I tend to do this list each year for what its worth. And yes I am one of the people buying albums and listening to them as an entity.
I will kick off by mentioning three live albums, they do not contain new material so I will keep them separate from the main list.
Big Big Train - Merchants of Light. A excellent record of the Cardogan Hall Shows of 2017.
Magenta - We are Seven : Live 2018. Affirmation of just how good Magenta are. I must get to see them some time.
I am The Morning - Ocean Sounds. This is beautiful, a live studio film shot on a remote area of the Norwegian coast complete with an audio album. The audio is also available to download on Bandcamp.
And now the 2018 albums 7 - Rikard Sjöblom’s Gungfly - Friendship, this one is growing on me and is probably more accessible than the previous album, particularly lyrically. A couple of tracks have yet to grow, but a couple more are becoming firm favorites.
6 - Hat's Off Gentlemen, its Adequate - Out of Mind. Its early days for me with this one but It looks like its going to become a favourite, quirky in places and very moving in others.
5 - Riversea - The Tide - I love this, reminicent of the Gilmore era Pink Floyd while still retaining originality.
4 - Gleb Kolyadin – Gleb Kolyadin - fantastic solo album from the I am The Morning pianist aided and abetted by Steve Hogarth, Nick Beggs, Jordan Rudess, Gavin Harrison and others. It certainly has some of the best piano playing on a rock record for a long time.
3 - Tiger Moth Tales - The Depths of Winter - I am sneaking this in from the very end of 2017. Its an exceptional album and the track "exposure" inspired by WW1 poet Wilfred Owen is devastating.
I have had to make a tie for the top spot, I can't separate these two.
Luna Rossa - Atropa - Some of Panic Room's Anne-Marie Helder and Jonathan Edwards' finest songs get channeled through this gentler, mostly acoustic project. Helder's voice is sublime, Edwards' piano the perfect accompaniment supplemented by Helder's guitar and flute and Sarah Dean's harp.
Talitha Rise - The Abandoned Orchid House - Like Atropa, its a album that difficult to classify in the "usual" list of genres. This was the discovery of the year for me. I was lucky enough to get to one of the two shows with the full band, the Abandoned Orchestra in the attic of a medieval barn in Totnes which seemed that a perfect location.