The top 10 Australian albums of 2018

It took months for the best Australian album to emerge, but it was well worth the wait. Mikey Cahill counts down the best in local music for 2018.

IT took until November for the best Australian album to emerge, pipping Flowertruck’s Mostly Sunny at the post. Who took first place? It’s time for Rock City’s annual countdown.

THE BEST (AND WORST) ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

CONFESSIONS OF A WEDDING DJ

1. Sea Glass — Grand Salvo

(Mistletone/Inertia)

This record washed up on the shore late November and guided us towards the light, one set of footprints in the sand at a time. Paddy Mann’s eight-minute odyssey All Those Stars feels like Kevin Parker’s Tame Impala masterpiece Let It Happen, in that he barely lifts a finger and it somehow ends too soon. He uses a qanun (Persian dulcimer), kora (African harp), koto (Japanese stringed instrument) and Indian percussion, with a female chorus of Laura Jean, Lisa Salvo, Hannah Cameron, Michelle Surowiec reprised throughout the album. Grand Salvo is making a late charge on The Australian Music Prize.

Number one album of the year: Sea Glass — Grand Salvo

2. Mostly Sunny — Flowertruck

(Universal)

This feels like getting pushed in a trolley down a coastal road, threatening bitumen beneath, half-cut, by goofy-grinning friends, the best days of your life. Like Hoodoo Gurus playfighting Plastic Bertrand. They’re my new favourite band, make them yours, too. This year’s sleeper cell hit will make your summer loads better if you let it.

3. Gumboot Soup — King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

(Flightless)

What a masterstroke, releasing their fifth album of 2017 on December 31. Gumboot Soup lurches and slurps from flute flutters (Superposition), Black Sabbath arm-wrestling Rob Zombie (The Great Chain of Being) and Donovan-esque lounge muzak (The Last Oasis). Possibly the most satisfying King Gizzard release yet.

4. Djarimirri — Gurrumul

(Skinny Fish)

Far more than a mere album, this is best summarised by A.B. Original rapper and unofficial Australian of the Year, Briggs: “If Dr G’s record doesn’t win The Australian Music Prize then the award’s a farce. You could send Djarimirri’s sheet music to an orchestra in Germany and they could jam on it.” This posthumous release works as transcendental meditation (without having to select the Waterfall Sounds Spotify playlist).

5. Tell Me How You Really Feel — Courtney Barnett

(Milk! Records/Remote Control)

Barnett has a fresh lightness to her that comes from shedding a skin and proving she can keep this career flying upwards and outwards as she tells what’s going on inward. Hopefulessness opens the album spectacularly, played conspiratorially slow: “Take your broken heart and turn it into art.” Help Your Self’s piano and guitar interplay is exquisite.

6. Blue Poles — Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders

(Barely Dressed/Remote Control)

Jack Ladder is detoxing masculinity. Tim Winton is gleaming somewhere right now and so am I after hearing this album. Here, Ladder gives us goofy funk, boogie woogie vibes, AM pop and Icehouse grandeur. Real name Tim Rogers (true story), he’s back in hot form, sounding like he has nothing to lose.

7. I’m Dreaming — Alive Ivy

(Dew Process)

Let’s nickname Annika Schmarsel “The Alivanche.” That’s not reductive, the buoyant local talent can pluck the finest forgotten samples and turn them into a delectable melange just like her Wildflower peers. She coaxed a star turn out of Bertie Blackman on Chasing Stars, a hip-house roller that is making me dance a little too hard in my seat right now and mis-hit my keuhhuKTY&*^*%*%*^ys, ahh, keys.

8. Devotion — Laura Jean

(Inertia/Chapter Music)

Still the most transfixing voice in Australia’s musical landscape, Laura Jean and John Lee hunkered down in Phaedra Studios in Coburg and went synth. Girls On The TV (played on Triple R approximately a bazillion times this year) out-Goldfrapped Goldfrapp. And Lorde became a huge fan too.

9. Hi Viz — The Presets

(Modular)

Any tips on how to remove Martini from my head? Or the sexy sauna banger Tools Down? While you’re there I need one more extraction: “Do whatchuuuu warrrrnt.” All instant classics. And Downtown Shutdown used St Paul’s Lutheran Church Choir in Shepparton made up of former refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and South Sudan. It should win the Triple J Hottest 100. Vote now, muchacho.

10. A Laughing Death In Meatspace — Tropical F--- Storm

(Mistletone/TFS Records)

Gareth Liddiard and partner/muse Fiona Kitschin poached two absolute guns for this project: Erica Dunn (Palm Springs, Mod Con) and Lauren Hammel (High Tension). Liddiard was getting bored of being in The Drones and sounds fully engaged here as he deploys nine songs of futuristic bluster, fire and brimstone. Shellfish Toxin is a rare instrumental, letting us take in what the hell has just happened before the title-track and Rubber Bullies fires live ammunition.

Agree? Disagree? I wanna know what rated and what grated in 2018.

MORE FROM MIKEY CAHILL

CASK WINE: WHY THE STIGMA? LET ME EXPLAIN

‘DUMP YOUR OLD SELFIES COWARDS’ TWENTY-ONE PILOTS

HOW CAN YOU DO THAT FOR A LIVING?

[e-mail]

@joeylightbulb