The Week In Music: Paste’s Favorite Songs, Albums, Performances and More

This week at Paste, we looked back at the year’s very best albums— so far. From Soccer Mommy to Lucy Dacus to Parquet Courts, check out which 2018 albums made our list. Plus, features on Nashville singer-songwriter Erin Rae, radio host Chris Thile, and more. Read them all and check out all our coverage from the past week below.

BEST ALBUMS
Michael Rault: It’s a New Day Tonight
Despite its sparkling sound, however, It’s A New Day Tonight is threaded with references to darkness, dreams, sleep and so on. In fact, the first words uttered on the album are “I don’t mind if the sun don’t shine,” kicking off “I’ll Be There,” a confident rocker with a psychedelic chorus and a squirrelly guitar solo. As if to hammer home the point, Rault starts off track two, “New Day Tonight,” with the line “Start to feel alright just after midnight, with you.” —Ben Salmon

Olivia Chaney: Shelter
Chaney posses a pristine vocal, delicate to the point that it demands one lean in and listen. Shelter, her latest album, and second for Nonesuch, is tender in tone with arrangements that rarely rise above a whisper, not surprising considering the fact that her accompaniment consists of little more than scant traces of piano, guitar, violin and occasional mellotron. The lyrics are precious and precise as well (“I spied a dragonfly/The size of my fist/Like the one I’d drawn/Carefully as a child”), but it’s posturing, not pretense, that proves so enticing. —Lee Zimmerman

BEST SONGS
Dirty Projectors: ‘That’s a Lifestyle’
Dirty Projectors aren’t known for sticking to one sound, and “That’s A Lifestyle” even plays with aspects of stomp and holler. But Dirty Projectors’ signature fusing skills chime in at full blast, incorporating elements of electronica into the 12-string acoustic fare. The song is a playful, yet irresistible romp. —Ellen Johnson

Wilder Maker: ‘Impossible Summer’
Self-proclaimed “cosmic American” band Wilder Maker are set to release their new record, Zion, July 13 via Northern Spy Records. Latest single “Impossible Summer” is swirling and soothing, like the cool breeze that cuts the oppressive feeling of an August afternoon in New York City. Frontman Gabriel Birnbaum wrote the song about a time when he was losing touch with reality. —Loren DiBlasi

Death Cab for Cutie: ‘Gold Rush’
Ben Gibbard laments the changing nature of his beloved hometown of Seattle in Death Cab for Cutie’s latest single, “Gold Rush.” The single has been released ahead of the band’s newly announced album, Thank You for Today. Gibbard confronts the feeling of alienation that comes from watching the physical places to which our memories are connected being torn down or remodeled. “Now that our hearts have taken flight,” he sings, “and been replaced with construction sites / how I feel like a stranger here / searching for something that’s disappeared.” —Noemi Griffin

PASTE STUDIO
River Whyless
Asheville, North Carolina folk band River Whyless returned to Paste to perform songs from their new album, Kindness, A Rebel.