| 1 | Kylie Minogue | "Hold On To Now" | Tension | I don't dance in dance clubs, and my favorite dance songs all have this kind of meditative dreaminess |
| 2 | Dobet Gnahoré | "Gni" | Gni +1 | that works better as private reverie than public exhortation; |
| 3 | Ingrid Michaelson | "If This Is Love" | single | or else this is exactly backwards, and because I dance privately, meditatively, |
| 4 | Caroline Jones | "Talking To Milo" | single | I attach myself to the introspective and cinematic |
| 5 | Angie McMahon | "Exploding" | single | instead of the gyrational and kinetic. |
| 6 | Karen Zoid | "Mash Up" | Humanoid | This is why Kylie's swoony, faintly Robyn-esque "Hold On To Now" |
| 7 | Lauran Hibberd | "i suck at grieving" | single | segues naturally for me not just into Dobet Gnahoré's sinuous Ivorian-Latin bounce "Gni" |
| 8 | Llynks | "Maybe" | single | but through it straight on to Ingrid Michaelson's montage-fragile Lisa Loeb / Jane Siberry hybrid soundtrack single |
| 9 | Teenage Joans | "5 Things I Can Taste" | 5 Things I Can Taste +2 | and Caroline Jones' heartbreaking demonstration of what a country song can be |
| 10 | Taylor Acorn | "Sticking Around" | Certified Depressant | when it's about what happens after you park the truck and get out |
| 11 | The Dollyrots | "When We're Sober" | single | and stand outside your own front door for a moment |
| 12 | Crawlers | "Would You Come To My Funeral" | single | thinking about the life you're walking back into. |
| 13 | Briston Maroney | "Breathe" | Ultrapure | All of these songs, the quiet ones maybe ultimately no more so than the loud ones, |
| 14 | Tuki | "En la cola de la fiesta" | Pedírtelo así 5 | are ways of rotating pain or doubt through emotional space |
| 15 | Against The Current | "silent stranger" | single | into some other aspirational orientation, |
| 16 | C Z A R I N A | "The Outsider" | single | aware or defiant |
| 17 | Byrdy | "Misery" | single | or just momentarily honest. |
| 18 | Elegy Of Madness | "Crawling" | single | Or this is backwards, too, |
| 19 | DIANNE | "Unleash the Siren" | single | and we hear songs how we are, |
| 20 | Ewiniar | "Sister Moon" | single | caught out between certainties, |
| 21 | Raven Tide | "Reach for Me" | single | close enough to touch the boundary between logistical despair |
| 22 | A Dark Reborn | "Levitating the Void" | single | and restorative serenity |
| 23 | Solarcycles | "Grows Then Dies" | single | with our own skin, |
| 24 | Varg | "Eisenseite" | Eisenseite +1 | shivering to transmit catharsis inwards. |
| 25 | Therion | "Twilight Of The Gods" | single | Everything goes through me, it feels like: |
| 26 | Sulphur Aeon | "Usurper Of The Earth And Sea" | single | voices saying anything they've practiced, |
| 27 | Heretoir | "Glacierheart - Nightsphere, Pt. 2" | single | guitars depicted in current or just magnets, |
| 28 | Sgàile | "Lamentations By The Lochan" | single | any allegory of structure, |
| 29 | Breath Of Wind | "A Natural Symphony" | A Natural Symphony +1 | anywhere in the measure to place a snare. |
| 30 | Temperance | "No Return" | No Return +1 | It's reasonable to wonder, if you know of only two people with a given name, if they're related, |
| 31 | DGM | "Unravel The Sorrow" | single | but it's even more reasonable to stipulate that we are all related, |
| 32 | Subsignal | "The Art of Giving In" | A Poetry of Rain | and that we don't declare ourselves Ramones as much as acknowledge it. |
| 33 | Apostolica | "Animae Haeretica" | Animae Haeretica | I am not, technically, either of two Australian soil chemists, |
| 34 | 燐舞曲 | "夢想曲 -Träumerei-" | 夢想曲 -Träumerei- +1 | but I approve of their shed estimates |
| 35 | Damian Hamada's Creatures | "The Beginning of the End" | 運命の支配者 | and mostly resist the impish urge to antagonize the sales representatives |
| 36 | Chanty | "kanadeiro" | single | for pickup trucks in which I suspsect they have no serious interest, |
| 37 | Mada Mitakoto no Nai Sekai | "Darkness (feat. Risa Yuzuki)" | single | or they would have dictated their email addresses more carefully. |
| 38 | 82kaime no shushinkei | "UNKILL FAITH" | single | These are my bother wolves, under sister moons, |
| 39 | IRIS MONDO | "相対愛憎ラブソング" | single | and maybe in both cases we are the same thing from a fractionally different celestial angle. |
| 40 | RAISE A SUILEN | "Apocalypse" | single | Did I write "Nitrogen supply to the grain modifies the effects of temperature on starch and protein accumulation during grain filling in wheat"? |
| 41 | mewhan | "shikabane" | Downer | How well do I really remember 2004? |
| 42 | Rokirun | "Please Don't Leave Me Alone" | single | If it had said "...in a record review" at the end, I would have to search to be sure. |
| 43 | Regal Lily | "泳いでゆけたら" | single | If you only have one of anything, you can't see the patterns in which it participates. |
| 44 | 藤川千愛 | "1000 Nen Ai" | single | The search for new favorite songs is not diluted by endlessness, |
| 45 | Maki | "hometown" | single | but it is transposed into a different category of ritual. |
| 46 | TOTALFAT | "New Shit" | A YEAR OF STRENGTH 3 | Another way of saying "do something you love" is "do something you can't not do", |
| 47 | as a sketch pad | "Now On" | single | because only then will you require yourself to treat it as an improbably standing wave, |
| 48 | ROTH BART BARON | "BLOW" | single | not a deliverable collapse. |
| 49 | BOYS LIKE GIRLS | "NEW LOVE" | NEW LOVE 5 | You don't need someone who is never wrong, |
| 50 | NateWantsToBattle | "Without a Cure" | To Let Go | you need someone who feels the effects of their own errors more than you do, |
| 51 | Cloud House | "Don't Wanna Talk" | single | and accepts them as expected challenge. |
| 52 | Ligabue | "Così come sei" | Dedicato a noi | You need to look into their eyes and feel the idiotic impulse to act as if you have a thousand years left, |
| 53 | Rubén Kelsen | "Tu Piel y Tu Nombre" | single | and a million years of joy to fit into them. |
| 54 | Broken Peach | "Pero Si Tú" | single | Nitrogen and wheat have been doing this dance without us since the dreamtime. |
| 55 | Chris Holsten | "Gå bli lykkelig, du" | Gå bli lykkelig, du | We introduce them to each other with smug and geeky enthusiasm, |
| 56 | Brendan Peyper | "Moegdans" | single | and they smile and say "yes, we've met", |
| 57 | Staubkind | "Da ist immer noch mein Herz" | Da ist immer noch mein Herz | but they aren't angry, how could you have known? |
| 58 | ErnstFall | "Keine Ewigkeit" | Keine Ewigkeit +1 | They have been together and apart and together, |
| 59 | Creeper | "Black Heaven" | Black Heaven +2 | and eventually you realize that the togethers only episodically seem finite, |
| 60 | JOHN (TIMESTWO) | "At Peacehaven" | A Life Diagrammatic | and the aparts are a dry, scaly protective casing that blows away in the wind if you throw yourself repeatedly into the air. |
| 61 | ANTIHELD | "LANG LEBE TRiPKiD" | single | I've heard that ping-echo descending guitar scale at the beginning of "kanadeiro" in at least 10 other songs in an erratic lineage winding back to Big Country, |
| 62 | GionnyScandal | "Vaffanculo" | Black Mood 2 | and the cycling-fifth riffs in "Keine Ewigkeit" in too many songs to even impose a personal origin myth, |
| 63 | MOG | "Bye Bye Butterflies" | X | and these are not record reviews any more than a day can be panned by opening with "the sun has chosen a tired point on an overused horizon for its unimaginative entrance". |
| 64 | Big Shamu | "Bold As Brass (Ballers Edition)" | Bold As Brass (Ballers Edition) +2 | If these songs contain ideas, it is so that singing may sustain them. |
| 65 | Sleaford Mods | "Big Pharma" | single | I'm fairly sure I've never heard "spells" rhymed with "more" outside of Scottish hip hop. |
| 66 | Eugy | "Safe" | single | Do I have to believe that Jason Williamson is singing "they’re eating their hats" instead of "they're eating the rats" just because that's what it says on sleafordmods.com? |
| 67 | H_art the Band | "NEVER SEEN" | single | No. It's probably worth accepting Eugy's insistence that it's the Lord who still kept him safe, rather than the laws, |
| 68 | David Jones David | "All The Way" | single | but only to place him in a long and welcoming tradition of African gospel diaspora |
| 69 | Sifaeli Mwabuka | "Hallow Naongea Na Nani?" | single | that after all more or less includes all of us, |
| 70 | Ihhashi Elimhlophe | "Ama Waza Waza" | Isina Muva | which isn't to say that a secular genre of pro-judicial hip hop wouldn't also be mesmerizing, |
| 71 | uMkhulekelwa | "Ubaba Wengan'Endala" | Baxov'Umndeni | nor to imply that I have necessarily even run these Zulu titles through the translators the way I usually do the Japanese ones. |
| 72 | Luve Dubazane | "Angibesabi (Umbuso wamaciko)" | Ngibeke ngaphezulu | If I am quiet, I am listening to something while I am watching you. |
| 73 | UMzukulu kaShafuza | "Ngithule ngiyanibuka" | Wajola ngiyajola 5 | It may not be our song yet, but it's not obvious which patience is likely to be more productive, |
| 74 | Thandazani | "Shwi noMntekhala" | Kuyoshiyan' Izenzo | searching for the place where we will meet, |
| 75 | PHUMLANI HADEBE | "Noma Kunzima" | Noma Kunzima +3 | or waiting for it to be exactly here. |
| 76 | Sanda Magubane | "Impumelelo yami" | IMPUMELELO YAMI | My success, such as it has been, is probably as much Lawful Neutral obduracy as weaponized openheartedness, |
| 77 | 071 NELLY THE MASTER BEAT | "Wa Khutisa" | single | but maybe this too is two ways of saying the same thing. |
| 78 | Kharishma | "Ong Costile" | Malapi | Neutrality is what you end up with when you relinquish the conviction that you inhabit an opposition of good and evil. |
| 79 | Maredi Maredi | "Mmata wa ntoya" | single | Law is what you end up with when you believe in each other but accept that we are still how we are. |
| 80 | Hilary Woods | "Where The Bough Has Broken" | single | You can look at the difficulty of writing a non-melodramatic song about the death of your former future brother-in-law and think "no, I will compose an ambient objection to the entire premise of metaphor". |
| 81 | Sowulo | "Heolstor Sċeadu" | single | Isn't this what ennobles the traditional? Its centering in nature? Forest baths? Singing like we imagine the ents would sing? |
| 82 | Appropriate Savagery | "Sunk Offshore, One Single Oath" | Only Autumn Returns | No. But this idea, inhabited, becomes itself human. |
| 83 | Sinke Dûs | "Vastatio" | Modus Vivendi | We are never more or less human than when we imagine the humanity of objects, |
| 84 | Vanco | "Kitchen" | single | or the will of math, |
| 85 | mouse on the keys | "Pointillism02" | Pointillism | or how algorithms would apologize for having done exactly as demanded, |
| 86 | INHUMAN | "ECHO" | ARRIVAL | or what any fear would imply if it were inverted. |
| 87 | CHVRCHES | "Lies - Live at Ancienne Belgique / 2013" | Lies 2 | Always we can sing, |
| 88 | Rain Paris | "What Was I Made For" | single | and some day we still might. |
| 89 | In This Moment | "ARMY OF ME" | ARMY OF ME +2 | Or this is backwards, and the reinforcements we represent |
| 90 | First to Eleven | "Wannabe" | Covers Vol. 16 | are exactly because we are constantly singing even when we clearly cannot. |
| 91 | Muhammad Zaky Zulfiqor | "Blood Sport" | single | We can't win. That's why we play. |