The Best Albums of 2018 So Far

I know a music year is good when I can look at my mid-year top 10 and feel like I'd be content if nothing changed by the end of the year. That's the case with the first six months of 2018, which yielded a true embarrassment of riches. Narrowing my list down to 10 records was no small feat, and necessitated cutting emotional wrecking balls from the likes of Brandi Carlile and Ashley Monroe, as well as pitch-perfect summer LPs like LANCO's Hallelujah Nights. Ultimately, though, the albums below stood out in sharpest relief. So, without further ado, my 10 favorite albums of 2018 so far.

1. Caitlyn Smith - Starfire

Some artists just have those voices that you can’t deny. You might not usually listen to the genre they hail from, and you might not even love the songs, but you can hear them sing and understand why people love their music. Adele is one of those artists. Chris Stapleton is one of those artists. Jeff Buckley, when he was alive, was one of those artists. And Caitlyn Smith is one of those artists, too. For my money, Smith’s debut, titled Starfire, is one of the two or three most well-sung LPs of the decade so far. I’m guessing that one listen to the theatrical tour-de-force “East Side Restaurant” will be enough to tell you why.

While Smith’s voice is the centerpiece, though, Starfire is what it is because of the songwriting. Smith has been waiting for this moment for a long time, releasing a series of EPs and writing songs for everyone from Garth Brooks to Dolly Parton to Meghan Trainor and John Legend. Starfire encapsulates that long-haul story into a record about chasing a dream until it breaks your heart—and then chasing it even harder. Songs like “Don’t Give up on My Love” and “This Town Is Killing Me” ache with the sting of everything you sacrifice when you gamble your life on a fool’s hope of music industry success. “They buried my granddad without me/’Cause I was out on the road at some one-off show in Tupelo/And I can’t take that one back,” Smith sings in the latter. Starfire is an album built on a lot of miles, a lot of lonely nights in shitty motel rooms, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. You can hear every ounce of what the journey cost in the songs, so when Smith belts something like the rafter-shaking key change at the climax of “Tacoma,” it feels like nothing less than a triumph of the human spirit.

2. Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

Virtually every music fan I’ve encountered online has Golden Hour somewhere in their mid-year best albums list. A lot of these people are not country music fans, but they were won over by Kacey Musgraves and her beautiful, lilting melodies. It’s not hard to see why: Golden Hour is lush, luscious, and emotionally satisfying, an earnest “falling in love” album from a girl who built her brand on always being the wittiest, most cynical person in the room. There’s still wit, of course. Musgraves is just a damn smart songwriter, which is why she can turn a song called “Wonder Woman” into a thoughtful dissection of unrealistic relationship dynamics, or why she can make the word “chrysalis” sound so goddamn romantic in “Butterflies.” But Kacey also knows when to drop the clever gun and level with you, making love songs like “Love Is a Wild Thing” and “Rainbow” sound like the purest and prettiest confessions ever to come from a heart.

3. Tenille Townes - The Living Room Worktapes

I don’t usually put EPs on “best albums” lists, but I couldn’t help myself with this one. The Living Room Worktapes is so good that it almost single-handedly reignited my excitement for new music. For whatever reason, around the middle of May, I found myself bored with seeking out fresh releases, preferring to revisit old favorites. I wondered for a spell whether I was getting to that point that so many listeners reach, where they lose their hunger for new music. Turns out I just needed a new, young artist to come along and light my world on fire again. Tenille Townes did that. The Living Room Worktapes is just four songs, and those four songs feature little more than Townes’ voice and guitar, but the result is still magnetic. Bookended by a pair of clever and catchy love songs (“Where You Are” and “White Horse”), this EP soars with its middle two selections, both songs that tell nuanced, heartbreaking stories in brand new ways. The first, “Jersey on the Wall,” is a conversation with god about a high school athlete who died in a car accident. The second, “Somebody’s Daughter,” finds the narrator reckoning with a million questions as she drives past a homeless woman on the side of the road. “I’ll wonder how she fell and no one caught her/She’s somebody’s daughter,” Townes sings on the latter, a burst of pure, beautiful empathy that cracked my heart in half the first time I heard it. No one has written a better song this year.

4. Brian Fallon - Sleepwalkers

Brian Fallon has gotten more press this year for an album that’s 10 years old than for one that came out less than six months ago. That fact isn’t terribly surprising: as The Gaslight Anthem celebrate 10 years of The ’59 Sound—both in print and on tour—everyone wants to take a look back at the earliest days of Fallon and his “next Bruce Springsteen” myth-making narrative. At the same time, though, Fallon is quietly carving out a comfortable niche for himself as a solo artist. His solo debut, 2016’s Painkillers, showed immense promise but often sounded like the prototypical “frontman goes solo” LP. Fallon was trying to figure out how his songs should sound without his mighty backing band behind him. On Sleepwalkers, he’s decided not to worry about it, and the result is a decidedly richer and more assured album. Hearing Fallon howl at the moon again—on songs like “Etta James” and the title track—feels so good after what was mostly a more restrained affair on Painkillers. Underneath the rediscovered confidence and gravitas, though, Fallon shares a deeply personal story about finding love again after a divorce. His willingness to tell the truth makes songs like “Neptune,” and “Watson” not just great solo Brian Fallon songs, but some of the best songs he’s ever done, with any project.

5. Dawes - Passwords

Less immediate than any other record in the Dawes catalog, Passwords nonetheless extends the band’s hot streak to six albums—five of them from this decade. No other band has been as consistently excellent over the past 10 years, and Passwords pushes the Dawes sound in enough interesting directions that it's easy to imagine their streak lasting another 10 years. For this record, the name of the game seems to be longer tracks with more subtle builds or structural changes throughout. Some listeners might flag the new style as boring at points, but give these songs some time to percolate and they flourish, with slow-burners like “I Can’t Love” and “Telescope” benefiting especially from more nuanced listening. The best numbers, though, are still grounded in frontman Taylor Goldsmith’s thoughtful observations about the human condition. When he lets his guard down and gets vulnerable on the last two tracks—“Never Gonna Say Goodbye” and “Time Flies Either Way,” both poetic love songs, both among his most personal work ever—he makes it feel like no one else has ever written songs about love before.

6. Donovan Woods - Both Ways

Donovan Woods just gets better and better. As a writer who always knows the best way to turn his pen into a knife—and how to twist it, to make things really hurt—Woods specializes in songs designed to break your heart. Both Ways is his most skillful work yet in that regard, packed with songs that balance joy and gratefulness with crushing sadness and loss. But that’s life: you get things both ways, the bad with the good and the dark with the light. It’s why there’s a song about falling in love that will probably make you cry (“I Ain’t Ever Loved No One”) and a song about losing a parent that will probably make you smile (“Next Year”).

7. Field Report - Summertime Songs

Doubt; fear; self-loathing; regret. These emotions are a songwriter’s best friends, but they typically end up distilled into sad, depressing songs. On Summertime Songs, they form the backbone to one of the year’s most uplifting albums. The record finds frontman Chris Porterfield fretting over the impending birth of his first child. Is he the “father” type? Does he have what it takes to be that kind of stable and dependable object for someone else? Or should he just hit the road and run right now? Save his wife and his unborn child the pain of his future mistakes? By the end of the record, though, Porterfield is recommitting—not because he thinks he can promise a future of infallibility, but because he wants to be a part of something bigger than himself when life’s storms inevitably come. “When everything is changing, you are everything I need,” he sings in the final song. It’s a chilling conclusion to the year’s most complete album-length statement.

8. Brothers Osborne - Port Saint Joe

On their first album, 2016’s Pawn Shop, Brothers Osborne proved a few things. First, they were committed to bringing the guitar solo back as a genuine artform. Second, they knew their way around a hook. And third, they were willing to go to darker places than the typical mainstream country band when the song demanded it. On the follow-up, a rich and organic set called Port Saint Joe, they double down on all of the above. The songs are catchy enough to be summer mixtape fodder (“Slow Your Roll”), rip-roaring enough to rock harder than any actual “rock” song from 2018 (“Shoot Me Straight”), and nuanced enough tackle serious topics like alcoholism (“Tequila Again”) and mortality (“Pushing up Daisies,” “While You Still Can”). Tying everything together is Jay Joyce’s expert production, which makes songs like “Weed, Whiskey, and Willie” sound like literal heaven.

9. Steve Moakler - Born Ready

If you’re still seeking a summer soundtrack now that July is here, look no further. Over the course of his past three albums, Steve Moakler has morphed from a pop-leaning songwriter in the vein of John Mayer and Matt Nathanson into one of the smartest and most melodically gifted songwriters in Nashville. Somehow, he’s yet to score a hit for himself, but Born Ready feels like it could change that. Stacked with hooky-as-hell songs ready for your next road trip, beach trek, night out, or evening drink on the porch, Born Ready is the kind of album that would be a hit machine with a major label behind it. Even if the radio doesn’t wise up and play these songs, though, I guarantee you that your summer will sound more idyllic with them coming through the speakers.

10. Dierks Bentley - The Mountain

Dierks Bentley needed a course correction after his last record, 2016’s Black. The album, while not bad, per se, was an obvious trend-chaser that tried to adapt Bentley’s sound to suit the pop/R&B-country trends of the time. Dierks has always been better being himself—hence the triumph of 2014’s Riser, largely inspired by the death of Bentley’s father. It makes sense, then, that The Mountain is arguably Bentley’s most consistent album yet, if not his best. There’s no obvious radio grab, and the songs all feel cut from the same weather-worn cloth. It’s a record about reconciling the restlessness of an adventurous soul with the commitments of love, marriage, and family. The result is an album that revels in the joys of life while casting aside the bad vibes. In other words, it’s the perfect summer album.