TOP 100 ALBUMS OF 2018

While Kamasi Washington set a high bar for himself with 2015’s monumental The Epic, the three-hour Heaven and Earth is a stunning achievement that illustrates how the sax player/composer and his band crossed over in 2018 to fans from outside of the jazz realm. At times stirring, complex, and moving, this is music for everyone. By Hays Davis

“We nearly drowned for such a silly thing,” sings Mitski at the outset of “Old Friend,” the third track from her brilliant fifth album, . This lyric lies at the nucleus of soldier heart: across the album’s 14 ultra-compact, hyper-hooky songs, Mitski often comes close to succumbing. Yet in none of these songs does she give up; across , she vividly depicts the ways in which the heart