Helsinki’s Flow Festival, one of Finland’s biggest musical gatherings and one of the world’s first carbon neutral festivals, revealed the first names of their 2019 edition and we’re aleady so hyped up.

Besides the iconic The Cure and Tame Impala, they will invite HighClouds-approved artists Robyn, Mitski, CupcakKe, and Yves Tumor who are all featured in our 100 Tracks of 2018 list to be revealed very soon. The first round of names also features Father John Misty, Modeselektor, and Amnesia Scanner. Check the full announcement and get your tickets on their website.

First, no one can be objective, there’s no truth in music. Then, it can be mentally difficult for artists to accept these insights. We are music fans above all and we never want to hurt anyone. Our goal is only to discover new talents and to bring them to our readers’ ears. We know they don’t always have the time to listen to everything we scan and write about during the year so these lists are just recommendations of what they should first focus on. Nothing more.

We know it’s a shared subjective feeling: 2018 has been another great year for music. We got introduced to fascinating newcomers with strong concepts that prove that albums are certainly not dead yet. Some rising singer-songwriters confirmed their defining style while a few established artists successfully re-recorded their masterpiece or explored challenging new soundscapes. You can find below the 30 albums that made 2018 according to our staff and stay tuned for our usual 100 Tracks of the year list next week.

30) Amen Dunes – Freedom

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29) Kadhja Bonet – Childqueen

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28) Yves Tumor – Safe in the Hands of Love

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27) Whitney Ballen – You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship

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26) Tirzah – Devotion

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25) CupcakKe – Eden

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24) Rosalía – El Mal Querer

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23) Tomberlin – At Weddings

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22) Sidney Gish – No Dogs Allowed

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21) Ezra Furman – Transangelic Exodus

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20) Kali Uchis – Isolation

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19) Janelle Monáe – Dirty Computer

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18) Frankie Cosmos – Vessel

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17) U.S. Girls – In A Poem Unlimited

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16) Ariana Grande – Sweetener

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15) Ex:Re – Ex:Re

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14) Car Seat Headrest – Twin Fantasy

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13) Tierra Whack – Whack World

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12) IDLES – Joy As An Act of Resistance.

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11) illuminaties hoties – Kiss Yr Frenemies

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10) Mr Twin Sister – Salt

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9) SOPHIE – Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Sides

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8) Low – Double Negative

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7) noname – Room 25

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6) Soccer Mommy – Clean

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5) Beach House – 7

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4) Robyn – Honey

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3) Lucy Dacus – Historian

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2) Snail Mail – Lush

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1) Mitski – Be The Cowboy

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Mitski delighted us this year with her excellent album Be The Cowboy. She also shared three singles: “Geyser”, “Nobody” and “Two Slow Dancers” which was announced as the final one. But surprise, Mitski has now unveiled a black and white video for “Washing Machine Heart”. It was directed by Zia Anger, who also signed the visuals of “Geyser“. Watch below.

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Two years after her career-breakthrough album “Puberty 2”, Mitski goes full art-pop in her fifth studio LP. Eschewing the guitar-based abrasiveness of her earlier work in favour of a poppier sound, “Be The Cowboy” finds the Japanese-American singer-songwriter at the most straightforward and accessible she has ever been. It is a left turn that somehow manages to not come off as one, one of those rare albums that serve both as outliers in an artist’s discography and as an entry point for people not that familiar with her work. A bona fide pop album from beginning to end, “Be The Cowboy” is brimming with huge choruses and carefully adorned by horn and string arrangements. It’s the kind of bold move reminiscent of prior career left-turns by female trailblazer artists like PJ Harvey or St. Vincent, a confident and successful plunge into pop music that retains the melodic strengths of her early work while expanding its sonic palette.

If there is a recurrent trend throughout “Be The Cowboy”, that would be the album’s refusal to stay put in one place. Gone are the grunge-y loud-quiet dynamics of “Your Best American Girl” and the Guided By Voices-inspired crunchiness of “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars”, here replaced by softly strummed acoustic guitars (see the 60s pop-inspired “Lonesome Love”), droning keyboards (“Geyser”) or electro-tinged basslines, as in album highlight “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?”. Only intermittently does Mitski’s reliance on distorted guitars appear on this album, as in the Pixies-esque “Remember My Name” or in the final outburst in the lead single and stand-out track “Geyser”.

It wouldn’t be unfair to claim that “Be The Cowboy” just fails to reach the peaks of her stronger work, but it does succeed in providing a welcome twist on her identity as an artist while playing to her strengths as a musician. Nothing on this record is as emotionally resonant as “Your Best American Girl” or “Francis Forever”, but she has turned around that lack of generation-defining songs to deliver the most compact album in her career. While “Puberty 2” and “Bury Me At Makeout Creek” seemed to be painstakingly built around their strongest songs, “Be The Cowboy” is the best Mitski album at functioning as a consistent work of art where most tracks belong to the same tier.

Though she keeps changing customs throughout the entire album, there is a strong sense in melody in each of these songs that is unequivocally Mitski. Her song-writing has shifted shape on this record – it is almost unpredictable melody-wise, a few songs boasting an almost Sparks-esque theatricality helped by the myriad arrangements she’s brought on board this time round. Released as a single a few months before the album was out, “Nobody” is representative of her stylistic left-turn. A piano-lead banger that would’ve been a chart-topper if we lived in a better world, “Nobody” has Mitski endlessly repeating the song’s title over 70s-inspired funk guitars and bassline, going so over the top that she even manages to make some of the corniest key changes in recent popular music seem like an earnest artistic expression.

No matter how multifarious it might be, “Be The Cowboy” is undoubtedly a Mitski album at its core. The surface has changed, but there remains a sense of angst and longing (half the lyrics of the album are either about her wanting to kiss somebody or wanting to be kissed) articulated through her idiosyncratic song-writing and lyricism: “Does it smell like a school gymnasium in here?”, she sings in the opening line of the starry-eyed “Two Slow Dancers”. A slow-tempo closing track embroidered with cinematic arrangements, “Two Slow Dancers” serves not only as a heart-wrenching and reluctant welcoming of the passing of time (It would be a hundred times easier if we were young again / But as it is / And it is /We’re just two slow dancers, last ones out) but also as a hint of what might be in store for her. Just as “Happy” previewed the more art-pop route that she has gone on with “Be The Cowboy”, it would not be particularly surprising if her next album is a collection of moody ballads in the style of “Two Slow Dancers”, just as PJ Harvey followed what was the most accessible material in her curriculum with the chamber pop White Chalk.

From the epic last minute of opener “Geyser” to the The Cars-meets-Vivian Girls power pop immediacy of “Washing Machine Heart”, “Be The Cowboy” is an instant reminder of Mitski’s compelling gifts as a songwriter. Though some will certainly miss the heart-on-your-sleeve candidness of her earlier work, she has succeeded in finding a way to grow as an artist without letting go of her trademark song-writing tropes. Each of these 14 songs unveil more about Mitski, working as a window into the mind and heart of one of the most fascinating artists of our day.

After “Geyser” and “Nobody“, Mitski is unveiling the closing track from her upcoming album “Be The Cowboy”. “Two Slow Dancers” is announced as the third and last single. About this intense piano torch song, the artist detailed:

[su_quote]They used to have something together that is no longer there and they’re trying to relive it in a dance, knowing that they’ll have to go home and go back to their lives.[/su_quote]

It’s the perfect track to close an album which focuses on loneliness. In the accompanying lyric video, there’s this disco ball which keeps on turning and turning. Even when it’s over and that you’re all alone, the world keeps turning after all.

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Following up on her intense and raw lead single “Geyser” and her amazing collaboration with Xiu Xiu, Mitski, one of our favourite artists here at HighClouds, has just unveiled a the second single and video from her upcoming fifth album. We have to say “Nobody” is a disconcerting one, not because of its quality (obviously) but because it reveals a new side to her artistry. Exploring the theme of loneliness that suits her so well, the singer-songwriter almost sounds funky and disco here. She’s dancing her loneliness away and we’re so ready for it.

In a press release, one can read that Mitski introduces a persona who has been teased but never so fully present until now — a woman in control. She reveals she had in mind “a very controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. Because women have so little power and showing emotion is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount of control she can get. Still, there is something very primordial in her that is trying to find a way to get out.”

This track comes with a great Christopher Good-directed music video that you can watch below.

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Mitski and Xiu Xiu rarely come up in the same conversation – the former’s music is usually inscribed in the alternative rock tradition and features relatively straightforward songwriting, while the latter’s errs rather on the avant-pop side. But that’s no reason to dismiss “Between The Breaths”, their first collaboration ever, which is taken from the upcoming John Cameron Mitchell film “How To Talk to Girls at Parties” (which, by the way, would have also made a great Mitski album title).

Mitski has gone to state that her input during the recording process was merely that of a session singer, but she is definitely selling herself short there. “Between The Breaths” definitely leans more towards Xiu Xiu’s musical palette, but Mitski brings in a recognizable and endearing sense of longing that make the song jump up a league or two. There’s a noisy and almost shoegaze-y feel to “Between The Breaths”, which at times seems to work as a neo-My Bloody Valentine song. Unlike the large majority of Mitski tracks, “Between The Breaths” does not boast an immediately memorable melody, nor is it something you could picture yourself playing on acoustic guitar. It is the sonic experience as a whole that simply irresistible; it is the blend of the Xiu Xiu-trademarked hazy electronic arrangements with the song’s post-punkish bass line and Mitski’s floaty vocals that we find truly compelling and unique. It’s a match made in heaven, and one can only wonder if it’ll become a turning point in Mitski’s career.

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“Nightride” – Tinashe

“We Got It From Here…Thank You 4 Your Service” – A Tribe Called Quest

“1992” – Princess Nokia

“Malibu” – Anderson .Paak

“My Woman” – Angel Olsen

“Hopelessness” – Anohni

“Coloring Book” – Chance The Rapper

“Atrocity Exhibition” – Danny Brown

“Blackstar” – David Bowie

“Blonde” – Frank Ocean

“How To Be A Human Being” – Glass Animals

“Oh No” – Jessy Lanza

“The Life Of Pablo” – Kanye West

“Dangerous Woman” – Ariana Grande

“Puberty 2” – Mitski

“Telefone” – noname

“Tempo” – Olga Bell

“Cut & Paste” – Oscar

“Nothing’s Real” – Shura

“American Boyfriend: A Suburban Love Story” – Kevin Abstract

You can also check our other lists:

20 Favorite Videos

20 Favorite EPs

20 Favorite Albums and Mixtapes

Radar 2017

100 Favorite Tracks