Boris – Dear  (Sargent House, Japan)

I haven’t heard all of Boris’ gigantic discography of studio albums, collaborative albums, live albums, EPs, and whatever other projects they’ve released in the past 25 years, but Dear immediately hit me as one of my favorite Boris albums in a while. The sludge parts are at their most crushing, the dream pop parts are at their most beautiful, and Dear really feels trimmed of all possible fat. Boris say they wrote three albums worth of material and cut it down to ten songs, and you can feel the efforts of that editing process in this concise album. Every song feels like it belongs, and every song brings something unique to the table. Some of this year’s best examples of multiple genres of rock are all found on this one album. “Absolutego” is one of the year’s best heavy rock bangers, “Biotope” is one of the year’s best shoegaze songs, and “Distopia -Vanishing Point” is one of the year’s best progressive rock songs. Though Dear will not likely go down as one of Boris’ all-time classics, it ends up being a good starting point for the uninitiated. It takes all of their strongest sides from over the years and puts them on one cohesive album.

Listen here.

Full list by Andrew Sacher via Invisible Oranges