So this Friday saw the release of Julia Holter's latest record, and I reckoned it was worth discussing in a thread separate from NP. Back when I saw
The Tree of Life in theatres I felt it was a film that, warts and all, felt like a very special and monumental experience, the chance encounter between a artist with wild, possibly unwieldy ambitions and the resources to bring their idea to fruition in all its grandiloquent, unfiltered glory. To my ears
Aviary is feeling very similar in these regards, and the kind of experience it seems to be delivering as well. It's grand, it's difficult and abstract, it's possibly overlong and overblown, like Malick's preference for sweeping and vertiginous vistas magnified through wide-angle lenses every track here seems almost designed to be as sweeping and massive as they possibly can, through classic wall of sound techniques, grand orchestral arrangements and Sanders-like clusters of winds, electronic textures that lend an often oneiric and cosmic feel to the music, dissonant choirs and else; all this to arrive to something that feels utterly transcendent, utterly lush and moving in all manner of ways. Like the Malick film I have no doubt this will be rather divisive, and it's also not perfect - there's tracks through the first half which do seem to meander and not always land on the mark. But it all seems to congeal for what is ultimately a very unique and fascinating thing. It's my album of the year, and possibly of the decade thus far.
I feel like
Aviary is the culmination of what's also been a pretty damn strong year for music, and what I like is also that it's proven remarkably easy this year to land on new interesting and worthwhile albums, relative to several of the past years - I honestly haven't felt this good listening to music of the same year since roughly 2007/8. It's not that there haven't been very strong years since (2014 and 2016 certainly give this year a run for its money) but it's often been the case for me that I'd only really land on the 'right' albums a couple of years after the fact, whilst wading through a lot of fairly mediocre and often overhyped stuff (pretty sure there's a joke somewhere in here about me overhyping
Aviary but, eh

). It used to be a rather tiresome affair, I felt, but not this year.
Other albums that have so far impressed me this year would be:
Koenjihyakkei -
DhorimviskhaSons of Kemet -
Your Queen Is a ReptileTropical Fuck Storm -
A Laughing Death in MeatspaceNiño de Elche -
Antología del cante flamenco heterodoxoKali Uchis -
IsolationKink Gong -
Dian Long: Soundscape China / Destruction of Chinese PopAnna von Hausswolff -
Dead MagicIdles -
Joy as an Act of ResistanceWhat about you guys? Any discoveries you've made or personal favorites you have?