2018 Indie Pop

Username: welcome2thejam

Album: Time ‘n’ Place: Doing this rate & rating Civilization earlier this year firmly established KKB as a top current band for me. Just too much good stuff in their discography

Outside: 9 Is this Bubblegrunge!?

Time Today: 10 Sarah's voice & the instrumental & the melody are all gorgeous, love the bright sheen covering over what's bubbling under the surface

Only Acting: 10 Two perfect song climaxes consisting of an eight second guitar solo and the Batman Arkham Asylum fake glitch, wowza

Flyway: 10 Making a note to put this on repeat during takeoff next time I take a flight

Dump: 8

Make Believe: 11 Only now am I finding out that the second verse doesn't start with "And though this song / is pretty boss," I was always like "hell yeah it is!"

Dear Future Self: 8 Feels like a reverse graduation song, like she's staring down the cover of Bonito Generation

Visiting Hours: 9

If I’d Known: 7 Move over Marvel, it's time for the Bonito Multiverse

Sometimes: 8 Works best live when you're part of the gang vocals

Swimming: 10 Old vacation videos aesthetic

Rest Stop: 6 Did Superorganism write the second half

The Open Road: 9 Unintentionally very funny coming right after Rest Stop

World Tour 2018: 7 More bands need to accompany tour announcements with whole ass songs

The One True Path: 8 Wow they got on the same shit MGMT were on

You Know How It Is: 10 The unrivaled smasha, I used to think it was too short, but actually the perfect length to repeat again & again to get that brief guitar solo serotonin boost

Cinema: 9 Indie pop sounds good in a place like this

Album: I’m All Ears: Everything except the interludes ranges from very good to absolute smasha's, and at least a cat was involved in the former

Whitewater: 7 This song on Genius: "🎵 This song is an instrumental" yeah but what does it meeeean

Hot Pink: 10 Alright hearing this again for the first time since finally hearing SOPHIE in TWOE rate and once those electronic elements came in I jumped cause "wait a second I recognize that production!"

It’s Not Just Me: 9 LEG revolutionizing the way we pronounce "hot" & "not"

Falling Into Me: 10 "We got this" might be the best singular moment of the rate

Snakes & Ladders: 9 Just when I got my fill of moody & introspective from the Trip Hop rate

Missed Call (1): 5 When they try to actually eat grandma

I Will Be Waiting: 7

The Cat’s Pyjamas: 4 Bro how do I score cat ASMR

Cool & Collected: 8 Somebody bring back Big Suit Kermit, his job ain't done yet

Ava: 7

Donnie Darko: 10 A spiritual experience

Album: Superorganism: Most of the the song opinions I had when scoring these tracks last year went the other way this time around. Some high highs, middling mids, and a few low lows

It’s All Good: 5 Oh honey I've been watching the discourse, trust me it's not

Everybody Wants To Be Famous: 10 Was my second favorite song at the time back in 2018, behind the band whose recent rate trajectory is honestly their ceiling: Snail Mail

Nobody Cares: 5

Reflections On The Screen: 9 Two of the first three songs off this album dropped a bit on re-listen, but this one grew big time

SPRORGNSM: 9 Superorganism is like those teams of misfits in movies that form a band and have their first big performance at the fundraiser to keep the community center from the hands of greedy land developers, and this is their big song, except when they play they get booed off stage and the place gets bulldozed the next day

Something For Your M.I.N.D.: 7 Nice try, but the only four letter acronym for me is D.A.R.E.

Nai’s March: 3 There's potential in the hazyness but boy is it not realized

The Prawn Song: 2 How prawn do you have to eat, before you make your skin turn like a bluish-grey or white

Relax: 8 For some reason her voice really works for me here

Night Time: 10 Nine straight songs of us asking "can you guys please just be normal for once" and they finally said okay

Album: Little Dark Age: It's so easy to see MGMT as just living a Strokes-esque existence of constantly struggling to follow up their enormous debut, but there's some strong stuff here that stacks up well, so good for them

She Works Out Too Much: 7 I hope no one will ever ever say this about me

Little Dark Age: 10 Apologies in advance when this gets sent to All Stars again

When You Die: 8 "Go fuck yourself" Me when I see the Ariel Pink co-write

Me and Michael: 10 Everyone deserves the kind of happiness I feel when that cat goes wöæo

TSLAMP: 5 "Oh, so this is about phone addiction" -man looking up the lyrics on his cell phone

James: 7 Beautiful instrumental on the chorus especially

Days That Got Away: 8 I have entered a digital world where interludephobia is non-existent

One Thing Left to Try: 10 Very solid til it hits the second half, where it becomes incredible

When You’re Small: 5 Little Dark Side of the Moon

Hand It Over: 7

BONUS TRACKS

Frogs: 10 Precious babies even if one leaping at me would activate my strongest flight mode yet

Japanese: 8 2018 Indie Pop hosts getting revenge for how long they waited by trying to cause an international incident

Kero from Cardcaptor Sakura: 10 Oh my god they're just a little guy

Clocks: 8 Join us at r/indieheads for Coldplay Wednesdays

Maps: 8 A 10 for Yeah Yeah Yeahs, deducted 2 for Maroon 5

Grandmas: 9 Shoutout all the cool grandmas out there

Grammar: 6

Cannibalism: 5 Side eyeing everyone scoring this too high, but also everyone scoring this too low. What are you hiding

Interludes: 2 History's greatest monster

SCP-1048-A: 4 The bear is made of WHAT

Ants: 1 I respect their place in the circle of life but they've kept getting into my house for years

Siphonophores: 8 Pulled up a youtube video and when the narrator said superorganism I cheered

Whales: 10 Big boys

Supergroups: 5

Self Titled Albums: 4 You can be more creative, I believe in you

Management: 3

Initialisms: 6 Trying to score songs is hard enough, now you want me to put a value to the concept of initials!?

Disemvoweling: 7 The way I was gonna tank this not realizing it was an actual term and not a sh*tty pun

The Letter M: 8

The Dark Ages: 5 Eh, I've seen darker

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