In place of a more traditional year-end best-of list, Talkhouse has asked some of our favorite artists to choose their favorite album of 2018 and tell us all about it.
—The Talkhouse Team
I picked Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves. I heard it pretty soon after it came out, I think in early March—we were on tour and we played it in the van because we had seen that it was getting a ton of press. I’d never really listened to her, but my drummer actually knows her steel player; He said it that it was poppier and that he liked it a lot, so we checked it out.
When I first heard the album I was into it, but it wasn’t The Best Thing In The Whole World to me; but very quickly, I became obsessed with it. It’s something I can listen to pretty much any time. It can be sad, but it can also be a kind of party music, and then it’s also good for when you’re driving on tour—it’s so interesting to drive along to. I also went back and listened to all of Kacey’s major label albums, and I really like the first one, Same Trailer Different Park, a lot too.
It kind of has this early-2000s vibe to it—this kind of pop, folky, singer-songwriter type of thing—but it’s not exactly early-2000s. It also has this new kind of take. It uses sounds like steel guitar in really weird ways that’s kind of atmospheric, which I always really like a lot. I think it adds a lot to it. The songs are really well-written too—I like all the melodies and chords. It’s hard to pick a favorite song on the album, because I like them all, but I really like “Love Is A Wild Thing” a lot; that’s one I always play. It has a little alt-country vibe to it. It’s definitely still pop, but something about it is just a little more heartfelt. Plus I like the chorus a lot, and how the drums come in at the end. It has a very nice driving vibe to it. I also like the very first line on the album, at the beginning of “Slow Burn”: “Born in a hurry/Always late/Haven’t been early since ‘88.”
I think the sound of Golden Hour is kind of unique to this year. I feel like there’s been a lot of indie-pop stuff, like mixing drums and drum machines in the way that she does, and how she kind of mixes this atmospheric vibe into pop music. I feel like a lot of pop has had this atmospheric vibe to it this year. It fits in with the way a lot of country music is starting to sound—it seems to be kind of leaning more towards pop whenever I hear it on the radio. It definitely sounds modern. I don’t think it sounds like something that could have been made five years ago.
As told to Annie Fell.
(Photo Credit: left, Natalia Mantini)
