Best Late discovery 2018

It's that time again. You know the time - when everyone stops to say that they can't believe that it's already this time of the year and now they've got to start putting together year end lists and where did all the time go. I'm kinda feeling the last part of that run on sentence this year.

It does just feel like yesterday that we were coming home from a very sickness-filled holiday trip, and that they day after that Benji was born, and then the day after that was yesterday. Oh well, might as well just jump right in.

The first award I give out every year I like to call my "Best Late Discovery." It goes to my favorite previous year release that I didn't discover until the next year. The first winner in 2016 was Julien Baker's 2015 release Sprained Ankle, and last year's winner was LVL UP's 2016 release Return to Love.

I also feel like a broken record when it comes time to tell you where I first discovered this years winners. As with the past two it was NPR, first with a Tiny Desk Concert and then via their Austin 100 list. It seems that every year as I'm listening to the 100 tracks one hits me and just screams "LISTEN TO THE REST OF THE RECORD I'M FROM," and you just can't ignore that, especially when the band is called Double Ferrari.

Here's the first sentence of the description of their debut album (also called Double Ferrari) from their bandcampsite: "Double Ferrari is an instrumental 4-piece band from Athens, GA that explores the vibrational and harmonic capabilities of the electric guitar in a high-energy, uptempo hard rock context." It is very high-energy. It is pretty uptempo. It is very guitar driven - it's as if two lead guitarists decided to go riff vs. riff on every song, threw in some decent solos, and found a pretty solid rhythm section. Seriously, the riffs crush so hard on this record, and they're the kind of riffs that put a smile on your face when you hear them. If you're the kind of person that starts to grin when "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" by The Darkness comes on, or even better if you have heard of The Fucking Champs, you'll get down with these jams.

Another thing that I love about Double Ferrari is that they don't let any vocals get in the way of the double guitar onslaught. I wish the bass were doing a few more interesting things on the record, but really, when you're behind two guitars like this I suppose you have to get out of the way. All in all a great fun discovery this past spring that I've been jamming to the rest of the year.

Recommended tracks: "Double Ferrari," "Melted Tongue," "Thumbs Up Molten Steel," "Temple of Ramone," "Warbringer of Impossible Mind-Tetris"

Runners up for the award: Stranger In the Alps by Phoebe Bridgers, To Infinity by Special Explosion, The Ordinary Man by L'Orange, The Endless Shimmering by And So I Watch You From Afar