Greetings from The Music Bowl! I'm The Wonderfish! Last week, Heard and I revealed our 2018 Shortlist for the best albums. In our last post of the year, we present our Top 5 Albums and our picks for Album of the Year. We cannot believe the amount of great music that came out this year and, as fans of all types of music, we think the records listed below deserve some attention. As always, we want to hear from you - drop us an email or leave a comment and let us know what you listened to in 2018. Shark's in the water! See you next year! Heard's Top 5: 5. Dave Matthews Band "Come Tomorrow." Even as a lifelong DMB fan this album wasn't a shoe in for high honors. The past few albums have taken several listens for me to get into. Not this one. From the first listen I was a fan and seeing most of these tunes live only confirmed a top 5 spot. 4. Circles "The Last One."  If you're a fan of progressive metal you don't want to miss this one.

Ahoy! What an amazing year we had for new music!  Last year you may recall that The Wonderfish and I only released a top 5 before we announced our picks for Album of the Year. This year we genuinely couldn't just give you all 5 albums each. Instead, we revamped our Album of the Year process. You'll see below that we each listed our top 5, and one of those 5 will be revealed next week as our respective 2018 Album of the Year. The remaining shortlist consists of 15 albums that at one point were either in the running or just too good not to promote. Make sure to check out anything you haven't heard and stay tuned for next week's reveals for Album of the Year! What's on your list? Until next time, Heard Heard's Top 5 (in no particular order) Lydian Collective - Adventure Circles - The Last One Rubble Bucket - Sun Machine Donny McCaslin - Blow Dave Matthews Band - Come Tomorrow Heard's Shortlist (in no particular order) Aaron Parks - Little Big

Ahoy! As we near the end of 2018 the Wonderfish and I will be discussing this year's “best” new albums (best according to us at least). Last year was the first year we named an official Album of the Year and I knew going into this year I'd need a better strategy for listening to so much music. When 2018 rolled in I was also 3 semesters into my graduate work as a jazz performance major and constantly discovering new music (new as in new to me). I set myself the lofty goal of listening to an album a day for the whole year and, because I know life gets crazy, used a minimum of 20 albums per month as my fall back. Here's what I found out. I want to clarify one thing, I'm using the term “album per day” to reflect the average number of albums. I do honestly strive to listen to one album everyday but some days that's not feasible so I catch up on long drives and listen to several. I also tally an album each time I listen to the whole thing, regardless if I've