After twelve months of listening to every key release (and a few weeks of intense stereo-focused arguments), Gigwise has compiled our annual 50 Best Albums Of The Year.
After an incredible year for music, there could only be one winner of Gigwise's Top 50: the dynamic, divisive and delightful St. Vincent by St. Vincent.
Compiled by Andy Morris, Andrew Trendell, Ed Keeble, Alexandra Pollard and Elliot Mitchell.
"There is a certain sort of joy that can result when extremely smart people make music you can dance to. Sure the album is high concept, but there's no look-at-me Art Rave nonsense or Sia style back-to-the-audience shenanigans. 'Digital Witness' and 'Birth In Reverse' have a certain wonky funk about them while 'I Prefer Your Love' is just crying out to be used on a film's end credits. Album Of The Year? Certainly. We'll snort a bit of the Berlin Wall to celebrate." (AM)
"'Everything is very considered now,' Annie Clark told Gigwise earlier this year, "like a strange fever dream." Clark's fourth album is her most definitive piece of work to date, stamping her identity and eccentricity over every bar.
Sprinting away with the art-rock baton from her last few LPs and her collaborative Love This Giant with David Byrne, it pulses with character and resonates as genuinely compelling, rather than merely being 'quirky'.
In the light of her reinvention and larger than life space-age persona becoming a reality, she is the closest thing this generation has to Bowie, but only in the sense that she's a freak, an other, living in a fever dream world of her own." (AT)
Watch St. Vincent talk to Gigwise about her next album + the future below
"Comprising twisted but angelic vocals drenched in noise, St. Vincent’s fourth LP is such a scuzzy, artrock delight that it’s no wonder she named it twice. Traversing between sharp- tongued humour and aching sincerity without missing a beat, listening to St. Vincent is an experience that can only be improved upon by seeing it, in all its genius insanity, performed live." (AP)
"St. Vincent's masterpiece saw Annie Clark fully embrace a persona to push herself into the most creatively intriguing territory of her career to date. Visceral and experimental throughout but still possessing that deep emotional undertow, this album is simply phenomenal." (EM)
Watch the video for 'Digital Witness' below
Read the rest of our albums of the year countdown below
