Best of 2018: Overall top 10 + songs

Here is my all-genres-in-play 2018 top 10, as submitted to two independent year-end surveys — neither of which is online yet — along with links to my coverage of each album.

1. The Bad Plus, Never Stop II (review)
2. Esperanza Spalding, 12 Little Spells (review)
3. Haunt, Burst Into Flame (review)
4. Dan Weiss, Starebaby (feature)
5. Voivod, The Wake (review)
6. Wayne Shorter, Emanon (review)
7. Peter Brötzmann / Heather Leigh, Sparrow Nights (review)
8. Tomb Mold, Manor of Infinite Forms (blurb)
9. Harriet Tubman, The Terror End of Beauty (track write-up)
10. Tyshawn Sorey, Pillars (review)

Some of these records also appear on my respective jazz and metal lists; some are unique to the above; all hit me hard. (See here for some thoughts on why the Spalding and Sorey discs did not appear on the jazz lists I compiled, despite their inclusion here.)

Here, for fun, is an archive of all my year-end top 10s stretching back to 2005, the first year I was employed as a staff writer-about-music.

And here is a playlist of some songs I really liked this year, some from the albums I've cited and some not.