Listed in order, are my top favorite albums released in 2019. There were far too many great songs to list them all, but these albums stuck out — all genres, many singer-songwriters, but what a great year for recorded music.
- Purple Mountains, Purple Mountains (Drag City)
- Deadbeat & Camara, Trinity Thirty (Constellation)
- Weyes Blood, Titanic Rising (Sub Pop)
- People Like Us, The Mirror (Discrepant)
- Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, I Made A Place (Drag City)
- Jamila Woods, LEGACY! LEGACY! (Jagjaguwar)
- Moon Duo, Stars Are the Light (Sacred Bones)
- The National, I Am Easy to Find (4AD)
- William Tyler, Goes West (Merge Records)
- James Brandon Lewis, An UnRuly Manifesto (Relative Pitch)
- Tyler, The Creator, Egor (Columbia)
- Durand Jones & The Indications, American Love Call (Dead Oceans)
- Lizzo, Cuz I Love You (Atlantic)
- Big Thief, Two hands (4AD)
- Bill Callahan, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest (Drag City)
- Tyler Ramsey, For the Morning (Concord)
- J.S. Ondara, Tales of America (The Second Coming) (Verve)
- Cigarettes After Sex, Cry (Partisan)
- The Messthetics, Anthropocosmic Nest (Dischord)
- Simon Scott, Soundings (Touch)
- Freddie Gibbs and Madlib – Bandana (RCA)
- Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Ancestral Recall (Ropeadope)
- Drab Majesty, Modern Mirror (Dais)
- Brittany Howard, Jaime (ATO)
- Sandro Perri, Soft Landing (Constellation)
- Lana Del Ray, Norman Fucking Rockwell (Interscope)
- Faye Webster, Atlanta Millionaires Club (Secretly Canadian)
- Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Ghosteen (Ghosteen LTD)
- Jessica Pratt, Quiet Signs (Mexican Summer)
- Billy Woods & Kenny Segal, Hiding Places (Backwoodz Studioz)
My Top Re-Issues of 2019:
- Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa (Rhino / Grateful Dead)
- Fleetwood Mac, Rumours (Rhino)
- Kenny Burrell, Introducing (Blue Note)
- Stereolab, Mars Audiac Quintet (Warp)
- Bob Dylan (feat. Johnny Cash), Travelin’ Thru: 1967-1969, Bootleg Series Vol. 15 (Columbia)
- Duster, Capsule Losing Contact (Box Set) (Numero Group)
- John Coltrane, Blue World (Impulse)
- Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age 1980-1990 (LITA)