| 1 | Art In America | "Goodbye My Love - Mind's Eye - Peace of Mind" | Cloudborn | I go through hundreds of new releases every Friday, and it's an unfortunate truth of the state of music metadata as of 2018 that in doing so I pretty much invariably find some confusion of bands with the same names. So I'm used to the emotional spike of thinking for a brief moment that there might be new music by some long-gone much-loved band, but of course no, they're gone and nobody remembers them but you. Except every once in a while, it's actually true. Art in America made one album in 1983, and I bought it because the cover looked like a Yes record and the back credits said they had a harp player. These were bad reasons. At that age I usually only bought things I could hear first on the radio. Did Art in America ever get played on the radio? Not where I lived. But 35 years later, here is their second album. They still play bounding, yearning prog-pop with occasional harps, like a cross between Marillion and Let's Active. This felt like a peculiarly specific appeal to me in 1983, and maybe feels even more so now. But if all the briefly-existing bands I loved as a teenager re-form, that will be awesome and heartbreakingly wonderful, and as good an argument as any for not dying. |
| 2 | Dark Sarah | "Sky Sailing" | single | And what is a song, by definition, if not an argument for not dying? |
| 3 | Within Temptation | "The Reckoning" | single | I miss Scott Hutchinson and Scott Miller and Stuart Adamson. I miss my friend Art. |
| 4 | Ignea | "Queen Dies" | single | They made decisions I disagree with, which would be fine if they weren't irrevocable. |
| 5 | Leah | "Edge of Your Sword" | single | All I really ask is that you not give up on everybody by giving up on yourself. |
| 6 | The Unity | "Last Betrayal" | Rise | I mean, that's not true, it's not all I ask, |
| 7 | Rob Scallon | "Prison Break" | single | but if it were all I could ask, |
| 8 | Northward | "Get What You Give" | single | I could make it be enough. |
| 9 | GIRLI | "Young" | single | It hurts to be young. It hurts to be old. All these things hurt. |
| 10 | Evalyn | "A Pill to Crush" | single | None of this is supposed to be painless. |
| 11 | Ariel Beesley | "Awake All Night" | Ariel Beesley 6 | I take a deep breath every time I manage to dance without injuring myself, |
| 12 | Tribulation | "Nightbound" | Down Below | every time someone has the courage to say something both true and new, |
| 13 | Bosse-de-Nage | "The Trench" | Further Still | every time someone holds an opportunity for cynical nihilism in their hand |
| 14 | Abhorrence | "Anthem for the Anthropocene" | Megalohydrothalassophobic 5 | and chooses, instead of inflicting it on the world, to give it an endearing name and a creation myth and keep it as a pet and a warning. |
| 15 | Dödsrit | "A Drowning Voice" | single | We are imperfect, |
| 16 | Future Usses | "What Is Anything" | single | but we can be the elegant museums of our weakest inclinations. |
| 17 | Low | "Rome (Always In the Dark)" | Double Negative | We are assemblies of mistakes survived and avoided, |
| 18 | Pale Waves | "Drive" | My Mind Makes Noises | covered in skin, shimmering with glitter, |
| 19 | Fatherson | "Gratitude" | Sum of All Your Parts | shattered inside. |
| 20 | Arcane Roots | "Before Me (Over)" | Landslide 4 | I miss people I only knew in 1983, too. |
| 21 | Royal Teeth | "It's Just the Start" | single | Forgetting is strong, but remembering is stronger. |
| 22 | NAVVI | "Human Highlight Reel" | single | Joy is remembering new things, |
| 23 | Sun Glitters | "Wrong Days" | single | or the temporal defiance of believing you will remember a thing you are only now hearing. |
| 24 | The Joy Formidable | "The Better Me" | single | Pleasure is "this feels good now"; |
| 25 | She Makes War | "Undone" | single | joy is "this will feel good forever" |
| 26 | Against The Current | "Personal" | Personal / Almost Forgot / Strangers Again 3 | and "immortality is implicit in this", |
| 27 | Jetty Bones | "Bringing It Up" | single | like harmony implies accord |
| 28 | Up from Here | "Breaking" | Words Left Unsaid | and choruses promise that good things stubbornly recur. |
| 29 | Modern Chemistry | "Take a Second" | single | I don't believe in an afterlife, |
| 30 | Erik Ekholm | "Reckless Monsters" | single | and I do believe in music, |
| 31 | Danny Baranowsky | "War Bond - Pax West 2018 Edit" | Industries of Titan: Pax West EP 4 | and thus musician suicides claw at my moral universe, |
| 32 | David Chappell | "Terra Aeterna" | single | and at the same time also partially explain themselves. |
| 33 | Antti Martikainen | "Taking Back Nassau" | Hymn of the High Seas, Vol. 1 | Our deaths are comprehensible only because the music remains. |
| 34 | AmaLee | "Believe in Myself" | Nostalgia V | Eternal afterlife as a reward or punishment for the conduct of a brief mortality is philosophically idiotic and vastly cruel, |
| 35 | PassCode | "Tonight" | Tonight / Taking you out 4 | but visiting this world to impart inertiae, |
| 36 | GOLDEN BOMBER | "暴れ曲" | single | that I can understand. |
| 37 | ROOKiEZ is PUNK'D | "party up!!" | The Sun Also Rises | Life is short, and the planet isn't going to spin itself. |
| 38 | Downfall | "Virus" | single | We keep it spinning by singing and dancing. |
| 39 | HEALTH | "MASS GRAVE" | single | You can doubt this, if you want, but |
| 40 | A Storm of Light | "Prime Time" | single | when will you ever get a chance to evaluate your alternative theories? |
| 41 | Ally the Fiddle | "Center Su(O)N'" | Up | We are the creatures who won't shut up, and we're all over this thing. |
| 42 | Carrie Underwood | "Ghosts On The Stereo" | Cry Pretty | We die and we still don't shut up. |
| 43 | Studio 3 | "รักอีกได้ไหม" | single | Sleep takes us, and somebody on the other side of the world awakens aloud. |
| 44 | Yppah | "Tree Ghost" | single | 35 years later, a song can resume. |
| 45 | SHALT | "Seraph" | Seraphim 6 | This is why love always wins: |
| 46 | Treat | "Build the Love" | Tunguska | it just never gives up. |
| 47 | Dynazty | "Firesign" | single | Can you live for Swedish power-metal for four minutes? |
| 48 | Hazte lapón | "Vidas de Santos" | single | Will you fall in love in Spanish hospital corridors? |
| 49 | Celtas Cortos | "Cada día" | Energía positiva | Spanish Celtic? I live in Boston, I can't really complain about this. |
| 50 | Romanthica | "Esta Oscuridad" | single | There isn't that much ocean between Galway and Graceland and Ceuta and St. John. |
| 51 | Ethernity | "The Human Race Extinction" | The Human Race Extinction | Emigrating won't be easy, but the vikings sailed to lands they couldn't even see. |
| 52 | Uriah Heep | "Living The Dream" | Living The Dream | We have Mars in our telescopes, |
| 53 | Public Memory | "The Line" | single | The sea is quiet; we have headphones. |
| 54 | Emma Ruth Rundle | "Control" | On Dark Horses | We have songs about the meanings of things that could all be obliterated in an instant. |
| 55 | Crippled Black Phoenix | "Rain Black, Reign Heavy" | Great Escape | This is why love always wins. |
| 56 | She Drew The Gun | "Resister Reprise" | single | It never gives up. |
| 57 | Bec Sandridge | "ANIMAL" | single | Maybe the planet thinks it could spin without us, |
| 58 | Plastic Picnic | "Doubt" | single | but send a drone back from a light-year out, |
| 59 | Troi Irons | "Antihero" | ANTIHERO 5 | and you'll find it blasting whatever speakers we left. |
| 60 | Richard Thompson | "You Can't Reach Me" | 13 Rivers | The trees have been listening all along, |
| 61 | Irreversible Mechanism | "Existence II: Collision" | Immersion | and the winds only howl to be heard. |
| 62 | The Chills | "Bad Sugar" | Snow Bound | We were the creatures whose worst songs were wonderful, |
| 63 | Driftmoon | "Fire Which Burns Us All" | single | and the rocks we leave behind will be the rocks that finally learned to sing, |
| 64 | Vast Vision | "Florentia" | Florentia | and thus don't need our pity. |
| 65 | Me Not You | "Stranger" | single | Can you live for New York electropop for three minutes exactly? |
| 66 | PANTHEIST | "Control and Fire" | Seeking Infinity | Don't give up yet, I want you to hear this. It's a little long, |
| 67 | 22 | "Sum of Parts" | You Are Creating: Limb1 | and then there's this one that sounds like college a cappella graduates deciding to form a new Muse. |
| 68 | 1997 | "Looking Back I Was Never Ever Right" | Field of Burning Flowers | We have satellites and synthesizers |
| 69 | The Trews | "Leave It Alone" | Civilianaires | like we once had longboats and lutes. |
| 70 | Craig Cardiff | "Ymir, BC" | single | We have songs about small towns and we send them around the world in wires and waves. |
| 71 | The Cerny Brothers | "Days of Thunder" | single | We have machines that only know math and emptiness, |
| 72 | Linn Koch-Emmery | "Don't Sleep on My Luv" | single | and we make them tell our stories of dreaming and overflowing. |
| 73 | Margaret Island | "Éjszaka" | III | We have Hungarian piano-pop |
| 74 | Soap&Skin | "Italy" | single | and Austrian bellows |
| 75 | Son Lux | "Delivery" | single | and the ability to flutter amongst architecture. |
| 76 | Francis Poulenc | "Un soir de neige, FP 126: No. 2, La bonne neige" | France | Only the most naive god would look at our churches and say "Oh yes, this is definitely all for Me." |
| 77 | Peter Broderick | "Two Balloons, Pt. 4" | single | "The players look euphoric, they must be channeling My Love." |
| 78 | The Anix | "Incomplete" | Incomplete +1 | We are not dancing for you. |
| 79 | Rave The Reqviem | "Are Yov Happy Now, Fidelio?" | single | A narcisist hears all anthems as rebellion, |
| 80 | The Black Queen | "Thrown into the Dark" | single | and isn't wrong. |
| 81 | Stove | "Mosquiter" | single | The superstitious correctly recognize the inherent antagonism of rationality and numbers, |
| 82 | Varien | "Oh, Sparrow" | single | but misunderstand ignorance as escape. |
| 83 | Jon Prezant | "Only Love" | Station 6 | You can't get off this Earth by digging holes or trenches or building walls. |
| 84 | Voyce | "Funkstille - Akustik Version" | single | Your armies of silence surrender at every single opportunity, |
| 85 | K-Fly | "Hab gedacht" | single | and even now are plotting your demise |
| 86 | All Tvvins | "Hell of a Party" | single | as a musical in which you'll be the irredeemable villain. You'll still get two good songs, |
| 87 | Guerilla Toss | "Walls of the Universe" | Twisted Crystal | but they'll come in the middle, and nobody will sing along. |
| 88 | And Then She Came | "Perfect as You Are" | single | You thought you won when you taught us your name, |
| 89 | Eyelids | "Maybe More" | Maybe More | but you forget that we will always hear it in your braying voice, and ourselves in our own. |
| 90 | Yumi And The Weather | "Long Before" | Yumi And The Weather | You have your cargo-cult triumphalist branding, but we have everything else, |
| 91 | Turmion Kätilöt | "Verenperintö" | Universal Satan | everything that made you |
| 92 | Street Sects | "Still Between Lovers" | single | and will take apart and reuse your miserable palaces. |
| 93 | Sarah Longfield | "Cataclysm" | single | Our apocalypses are poems and legends, |
| 94 | Marina and the Diamonds | "I Am Not A Robot - Clock Opera Remix" | single | yours are just guys in the hallway telling you it's time to leave now. |
| 95 | Ic3peak | "Сказка" | single | The Russians love their children, but their children have satellites and synthesizers, too. |
| 96 | TeraBrite | "6teen Theme Song" | single | This song, and this song, and this one, and all of them and all of us: we are why love always wins. |