMELY list, but we'll see how I go. Due to aforementioned personal issues, I really haven't been keeping up to date with music that much this year, although that has changed in the last few months.