Top Albums: 19-17

19) WU Lyf - Go Tell Fire to the Mountain

Appearing out of seemingly nowhere, shrouded in an unusual amount of anonymity, and taking a name that means World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation, Wu Lyf certainly has carved a unique niche for themselves.  But that wouldn't mean much if their "heavy pop" wasn't pleasing to the ears.

Unintelligible barks break between bursts of glistening organ and shards of glassy guitars.  This all builds to a thundering crescendo and then descends into an even more unintelligible call-and-response only to build once more.  WU Lyf definitely have a template for what they're doing, but, god damn, it's an effective template.

18) Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for My Halo

Vile's been kicking around for a few years now releasing uneven folk and psych albums under both his own name and as a former member of the War on Drugs.  As noted, his albums were somewhat incosistent positioning him as more of a singles artists with brief moments of sublime brilliance.  Somehow he was able to pull everything together for Smoke Ring and release his first "complete" album.

Everything here feels as one, from the love-lorn folk balladry of "Baby's Arms" to the weary road song "On Tour".  Even the moments when it seems like he's meandering or padding the album for length, as on "Ghost Town", still end up feeling relevant in the context of the album as a whole.  This isn't new territory for Vile, but it's the first time he's been able to string together everything in a cohesive package.

17) Elite Gymnastics - Ruin 1 / Ruin 2

The first EP to grace the list, this is actually two separate EPs that were later reissued as one release.  The first half, Ruin 1, is the more upbeat fare, expanding from the band's previous attempts at chillwave to a more indie dance-oriented sound.  They still pull in some disparate influences along the way, "Omamori" filtering its dance beats through the hazy warmth of shoegaze's better moments, but as shown on "So Close to Paradise" the band seems to have found the essence of what makes a great dance track.

Meanwhile, the second half, Ruin 2, appears to have taken chillwave's lazy approach to dance to its logical conclusion: every song has been reinvented to move at a snail's pace.  Heavy on atmosphere, Ruin 2 is a series of loosely-connected dream sequences that reinterpret the meaning of each song so a danse macabre number like "Omamori", already a rumination on death, now descends into the afterlife it only once tempted.