The 50 Best Albums of 2022

May 7, 2023 Zack Free

This year was one of renewal, repercussion, and the peak of the Great Resignation. Here’s some of the best music 2022 had to offer.

50. yeule Glitch Princess

In essence, electronic music has always been an exploration of the ways in which machinery can amplify human feelings. During a time of dizzying technological advancement and blossoming artificial intelligence, the overlap feels especially vivid. On Glitch Princess, Singaporean musician yeule renders technology and emotion inseparable; the artificial becomes painfully human, and vice versa. The guise of artifice becomes a tool with which they can escape their body, a distinct container that allows them an outside look at gender dysphoria and dissociation. On uncanny intro “My Name is Nat Cmiel,” yeule sounds fragmented, a digitized smoke screen shrouding deep, conflicting personal truths - “I like touching myself, and I like being far away from my body,” “I like to eat, but I don’t like it when it lingers on my body.” The music reflects a similar dichotomy, straining organic sounds through writhing electronics. Highlight “Don’t Be So Hard on Your Beauty” sounds like something like Jimmy Eat World recreated through algorithm, and the stunning “Electronic” distorts yeule’s melodies into piercing, heartrending cries. The musician is assisted by Danny L Harle and Mura Masa, the latter of whom adds an effervescent sheen to the roiling violence of “Bites on My Neck.” Glitch Princess culminates in the mind-boggling “The Things They Did for Me Out of Love,” a nearly five-hour ambient piece in which yeule leans on electronics to express what they can’t put into words, a distinctive, progressive take on a storied tradition.

49. Panda Bear & Sonic Boom Reset

Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox, better known as Panda Bear, has been responsible for some of the most spellbinding music of the 21st century, not least of which is 2007’s Person Pitch, a triumphant piece of sampledelic art pop that has rippled beneath the surface of indie music since its release. On this year’s Reset, Lennox recruits Spacemen 3’s Peter Kember, or Sonic Boom, for another patchwork of woozy nostalgia, at once disorienting and immediately gratifying. Its sonic bed is comprised of loops culled from sixties soul and rock-n-roll, stacked between layers of delicate harmony and brain-eating synth arpeggios. It plays directly to both artists’ strengths; “Everyday” leans into Lennox’s noted adoration for the Beach Boys, and “Whirlpool” spotlights Kember’s cavernous space rock sensibilities. The best songs here find the pair in push-and-pull synchronization, teetering between moments of serenity and total collapse, the results like warped transmissions from a weathered intergalactic vessel. While treading familiar territory, Reset is content to display two experimental veterans operating at peak capacity.

48. Vince Staples RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART

For over a decade, Long Beach native Vince Staples has been celebrated as one of hip hop’s great storytellers, known for his candor, dry wit, and his gritty, lived-in portrayals of inner city violence. After last year’s slight, solemn Vince Staples, his fifth album feels like a return to form; RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART is a thoughtful tribute to his hometown, at times meditative, mournful, and celebratory. “AYE! (FREE THE HOMIES)” is all three, a bittersweet ode to success that eulogizes those who have been left behind, caught up in the throes of incarceration. “Trying to make it to the top, we can’t take everybody with us,” Staples intones in the record’s early moments, and that sentiment’s deep sadness resonates throughout the album. Centerpiece “EAST POINT PRAYER” is a sober, reflective masterpiece that features a gut-spilling verse from Lil Baby, and closer “THE BLUES” reels in the trappings of celebrity - “what’s success but guilt and stress?” On RAMONA PARK, Staples paints fame as a bittersweet victory, a rose barbed with sacrifice and regret. “Money ain’t make me,” he raps, a promise to stay true to his roots, “still thuggin’ ‘til the feds come take me.”

47. Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn Pigments

As one of the most consistent and progressive voices in contemporary music, Dawn Richard has set a rigorous standard for herself, folding new dimensions into her artistry with each release, refusing to be restrained by the boundaries of genre. On Pigments, her collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Spencer Zahn, the singer joins a tapestry of strings, synths, and saxophone in a gorgeous, searching, eleven-part suite. The movements are named after richer, less conspicuous shades on the color wheel (“Coral,” “Opal”), a representation of the more complex feelings hidden within the emotional spectrum. Accordingly, Richard follows her heart through peaks and valleys, spanning her internal oeuvre with grace and understated sincerity. “Dreamer, I want to love like you,” she begins on “Sandstone,” her voice cutting through the scenery like a chilly ray of light, “If I could be more… more through you.” Her lyrics here exist in fragments, almost afterthoughts in the conveyance of unfiltered emotion. Zahn mirrors her intensity, and the two lock into sync on moments like the flooring climax of “Cerulean,” in which the arrangement collapses around her, a moment of unmitigated catharsis - “are you hurting like you hurt me?” The movement that follows is still, serene, the calm after the storm, Dawn retreating into herself. The finest moments here occur in the third act, a grounded, percussive counterpoint to Pigments’ largely freeform structure. As the album nears its close, Richard reaches a moment of acceptance and resolution, all of her selves reconnecting in transcendent bliss: “I feel like love, I feel like faith, I feel like God.” As Zahn’s accompaniment stretches into a warm, all-encompassing force, it’s hard not to feel the same.

46. Shygirl Nymph

Judging from her first two EPs, Shygirl’s brand of filthy, sex-centric electro-rap doesn’t seem like it would lend itself to a long play effort. Her best music exists in brief explosions, rushes of dopamine that evaporate as soon as they’re through. She defies expectation with her first full-length album, Nymph, a dynamic, expansive collection of surging hip house and forward-thinking synth-pop that widens her scope without making any concessions. The title itself is a transposition, slicing the term “nympho” into something softer, more innocent. Of course, this is largely a farce; standouts ”Nike” and “Shlut” are two of the nastiest, over-the-top sex jams in her catalogue. But it’s the subtler, more melodic moments that make Nymph a triumph. Shygirl sings more than she raps here, her voice cool and malleable, infusing her sound with a previously unexplored sensitivity. She’s bugged-out and obsessive on “Firefly” and “Wildfire,” and unabashedly lovesick on the pristine “Heaven.” She strikes a perfect balance on songs like “Coochie (a bedtime story),” a sparkling ode to genitalia that is at once sensual and side-splittingly funny (“so does that mean… somewhere out there… there’s a coochie waiting for me?”) There’s an inherent ridiculousness to Shygirl’s music, and on Nymph, there’s a whole lot of beauty too.

45. Charli XCX CRASH

In preparation for the release of “Good Ones,” the lead single from Charli XCX’s fifth studio album, the British superstar offered a cryptic portent via Instagram: “rip [sic] hyperpop?” In accordance, CRASH is a bold swerve from the frenetic bubblegum of previous efforts like POP 2 and Charli, opting instead for the warmer textures of bubbling new wave and rubbery ‘80s synth-funk. Her longstanding partnership with the PC Music collective has cemented her as one of hyperpop’s pioneers, and though frequent collaborator A.G. Cook appears once here, she works intentionally to avoid pigeonholing. To that end, she recruits a diverse roster of producers ranging from Ariel Rechtshaid to Daniel Lopatin, gracing the album with an eclectic pallet and puddy-like elasticity. Her source material is similarly expansive; she’s cited Janet Jackson’s Control as an influence on the squirmy “Baby,” and highlights “Good Ones” and “Yuck” consolidate the last decade of pop music into something unique and current. Charlie’s trademarks remain, her vocals stretched into mechanical shapes, songs caught somewhere between lovesickness and indifference. But CRASH speaks to her versatility and endurance as an artist and innovator, hyperpop be damned.

44. Taylor Swift Midnights

Taylor Swift has always been a pop star, even when the classification seemed just out of reach. One could attempt to trace her shift towards the mainstream (Red perhaps? 1989?), but there’s a reason her early, country-leaning hits, such as “Love Story” and “You Belong to Me,” have had so much staying power. At the core of her best work lies true, honest-to-God, pop songcraft. As her artistry has blossomed, Taylor has purposely strayed from the traditional superstar mold. Her last two projects were re-recordings of Speak Now and Red, hard won victories in the battle to reclaim her art from the hands of megalomaniac Scooter Braun. They remained lovingly faithful to the originals, painstakingly pieced together as to recapture the same ephemeral feelings. In several ways, Midnights feels like a revisiting, if a less explicit one. After a fertile detour into folkier territory with 2020’s duel success of folklore and evermore, Taylor’s tenth studio returns to the glassy synth-pop of redemption and Lover. Those records were largely helmed in collaboration with Jack Antanoff, a producer who has since become so ubiquitous as to incite collective groans. She reconnects with Antanoff here, distilling the most compelling elements of both of their spotty works together. At worst, redemption was boastful and bloated, and Lover was flighty and unfocused. This time around, Swift sounds confident and hyper-focused, laughing at her own ego instead of letting it run the show. The songs here are conceptualized as journal entries, (“a collage of intensity, highs and lows and ebbs and flows”), and her lyrics are appropriately candid. Her writing is characteristically pointed, newly cynical, and often hilarious (“sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby and I’m a monster on the hill”). The moods explored here are well-worn landmarks in Swift’s catalogue (emotion as color, break-up confessionals) but she manages to spin them artfully into new shapes. For an artist who once seemed poised to control every facet of her image, Midnights is refreshingly frank and out-of-step, another step in her reconstruction of pop stardom.

43. Chat Pile God’s Country

On one the year’s most harrowing releases, Oklahoma band Chat Pile transmit a morbidly fascinating picture of life in middle America’s darkest corners. God’s Country is claustrophobic sludge metal that wrestles with inescapable darkness, vocalist Raygun Busch emoting in throat-shredding howls. The band’s music surges with empathy; “people peg us for being this super nihilistic band,” said drummer Cap’n Ron earlier this year. “We definitely talk about dark things, but it’s not in an, ‘Oh, fuck it, let’s watch the world burn’ type of way.” Instead, they rage against injustice and systemic inequality, tackling drug addiction, classism, and the glorification of gun violence. “Why do people have to live outside?” Busch urges on “Why,” a treatise on houselessness that writhes with squirming, uncomfortable realism. “Have you ever had ringworm?”, he shrieks, “scabies?” In echoes of the nation’s mental health crisis, the frontman leads the listener through psychological decline - the trip reaches its apex on nine-minute closer “grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg,” in which a meme weasels its way into a spinning, suicidal psychosis. Rather than pushing the grim realities of our country away, Chat Pile cope by letting the darkness in.

42. Lucrecia Dalt ¡Ay!

A champion of experimental sound design, Colombian musician Lucrecia Dalt has spent the last decade testing the limits of her own imagination. Her early work as Sound of Lucrecia opted for conventional, four-on-the-floor rhythms, but since embracing her birth name, the artist has actively disassembled all of the structures holding her music in place. On October’s !Ay!, she puts the pieces back together, emerging with something unlike anything else in her oeuvre. She pushes her voice to the forefront, gliding gracefully over upright bass and organic percussion. There is a complex narrative attached, in which a formless consciousness named Preta purchases human skin, but the music creates its own world apart from any greater context. Dalt’s intent was to evoke the “diluted memory of … rhythms” that surrounded her childhood, namely those of Cuban Bolero music. Bongos and timbales abound - opening track “No tiempo” moves at an almost pastoral pace, and “Gena”’s brass-heavy arrangement is taken over completely by its end. Dalt is remarkably prolific; this year alone, she scored indie horror film The Seed and HBO series The Baby, channeling John Carpenter-esque synth-work into two cohesive, oddly straightforward bodies of work. But !Ay! holds a central place in her discography - In her novel approach to traditional music, Dalt stands at vanguard of Latin electronic.

41. FKA twigs CAPRISONGS

Since her rise to acclaim with 2013’s EP2, British musician FKA twigs has been held as one of century’s defining talents, a multi-talented innovator with an otherworldly voice and a lot to say. Credited as her first mixtape, CAPRISONGS is intended to lower the stakes. It’s the first of twigs’ projects where she lets herself loose, freed from the onus of profundity. Instead, the project flows with a conversational ease, patched together by impromptu clips of friends and collaborators. Recruiting a veritable boatload of collaborators, several of whom she met over FaceTime in the early months of the pandemic, she emerges with some the most pop-forward music of her career; The Weeknd collaboration “tears in the club” is built for strobe-lit dance floors, and “jealousy” is a slick dancehall cut that wouldn’t sound out of place on the Hot 100. But twigs sacrifices nothing in terms of creativity or artistic integrity - the production is consistently mindbending (see the flawless, head-spinning work on “Minds of Men”) and the singer sounds self-assured as ever. “papi bones,” which features a predictably excellent turn from Shygirl, is irrepressibly fun, and “which way” is a fizzy, giddy declaration of personal freedom (“I had a good job and I left! I left because I thought it was right!”). A brief reprieve from plunging the fathoms of her soul, CAPRISONGS feels like a well-deserved dose of happiness; “thank you song” pulls FKA back from the edge of depression and abuse, radiating gratitude for her loved ones. After years of following twigs through darkness, it feels nice to hear her find some light.

40. The Weeknd Dawn FM

Since his rise to superstardom with 2015’s Beauty Behind the Madness, The Weeknd has struggled to balance his singular vision with his blockbuster-sized ambitions. On his fifth studio album, he finally meets himself halfway. His sleekest, most refined effort to date, Dawn FM is a queasy, adrenaline release of colossal dance-pop, squelching techno, and ambient R&B that holds together like nothing else in his catalogue (save, perhaps, his debut mixtape, House of Balloons). Its retro-fetishism and nostalgia for analog synthesizers and FM radio falls squarely into the world of collaborator Daniel Lopatin, who met Abel Tesfaye on the set of Uncut Gems and contributed heavily to 2020’s After Hours. He appears on the majority of the songs here, lending the project a chasmic depth. Much like Lopatin’s 2020 effort Magic Oneohtrix Point, the project is conceptualized as late night radio marathon, chintzy station IDs included. The affair is narrated by an uncharacteristically composed Jim Carrey, whose monologues are undercut with doom and stark humor. There are several career highs for Tesfaye here, including the Tyler, the Creator assisted “Here We Go… Again” and the monstrous, throbbing “How Do I Make You Love Me?” His vocals are warm and versatile as ever, and his songwriting is newly topical, addressing timely themes of isolation and apocalyptic ideation. The most striking development here is a shift away from the overt misogyny of his early work - instead, he addresses his own trauma and resulting insecurities, owning up to his toxic behavior and pledging to do better. “I’ve been so cold to the ones who loved me, baby,” he sings on “Out of Time,” “I look back now and realize.” It’s a striking moment of honesty on an album full of them, a remarkable declaration for an artist who has hidden behind his persona for so long.

39. The 1975 Being Funny in a Foreign Language

Matty Healy has become one of the most accomplished songwriters of his generation, casually profound, charmingly sardonic, and wickedly funny. On his band’s fifth album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, the 1975 offer the most fully-realized version of their well-established sound, matching stinging social commentary with bold, shout-along eighties pastiche. It’s considerably more concise and focused than 2020’s gloriously unwieldy Notes on a Conditional Form, an album that leapt (quite successfully) at any style that caught the band’s attention. Here, they’ve embraced their proclivity for stadium-sized love songs, movingly sincere if slightly embarrassing; “I’m in Love with You” says all it needs to in its sparkling, five-word chorus, and the soul-tinged “All I Need to Hear” is the type of big, gloopy ballad Ed Sheeran would sell his soul for. But the album’s biggest revelations surface when the neon lights dim, allowing Healy’s more intimate songwriting to take the stage. “Part of the Band” is a contender for the most accomplished piece of work in their catalogue, characteristically cynical and fantastically witty - “I like my men like I like my coffee,” he smirks, “full of soy milk and so sweet it won’t offend anybody.” It’s the kind of cultural assay he does best, a critique of self-righteous, performative progressivism that ultimately turns the gun on Healy himself: “am I ironically woke? / The butt of my joke?”

38. Aldous Harding Warm Chris

New Zealander Aldous Harding writes enigmatic pop songs in the cozy ambience of French pop and seventies folk jazz. Her voice is stretchy and versatile, sometimes recalling Nico’s, sometimes something more spritely. Her lyrics are confounding and often very funny (she’s called herself “the Jim Carrey of the indie world”) but she doesn’t like to delve into their meanings; “I just want everyone to feel like a philosopher,” she’s explained, “you put on a record, and that record belongs to you for that 40 minutes.” Warm Chris, her fourth studio album, is the kind of record that invites personal interpretation and relatability, conveying big emotions in brief bursts of imagination. She describes her process best on highlight “Fever”: “looking for that thrill in the nothing,” she sings, “you know my favorite place is in the start.”

37. Gilla Band Most Normal

On their third album, Dublin-based Gilla Band envision noise rock at its most polished and tightly packaged. Vocalist Dara Kiely writes in stream-of-consciousness diatribes about “very everyday scenarios,” enveloped in writhing, trash-compacter arrangements that consume everything in their path. Most Normal is fabulously engineered - highlight “Backwash” bursts into stereo-spanning arrangements at unpredictable, head-spinning intervals, and “Red Polo Neck” sounds something Flying Lotus doing post-punk. There’s a goofy, average-guy charm to Kiely’s delivery (“I play footsie by myself”), and it makes the strangest moments all the more alluring; “Capgras,” which was reportedly inspired by country legend Ray Price, is almost swallowed entirely by ear-piercing static, and the wordless “Gushie” sounds like an accordion being fed through an industrial grinder. “I’m just a normal guy,” Kiery slurs on “Almost Soon,” his world careening around him - on Most Normal, Gilla Band make the mundane sound progressive.

36. Pusha T It’s Almost Dry

Two decades apart from his major label debut with brother No Malice, Pusha T remains coke rap’s kingpin, a tirelessly innovative emcee with an ear for nasty, left-field beats. On It’s Almost Dry, his first LP since 2018’s seminal DAYTONA, his poetry has lost none of its rich nuance and sly humor - on highlight “Smokers Shine the Coups,” he notably dubs himself “cocaine’s Dr. Seuss.” The production is evenly split between contributions from Pharrell Williams, caught in his third career renaissance, and Kanye West. (The latter artist’s deep dive into racist and antisemitic rhetoric this year renders any praise dubious at best.) Pusha stitches it all together with panache, inhabiting an array of voices - he’s cold and menacing on opener “Brambleton,” brash and cocksure on “Dreamin of the Past,” and pensive on closer “I Pray for You,” which realigns him with his brother. In the album’s final moments, Pusha’s career comes full circle: “you can live forever when the shit you write is timeless.”

35. Oso Oso sore thumb

The fourth release from indie rocker Jade Lilitri, better known as Oso Oso, was recorded with cousin and collaborator Tavish Maloney in the early months of the pandemic. Before the record’s completion, Maloney died of undisclosed causes, and sore thumb was released in untouched form, a perfectly preserved dedication to a friendship cut short. You might not realize the breadth of its baggage on first listen; sore thumb is all pitch-perfect power pop, Lilitri’s voice a bright, comforting balm. Opener “computer exploder,” for example, evolves from from a Pixies-sized riff into a soaring chorus. But the sweetness of Lilitri’s delivery is undercut by themes of dependence and substance abuse - “it’s fine if the love and money run out,” he sings, “if the drugs run out I’ll die.” The music here is soaked in nostalgia, conjuring Elliott Smith on “nothing to do” and Red Hot Chili Peppers on “describe you,” and guided by the spirit of early aughts pop punk. It suggests the work of two kindred spirits, friends making the kind of music that brought them together. Like any record haunted by the specter of loss, sore thumb is colored by its eventual context; the brights are brighter, the darks unfathomable. Apart from its circumstances, it’s a time capsule, a touching still frame of two lives in intersection.

34. Earl Sweatshirt SICK!

Watching Earl Sweatshirt’s progression from Odd Future’s enigmatic wunderkind to one of hip hop’s most revered emcees has been a thrilling process, an evolution that progresses in vast artistic leaps. As expected, his first effort since 2019 marks a significant progression from the murky lo-fi of high watermark Some Rap Songs. While that album’s homespun, surrealist approach to sound collage felt purposely off-balance, this set is sleek and carefully curated, bolstered by collaborators such as the Alchemist and Black Noi$e. SICK! is a clever spin on the “quarantine album,” the label that has come to define a slew of the last few years’ most introspective and insulated works. But Earl’s take transcends the tag’s typical markers, instead coming through in brief revelations and dry quips - “the cost of living high,” he raps in the record’s opening verse, “don’t cross the picket line and get the virus.” His lyrics are abstract as ever, layered in allusions and double entendres, but they’ve have never felt sharper or more immersive. SICK! touches on the themes of isolation and depression that lie at the core of his most revealing music; it’s also his most vibrant, jubilant body of work to date, a testament to the constant metamorphosis of Earl’s artistry. “The madness method rampant these days,” he muses, a reflection on the pandemic’s collective trauma, “I let the panic pass me.”

33. Hurray for the Riff Raff LIFE ON EARTH

Alynda Seggara’s eighth album as Hurray for the Riff Raff is ostensibly her heaviest to date - LIFE ON EARTH copes primarily with climate change, a growing emergency for which solutions seem to elude us. The title track is a dedication to a dying Earth - “life on Earth is long,” Seggara sings, “and oh, I might not meet you there.” But for all of its thematic heft (“PRECIOUS CARGO” is a heartbreaking account of a broken immigration system), the record’s tone is one of resilience: “you’ve gotta run, babe, you know how to run.” Highlight “RHODODENDRON” is about “finding rebellion in plant life,” and “SAGA” turns its back on a lifetime of trauma. “I don’t want this to be the saga of my life,” Seggara sings, “I just wanna be free.” On LIFE ON EARTH, they find freedom in connection to our planet and the people living on it, achieving healing in communion.

32. Soccer Mommy Sometimes, Forever

Nashville singer-songwriter Sophia Allison specializes in dreamy, bittersweet nostalgia, scoring the sweet spot between frosty nineties alternative and glittery early-aughts pop rock. At twenty-five, she’s matured from the lo-fi indie pop of her early bedroom recordings to the gorgeous, full-spectrum melancholy of color theory, one of 2020’s most magnetic records (one that I unfairly failed to include in my top 50 that year). Her third major label effort, Sometimes, Forever, is a bewitching evolution, gauzier in texture and darker in subject matter but just as pure in its crystalline song structure. The production here is handled by Daniel Lopatin, who guides the project with an unusually subtle hand. His signature emerges in the details, such as the cascading synth riff on “With U” and shifting tectonics beneath the surface of “Unholy Affliction.” Otherwise, he lets Allison’s own ambitions take the reins, pushing her sound in new and captivating directions; highlight “Don’t Ask Me” is awash in vibrant, shoegaze fuzz, and “newdemo” is a patient, mystical ballad that gracefully levitates between key changes. But for all of her experimentation, Allison scores some the biggest, most immediate hooks of her career - “Bones” and “Shotgun,” in particular, take aim directly at the pleasure center, their melodies pristine and earnest. On closer “Still,” one of her most personal, affecting songs to date, she arrives at a mission statement: “I don’t know how to feel things small.” On Sometimes, Forever, the music feels just as big as her emotions.

31. SAULT Air

UK collective SAULT have gone out of their way to avoid categorization, and their lack of concrete identity has allowed them to shape-shift at will. Even upon the release of their fifth album, they remain a mysterious entity; assumed mastermind Inflo is the only identifiable member, though rapper Little Simz and singer Cleo Sol appear to be connected to their inner sphere. Air is just as confounding as SAULT themselves, a difficult-to-label collection of orchestral epics that throws all preconceived notions out of the window. One struggles to find appropriate genre labels - symphonic jazz, perhaps? Contemporary classical? “Time is Precious” works its way into a gorgeous, gospel-style coda, and “Luos Higher” toys with what sound like traditional East Asian instruments. However one attempts to box it in, Air is unlike anything in the group’s catalogue, and possibly unlike anything conceived before.

30. Ravyn Lenae HYPNOS

Signed to Atlantic Records at the age of seventeen, R&B phenom Ravyn Lenae has long possessed a vocal agility and versatility well beyond her years. On her debut LP, HYPNOS, she hones her artistic vision, fulfilling the promise of her early EPs. At twenty-three, Lenae has crafted a signature sound, a concoction of space-age synth-funk, neo soul, and Afrobeats. Her angelic upper register recalls Aaliyah and Minnie Ripperton, and the breathy tapestry of harmonies that weaves between the music here recalls the sensual atmospherics of Brandy. “Inside Out” and “Deep in the World” are delicate and alluring, the arrangements spare enough to leave room for her voice. The singer also has a taste for wonky, rhythmically complex production work, a propulsive force that balances the softer, airier textures of her layered vocals - the instrumental on “Lullaby” sounds like its been warped by inter-dimensional travel, and “Higher” is queasy and aquatic, bubbling up between gargantuan kick drums. Like frequent collaborator Steve Lacy (who appears on the excellent “Skin Tight”), Lanae frequently channels the music of Prince, whose boundless range and adventurous spirit sets a precedent here. HYPNOS may well be her Dirty Mind, the jumping off point for a natural talent with nowhere to go but up.

29. Jazmine Sullivan Heaux Tales, Mo’ Tales: The Deluxe

On last year’s magnificent Heaux Tales, Jazmine Sullivan’s vision came into full view, bold, honest, empathetic, sexy, and funny. On this year’s expanded edition, cleverly titled Heaux Tales, Mo’ Tales, she adds five additional songs with corresponding spoken word interludes. The concept of the deluxe edition holds little water in the streaming age, and what was once an excuse to repackage and resell has become a redundant exercise in over-saturation. In Sullivan’s hands, however, the expanded release is a continuation, a logical follow-up to a teasingly brief project that left plenty of room for continued conversation. Comedian Issa Rae leads in the hilarious, merciless “Tragic,” which creatively reframes Maxine Waters’ infamous “reclaiming my time” speech, and Jazmine herself sets the stage for “Hurts Me So Good,” offering valuable insight on the tie between self-esteem and the willingness to deal with abuse. The best new songs here, “Roster” and “Selfish,” bring attention back to the musician’s biggest draw: her spectacular voice, a weapon as much as an instrument, a force capable of wringing emotion from any perspective or character study. A decade-and-a-half into her career, it’s clear she has plenty of stories left to tell.

Read my review of Heaux Tales, the best album of 2021, here.

28. Arctic Monkeys The Car

Remember the garage rock revival of the early aughts? Arctic Monkeys sure don’t. Their seventh album exists galaxies apart from their scrappy, sweaty debut, in which frontman Alex Turner sounded like the brainiest asshole at the basement show. Since the band’s transformation on 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, Turner has become demure and suave, if still a little smarmy. He glides along with the drugged-out worldliness of Station to Station-era Bowie, floating in and out of seamless falsetto, brushing past featherweight orchestral flourishes. His lyrics are plush with detail (“jet skis on the moat / they shot it all in CinemaScope”) and dusted with derisiveness, like Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen wrapped in silk. That band’s 1977 masterpiece Aja might be an appropriate analog, an exercise in studio perfectionism that sanded the rough edges of their music into polished gems. An album as majestic and restrained as The Car should sound ridiculous coming from a band that was once heralded as the second coming of British post-punk, but Arctic Monkeys are a fundamentally different act than they were at the turn of the century, and time will tell how they’ll evolve in the years to come. But one thing’s for sure - wherever they go next, there’d better be a goddamn mirrorball.

27. Animal Collective Time Skiffs

On their first album in four years, and their best in over a decade, Animal Collective are tempered and steady. Long gone are the primal shrieks and raucous drum freak-outs of Ark or the vocal exorcisms of Sung Tongs - the music is decidedly gentler, more patient. 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, their standing masterpiece, is the last time they’ve sounded this inspired, but age has chilled them out considerably; opening number “Dragon Slayer” rides a cushioned groove and glassy keyboards, Avey Tare’s signature yelp pressed into a whisper. They experiment with jazz on lead single “Prester John,” and closer “Royal and Desire” ebbs and flows with an understated grace. There are moments that harken back to the explosive glory of their peak era; the bridge on “Strung with Everything” is almost uncontrollably ecstatic, boundless in its mile-high harmonies and tight musicianship. But rather then rehashing their previous successes, Time Skiffs begins a new era for AnCo, one that utilizes age and experience to propel them into the future.

26. Destroyer LABYRINTHITIS

As one of indie rock’s most notorious shapeshifters, Dan Bejar makes music that is impossible to pin down - over the course of his illustrious, decades-long career, he’s explored everything from acoustic folk rock to sophisti-pop. On his thirteenth solo album, LABYRINTHITIS, he makes music in mazes, touching at times on Berlin-era Bowie to New Order-style synth-pop. Though his lyrics are famously dense, the album reads as his take on the pandemic and its societal repercussions; the tone ranges from unrelentingly bleak (“Suffer”) to uncharacteristically hopeful (“It’s in Your Heart Now”). The music, however, is consistently thrilling - the breakdown on “Tintoretto, It’s For You” is grinding industrial techno, and the instrumental title track is a Four Tet-style exercise in atmosphere building. Twenty-six years apart from his solo debut, LABYRINTHITIS ranks among Bejar’s strangest and most exciting works, and the musician shows no sign of slowing down.t

25. Rachika Nayar Heaven Come Crashing

One of the year’s most devastatingly beautiful successes, Rachika Nayar’s second album is designed to “bring you to a place of overflowing.” Heaven Come Crashing is in constant motion, ecstatic ribbons of neon, swirling into the most immersive music she’s made to date. Her guitar is still the central element here, her own voice ringing out among the hurricanes of synth and ambient noise - a gorgeous riff overtakes the final minutes of the epic, ten-minute “Tetramorph,” and a plucked, Edge-esque riff supplies the backbone for “Death and Limerence.” But Nayar draws from a wide array of sounds and moods, including the bouncing digital plonks of opener “Our Wretched Fantasy” and the streaking five-alarm rave synths of the grandiose “Nausea.” The best song here is the title track, which features a vocal from fellow electronic innovator Maria BC; the album’s patient build finally erupts into a jungle-style climax, pushing its limits into a something truly overwhelming and bafflingly pretty. Nayar’s music occasionally recalls Austrian legend Fennesz or PC Music mastermind A.G. Cook, but on Heaven Come Crashing, she’s dialed in on a singular, truly bewitching signature.

24. Alex G God Save the Animals

From the slapdash GarageBand demos of his earliest work to the polished, glimmering folk rock of 2019’s House of Sugar, Alex Giannascoli has remained unwaveringly true to his sound. His ninth album, God Save the Animals, feels just as sincere, the music warm and familiar. He explores new dimensions here, lapsing into hyperpop on “No Bitterness” and folding a subtle dembow groove into the stunning “Cross the Sea.” But his signature quirks remain, from the smirking shriek in the second verse of “Runner” to the liberal use of pitch shifting on “After All” and “Blessing.” He toys with timbre, delivery, and audio effects to create a cast of characters; on “S.D.O.S,” for example, he warps his voice to play both the devil and the desperate believer. Under the guidance of religion, the arc on God Save the Animals is one of redemption and faith in humanity. “I have done a couple bad things,” Alex sings on “Runner,” an understated admission of shame. Here, he looks to God and the people loves for guidance, searching for pockets of joy in hopeless times. This kind of wistful optimism is in short supply these days, and when Giannascoli, wide-eyed, sings “my teacher is a child with a big smile, no bitterness,” you start to believe too.

23. Perfume Genius Ugly Season

As one of indie music’s most invaluable, inventive queer voices, Mike Hadreas has managed to reinvent himself in cycles, emerging every time with something unique and progressively polished. In a way, this year’s Ugly Season feels like a return to form, spare and emotionally stark in a manner that recalls breakthrough efforts Learning and Put Your Back N 2 It. It’s gorgeously produced; helmed in its entirety by frequent collaborator Blake Mills, the album fits sumptuous textures into an icy, metallic framework. But Hadreas’ vocals are spare and sinewy, reshaping the minimalistic approach of his earlier, lo-fi works into something cavernous and imposing. The music is patient and suspenseful, ranging in length from the brief nightmare of “Just a Room” to the extended, surrealistic disco of “Eye on the Wall,” and its stylistic breadth is covers everything from minimalist classical (“Scherzo”) to reggae (the title track). It’s less immediately rewarding than 2020’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, but like Hadreas’s career, it gets richer and more nuanced with time.

22. Yaya Bey Remember Your North Star

Yaya Bey knows her worth - “‘fore it’s all said and done, I’m gon’ die a fly bitch.” On her spectacular third album, Remember Your North Star, the Brooklyn-based artist crafts a genre-spanning collection that vibrates with confidence and inexhaustible creativity. Her voice is earthy and jazz-inflected, recalling neo-soul goddess Erykah Badu or Billie Holiday. The music here is expansive and versatile, stretching from the moonlit R&B of “reprise” and “don’t fucking call me” to the roots reggae of “meet me in brooklyn.” It’s a stylistic breadth she’s hinted at on EPs Madison Tapes and The Things I Can’t Take with Me, but she scrapes new heights here, namely on the glorious “keisha” and the rollicking dancehall cut “pour up.” On closer “blessings,” she emerges from the depths of depression with North Star’s shining credo - “there’s blessings all around me.”

21. Jockstrap I Love You Jennifer B

There’s something perverse about a band named Jockstrap creating something as breathtakingly pretty as “Concrete Over Water,” the centerpiece of their full-length debut. But the duo has made dissonance their modus operandi, and We Love You Jennifer B is packed with sideways twists and turns, sewn together with sadistic humor and inspired songwriting. Opener “Neon” sounds like a long-lost PJ Harvey demo until wriggling dubstep worms its way to surface, a harbinger of the constant metamorphosis that surges throughout the album. “Debra” is big tent EDM squashed through a signal scrambler, and “Glasgow” blankets its strummed acoustic pop in layers of swirling, orchestral grandeur. The best song here, “Greatest Hits,” is their most straightforward, an ironic twist - its gentle trip hop and glamorous allusions to Madonna and Marie Antoinette make for the sunniest, least sarcastic piece of music in their catalogue. It’s a reminder that, through layers of sonic grime and their gross-out gag of a band name, there lies an immense sense of craft in Jockstrap’s music.

20. Grace Ives Janky Star

On her sophomore effort, bedroom pop auteur Grace Ives renders her sound in high-definition. Janky Star follows her 2019 debut, which introduced the world to her zany vision and homespun aesthetic. But this time around, she wields the self-assuredness of a full-blown pop star, her vocals stronger, her beats bigger and brighter. Opener “Isn’t It Lovely” is cartoonishly vibrant, dizzy birds flittering around her, and “Lazy Day” walks the line between glittering eighties synth-pop and shuffling new jack swing. Her approach to songwriting sometimes recalls indie pop icon Lorde, if odder and less contained, and her music incorporates influence from R&B, indie rock, and UK electronic. Every song here is a highlight (the lovelorn “Shelly” is a personal favorite), but closer “Lullaby” is her best track to date, a sugar-high torch song that embraces all of love’s messy intricacies. Her music still feels like an intimate peek into her colorful mind, but on Janky Star, Ives takes her starry-eyed dreams out into the world.

19. Angel Olsen Big Time

From an artist whose music has always felt unshakably sincere, Angel Olsen’s sixth studio album is a remarkable feat of soul-baring. The musician came out as gay in 2021, and that breakthrough informs the music on Big Time, a project as delicately insightful as it is impossibly huge. Olsen doubles down on the country and folk elements that snuck between the seams of her 2012 debut - the title track, for example, recalls seventies Dylan, or the Byrds in their Sweetheart of the Rodeo era. But her voice remains the focus, an unstoppable force that finds power in its quavering honesty. Opening track “All the Good Times” swells to impossible size, her vocals growing in intensity as a bittersweet brass ensemble joins the mix. There are plenty of quieter, more internal moments as well - her performance on the heartbreaking “All the Flowers” recalls the understated force of contemporary Perfume Genius (who also appears on this list). But Olsen’s emotions have always been bigger than her songs can contain, and Big Time stands as her most revealing body of work to date.

18. MJ Lenderman Boat Songs

North Carolina musician MJ Lenderman is something of a working man’s Alex G, his lyrics goofy and niche as they are sharp and telling. His third album, Boat Songs, finds a space somewhere between indie, blues rock, and alt-country, and his gentle drawl sells stories about basketball, theme parks, and, yes, boats, with charming candor. His songs touch on life in his hometown of Asheville, a personal touch that gives his writing a casual, genuine appeal. But there’s often a deeper sadness lingering beneath - “TLC Cage Match” is a tale of dashed childhood dreams and steroid abuse, and a Michael Jordan anecdote on “Hangover Game” brushes on alcoholism. In his talent for knotty storytelling and sly humor, Lenderman emerges as one of his generation’s most promising songwriters.

17. Cate Le Bon Pompeii

Welsh musician Cate Le Bon paints enormous pop songs in strange, warped textures. On her sixth album, Pompeii, she finds the sonic equivalent to impasto, heaping gnarled guitars and bleating saxophones onto plump, rubbery bass lines. Her vocals are plaintive and composed, her lyrics jagged and abstract - “I’ve pushed love through the hour glass,” she sings on the title track, “did you see me putting pain in a stone?” Le Bon has described the record as “written and recorded in a quagmire of unease,” and its queasy sound pallet offers a heady aura of disorientation. She recorded the nine-song set in a house she’d lived in fifteen years prior, and the “time warp” in which she found herself comes through on the anxious wobble of “Dirt on the Bed.” Pompeii also contains some of her sturdiest songs to date, primarily the shimmering pair of “Moderation” and “Running Away.” In her own “[grappling] with existence, resignation, and faith,” Le Bon has created a work that makes her own unease feel universal.

16. Björk Fossora

In the lead-up to her tenth studio album, Icelandic iconoclast Björk described the most recent phase of her career as her “fungus period,” a concept that would seem downright absurd coming from anyone else. But Björk has never been concerned with palatability - the cover of her last album morphed her visage into something between vulva and Star Trek’s Worf. Following the stunning Arca collaborations of Vulnicura and Utopia, Fossora is self-produced, a self-contained world where melodies spawn from Björk like alien foliage. Whereas Utopia drew its essence from the Central American rainforests, Fossora grows an ecosystem from scratch: bass clarinets croak like toads, flutes soar out from trees, and voices replicate like spores. Collaborators flit in and out - serpentwithfeet delivers a particularly magnetic performance on “Fungal City” - but Björk remains the center of her own environment. Four decades into her career, it’s baffling that the musician continues to find novel modes of expression. On Fossora, she remains an unrestrained force of nature.

15. Bad Bunny Un Verano Sin Ti

The driving force behind reggaeton’s international explosion, Bad Bunny has held the title of most streamed artist in the world for three consecutive years. He’s used his platform as a vehicle for social change, shining a light on the deteriorating conditions of his native Puerto Rico and pushing the envelopes of gender and sexuality, making himself one of the most consequential figures in popular culture. His music, however, acts as an escape, avoiding the pressures of the world in favor of pure, unadulterated fun. The artist’s first album since 2020, Un Verano Sin Ti, is an absolute blast, an adrenaline rush of a record that pivots between tales of promiscuity and heartbreak. It’s his longest effort to date, spanning a wide variety of genres from Latin trap to house and ambient pop. He manages to sustain this energy for its almost ninety-minute runtime, an exercise in endurance and musical exploration few of his contemporaries could manage. Tempos change and genres shift completely within the duration of a single song; halfway through early highlight “Después de la Playa,” the song regenerates into a delirious mambo. The record transforms dramatically in its latter half, percussion sinking into the background (the submerged groove on “Andrea”) or dropping out all together (the seasick wobble of the title track). It’s a daring expansion of Latin pop that could only come from a man who has the genre in the palm of his hand.

14. Florist Florist

On 2019’s solo effort Emily Alone, Florist’s Emily Sprague wove delicate meditations on mortality and belonging, so precarious in their beauty that listening in felt destructive. Her third album reinstates Florist, the band, and their self-titled effort bristles with detail, a semi-maximalist approach to meticulous, mindful composition. Florist sits alongside the strange, ethereal folk of contemporaries (and list placers) Big Thief and the muted bedroom rock of singer-songwriter Lomelda. But Sprague’s writing style is distinctive and deeply contemplative, using nature as a wellspring of creativity and insight; “you are the kind of person that comes from the flower’s center,” she sings on “Spring in Hours.” The songs are glued together by reflective, gorgeously engineered vignettes, pieces of scenery that emote in soft, swirling colors. It all works in symmetry with Sprague’s voice, an immovable calm that allows emotion into its orbit without holding on for too long. At its center, Florist is a reflection on impermanence, an ode to the natural forces that transcend the corporeal form - “our bodies [are] only here for a little while ’til they melt.”

13. Nilüfer Yanya PAINLESS

On her 2019 debut, British singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya presented herself as one of indie rock’s most promising talents, matching her fuzzed-out guitar work and deep cynicism with sticky sweet pop sensibilities. On follow-up PAINLESS, she’s refined her sonic pallet, zeroing in on the essentials; in the spirit of traditional post-punk, the barebones arrangements involve little more than guitar, drums, and bass. Yanya’s voice works in angular shapes, icy and unperturbed, falling somewhere between the plunging timbres of Siouxsie Sioux and King Krule. Her guitar riffs are similarly structured, unfussy and geometrically sharp; the arrangement on “L/R” is essentially cubist. Even in its no-frills approach, PAINLESS finds ample moments of transcendence, such as the heart-stopping chorus on “shameless” or the acid-eaten coda on “midnight sun.” Closer “anotherlife” bursts into color, the most immediate track on an album that rewards repeat listening - synth strings wash over a sun-soaked groove that proves, even in rock star mode, she can hit all the sweet spots.

12. The Smile A Light for Attracting Attention

In the six year absence of a new Radiohead album, Thom Yorke’s work has remained plentiful and plenty captivating. Along with his soundtrack for 2018’s Suspiria remake, he released his best solo album to date with 2019’s ANIMA, a dark, spiraling journey through loss and mourning. His first album with Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and percussionist Tom Skinner, billed as The Smile, follows a similar sound pallet. But it’s strikingly minimal arrangements focus heavily on grooves, incorporating influence from Afrobeat and jazz. Stylistically, it recalls Radiohead’s underrated The King of Limbs, a percussion-centric album that allowed a peek through the band’s veneer. A Light for Attracting Attention has a similar appeal, a comparably relaxed effort that finds the trio having lots of fun - lead single “You Will Never Work in Television” is a blast of garage rock squalor that sounds closer to The Bends than anything Radiohead has done since. Yorke even lets down his hair; “simple ass motherfuckers,” he rips on opener “The Same.” There are moments, of course, of unholy beauty and bleakness, namely the “Pyramid Song”-esque “Pana-vision.” But there are unprecedented glimpses of light too - “Free in the Knowledge” is a swelling anthem of radical acceptance. A Light ends up being Yorke’s and Greenwood’s best work in several years, and the Radiohead album we didn’t know we needed.

11. Soul Glo Diaspora Problems

The appeal of Philadelphia act Soul Glo is all there in the album cover for Diaspora Problems, their fourth studio album - the collected works of radical feminist Audre Lorde, a splayed stack of hundreds and fifties, the Cookie Monster, and what looks like a couple pretty imposing blunts, all placed mindfully on an altar for a musician named Christopher Werner. The hardcore band is known for their trailblazing politics, even if they’ve rejected the idea of being called a “political band.” The music on Problems seems to channel rage more than any set political idea - “can I live?” lead singer Pierce Jordan shrieks on “Gold Chain Punk”. They’re plenty goofy too; “Thumbsucker” asserts that “Cookie Monster was a prisoner of war,” and a piece on our broken electoral system is called “Fucked Up if True.” Even through its analysis of generational trauma and crippling anxiety, Problems is a raucous party, a deeply magnetizing experience. The band’s fusion of hardcore punk and rap is seamless, bracing, and totally unique, dodging the pejorative connotations of “rap rock” by recalling hardcore’s origin as a genre invented by radical Black musicians. “It’s a spiritual level of gang shit,” Jordan sings on the closing number, an apt summation.

10. Beth Orton Weather Alive

Decades apart from her beginnings as folktronica’s leading lady, Beth Orton has expanded her sound into an all-encompassing aura, elegant and gorgeous. Her eighth studio album is her first in six years, and on Weather Alive, she addresses her role as a mother and her struggle with chronic illness. Her voice has aged gracefully, and the pared down arrangements here recall late career successes from Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. Orton wades through darkness without succumbing to it, matching every “[I] forgot I had bones” with “the weather’s so beautiful outside / almost makes me want to cry.” Weather Alive buzzes with wisdom, and on “Fractals,” she emerges with new perspective: “when anything happens, it happens to you,” she sings, “and you start believing in magic.”

9. Weyes Blood And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow

Even staring into void, Natalie Merling’s music is comforting, pacifying in its immensity; “I like to think of myself as a salve for people that are hurting,” she admitted in a Guardian interview this year. Her fifth album, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, wrestles with the unrelenting doom of our time, emerging with a collection of songs that sound like they’re swallowing all of the uncertainty and fear - “there’s no time to be afraid anymore,” she sings on “Children of the Empire.” There’s a deep sense of nostalgia to Merling’s work; her music invokes the Laurel Canyon and Brill Building movements of the sixties and seventies, and she’s cited Harry Nilsson as a major influence. This era-bending places Hearts Aglow in a vortex of timelessness, a secret haven where everything is in exactly the right place.

**pgLang, Top Dawg Entertainment, Aftermath, Interscope • 2022**

8. Kendrick Lamar Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers

More than a decade into his career, Kendrick Lamar’s standing as the greatest rapper alive is generally accepted as fact. On the Compton emcee’s fifth album, he seems determined to subvert the idea of the rap superstar, yielding his most morally complex, thematically ambitious release to date. He tangles himself between themes of emotional abuse, sexual violence, and transphobia, emerging with a gnarled, complicated, and often disorienting piece of art, a twisting manifesto meant to be challenged. Imperfect and often uncomfortable, Mr. Morale lays all of its cards on the table, a logical play for an artist who has little left to prove.

Read my May review here.

7. Special Interest Endure

New Orleans no wave outfit Special Interest are known for their explosive live performances, piloted by the charismatic presence of vocalist Logout, and they channeled that energy directly to tape on previous efforts Spiraling and The Passion Of. For their third album, Endure, the band had to revise their process - in the summer of 2020, they were relegated to Zoom sessions and socially distanced practices. The product is a fine-tuned take on their sound, crisply produced and ultra-focused. They sacrifice none of their radical, kinetic appeal, positively ripping through songs like “Foul” and “Impulse Control.” But the increased intentionality behind their approach on Endure yields some of their most arresting work to date; an early product of their pandemic sessions, “Midnight Legend” is a smooth, texturally refined synth-pop number that allows for closer attention to each member’s individual contributions. The best number here, “(Herman’s) House,” strikes a balance between the two modes - the house-influenced track transports you to the queer clubs that were temporarily shuttered in 2020, and it makes for the finest ode to drag ball culture this side of Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE. Perhaps the biggest shift here is in the band’s mentality - they lose none of their political fire, but in a year so fraught with social tension and isolation ennui, they managed to find optimism, a promise for the day when they could once more incinerate the stage.

6. ROSALÍA MOTOMAMI

Over the course of the last several years, Catalonian superstar Rosalía has become one of the most significant and enigmatic voices in Latin pop; she quickly garnered acclaim with her sophomore album, 2018’s high concept masterpiece El Mal Querer, which merged the theatrically of Flamenco with textured, progressive urbano. This year’s MOTOMAMI hits the reset button - sonically expansive and artistically ambitious, she flexes every skill in her repertoire over crackling reggaetón and speaker-warping industrial. A direct contrast to Querer, her third album is less cohesive by design - “La Fama,” a strikingly traditional bachata duet with The Weeknd, squirms uneasily next to “CANDY,” a dank downtempo number that brilliantly interpolates Burial’s post-dubstep classic “Archangel.” The latter is one of several mind-blowing left turns; the Neptunes add a gelatinous sheen to the title track, and opener “SAOKO” stretches shuffling jazz over a chest-thumping dembow beat. But the peak cut here is “HENTAI,” a gorgeous piano ballad in which sexual dependence is imbued with deep spirituality. Rosalía’s performance is at once hushed, frayed, and ecstatic, as intricate and layered as MOTOMAMI itself.

5. Alvvays Blue Rev

Canadian outfit Alvvays emerged in 2014 with an immediate classic; “Archie, Marry Me,” the lead single from their self-titled debut, is a timeless piece of punch-drunk jangle pop, a surrender to the impulse of passion. The same sugar-high immediacy is all over their third album, Blue Rev, a record so ecstatic that it threatens implosion. While their sophomore effort hinted at a brighter, heavier sound, the music here is massive, every strum and synth whooshing by in blinding technicolor. Opener “Pharmacist” crashes in with reckless abandon, Molly Rankin’s vocal captured in the peak moments of heartbreak. There is an array of perfect moments here: the final refrain of “Tom Verlaine,” the sludgy guitar solo on “Many Mirrors,” the breakdown and tremendous return on “After the Earthquake.” But it’s the feelings in-between that give Blue Rev its heft; a profoundly personal work, the record explores themes of regret and paralyzing fear. When Rankin reaches a place of acceptance on “Belinda Says” (“knowing all to well terrified / but I’ll find my way”), it recaptures the euphoria that made us fall in love with Alvvays in the first place.

4. Black Country, New Road Ants from Up There

On their 2021 debut, Black Country, New Road distinguished themselves from fellow post-punk acts like Shame and Dry Cleaning with a wider, more experimental sound pallet and a post-rock penchant for extended jams and darker, rawer poetics. A year later, they’ve honed in on an inimitable sound, their song structures grander in scope, lead vocalist Isaac Wood’s lyrics digging further beneath the skin. Ants From Up There is an instant classic, a record that welcomes you as much as you let it in, emotionally trying and viscerally exciting. Wood is a masterful songwriter, ripping through allegories with a weathered, understated intensity. The band builds worlds around him - the gut-wrenching “Bread Song” locks into place just as his heart falls to pieces. The record’s sense of catharsis is body deep, and Wood’s departure from the band immediately after its release makes it seem as if he’d exhausted his soul within its hour-long runtime. Black Country will undoubtedly continue to make stirring music, but Ants stands as a once-in-a-career triumph.

3. Sudan Archives Natural Brown Prom Queen

Brittney Parks, better known as Sudan Archives, is something of a renaissance woman; a singer, songwriter, producer, and violin virtuoso, she’s harnessed a singular vision greater than the sum of its parts. Her sophomore album, Natural Brown Prom Queen, is a massive expansion of her sound, spilling over with ideas and weighty emotions. She’s reassessed her approach to the violin, eschewing the instrument’s perceived austerity in favor of something looser, more expressive. “I found violinists who looked like me in Africa, playing it so wildly,” Parks has explained. “It's such a serious instrument in a Western concert setting, but in so many other places in the world it brings the party.” She channels that energy throughout NBPQ, her violin as essential a voice as her own. The album portrays a singular take on Black womanhood - “Selfish Soul” explores Western culture’s fixation with Black hair, delving into the anxiety surrounding self-expression. “I don’t want no struggles, I don’t want no fear,” she chants, “does it make sense to you why I cut it off?” Parks covers a wide variety of genres and influences; “Ciara” is thumping trap-soul, “ChevyS10” might be described as ambient Afrobeats, and “OMG BRITT” envisions rage rap through the lens traditional African music. On title track “NBPQ (Topless),” she embraces the complexity of her being, arriving a personal breakthrough and mission statement: “I’m not average.”

2. Big Thief Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

Adrianne Lenker’s voice exists on a different plane of reality, mystical and transportive. On Big Thief’s fifth studio album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, the band follows her through a vortex of immeasurable possibility, surprisingly playful and contagiously joyful. The Emmylou Harris-esque country folk of opener “Change” is almost a red herring, a spellbinding ballad that could’ve found a home on one of their earlier records. Immediately after, the album expands in kaleidoscopic dimensions - “Time Expanding” tears any inertia wide open, splaying plunking percussion and sky-high harmonies across the aural plane. There are several career highlights here - the title track, for example, is almost unbearably gorgeous, a transmission from the peak of a mountainous expanse. But for all of its explicit beauty, Dragon is actually a lot of fun - “Spud Infinity” is defiantly goofy, loaded with cartoon spring sounds and absurd lyrics (“finish” rhymed with “potato knish,” a line about elbows, etc.). It’s an extended peak into the band’s understated brilliance - if you listen closely, you can hear the gears turning, hesitant guitar plucks locking into groove, ideas coming together in real time.

**Parkwood Entertainment, Columbia • 2022**

1. Beyoncé RENAISSANCE

In the lead-up to her seventh studio album, Beyoncé released a statement dedicating the project to a relative named Uncle Jonny: “he was my godmother,” she explained, “and the first person to expose me to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album.” Uncle Jonny lost his battle with AIDS when Knowles was 17, his death a consequence of an epidemic that ravaged the gay community, with a particular toll taken on queer Black folks. “Thank you to all of the pioneers who originate culture,” she continued, “to all of the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long.”

On RENAISSANCE, her first studio album since 2016’s Lemonade, she aims to honor the legacy of gay club music, long a safe haven from the suffocating grip of oppression. She folds conspicuous tributes to pioneers like Robin S. and Donna Summer into the album’s glittering sound pallet, which incorporates funk, house, and an array of sounds from the African diaspora. This is also Knowles’s first album in a decade to arrive without visual accompaniment; the music is designed, instead, to transport you to the dance floor, meant to be experienced rather than consumed. Its structure as a seamless DJ set adds to its visceral appeal, glistening with sweat and prismatic lighting.

Drag ball culture is the prominent influence here, and Beyoncé wears its proud regality like a diamond-studded crown. Early highlight “ALIEN SUPERSTAR” is an electro-house stunner that drops opulent nuggets like “stilettos kicking vintage crystals off the bar” and “Tiffany blue billboards over that ceiling,” and her rap verse on “HEATED” is reading at its finest - “Uncle Jonny made my dress / that cheap Spandex, she looks a mess.” “COZY” is a strutting exercise in self-empowerment that knocks the theft of Black (and queer) art at the expense of its deep traditions - “you hate me,” she taunts, “‘cause you want me.”

There is plenty of criticism to be levied against the Carter-Knowles dynasty, an institution with a combined net worth of almost two billion. Lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” is intended as a working class anthem, but its everyman credo (“work by nine, then off past five”) could read as disingenuous from an individual that has likely never worked a nine-to-five job. RENAISSANCE, however, is built to be bigger than Beyoncé herself; it’s a loving tribute, pure in intention and mindful in its inclusivity of queer voices. “SOUL” gives a spotlight to New Orleans bounce innovator Big Freedia, an artist whose influence has too often been buried underneath big name co-opters (here’s looking at you, Drake). Closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE” heavily incorporates elements from gay anthem “I Feel Love,” and “PURE/HONEY” samples drag icon Kevin Aviance.

For all of its thematic weight, RENAISSANCE would be nothing without the supreme talent that lies at its center. The album recruits an intimidatingly vast roster of collaborators, the likes of which include The-Dream, Honey Dijon, Skrillex, and A.G. Cook. And then there’s Beyoncé herself, a generational talent whose virtues have been extolled almost too often to expand upon. She’s never sounded freer or as accomplished as she does here, approaching every vocal lick and tongue-twisting bar with voracious intensity and unmatched poise. For an era in which queer Black lives are increasingly under attack, there are few voices as influential of Beyoncé’s to assert their beauty and inalienable right to exist. On RENAISSANCE, she explores their deep cultural history with selflessness and admiration, an era-spanning exploration that feels ineffably vital.

100+ releases you should hear

$ilkMoney - I Don’t Give a Fuck About This Rap Shit, Imma Just Drop Until I Don’t Feel Like It Anymore

070 Shake - You Can’t Kill Me

700 Bliss - Nothing to Declare

Alabaster DePlume - GOLD

Amber Mark - Three Dimensions Deep

Archers of Loaf - Reason in Decline

Ari Lennox - age/sex/location

Axel Boman - LUZ / Quest for Fire

Bartees Strange - Farm to Table

beabadoobee - Beatopia

Beach House - Once Twice Melody

billy woods - Aethiopes

Black Dresses - Forget Your Own Face

Black Star - No Fear of Time

Bladee & Ecco2k - Crest

Bladee - Spider

Blood Orange - Four Songs

BROCKHAMPTON - The Family

Burial - Antidawn EP

Burna Boy - Love, Damini

Cakes da Killa - Svengali

Camp Cope - Running with the Hurricane

Cam’ron & A-Trak - U Wasn’t There

Carly Rae Jepsen - The Loneliest Time

Cass McCombs - Heartmind

CEO Trayle - HH5

Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul - Topical Dancer

Coco & Clair Clair - Sexy

Conway the Machine - God Don’t Make Mistakes

Danger Mouse & Black Thought - Cheat Codes

Daphni - Cherry

Death Cab for Cutie - Asphalt Meadows

death’s dynamic shroud - Darklife

Denzel Curry - Melt My Eyes See Your Future

DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ - Bewitched!

Doechii - she / her / black bitch

Drake & 21 Savage - Her Loss

Drake - Honestly, Nevermind

Dream Unending - Song of Salvation

Dreezy - HITGIRL

Dry Cleaning - Stumpwork

Duval Timothy - Meeting with a Judas Tree

Duwap Kaine - A Dogg’s Influence

dvsn - Working on My Karma

Empress Of - Save Me

Ethel Cain - Preacher’s Daughter

Fatlip & Blu - Live for the End of the World, Vol. 1 (Demos)

Fireboy DML - Playboy

Flo Milli - You Still Here, Ho ?

Flume - Palaces

Fly Anakin - Frank

Freddie Gibbs - $oul $old $eparately

GloRilla - Anyways, Life’s Great…

Harry Styles - Harry’s House

Hikaru Utada - BADモード

Hook - From, Hook

Horsegirl - Versions of Modern Performance

Hudson Mohawke - Cry Sugar

Huerco S. - Plonk

Jacques Green - Fantasy

Jeff Parker - Forfolks

Jenny Hval - Classic Objects

Junglepussy - Jp5000

Just Mustard - Heart Under

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Let’s Turn It Into Sound

Keeley Forsyth - Limbs

Kehlani - blue water road

Kenny Beats - LOUIE

King Princess - Hold On Baby

Koffee - Gifted

Lambchop - The Bible

Leikeli47 - Shape Up

The Linda Lindas - Growing Up

Lykke Li - EYEYE

Maggie Rogers - Surrender

Mary J. Blige - Good Morning Gorgeous

MATTIE - Jupiter’s Purse

MAVI - Laughing so Hard, it Hurts

Megan Thee Stallion - Traumazine

Mitski - Laurel Hell

MUNA - MUNA

Mura Masa - demon time

Mykki Blanco - Stay Close to Music

Nas - Magic

Nia Archives - Forbidden Feelingz

Oliver Sim - Hideous Bastard

Omar Apollo - Ivory

Palm - Nicks and Grazes

Phoenix - Alpha Zulu

Plains - I Walked with You a Ways

Post Malone - Twelve Carat Toothache

PUP - THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND

quinn - quinn

R.A.P. Ferreira - 5 to the Eye with Stars

redveil - learn 2 swim

Rico Nasty - Las Ruinas

Bad Boy Chiller Crew - Disrespectful

Roc Marciano & The Alchemist - The Elephant Man’s Bones

Sally Shapiro - Sad Cities

Sam Prekop & John McEntire - Sons of

Santigold - Spirituals

SASAMI - Squeeze

S.G. Goodman - Teeth Marks

Shamir - Heterosexuality

Sharon van Etten - We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong

Shawny Binladen - Wick City

Smino - Luv 4 Rent

Sobs - Air Guitar

Sorry - Anywhere But Here

Steve Lacy - Gemini Rights

Stromae - Multitude

Sun’s Signature - Sun’s Signature EP

Syd - Broken Hearts Club

Tink - Pillow Talk

Tomu DJ - Half Moon Bay

Two Shell - home EP

VNTAGEPARADISE - The Parable of the Sensei

The Weather Station - How Is It That I Should Look At the Stars

Westside Gunn - 10

Wet Leg - Wet Leg

WiFiGawd - CHAIN OF COMMAND

WILLOW - <COPINGMECHANISM>

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down

Yeat - Lyfë

Young Nudy - EA Monster

Yung Kayo - DFTK

The 50 Best Albums of 2021

February 2, 2022 Zack Free

This year pushed us to find small joys in the face of constant disappointment and building frustration. Music helped - here are the 50 best albums that kept us going.

50. Doja Cat Planet Her

In her ascension to pop megastar, Doja Cat has remained a distinctly polarizing character. She’s a chameleonic talent, at times disarmingly goofy and wildly charming; this is a woman who first went viral playing a cow, after all. Her theatrical ability to cycle through masks has also earned her some detractors, shrouding her credibility in accusations of rote imitation and speculation on her shadowy past as an internet troll. On Doja’s third album, none of the criticism seems to matter - Planet Her is a collection of mega-smashes so indelible that all the noise is rendered inaudible. The production here is featherweight, celestial bodies of glittering trap-pop and electro-R&B, and Doja bends them to her will. She outshines Ariana Grande and The Weeknd on “I Don’t Do Drugs” and “You Right,” respectively, and improves on Nicki’s “Massive Attack” flow with the inescapable “Get Into It (Yuh).” The best track here is hazy disco cut “Kiss Me More,” on which SZA proves herself Doja’s only capable sparring partner. We don’t learn much here about who the superstar is when no one is looking, a glaring weak spot in her otherwise compelling take on contemporary pop. But when Planet Her sounds this inviting, it’s much harder to care.

49. PinkPanthress to hell with it

Much like the era in which we’re living, the debut from English musician PinkPanthress exists somewhere out of step with the rest of time. to hell with it is quintessentially 2021 - its star emerged from the depths of TikTok, seemingly overnight, and her songs are bite-sized soaps, tailor-made for modern consumption. But the music, which scans through decades of UK electronic and pop, is pure nostalgia. “Just for me” is teenage infatuation distilled (“if you turned around and saw me I would die”), laced around a Y2K-era 2-step bounce, and “Passion” is woven masterfully between the ridges of late-nite drum-n-bass. Breakthrough single “Break it off” is listed as a bonus track, and its secondhand inclusion speaks to the singer’s expedited rise to fame - in a matter of months, PinkPanthress has become a Gen Z superstar, a purveyor of pristine pop in less-than-perfect times.

48. dltzk Frailty

New Jersey musician dltzk released two projects this year, the first of which - February’s Teen Week - propelled them to the front of the digicore movement. On Frailty, their first proper album, they zero in on a sound entirely their own. Equally as indebted to emo as it is hyperpop and chiptune, dltzk’s music explores themes of gender identity and social isolation with an emotional acuity well beyond their eighteen years. Among the influences they’ve cited are Porter Robinson (who also appears on this list), Skrillex, vaporwave innovators such as Blank Banshee and George Clanton, and video game music. They’ve also name-checked MTV cult classic Daria, which shines through in their dry humor and straight-faced delivery - “pretender” drapes “oh, how I lie in bed and feel like dying” in apathy like it’s ordinary chatter. But the musician’s cool, depressive exterior makes moments of complete vulnerability (“goldfish,” “movies for guys”) all the more gutting. “I always change the channel when the couple starts to kiss,” they confide on “your clothes,” turning an individual trigger into a universal pain, a familiar twinge for anyone who’s felt that they’ve grown up in the wrong skin. That’s the brilliance of Frailty; in its ultra-modern spin on teenage angst, dltzk has captured something timeless.

47. IAN SWEET Show Me How You Disappear

“Take love away,” Jillian Medford sings, “[and] you’ll have your whole life to live without the fear of dying.” Her third album as IAN SWEET, Show Me How You Disappear, is a deeply vulnerable record, a series of ghosts creeping out from behind a hardened veneer. When Medford offers to let down her guard on “Sword,” there’s a caveat posed as a threat: “my body is a sword / it gets sharper when it gets ignored.” Her lyrics are grounded in the elements - sun, air, and water are vehicles for life’s immovable constants, and she wriggles desperately to free herself from them. But Disappear works through trauma in real time, and there’s a sense of resolution to her surrender on closer “I See Everything”: “got that air in my lungs,” Medford sings, embracing the peace of acceptance, “I can breathe.”

46. Magdalena Bay Mercurial World

On their debut LP, Miami duo Magdalena Bay make brainy synth-pop from the hyper-digital eclecticism of late-capitalistic society. Mercurial World flips the consumer politics of Madonna’s “Material Girl” on their head, musing on the impermanence of earthly belongings. On intro “The End,” vocalist Mica Tenenbaum offers an uncomfortable truth, a sarcastic reassurance: “everything comes from and goes to the same place - nowhere … does that help you sleep better?” The music here recalls the progressive mid-‘10s pop of Carly Rae Jepsen and Grimes, and draws influence from a range of genres as expansive as disco, house, techno, and K-pop. They flirt with nineties G-funk on “Secrets (Your Fire),” and cascading digital squiggles consume “You Lose!” like a dying Pac-Man. The slinky sensuality of Tenenbaum’s vocals suggest Fever-era Kylie Minogue, or the Cardigans’ Nina Persson, and Matthew Lewin’s innovative production pulsates with careful, studied detail. On last year’s EP, A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling, the duo aimed straight for the pleasure center - on Mercurial World, they argue pop music can be as cerebral as it is visceral.

45. aya im hole

“Thee vibe hath changed,” croaks aya, a fanged grin creeping audibly across her face. The enigmatic Mancunian positions her breakthrough, im hole, along the seams of modern electronic, delivering demented poetry in a coarse rasp. On opener “somewhere between the 8th and 9th floor,” she squawks like a demented myna bird, chanting Suess-like mnemonics in a Lynchian half-logic (“me more/red shoes or blue shoes”). Her incantations glow with dark energy and twisted sexuality - “come over,” she taunts on “what if i should fall asleep and slipp under,” “we can fuck the void out of each other.” The project is also a jaw-dropping exercise in sound design; defined largely by its use of negative space, it crackles in clicks and pops, jetting spiraling synths across the aural plane. Released on storied electronic imprint Hyperdub, its frenetic eclecticism touches on the label’s trademark dubstep, stuttering techno, and footwork-like polyrhythms while defying staunch categorization. In its uneasy lurch, im hole becomes one of the the year’s most magnetizing and disquieting records.

44. Lost Girls Menneskekollektivet

On her first full-length with collaborator Håvard Volden, Jenny Hval opens with a genesis story - “in the beginning, there is sound,” she intones, “…there is darkness, and sound travels across it.” In imitation, drums begin to spill into focus, marching through the formation of civilization. Lost Girl’s Menneskekollektivet is a meditation on humanity, a garden of ambient techno tracks that blossom patiently into shimmering philosophical breakthroughs. Hval’s voice is the grounding center, a forcefulcalm in calamitous times. In the album’s closing moments, she turns the trials of existence into art - “when we die, we become paper, charcoals, and a marker pen/meanwhile, we are merely content.” On Menneskekollektivet, Hval finds contentment in her search for spiritual understanding.

43. Little Simz Sometimes I Might Be Introvert

“There’s a war,” begins Little Simz’s sixth album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. An acronym shaped from the artist’s nickname, Simbi, the title suggests inner turmoil rather than disposition. “There’s a war inside, I hear battle cries,” she clarifies, grappling with the living ramifications of the slave trade and African diaspora. Of Yoruba descent, the British rapper feels the restlessness of generational displacement bubble inside of her, weaponizing her demons in service of a greater mission. Her determination to succeed has made her a razor-sharp emcee, relentless and energetic, climbing over competitors on the towering “Standing Ovation” and “Rollin Stone.” But her battle is a noble one - she celebrates black womanhood on opener “Woman,” empowering others to reach the peak of personal enlightenment. On “How Did You Get Here,” she looks back on her struggle with fondness and perspective - “I’m the version of me I always imagined when I was younger.”

42. serpentwithfeet DEACON

The sophomore effort from Baltimore musician serpentwithfeet is an ethereal celebration of queer, black love in all of its forms - romance, sex, friendship, and shared spirituality. DEACON radiates with warm sensuality and joy - there’s literal fanfare on “Same Size Shoe,” in which serpent goofily imitates a horn section in ebullient harmony. In contrast to his earlier works, which relied on darker, mossier textures, tracks like “Fellowship” and “Amir” draw brighter sounds from world music and ‘00s R&B. The singer’s mellifluous voice is the piloting force, graced with a gospel-trained agility, and his songwriting is cheeky and honest - “the handsomest guys are caring and they’re bi,” he sings on “Hyacinth.” On the same song, serpentwithfeet embraces the divine fortune that comes along with finding love in a dark world - “don’t tell me the universe ain’t listening.”

41. MIKE Disco!

On the tail of two grief-stricken masterworks, 2019’s tears of joy and last year’s weight of the world, Disco! finds MIKE hopeful, chuckling through the residual pain. His raps are fanciful, bouncy, and even playful this time around (“how I dread life and gave hope to n****s each day?”) The production, credited to his DJ BlackPower moniker, plays co-star, even when tangled in MIKE’s impressionistic rhyme schemes. Opener “Evil Eye” reshapes its sample with Dilla-esque sleight of hand, turning the backdrop into a tapestry of Illuminati imagery. Elsewhere, he rides shuffling jazz grooves and luxurious city pop with elastic ease, a sandbox of sonic delights. Still trudging towards the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, MIKE is ready for the journey - “Stuck in the midst of it all,” MIKE smirks on “Aww (ZaZa), “struggling? Hmm… nah.”

40. Lingua Ignota SINNER GET READY

Earlier this month, Kristin Hayer detailed allegations of abuse and assault at the hands of ex-partner Alexis Marshall, frontman of noise rock outfit Daughters. Trauma has long played a central role in her music as Lingua Ignota, but the added context for SINNER GET READY gives her most recent chapter a harrowing gravity. Hayer’s music might be classified as baroque noise, defined by its intensity as much as its classical-influenced intricacy, and SINNER simmers with an ancient, otherworldly darkness. On “I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES,” she speaks directly to God, imploring him to smite the bearer of her pain - “Glorious father, intercede for me,” she bellows, “if I cannot hide from you, neither can he.” In a world of unpredictable tragedy and unchecked male toxicity, Hayer has made a chamber of her own control, molding fate to her will.

39. Injury Reserve By the Time I Get to Pheonix

The second full-length effort from hip hop experimentalists Injury Reserve was not an inevitability; it’s their first since the 2020 death of founding member Stepa J. Groggs, a shocking loss that put the group’s future as performers in jeopardy. Shrouded in grief and anxiety, By the Time I Get to Phoenix feels necessary and cathartic - the title is ripped from the Glen Campbell classic, a dual purpose header that evokes the song’s deep longing as much as it pays homage to the group’s home state of Arizona. Their sound here is murkier, bristling with barbed static and quiet intensity, akin to the glitch-hop touchstones of Yeezus and The Money Store. Phoenix also suggests an increased sense of musicianship, a jazz-like approach to rhythm and dynamics that lends the project a raw, origanic aesthetic, even buried under walls of digital collapse. It speaks to the duo’s resilience and willingness to keep growing in the face of suffocating sorrow, and on stunning closer “Bye Storm,” member Ritchie with a T finds relief in an age-old adage - “the show must go on.”

38. Lucy Dacus Home Video

The music of singer/songwriter Lucy Dacus draws from a painstakingly catalogued library of memories and emotions. On her third studio album, the aptly titled Home Video, she compiles raw fragments into four-minute episodes, gut-wrenching vignettes that reanimate past into present. Like fellow musicians Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker (with whom she’s recorded as Boygenius), she’s a virtuosic storyteller, gifted with empathy and acuity - on highlight “Thumbs,” she makes a partner’s reunion with their estranged father sound distinctly personal. Home Video is disarming in its wry humor and unfiltered honesty, its many weighty moments balanced with levity. On single “Brando,” Dacus writes with tossed-off candor, “you called me cerebral, I didn’t know what that meant / but now I do / would it have killed you to call me pretty instead?” It’s the kind of no-holds-barred honesty that sticks with you, the essence of Home Video’s charm and power.

37. Mdou Moctar Afrique Victime

It wouldn’t be far-fetched to call Mdou Moctar the Jimi Hendrix of Niger. The Tuareg guitarist and bandleader has been stirring up worldwide acclaim since the 2014 re-release of his debut by Oregon-based label Sahel Sounds, and on his sixth album, Afrique Victime, he’s primed for a breakthrough. Moctar has achieved an unmistakable sound, his guitar chiming like streaks of sun through a shaded valley, and his take on Saharan rock is marvelous and compelling. Shuffling opener “Chismiten” recalls Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti in its call-and-response refrain, and the influence of idol Abdullah Oumbadougou rings through on the earthy “Bismilahi Atagah.” But Mdou performs with an intense and inimitable passion, sifting every ounce of his being through his guitar. The title track burrows deep into generations of injustice and corruption - “if we stay silent, it will be the end of us.” On Afrique Victime, Moctar comes through loud and clear.

36. 파란노을 (Parannoul) To See the Next Part of the Dream

“Some of the listeners may have already noticed,” Korean musician Parannoul revealed in a rare interview this May, “but almost all of the instruments [on To See The Next Part of the Dream] are [virtual].” His admission carries an air of shame, a wariness of backlash from the indie rock community. But Parannoul’s music is a conspicuously digital, online phenomenon; shrouding his art in mystery, he’s managed to keep his real-life identity sacred. Beneath its intentional cloaking, To See The Next Part of the Dream is a true-blue shoegaze album, convincing guitar rock from someone who has never learned to play guitar. It’s stunning that canned sounds can sound so vibrant - the smirkingly titled “Analog Sentimentalism” glistens like a swarm of fireflies, a natural beauty pieced together from artificial parts. “Through these works,” Parannoul offers on his Bandcamp page, “I want to leave a little trace of my own, no matter how stupid and anachronistic [a] dream it may be.” On his breakthrough effort, he makes his dream a reality.

35. Mega Bog Life, and Another

Erin Birgy’s third album as Mega Bog is thoughtful and measured, even in its paint-splatter approach to songcraft. Life, and Another is willfully abstract, exorcising demons into ecstatic swatches of color - Birgy has described the recording process as “transforming [her] songs into something positive,” leaning on her bandmates in spiritual harmony and mutual support. Her eccentric folk jazz draws as much from Court and Spark-era Joni Mitchell as it does the shapeshifting alien pop of David Bowie and Kate Bush, contorting itself into mesmerizing figures. The album’s leading half races along with the haphazard abandon of firing neurons, reaching a turning point in spacious, elegiac centerpiece “Maybe You Died.” The turn recalls Bowie’s landmark Low, dissolving gracefully into melancholic, sometimes speechless, reflection. In a literal reading, Mega Bog follows “life” into “another,” viewing existence from the inside out.

34. The Armed ULTRAPOP

Hardcore collective The Armed is less a band than it is an entity, an inscrutable force that has been furtively reshaping the boundaries of modern punk since its formation in 2009. This year’s ULTRAPOP is an expectedly impenetrable body of work, an explosive cocktail of noise rock and gelatinous electronic pop. The Armed is largely defined, in absence of a discernible core, by its collaborators - ULTRAPOP’s liner notes only identify a group of “additional musicians,” including alt-rock legend Mark Lanegan, metal drummer Ben Koller, and Kurt Ballou of Converge. In a piece for Interview magazine, journalist Max Frank tracked down Dan Greene, the collective’s ostensible leader, though he notes that The Armed “has presented many people as ‘Dan Greene’” over the years. Frank’s interview is littered with mind-boggling nuggets, including one in which the supposed Greene details The Armed’s mission to become “the most invincible, ridiculously jacked, healthiest, disgustingly hot band of all time.” The music on ULTRAPOP is accordingly muscled, steaming at the edges of its pummeling, melodic hardcore. In all the chaos surrounding The Armed’s artistry, they’re rewriting the rules of punk rock by disregarding them altogether.

33. Dawn Richard Second Line

“A second line is a dance where everybody is happy and they’re doing how they feel,” explains Debbie Richard, “they’re just getting down.” The fifth full-length from electro-R&B iconoclast Dawn Richard is centered around the voice of her mother, whose insights on everything from New Orleans dance culture to true love give Second Line personal and historical context. Dawn’s best album since 2015’s boundless Blackheart, her latest bulges at the seams with irrepressible energy and multi-faceted talent - she flexes a breathless, tongue-twisting flow on highlight “Bussifame,” and grunts through mesmerizing riffs like peak-era Michael Jackson on “Boomerang.” Each release has added unique dimension to Richard’s music, and here she plays with house and crackling breakbeats like freshly unboxed toys. Second Line registers as a more refined take on the lineage-tracing mission of 2019’s new breed, wider in scope and ambition, more joyful and explorative. She sounds reenergized and ready for the journey, wherever it may take her - “they tell me slow down,” she scoffs on “Bussifame,” “bitch, never me.”

32. Arca kiCK ii / kiCK iii / kiCK iiii / kiCK iiiii

In late November, electronic innovator Arca released four albums in just as many days, all labeled as follow-ups to last year’s groundbreaking kiCK i. The sheer volume of her output this year speaks to the immensity of her talent, but it’s all the more impressive that each release speaks to a different mode - over course of the kiCK series, Arca explores urbano, industrial, and ambient, sometimes all at once. ii and iii spotlight her skills as a rapper as much as they do her progressive take on sound design, and iiii and iiiii unearth the beauty in her compositions, almost completely detached from her signature focus on tectonic shifting percussion. The series’ artwork is worthy of praise on its own - a far cry from the amorphous body horror of frequent collaborator Jesse Kanda, Frederik Haymen’s work places Arca directly at the center, posing in hyper-erotic expressions of power. Its befitting kiCK’s thematic center of gender expression and body autonomy, explorations that position Arca at the nexus of queer-centric futurism.

31. Porter Robinson Nurture

In the years following his debut, 2014’s Worlds, Atlanta musician Porter Robinson struggled to reignite his creative flame, pinched out in his battle with depression. On his second album, Nurture, he sounds older and more contemplative, phasing out the steep EDM drops of his earlier work in favor of prettier, softer modes of expression. Robinson is a prodigious talent, adept here at bending his music into emotional peaks and valleys. Nurture is at times ecstatic (effervescent highlight “Musician”) and often gorgeous (the pastoral calm of “Wind Tempos”), but always vibrant and honest, almost childlike in its innate grasp of feeling. The lyrics suggest profound growth, the insight of someone who’s trudged through darkness and made it to the other end - “don’t you waste the suffering you faced,” he advises on “Get Your Wish,” “it will serve you in due time.”

30. Wiki Half God

His third effort since the dissolution of former group Ratking, Half God showcases Wiki at his introspective best, a free-flowing body of potent storytelling and sly humor. He reaffirms his role as one of New York’s most inventive, imaginative emcees - he’s capable of baffling wordplay (“I’ve been sonning sons since the first son of a gun / since the first someone’s tongue the expression was uttered from”), but his greatest skill is unguarded soul-baring, turning anecdotes into fundamental revelations. Wiki’s storytelling is bolstered here by delicate, jazzy sample work from Navy Blue, who provides a verse on the heartwarming “Can’t Do It Alone,” and its gritty, lived-in sound pallette compliments the record’s everyman appeal. “Not every God-given sign you get is on a hike, on a mountaintop, shown by some sort of light,” Wiki professes on closer “Grape Soda.” On Half God, he finds the blessings in the details.

29. SAULT NINE

Referred to by media outlets as the “disappearing album,” the fifth release from mysterious UK outfit SAULT was available for purchase for only ninety-nine days. It’s a shame, too, because NINE deserves to be heard - it’s an engrossing, often gruesome depiction of life in the streets of London, and the group’s sharpest body of work to date. NINE wears an effortless musicality; steering away from the sleeker disco touches that accented their earlier works, SAULT embrace the dimmest corners of soul and funk. “London Gangs” and “Fear” wed Surrealistic Pillow-esque psychedelia to bare-bones acid jazz, and the final moments of “Trap Life” approach UK grime through eyes of Timbaland and Arular-era M.I.A. The most effecting cuts here are given room to breathe and vent: “Alcohol” is a desperate cry from the bottom of a bottle, and “Bitter Streets” explores the hopelessness of inescapable circumstance. Closer “Light’s in Your Hands” is a ray of hope, the gentle comforting of a wounded inner child - “don’t ever lose yourself / you could always start again.” But then the album disperses into particles of light, the devastation sets in, and NINE disappears like black bodies, all too often, do.

28. Indigo De Souza Any Shape You Take

North Carolina singer/songwriter Indigo De Souza blossomed into breathtaking color on Any Shape You Take. A departure from the danker, unvarnished sound of her 2018 debut, De Souza’s sophomore album is lent a professional sheen by producer Brad Cook (who worked similar magic on Liz Phair’s excellent comeback this year). Opener “17” lures you in, sour candy in a Top 40-ready wrapper, and “Hold U” recalls pop punk mainstays Paramore’s foray into dance-rock on 2017’s After Laughter. Elsewhere, she explores a pleasingly melodic permutation of indie rock - the guitar licks on “Die/Cry” flutter from the song’s jangling center like butterflies from a tree’s hollow. But the sweetness of the music often betrays the musician’s poetry, which smacks of searing heartbreak and lost innocence. Halfway through highlight “Real Pain,” the song derails into a demented rollercoaster ride of howls and scraping machinery, and it’s difficult to decipher excitement from fear, anticipation from dread. For De Souza, it’s part of the experience.

27. Water From Your Eyes Structure

Much like the stretching, misshapen figure on its cover, the sixth album from Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes makes unclassifiable shapes from recognizably human parts. Nate Amos and Rachel Brown giggle through Structure, a giddy half-hour spent flouting expectations. Opener “When You’re Around” is a muted interpretation of Sunflower-era Beach Boys, sunshine pop refracted through a clouded window. Immediately after, things get much weirder - “My Love’s” is orchestral pop fed through a shredder, and “Quotations” (which was inspired by “a YouTube video of some giant machine”) tangles its sticky melody in jagged post-punk squalor. In its most inspired hat trick, Structure ends on a complete reconfiguration of “Quotations,” turning the track inside out and playing among its entrails. A disembodied ensemble of Rachel Browns swirl hypnotically around castanets and jittery, organic breakbeats, reframing its lead vocal from a menacing chant into something pensive and pretty. The duo has described Structure as a “parody of ‘the concept album’,” likening the process of its creation to an inside joke “that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.” They make it easy to laugh along, but impossible to laugh off.

26. Dean Blunt BLACK METAL 2

English musician Dean Blunt has been an enigmatic force in underground music for over a decade now. Though he’s cloaked himself in mystery, releasing his projects under various monikers and avoiding interviews, he’s stayed remarkably active, slithering always just under the radar. On the sequel to minor classic BLACK METAL, he’s emerged with his most accessible, least impenetrable work to date, unprecedentedly lucid in its grim storytelling and straightforward musicianship. Here, Blunt raps in vignettes, rancid visions of London’s seedy underbelly. The music is dimly-lit, soaked in reverb, and consistently ominous - it’s frequently beautiful as well, syrupy and languorous. Frequent collaborator Joanne Robertson matches Blunt’s gravelly, half-whispered baritone in lovely, harmonic asides, the Martina Topley-Bird to his Tricky. In fact, trip hop opus Maxinquaye is a spiritual ancestor to METAL’s moonlit minimalism, similarly arresting in its mournful bravado and tortured accounts of a broken, hyper-violent culture. Closer “the rot” is a masterpiece, the most bewitching piece of music that Blunt has ever released. It’s also a glimmer of light at the end of a harrowing tunnel - “you might as well relax, ‘cause the fear is going down,” he rasps. It’s a meditation on mortality, permanence, and human resilience, and a twist ending - like everything else, Blunt suggests, the pain will someday rot away.

25. Faye Webster I Know I’m Funny haha

Singer/songwriter Faye Webster writes songs for lonely nights at home, diary entries penned by lamplight after a “shower beer.” On her fourth studio album, the marvelously titled I Know I’m Funny haha, the 24-year-old makes indie folk that’s tinged with country and retro soul, steeped in nostalgia but rooted in the present. Webster has a keen sense of humor, disarmingly warm but shy and self-critical; intended as a shield, her wit is often too sharp for her own good, a weapon turned against herself. She allows vulnerability to sneak through in private (“I tried to eat, I tried to sleep/but everything seems boring to me,” she sighs on single “Better Distractions”), but she recounts interpersonal blunders like they’re cringe comedy. On the title track, she offers this gem: “I think your sisters are so pretty/got drunk and they forgot they met me/I made her laugh one time at dinner/she said I'm funny and then I thanked her/but I know I'm funny… haha.” The wordless chorus that follows leaves space for empathy and relatability, and I Know I’m Funny becomes a soundtrack for an entire generation of introverts.

24. SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH

On their third studio album, Philly experimentalists SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE rip straight through the heart of modern psychedelia, opening a staggering whirlpool of plunderphonic dream pop and bracing noise rock, a sonic playground where almost anything goes. This is the group’s first record as a trio, folding the talents of indie veteran Zack Schwartz, Rivka Ravede, and Corey Wichlin into a singular, shape-shifting vision. The album’s bookends, “ENTERTAINMENT” and “DEATH,” enclose a universe - “I woke up when I heard the blow,” starts Schwartz, evoking the sound of its creation. The record in-between drifts past in flurries of color and texture, and in under forty minutes, the band observes its collapse. “Once was a comedy is now the universe,” ends ENTERTAINMENT,DEATH, “…nowhere left to run.”

23. illuminati hotties Let Me Do One More

Up until her 2018 debut with illuminati hotties, Sarah Tudzin was best known as a producer, lending an expert finish to albums by Porches, Logic, and Weyes Blood. Her reputation as a sound engineer is evident in the crisp, bouncy arrangements on Let Me Do One More, her band’s third album. But its spotlight falls on Tudzin’s talents as a singer, songwriter, and anti-establishment rabble-rouser, and she’s reintroduced here as a full-fledged rockstar. Lead single “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA” makes its case for song of the year, deserving of the accolade on song title alone. In its half-rapped dexterity, her voice becomes a wily, puddy-like instrument, stretching into whispers and growls at a whim. Her writing is just as inventive; “Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism,” for example, commodifies saliva in service of society’s unquenchable thirst for bottled well-being. Capitalism is an object of preoccupation, clouding even the sunniest of Tudzin’s fantasies - “[it] buzzes around in the back of my mind,” she’s explained, “because art, in essence, is so anti-capitalist.” In this context, Let Me Do One More is art in action.

22. Iceage Seek Shelter

Danish rockers Iceage are a fundamentally different band than they were a decade ago. Their 2011 debut, New Brigade, was sweaty, flailing, and bugged-out, threatening to derail itself at any moment - in a celebratory piece for Jezebel, writer Maria Sherman credits the album for “[bringing] punk conversation [into] a space it had been dormant in for some time.” In the years since, Iceage have reinvented themselves several times over, their stature more imposing with each subsequent release. Elias Rønnenfelt has grown into quite the frontman, swaggering and sexual, sacrificing none of the intensity that first brought the band notoriety; his onstage persona has been described as “[prowling] around like [he’s] possessed by a demon.” On Seek Shelter, his band’s fifth album, Rønnenfelt maintains a merciless grip on his audience, an acting conduit for Iceage’s most electrifying work yet. The title track is their “Moonlight Mile,” inverting the Sticky Fingers formula by placing its grandest ballad at the top of the heap. It’s not, by any means, the only skull-crusher here; “High & Hurt” is a rollicking funk-rock stomper, and “Vendetta” rides a ten-ton Madchester groove like the nineties never left. Most surprising, however, is “Drink Rain,” the fizziest, head-over-heels lovesick song in their catalogue - it’s the type of creative overhaul Iceage has become known for, keeping them one of modern rock’s most unpredictable, consistently thrilling monoliths.

21. Dry Cleaning New Long Leg

“Do everything and feel nothing,” Florence Shaw deadpans on “Scratchcard Lanyard,” the dizzying opener to Dry Cleaning’s full-length debut. It’s a profound credo for the ultra-technological, socially isolated age in which we’re living, but it’s delivered with the same understated apathy as the rest of the one-liners on New Long Leg - “I think of myself as a hearty banana,” she proclaims on the same track, “…a woman in aviators firing a bazooka.” Shaw’s stream of consciousness poetry touches on body image (“Unsmart Lady”), emotional toxicity (“Her Hippo”), and “Brexit’s disruptive role in romantic relationships” (“Strong Feelings”), pieced together in a sprawling, multi-dimensional collage. In contrast with the spacier, post-rock leanings of contemporaries such as Black Country, New Road, and Squid (both of whom released excellent projects this year), Dry Cleaning cling to the bare essentials of archetypal post-punk; the arrangements here conjure the terse minimalism of Gang of Four’s Entertainment! and Wire’s Pink Flag, and the intricate, latticed guitar work suggests Talking Heads ’77 and Television as points of influence. But its relative traditionalism yields the spotlight to Shaw, whose gripping delivery makes New Long Leg a unique and electric addition to the canon of post-punk classics.

20. Turnstile GLOW ON

Hardcore is having a moment. On their third album, Baltimore-based band Turnstile approach underground punk like mainstream pop, doing so without sacrificing any of their wallop. Assisted by producer Mike Elizondo, who honed his skills under the tutelage of Dr. Dre, GLOW ON is hardcore for casual fans and diehards alike, engineered to aim straight for the jugular. Turnstile are known for their no-filler approach - on their previous effort, 2018’s Time & Space, they crammed thirteen songs into the confines of a 25-minute runtime. The band is more patient here, artfully delaying gratification; opener “MYSTERY” cascades in on twinkling synth arpeggios before plummeting in like a ton of cement, a give-and-take method that keeps their longest album (a whopping 34 minutes!) exhilarating and dynamic. “HUMANOID / SHAKE IT UP” transitions from a head-banging thrash to a sludge metal crawl with seamless ease, and “HOLIDAY” drops into the abyss halfway through, only to return with twice the intensity.

Some of most captivating work here exists outside of the sphere of their previous work - art pop genius Blood Orange is credited twice, once on dreamy highlight “ALIEN LOVE CALL,” and once more on the cavernous “LONELY DEZIRES.” Penultimate track “NO SURPRISE” is complete weightless, an airborne slice of atmospheric pop that recalls the work of Kid Cudi more than that of their immediate contemporaries. In its final minute, the album disperses into stardust, a purposeful unraveling that ushers Turnstile into a future of endless possibility.

19. Japanese Breakfast Jubilee

It’s been a big year for Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner; in April, she published her best-selling memoir, Crying in H Mart, and received two nominations for the 2022 Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist. Her greatest success of 2021, however, is Jubilee, her third and best studio album to date. Her sound has never been clearer or fuller, moving from the cosmic indie rock of Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet towards gleaming pop and earthy folk. Zauner has listed two all-time greats in the “third album” category, Björk’s Homogenic and Wilco’s Summerteeth, as influences here - the former comes through in the subterranean mechanics of highlight “Posing in Bondage,” as well as the sky-scraping vocal technique of opener “Paprika.” The rustic grandeur of “Kokomo, IN” fits Summerteeth’s sprawling orchestral rock, but its execution feels unique, glimmering with earnest awe and wide-eyed optimism. “How’s it feel to be at the center of magic?” she asks herself on “Paprika,” swirling in a paradise of her own creation. On Jubilee, Zauner looks for the fleeting ecstasy in everyday life - monumental closer “Posing for Cars,” she closes with a gorgeous two-minute guitar solo that she’s said “expressed everything that couldn’t be said in words” - an exercise in soul-bearing that exposes every layer of her artistry.

18. black midi Cavalcade

Towards the end of their tour for 2019’s excellent Schlagenheim, London quartet black midi started to feel boxed in by expectation. Well-regarded by critics and fans for their volatile, improvisational stage show, the band sought to expand their perceived range. “Our whole idea with this album was to keep going towards both sides,” explained frontman Geordie Greep in an interview earlier this year, “…not [to be afraid of] the tranquil, beautiful stuff, but also [to try] and take the crazier bits even further.” In an explosive progression from their debut, the band’s sophomore effort, Cavalcade, is sophisticated, ambitious, and skillfully nuanced. black midi take their name from an aggressively niche sub-genre of video game music, one that’s intended to push computer processors to their absolute limit; opener “John L” takes a similar approach to rock, detonating into a mushroom cloud of raucous free jazz. Across the record, the group stretches their tightly coiled sound into a series of expansive, attentively structured prog rock numbers (“Diamond Stuff,” closer “Ascending Forth”), showcasing their astounding chemistry as an ensemble. But their most arresting development is found in Greep’s dense, evocative poetry - the album’s peak, “Marlene Dietrich,” is carried by his delicate, sensitive portrayal of the late actress. As intended, Cavalcade rips any preconceived ideas about black midi to shreds, reintroducing them as avant-garde visionaries, incredibly versatile musicians that just happen to put on a killer live show.

17. Playboi Carti Whole Lotta Red

If 2018’s Die Lit was a manifesto in argument of mumble rap’s viability, Playboi Carti’s third album, Whole Lotta Red, is documentation of the genre at its absolute limits. The rapper’s quirks have evolved into inimitable trademarks, and he stretches his voice here like codeine-soaked putty - “Teen X” is dripping with saccharine falsetto, and opener “Rockstar Made” pushes phrases into angular shapes. Carti has also expanded his emotional range, opening up into unbridled rage (“Stop Breathing”), desire for intimacy (“Control”) and gratitude (“F33l Lik3 Dyin”). It makes for a fully immersive experience, even at twenty-four tracks; on Red, Playboi Carti proves that his brand of asteroid-surfing SoundCloud rap is far from a fad.

Read my January review of Whole Lotta Red here.

16. Adele 30

Last we met Adele, she was twenty-five, with a diamond record under her belt and plenty of living to do. She’s built a career spinning gold from heartbreak, but on 30, her soul is heavier than ever before - the years in-between have born the weight of motherhood and divorce. Age has given the singer’s voice increased agility and dynamic ability, and it’s never sounded better than it does here. It’s also strengthened her pen; the songs on 30 are openly auto-biographical, aching with experience and wisdom. “I’ll be taking flowers to the cemetery of my heart,” she sings on opener “Strangers By Nature,” a symbolic milestone in her search for closure. On the stirring “My Little Love,” she explains the excruciating emotional process of divorce to her son in real time, straining to keep a brave face while he listens with wide-eyed innocence - “mama’s got a lot to learn,” she levels with him, “teach me.” Adele rises from 30 with grace and insight; penultimate track “To Be Loved” is a resilient masterpiece, a show-stopping ballad that evokes the same tragic splendor as Donny Hathaway’s “A Song for You.” “I’ll never learn if I never leap,” she declares, “I’ll always yearn if I never speak.” On 30, she’s found her voice.

15. The War on Drugs I Don’t Live Here Anymore

On his fifth album with The War on Drugs, Adam Granduciel is larger than life. Brimming with joy over the birth of his son, the singer/songwriter displays his most exuberant, expressive work yet on I Don’t Live Here Anymore. The production, assisted here by engineer Shawn Everett, draws from the biggest, glitziest elements of Born in the U.S.A.-era Springsteen, as well as Tom Petty’s power pop and Bruce Hornsby’s delicate adult contemporary. Granduciel’s songwriting follows suit, dramatic in its sweeping sincerity; on “I Don’t Wanna Wait,” he milks the chorus for all its got, delivering a lovelorn “I’m starving!” like its a physical imperative. The title track, which receives a hand from indie pop duo Lucius, is the album’s hulking peak, an ecstatic, life-affirming anthem that makes its source material seem static in comparison. The War on Drugs are capable of truly heart-rending material - “Living Proof” and “Rings Around My Father’s Eyes” are some of the most devastating ballads in their repertoire - but I Don’t Live Here Anymore is an undeniably uplifting record, a celebration of life’s silver linings. “Ain’t the sky just shades of gray,” Granduciel ponders on closer “Occasional Rain,” “until you’ve seen it from the other side?”

14. Grouper Shade

Liz Harris’ music as Grouper has always seemed just out of reach, a secret overheard from the next room. Calling Shade her most accessible collection might be a stretch, but it may be her most intelligible; many of the songs here are sonorous and pristine. Early highlights “Unclean mind” and “Ode to the blue” are immediately gratifying, just Harris and her guitar. In its latter half, her lyrics become perceptible - closing number “Kelso (Blue sky)” comes through loud and clear, an immense and inviting development. The magnified sound quality even allows subtle details, like an owl’s hoot, to slip through the cracks. The songs that are cocooned in distortion are done so with intent - the prickling edges of “Disordered Minds” add harmonic value to the song buried within - but Shade’s most tangible moments offer a wider, clearer window into Grouper’s often shrouded artistry.

13. Billie Eilish Happier Than Ever

Billie Eilish has quickly become one of pop’s most reliable and influential acts. Her second album, Happier Than Ever, is a breathtaking evolution, a far cry from the youthful, winking horror-pop of her 2019 debut. Her brother FINNEAS provides the scenery again, a stylish, understated collection of skeletal synth-pop and soft, insulated balladry. But it’s Billie’s voice that gives the music color, layered and present. Her characteristically hushed delivery has become ubiquitous (see devoted disciple Olivia Rodrigo), and she doubles down on her trademarks here. Even so, her voice has matured fabulously over the last several years, now huskier and more soulful. Single “My Future” is her most nuanced performance to date, swelling and receding artfully, indulging in pretty melismatic flourishes. She stretches her range into a strained howl on “Oxytocin,” and stacks herself into choral harmony in the early moments of “GOLDWING.”

More than ever before, the focus on Happier rests on her skills as a songwriter. Her lyrics are imbued with razor-sharp wit and humor, cutting, acerbic, and sometimes self-effacing. “The strangers want me more than anyone before,” she muses on opener “Getting Older,” “too bad they’re usually deranged.” Thematically, she reckons with self-esteem, body image, and the horrors of growing up in the spotlight. “Your Power” and “Male Fantasy” are gorgeous and crushing reflections on the power dynamics of gender, and spoken interlude “Not My Responsibility” stares back at the male gaze with insight and resilience. “Though you’ve never seen my body,” she retorts, “you still judge it, and judge me for it. Why?”

The title track here is a career high, mutating from gently strummed acoustic pop to clipped, hair-razing rock with fluidity and grace. As an album title, Happier Than Ever is part tongue-in-cheek, part cautious optimism - “I’m happier than ever, at least that’s my endeavor,” Eilish quips in the record’s early moments. As a song, it’s a fully loaded kiss-off to an emotionally abusive ex, her endeavor in practice.

12. Snail Mail Valentine

On her debut, 2018’s Lush, Snail Mail’s Jordan knit starry-eyed bedroom rock out of timid crushes and muted desire. Her sophomore effort, Valentine, finds her bolder, feistier, demanding attention where she once plead for it. The stunning title track is strung-out, almost agitated; “why’d you wanna erase me?”, she wails, more a command than an ask. Jordan’s voice is hoarser, more confident, pushing thoughts out with urgency. “Drag me with you to Nirvana, baby, take me all the way,” she dictates on “Headlock,” flipping the dynamic of earlier, more passive works such as Lush’s definitive “Pristine.” Valentine is more musically adventurous, too - the arrangement on “Benjamin Franklin” flirts with both hip hop and new wave, and “Forever (Sailing)” recalls the trip hop-influenced folk pop of Sarah McLachlan and Natalie Imbruglia. Its quietest moments, however, are its most alluring; “Light Blue” is gorgeous in its lilting, orchestral pop, and the Elliott Smith-indebted “c. et. al.” offers her most astounding vocal performance to date. There’s a thematic consistency to Valentine that highlights the intimacy of Jordan’s songwriting, her affections centered on a character named Mia. The stunning closer is addressed directly to her lover - “lost love, so strange,” she whispers, her voice cracking with desperation, “and heaven’s not real, babe.” But even at the mercy of love’s hard hands, she’s in control of her own destiny - “I love you forever / but I’ve gotta grow up now.”

11. Xenia Rubinos Una Rosa

On her first album in five years, Connecticut musician Xenia Rubinos reflects on love, loss, and her experience as a Latinx woman. Una Rosa leans into her roots - the burbling flamenco of “Ay Hombre” lends itself to the neo-traditional theatrics of Latinx contemporaries such as Rosalía and Arca, and “Sacude” falls somewhere between deconstructed reggaetón and neon-lit salsa. The jazzy shuffle of “Cógelo Suave” hews closest to the earthy neo-soul of her previous effort, 2016’s Black Terry Cat. Elsewhere, Rubinos transmits through twisting atmospherics and rumbling electronics, a makeshift echo chamber of intergenerational trauma. She is at times sorrowful, angry, and anesthetically numb; single “Who Shot Ya?” embodies all three emotions, mourning the yet-unavenged murder of Breonna Taylor. The track’s stuttering hook - poison dart tosses of a half-rhetorical “get it??” - seeps through clenched teeth, an audible release of body-deep tension. On “Don’t Put Me in Red,” she rages against the government-sanctioned concentration camps at the border, and “Working All the Time” pinpoints the sheer exhaustion of living in a system designed to oppress. The rawest cut here is “Did My Best,” which mourns the death of a lover with desperation and deep regret. It’s the reddest rose in Una Rosa’s stirring bouquet, a monument to the power of release.

10. Taylor Swift Red (Taylor’s Version)

Somewhere in the midst of the legal battle to reclaim the rights to her music, Taylor Swift hit her stride - she released two albums of new material last year, the much-acclaimed folklore and the excellent, understated evermore, which has been unfairly relegated to a footnote in the context of her sudden creative growth spurt. But in her ambitious mission to re-record her back catalogue, she’s discovered that Red might still be her magnum opus.

It’s remarkable how well these songs stand up almost a decade on; Taylor’s abilities as a songwriter have always far outstretched the confines of her age, but listening to Red, it’s baffling that a 22-year-old could’ve written music this eloquent. Taylor’s Version improves on the original in almost every way; like this year’s revisit of Fearless, the arrangements are tedious in their faithful recreation, but the instruments are brighter, the sonic range fuller. Most improved is Taylor’s voice, which has sharpened with time, adding new textures to still lively material. The chintzy dubstep-pop of “I Knew You Were Trouble” sounds dated, but Swift brings renewed energy to its indestructible hook. “22” sounds even giddier than it did, an accomplishment from someone who is, by all logic, no longer feeling 22.

“All Too Well,” arguably the best song Taylor has ever written, is stretched into a ten-minute epic, and its ridiculous excess is outdone only by its brilliance. The new verses are piquant, haunted and tragic; in one of her finest turns as a poet, she recalls waiting by the front door for her lover to return, her father looking on, remarking that “it’s supposed to be fun turning 21.” Loss of innocence is a lingering specter on Red, summarized beautifully on the newly unearthed Phoebe Bridgers collab, “Nothing New”: “how can a person know everything at eighteen and nothing at twenty-two?”

A decade on, Taylor is consumed with the intricacies of aging. On folklore stand-out “cardigan,” she reflected on her maturation in the spotlight - “when you are young they assume you know nothing.” In her revision of Red, she reveals that she knew more than you’d think.

9. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra Promises

Spiritual excavation has long been the crux of Pharoah Sanders’ music. One of the last living disciples of John Coltrane, Sanders guides his saxophone to the same end as his mentor, a wandering extension that reaches into the cosmos for fleeting, eternal knowledge. At 81, he stretches his weathered tenor as capably as ever, each harmonic overtone a volume of scripture. Promises, a collaboration with electronic innovator Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra, is an exploration of a single, boundless motif, each mysterious movement adding new layers of subtle gravitas. In its final four chapters, the piece transforms in spellbinding leaps, unraveling into flowering orchestral touches, intergalactic synth arpeggios, and fathomless organ drones. Promises offers a bracingly modern take on jazz, pushing fearlessly in all directions while remaining faithful to Sanders’ unique vision. If this is the icon’s final masterpiece, it will be one well worthy of his legacy. If it’s not, untouched expanses of universe await his next adventure.

8. Cassandra Jenkins An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

“I’m a three-legged dog,” starts Cassandra Jenkins’ second album, “looking for what I lost.” Now in her late thirties, the Brooklyn musician stops to take in her surroundings on An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, allowing years of grief to catch up with her. Across the project’s seven tracks, Jenkins explores loss in numerous forms; she pens a tribute to an incarcerated friend on “American Spirits,” mourns the death of indie rock veteran David Berman on “New Bikini,” and channels the universal yearning for connection in the pandemic age on “Crosshairs.” An Overview marvels at the healing power of natural world’s innate wonders; “baby, go get in the ocean,” a friend advises, “if you’re bruised, you’re scraped, you’re any kind of broken / the water, it cures everything.” But Jenkins also highlights the frequent, but oft-overlooked, beauty found in human nature - “Hard Drive” is a poignant masterpiece, one of the year’s most perceptive, open-hearted successes. She tracks her own emotions through experiences with strangers and acquaintances, finding resolution in an impromptu reading with a psychic - “we’re gonna put your heart back together,” her friend Peri pledges. “So all those little pieces they took from you, they’re coming back now.”

7. Tirzah Colourgrade

The second full-length from Essex native Tirzah channels the singer’s singular brand of homespun art pop into a living microcosm, an icy, mechanical world with a warm, beating heart. On Colourgrade, producer and longtime collaborator Mica Levi offers R&B by way of sound collage, gluing together analog drum loops and seasick keyboard riffs with industrial-grade bass. Tirzah writes in fragments, stream-of-consciousness lyrics that circle tangibility. “You know I’m yours, and you’re mine,” she commands on “Tectonic,” “as soon as you meet my face.” Even in the absence of concrete thought, her voice is a powerful tool, a soul-plunging force that holds unwavering in the throes of intense emotion - the centerpiece here is the wordless, six-minute meditation of “Crepuscular Rays,” a swirling voyage that radiates absolute contentment.

Between Colourgrade and 2018’s Devotion, Tirzah became a mother, an instinctual shift that resonates from deep within her body. “I got you, you got me,” she beams on “Beating,” “we made life - it’s beating.” She remains adept at turning small moments into life-sized monuments; “ooh, she’s dreaming / my baby / ooh, she’s sleeping tonight,” she whispers on “Sleeping,” a stirring lullaby that captivates with the power of twinkling crib mobile. On the Prince-esque “Sink In,” she lets everything in at once (“for that feeling / I am sinking”), surrendering completely as Levi’s dulcet chords wash over her. That’s Tirzah’s real gift - in a world that threatens to swallow us in worry and rumination, she lets Colourgrade live fixedly, completely in the moment.

6. Low HEY WHAT

On 2018’s brilliant Double Negative, slowcore veterans Low dismantled their trademark sound, lowering themselves steadily into corrosive acid. Their thirteenth album, HEY WHAT, builds them back up from the remnants, a colossal magnet recollecting damaged granules of digitized sound. The affair is engineered by BJ Burton, who rose renown with his work on Bon Iver’s 22, A Million, and he envelops the duo in thick walls of artificial harmony and self-destructing sound structures. Low’s recent music has leaned more heavily into noise, frying their delicate vocal interplay in distortion, but they remain best at making the most of the stillness. Lead single “Days Like These” is a semi-apocalyptic, pandemic-summoning vision cut into distinct halves, one part an atomic bomb of pent-up anxiety, the other a barren landscape, blowing dust. On closer “The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off),” Low sit at the precipice of judgment day, watching humanity crumble - “either side you’re on,” they command, “you get what you deserve.” Thirty years into their career, they continue to bring life to the liminal spaces in-between.

5. The Weather Station Ignorance

“I should get all this dying off of my mind,” Tamara Lindeman chastises herself. “I should really know better than to read the headlines.” It’s a relatable sentiment for anyone who’s half-aware of what’s going on in the world today. But instead of burrowing her head in the sand like so many of us are apt to do, she faces uncertainty head on with Ignorance, her fifth effort as the Weather Station. The album was conceptualized as a response to the growing threat of environmental collapse, inspired by her work with climate change activists in her home town of Toronto. She’s described the awareness of her own footprint as an “oozing, festering wound that [she wasn’t acknowledging,” and it creeps into every aspect her life here. “Separated” is ostensibly about social media’s disintegrating effect on interpersonal boundaries, but her thoughts come through in images of rivers and fields. On “Parking Lot,” she’s torn apart by the beauty of nature: “you know it just kills me when I see some bird fly.” One of the most striking pieces here is “Robber,” which personifies the capitalist greed that has led our planet so far along the path of its demise. “I never believed in the robber,” she sings - for Lindeman, ignorance is bliss, but awareness is necessary.

4. Mach-Hommy Pray for Haiti

Long the secret weapon of Buffalo crew Griselda, Mach-Hommy is a rapper’s rapper, a virtuosic emcee with a penchant for intricate phrasing and double-take-worthy metaphors. On his magnum opus, this year’s Pray for Haiti, he pens a love letter to his Haitian heritage, lapsing frequently into Creole. He draws parallels between the rampant violence in his hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and the crumbling infrastructure of Haiti, both riddled with corruption and poverty.

Hommy’s music is also deeply entrenched in hip hop tradition: Griselda has long hewed to the Wu-Tang mold, and Westside Gunn fittingly plays the Ghostface to Hommy’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx-era Raekwon. Mach draws influence from a diverse slew of legends, however; his rich baritone often recalls that of Brooklyn legend Yasiin Bey, and he artfully weaves sly references to Jay-Z, MF DOOM, and Lil Wayne into his verses. Through all of its evident source material, Haiti emerges with with something distinct and original, a nuanced take on drug rap that vibrates with color like the Basquiat portrait on its cover.

The spotlight on life in Haiti is timely - mere months after Pray for Haiti’s release, U.S. border guard agents attacked a group of Haitian immigrants crossing the Mexican border, a blip in the media flood of xenophobic and racist atrocities our government continues to sanction. The tragedy and its rapid disappearance from public consciousness give Mach-Hommy’s gritty portrait due context - in the ever-evolving discourse on the erosion of democracy and the evils of wealth inequality, Haiti deserves a voice.

3. L’Rain Fatigue

On the roiling intro to Taja Cheek’s second effort as L’Rain, collaborator Quinton Brock poses a searing, timely inquiry - “what have you done to change?” On Fatigue, Cheek scours in earnest for an answer, a brave mission in an era that shifts restlessly around us. Her music is grounded in soul, jazz, and gospel, but she’s dead set against being pigeonholed - drawing inspiration from philosophy, art, and poetry, L’Rain delights in viewing Brock’s ask from every possible angle.

It’s apparent in her genre-warping musicianship - the cyclical harmonies at the bed of highlight “Find It” recall Sung Tongs-era Animal Collective, and the slithering vocal treatments on “Blame Me” and “Suck Teeth” mirror psych-folk auteur Moses Sumney, whose 2020 epic grae might be Fatigue’s closest contemporary. Cheek embraces a similar maximalism, employing twenty musicians to vivify her bottomless vision. But it’s offset by a stark, piecemeal approach, musique concrete through a prismatic lens. Fatigue never stays in one moment for too long, shuffling restlessly through modes and emotions. Its title hints at resolution in Cheek’s treatise on change - amidst the grueling exhaustion of modern life, L’Rain finds her purpose in a deep longing for movement and constant evolution.

2. Tyler, the Creator CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST

On spoken interlude “BLESSED,” Tyler, the Creator is beaming: “I’m healthy, my skin glowing, my friends healthy… we writing shows, man, life is beautiful.” It’s a far cry from the restless, depressive ideation of BASTARD, his 2009 breakthrough, and a moment he’s likely been working toward his whole life. Tyler’s early, nightmarish fantasies burst into technicolor on 2017’s Flower Boy, an absorbing document of personal and artistic maturation that exposed a softer, more reflective side of an artist who had once been stubborn and provocative. But even that album’s sunnier, Fantasia-like arrangements were undercut with a deep longing - on his sixth studio album, CALL ME WHEN YOU GET LOST, he’s found a modicum of peace.

Stylistically, CALL ME is of a return-to-form of sorts - 2019’s IGOR shifted attention away from Tyler’s virtuosic talents as a lyricist, landing instead on beds of sprawling, widescreen funk. While his instrumentation here is finely tuned and irrepressibly inventive, the focal point is his poetry, incisive and direct as its ever been. The emphasis on killer one-liners harkens back to the mixtape renaissance of the early oughts; modeled after the coveted Gangsta Grillz series, the album is garnished with DJ Drama’s endearing bluster (he goofily flubs the title on “HOT WIND BLOWS” as Call Me When You Get Lost). An appearance from Gangsta Grillz disciple Lil Wayne, who arrives in peak form, only adds to the authenticity.

Beneath its loose-fitting homage, the project is painstakingly structured, driven by a gripping, novella-worthy tale of infidelity and guilt. He scatters foggy details throughout (“tried to take somebody’s bitch ‘cause I’m a bad person,” he foreshadows on early cut “CORSO”), arriving finally at the penultimate “WILSHIRE.” Over the course of its eight-and-a-half minute runtime, he sketches a blistering account of aching desire and heartbreak, a ruthlessly engaging epic that posits Tyler as one of modern hip hop’s great storytellers. Even apart from its overarching narrative, CALL ME is scattered with self-mythologizing nuggets that put Tyler’s personal growth into perspective. He surveys the course of his career on “MASSA,” and reveals that his mother lived in a shelter when breakthrough single “YONKERS” was released. The references to his early work make the ways in which he’s matured all the more remarkable - once a trusty weapon, he remarks that he doesn’t even like the word “bitch” (“it just sounded cool”).

In the voyage through his checkered past, Tyler details an extraordinary evolution, warts and all. He’s grown into a measured, well-rounded individual and a brilliant, insightful emcee. Even amidst emotional turbulence, he radiates gratitude and maturity, finally focused on the bigger picture.

1. Jazmine Sullivan Heaux Tales

In the modern lexicon, the term “hoe” has taken on new life; reshaped from its legacy as a putdown for women perceived as promiscuous or overtly sexual, the word has been reclaimed by ladies and queer folks as an honorific. On her fourth studio album, and her first in almost six years, Sullivan dissects the label from every perspective. Its brilliant title, Heaux Tales, is likely a 180-degree spin on Too $hort’s filth-rap classic, “Freaky Tales,” which itemized women as conquests in the service of the rapper’s pimp-wise image. Here, “hoe,” or “heaux,” as it’s stylized, becomes a complex state of being, encompassing the many modes of modern womanhood. In “On It,” the raunchiest paean to feminine sexuality this side of “WAP,” it’s a badge of honor. On “Price Tags” and “The Other Side,” it’s a complicated, multifaceted label for women in the pursuit of the finer things.

Sullivan’s talents as vocalist sell it all; her voice is impeccably honed, powerful and frayed at the edges, balanced somewhere between the stylings of Kim Burrell, Mary J. Blige, and Brandy. Her songwriting is equally compelling, and on Heaux Tales, her true calling as a storyteller comes fully into view. Her last effort, 2015’s Reality Show, seems like a practice run now, marvelous as it is - a semi-autobiographical montage of reflections on body image, infidelity, and ambitions dwarfed by self-entitled men, many of its motifs appear here, fuller and deeper than before.

Apart from an excellent Anderson .Paak feature and behind-the-scenes production credits, Tales’ cast of voices is comprised entirely of women of color, creating a space, absent of shame, in which they can heal, embracing the fullness of their beings. Sullivan sports fabulous chemistry with her collaborators, winning duet of the year twice over with Ari Lennox and H.E.R., respectively. In supportive company, she carves out due room for vulnerability; the most delicate moment on Heaux Tales is “Lost One,” which breaks the brassy exterior Sullivan often inhabits, lapsing instead into regret, loneliness, and rumination on addiction.

At its core, Heaux Tales is a cataloguing of messy emotions; insecurity, restlessness, and jealousy all become part of the experience of modern womanhood. In the process, it becomes a deconstruction of historical oppression, a declaration of power, and a breathtaking manifestation of Sullivan’s talent.

100+ releases you should hear

Adult Mom - Driver

AKAI SOLO - True Sky

The Alchemist - This Thing of Ours

Alessia Cara.- In the Meantime

ALLBLACK - TY4FWM

Amyl and the Sniffers - Comfort to Me

Anthony Naples - Chameleon

Anz - All Hours

Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark

Armand Hammer & the Alchemist - Haram

Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince

The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You

Baby Keem - The Melodic Blue

Baby Tate - After the Rain: Deluxe

Bachelor - Doomin’ Sun

BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory

beabadoobee - Our Extended Play

Benny the Butcher & Harry Fraud - The Plugs I Met 2

Bernice - Eau De Bonjourno

Bfb Da Packman - Fat N****s Need Love Too

Big Jade - Pressure

Birds of Maya - Valdez

Black Country, New Road - For the first time

Bladee - The Fool

Bnny - Everything

The Body - I’ve Seen All I Need to See

Body Meat - Year of the Orc

Boldy James & Real Bad Man - Real Bad Boldy

Bruiser Wolf - Dope Game Stupid

The Bug - Fire

CHAI - Nobody Knows We Are Fun

CHVRCHES - Screen Violence

Clairo - Sling

Conway the Machine - La Maquina

Cookiee Kawaii - Vanice

Dâm-Funk - Above the Fray

Danny L Harle - Harlecore

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

Dijon - Absolutely

DJ Manny - Signals in My Head

Erika de Casier - Sensational

Ethel Cain - Inbred

Fiddlehead - Between the Richness

Floatie - Voyage Out

Flying Lotus - Yasuke

foodman - Yasuragi Land

Fred again.. - Actual Life (April 14 - December 17 2020)

girl in red - if i could make it go quiet

Goat Girl - On All Fours

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!

Half Waif - Mythopoetics

Halsey - If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

Helado Negro - Far In

Hiatus Kaiyote - Mood Valiant

ILOVEMAKONNEN - My Parade

Isaiah Rashad - The House is Burning

James Blake - Friends That Break Your Heart

John Glacier - SHILOH: Lost for Words

Joy Orbison - still slipping, vol. 1

JPEGMAFIA - LP!

Julien Baker - Little Oblivions

Ka - A Martyr’s Reward

Kacey Musgraves - star-crossed

Kanye West - Donda

KAYTRANADA - Intimidated

Kero Kero Bonito - Civilisation II

Lambchop - Showtunes

Lana Del Rey - Blue Banisters

Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club

Laura Mvula - Pink Noise

Leon Vynehall - Rare, Forever

Lil Nas X - MONTERO

Lil Yachty - Michigan Boy Boat

Lily Konigsberg - Lily We Need to Talk Now

Limp Bizkit - STILL SUCKS

Liz Phair - Soberish

Loraine James - Reflection

Lorde - Solar Power

Lucy - The Music Industry is Poisonous

Lucy Gooch - Rain’s Break

Madlib - Sound Ancestors

Mariah the Scientist - RY RY WORLD

maassai - With the Shifts

Matt Sweeney & Bonnie “Prince” Billy - Superwolves

Maxo Kream - WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

Megan Thee Stallion - Something for Thee Hotties

Men I Trust - Untourable Album

Midwife - Luminol

Moneybagg Yo - A Gangsta’s Pain

Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia of the Air

Moor Mother & billy woods - Brass

Mykki Blanco - Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep

Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8

Namasenda - Unlimited Ammo

Na0 - And Then Life Was Beautiful

Navy Blue - Navy’s Reprise

Navy Blue - Song of Sage: Post Panic!

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE

Nite Jewel - No Sun

Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR

박혜진 Park Hye Jin - Before I Die

Parquet Courts - Sympathy for Life

Paul McCartney - McCartney III

Pi’erre Bourne - The Life of Pi’erre 5

Pink Siifu - GUMBO’!

Pino Palladino & Blake Mills - Notes with Attachments

Pooh Shiesty - Shiesty Season

Polo G - Hall of Fame

Poppy - Flux

Porches - All Day Gentle Hold !

quickly, quickly - The Long and Short of It

quinn - Drive-By Lullabies

Remi Wolf - Juno

Rico Nasty - Nightmare Vacation

Rochelle Jordan - Play with the Changes

Roșie Lowe & Duval Timothy - Son

Sega Bodega - Romeo

shame - Drunk Tank Pink

Shelley fka DRAM - Shelley fka DRAM

Silk Sonic - An Evening with Silk Sonic

Smerz - Believer

Snoh Aalegra - TEMPORARY HIGHS IN THE VIOLET SKIES

Space Afrika - Honest Labour

Spellling - The Turning Wheel

Squid - Bright Green Field

Steve Gunn - Other You

St. Vincent - Daddy’s Home

Summer Walker - Still Over It

Taylor Swift - Fearless (Taylor’s Version)

Tinashe - 333

Tkay Maidza - Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3

TORRES - Thirstier

Ty Segall - Harmonizer

Vince Staples - Vince Staples

Weezer - OK Human

WILLOW - lately I feel EVERYTHING

Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend

Yasmin Wiliams - Urban Driftwood

Yaya Bey - The Things I Can’t Take With Me

Young Dolph & Key Glock - Dum and Dummer 2

Young Nudy - DR. EV4L

Young Thug - Punk

Your Old Droog - TIME

Yves Tumor - The Asymptotical World EP

454 - 4 REAL

Premiere: Zap Tura Bursts into Color on "Echo Space"

July 30, 2021 Zack Free

As sound floods into the video for “Echo Space,” Zap Tura’s Andrew Jones drifts steadily into focus. Swirls of color melt past him as he hunches over his microphone, a stationary figure in a storm of synthetic voice and thundering percussion. It all seems to catch up to him mid-thought: “And we don’t know how to process / the speed at which God forgot us,” Jones sings, plaintive and foreboding. As the hues become warmer and the camera settles into perspective, we reach a moment of relative clarity - “but we still move on.” It’s a relevant platitude in a time of tension and uncertainty, and Zap Tura finds steady ground in its hopeful resilience.

The first single from his sophomore album, Adaptasia, “Echo Space” is a shifting, psychedelic maze of a song - laden with sonic booby traps, it changes course several times before combusting into full, technicolor hiss. Exploring the liminal margin between delicate beauty and sensory overload, the track flirts with shoegaze, dream pop, and trip hop, but lands firmly in a world of its own creation.

In its latter half, the visual reveals an embrace of community - as the flurry of neon intensifies, “Echo Space” finds itself at the crux of the Des Moines music scene. Appearing with Jones are director Phil Young, Adaptasia producer and member of local band Tires; Trey Reis, musician and founder of indie label Warm Gospel; and Huxley Maxwell, whose band Justice Fetish released their excellent, blistering debut earlier this year. When the dust settles and the music fades, “Echo Space” lives up to its title, a self-contained explosion of catharsis, color, and sound.

Zap Tura’s Adaptasia is out this fall.

The 50 Best Albums of 2020

January 4, 2021 Zack Free

Let’s get this out of the way: 2020 has been a shitty year. In the midst of a global pandemic, catastrophic climate events, increasingly tyrannical behavior from president Trump, and the rampant destruction of Black and indigenous communities, music has often provided a necessary solace. Here are the best releases from a positively terrible time.

50. Arca @@@@@

Venezuelan iconoclast Arca has been smudging the edges of popular music since her corrosive sound design wormed its way through the circuits of Kanye West’s 2013 glitch marvel Yeezus. In the years since, she’s helped craft masterpieces for the likes of FKA twigs and Björk, cutting some real gems of her own along the way (2015’s Mutant and 2017’s Arca, in particular, are flooring). This year alone, the artist made stunning advances in avant-garde reggaetón on fourth album KiCk i and reissued formative 2013 loosie &&&&&. Her most enthralling 2020 success, however, hews closer to the latter than the former - the single-track @@@@@ is all blown-out drum sequencing and gurgling electronics, a formal reintroduction to her singular world of sound. This shape-shifting collection plays like a DJ set from a scorched, queer-led future, where gender is a long-forgotten relic, and “shake that pussy” is a hell-razing call-to-arms.

49. Flo Milli Ho, why is you here ?

The debut mixtape from Alabama emcee Flo Milli added a much-needed dose of fun to a remarkably bleak year. Equipped with braces and bludgeoning one-liners, the twenty-year-old falls somewhere between Kreayshawn and Rico Nasty in the lexicon of ladies in hip hop, landing each punchline with a youthful, giddy precision. In the video for breakthrough single “In the Party,” Flo is the cheerleading, ass-shaking star of her high school, snatching boys and taking names. Even without the aid of visuals, Ho, why is you here ? sells the image, a bouncy set of trap-wise bops that makes her an artist to watch.

48. The Flaming Lips American Head

On their best album since 2009’s Embryonic, the Flaming Lips explore the dark side of psychedelic drug culture. American Head is a eulogy for lost youth, a depressive come-down that reckons with death and mortality. It never comes across as preachy or scolding - Wayne Coyne delivers the cautionary tales here with a sad sweetness, enlightened by age and experience. When he arrives at the mind-warped chorus of “Mother I’ve Taken LSD,” it feels like a true epiphany: “now I see the sadness in the world.” The album’s gutting peak, however, arrives too late - “Mother Please Don’t Be Sad” is a heart-rending message from the afterlife, delivered from son to mother with spiritual clarity. The song cycle that follows heaves with grief and perspective, and on closer “My Religion Is You,” American Head comes full-circle. Sixteen albums into their career, the Lips hint at the well-worn wisdom of 2002’s “Do You Realize??,” urging us to cherish life’s complexities while we can.

**Night School, Thrilling Living • 2020**

47. Dogleg Melee

Detroit hardcore band Dogleg absolutely rip through their debut album, Melee. Having honed their edges in basement shows with contemporaries La Dispute and Pity Sex, the quartet makes thrashing indie rock that feels familiar and all-consuming. In addition to Midwest emo legends like Cap’n Jazz and Sunny Day Real Estate (the latter of whom come through clearly on highlight “Prom Hell”), the band has mentioned The Strokes, Interpol, and Arctic Monkeys as points of reference, seemingly unusual influences that make more sense in the scope of their pop-leaning immediacy. Breakthrough single “Fox” fully encapsulates their appeal, an absolute steamroller of a song that never once sags under the weight of its emotional impact. Melee sounds built for tightly packed, sweat-drenched venues, the likes of which seem like fading memories at this point in time. Even as we’re relegated to the privacy of our headphones, Dogleg take us there.

46. The Microphones Microphones in 2020

You could call Phil Elverum a lot of things - over the course of his illustrious career, he’s explored glittering mysticism, subconscious unraveling, and unadorned tragedy. You could never accuse him, however, of being indirect. On his first release as the Microphones in nearly two decades, he combs back through a lifetime of meditative scaffolding, recounting his formative years with bold austerity. “The true state of things,” he begins, “I keep on not dying / the sun keeps on rising.” The plainspoken self-cataloguing of the single-track Microphones in 2020 recalls Sun Kil Moon’s 2014 opus Benji (as unfortunate a comparison that might be this year), rewatching grief, elation, and everything in-between with mindful reverence. Over the course of the song’s 44 minutes, Elverum recovers several breathtaking photo stills, a description made very literal in its long-form music video. But for all of his revelations in miniature, he ends up back where he started - “every song I’ve ever sung is about the same thing: standing on the ground, looking around.” In the seventeen years since the last Microphones album, Elverum has offered evocative, haunting works as Mount Eerie, navigating most recently through the trauma of death, loss, and divorce. If Microphones in 2020 is any indication, his eternal quest for meaning remains unchanged.

45. Pink Siifu NEGRO

The wrongful deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and hundreds of other Black Americans cast a long shadow over 2020. Nationwide protests, led primarily by the Black Lives Matter movement, inspired incensed conversation on police brutality, reform, and abolition. Music played an essential role in this discourse, and on one of the year’s more criminally overlooked releases, Birmingham rapper Pink Siifu channels centuries worth of rage and repression into a moment-defining tour de force. NEGRO pays homage to a storied tradition of Black hardcore, evoking sounds from D.C. legends Bad Brains all the way to noise rap overlords Death Grips. Only on occasion does Siifu indulge in the jazz-lit glow of 2018’s ensley, and these moments float by like smoky daydreams. Elsewhere, it’s unrelentingly and horrifyingly realistic - highlights “SMD” and “FK” are throat-shredding laments, tragic and relevant tales of a grim American ethic.

**Spaceship Entertainment, Atlantic, Warner Music • 2020**

44. Burna Boy Twice As Tall

In a landmark year for Afrobeats - West Africa’s diaspora-spanning concoction of dancehall, R&B, and local styles such as highlife and jùjú - Burna Boy’s fifth album rose to the top of the heap. The Nigerian musician bests his 2019 stunner African Giant with flying colors, emerging with an engrossing, no-frills pop album, the sonic depth of which knows no bounds. Every mode of Burna’s multifaceted talent is present on Twice As Tall: “Level Up” is cavernous, Timbaland-assisted trap; “Monsters You Made” is a chart-ready Chris Martin collab; and “Wonderful” is a soaring, joyous flare of reggaetón, R&B, and South African Kwaito that makes the rest of modern pop feel colorless in comparison. He brings out the best in his collaborators too, making Martin bearable, Stormzy softer and more melodic, and hip hop stalwarts Naughty by Nature sound more energized than they have in decades. Burna Boy has been steadily redrawing the borders of contemporary music for several years now, and on Twice As Tall, he’s broken the ceiling several times over.

43. Rina Sawayama SAWAYAMA

British singer Rina Sawayama has a sponge-like sense of musicianship, absorbing her many stylistic influences (Britney, Christina, Gaga) into a unique whole. On her debut, SAWAYAMA, she settles into a kaleidoscopic realm where early oughts nostalgia, pulsing house, thrashing nu-metal, and modern pop conventions bridge seamlessly into something timeless. Rina is a versatile singer and a gifted songwriter, recounting in visceral detail the growing pains of overcoming family trauma. On standout “Chosen Family,” SAWAYAMA becomes a personal transformation, the artist reclaiming her name from the claws of self-doubt and oppressive traditionalism.

(Read my original review here.)

42. The Mountain Goats Songs for Pierre Chuvin

Recorded on the same Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox as his breakthrough, 2000’s All Hail West Texas, John Darnielle’s eighteenth studio album is a welcome return to the gritty, everyman charm of the Mountain Goats’ early achievements. Songs for Pierre Chuvin was inspired by the titular French historian’s A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, and the stories told here are saturated in meticulous detail and studious focus. Of the two albums the Goats released this year, Songs is the more immediately gratifying, thrilling and listenable even in the absence of its explicit context. It’s the first release in years where Darnielle sounds like he’s having fun, left to his own geeky devices in the solitude of COVID-19 lockdown. In that respect, Pierre Chuvin is essential 2020 listening, an embrace of instinct and knowledge in the midst of unfathomable chaos.

41. Deftones Ohms

This year marked the 20th anniversary of Deftones’ high watermark, White Pony, a fitting point of discourse in the recent critical reassessment of nu-metal and its oft-maligned rise to prominence. Though they’ve retained a dedicated fanbase, the Sacramento band began to fade into the tapestry of alternative metal’s forefathers almost immediately after their opus, arguably more resonant in their reaching influence than in their actual output. They retooled brilliantly on 2016’s Gore, an album that tested the boundaries of their sound, trading pressurized walls of sound for spacious, disquieting fog. This year’s Ohms, however, doesn’t cover much new ground. It’s sometimes prettier and markedly less violent than their early work, lapsing into dream pop and ambient with surprising grace. At its heart, though, their ninth studio effort is a dyed-in-the-wool Deftones album, a striking reminder that these guys made alt-metal what it is today, and they can tear it apart at will.

40. Megan Thee Stallion Good News

2020 undoubtedly belonged to Megan Thee Stallion. A list of her many successes this year include a coveted Beyoncé feature, a stunning SNL performance, Cardi B collab (and song of the year) “WAP,” and, of course, her debut LP. Good News in an imperfect but wildly enjoyable showcase for Meg’s cocksure brand of witty, sex-positive bangers. A few less inspired cuts pop up in its middle section, but there are runs here that rival any of the century’s full-length rap classics - excoriating opener “Shots Fired” begins an eight song sequence that reserves an instant spot in the hip hop pantheon. Even better is its closing triad - the endlessly quotable “Savage Remix” gives way to “Girls in the Hood,” a brilliant rework of Eazy-E’s solo standard, and stuttering closer “Don’t Stop,” in which Meg tops a terrific Young Thug feature with her hands tied. At its best, Good News is exhilarating and empowering, a notable victory for an artist already towering over her male contemporaries.

39. Grimes Miss Anthropocene

When Grimes teased the concept for her fifth studio album in 2019, it was easy to feel skeptical; the five years since the Canadian musician’s opus, Art Angels, have been complicated. Miss Anthropocene carries a weighty conceit and hefty baggage, an impassioned but muddled dissertation on climate change from the partner of real life supervillain Elon Musk. Grimes gave birth to their first child, X Æ A-XII, earlier this year, a fact that should make her message here all the more dire - Miss Anthropocene projects various “embodiment[s] of human extinction” onto an “anthropomorphic goddess,” hoping to make the increasing reality of global collapse more palatable. The irony is that none of this is what makes the album engaging; at its core, Miss Anthropocene is a jaw-dropping showcase of Grimes’ talents as a sonic innovator. Her voice weaves like barbed wire through bracing industrial soundscapes, sprite-like and menacing. Ultimately, in her painstaking efforts to make climate crisis a more tangible concern, Grimes has accidentally created something powerfully abstract, a universe of her own where dark energy gives way to immersive beauty.

38. Open Mike Eagle Anime, Trauma and Divorce

Chicago emcee Open Mike Eagle turned forty this year, reaching a milestone that inspires discomfort in even the most well-adjusted individuals. On his fifth solo album, brilliantly titled Anime, Trauma and Divorce, Eagle adjusts to life as we know it with weary perspective. In the time since 2017’s spectacular Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, the rapper navigated a difficult divorce, recounted with humor and anxiety on “The Black Mirror Episode” (“the Black Mirror episode ruined my marriage!”) Here he confronts the emotional aftermath, grappling with depression on “Everything Ends Last Year” and finding bravery in the face of terror on “The Edge of New Clothes.” The best moments on Anime feel lived-in and endearingly honest - “Wtf is Self-Care” conjures hilarious images of Mike struggling to grasp the newfangled concept of “self-care,” making smoothies out of kelp cubes and going to wineries. Eagle’s greatest strength as a songwriter is warming darkness into vibrant color - on Anime, Trauma and Divorce, he turns personal adversity into a universal treatise on the healing triumph of self-compassion.

37. Amaarae THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW

The full length debut from Ghanaian singer and producer Amaarae breaks ground from almost every angle. As a queer woman from West Africa, her gender-bending persona carries immense weight, even as her songs float around her, buoyant and candy-spun. The music, however, is just as progressive as the politics; ANGEL recalls Grimes’ anti-pop masterpiece, Art Angels, in its disregard for genre boundaries, melding Afrobeats, R&B, trap, and indie pop with a smoldering confidence. Amaarae’s unique voice carries it all, a funhouse mirror display of bold sensuality and sly humor. Over the course of its brief runtime, THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW becomes cultural moment, a marvelous statement of intent and the sound of pop’s future.

36. Dua Lipa Future Nostalgia

In an era during which TikTok algorithms have rendered the underground and the mainstream almost indistinguishable, Dua Lipa’s sophomore effort is a pop album in a very traditional sense. Almost devoid of filler, Future Nostalgia aims right for the jugular, bursting with shiny ‘80s revival and razor-sharp hooks. Though the album’s coincidence with the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic could easily be chalked up to bad luck, Nostalgia ended up serving an essential purpose this year - as further evidenced by its excellent, Black Madonna-curated remix project, Dua Lipa’s triumph provided a safe space, a world where we could lose ourselves on a hypothetical dance floor.

35. Bartees Strange Live Forever

The full-length debut from D.C.-based musician Bartees Strange is one of the year’s great surprises. Live Forever suggests a clear-headed artistic vision, as informed by Southern hip hop as it is by Brand New and the National (the latter of whom Bartees payed tribute to on EP Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy). The songwriting here is excellent, but the real beauty lies in the harmony of pummeling indie rock (highlights “Mustang” and “Boomer”), lo-fi hip hop (“Kelly Rowland”) and jittery house (“Flagey God”). At the age of thirty-one, Strange has soaked in the wisdom of each style, and on Live Forever, the return is immense.

34. Julianna Barwick Healing Is A Miracle

Each of Julianna Barwick’s releases is a world unto itself, making planet-sized spaces from synthetic echo chambers. Her voice is the center of her music, bewitching enough to stack itself to the heavens. On Healing is a Miracle, however, she embraces the therapy in community, folding experimental harpist Mary Lattimore, Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi, and electronic wizard Nosaj Thing into a single-room set-up. The result is warm and magnetic, a safe hideaway from a tumultuous year. More than ever before, the musician’s compositions here recall the ethereal calm of Celtic music icon Enya, whose body of work is renowned for its capability to soothe in trying times. Barwick insists that she titled her fourth album last year, months removed from the pandemic, but it’s almost too powerful a coincidence - in an era wrought with anxiety and anguish, Healing is a Miracle couldn’t be more timely.

33. Sufjan Stevens The Ascension

On the heels of his 2015 masterpiece, Carrie & Lowell, indie folk giant Sufjan Stevens dropped scattered, treasured hints at the direction of its breathlessly awaited follow-up. Feeding years of speculation, the artist embraced decidedly queer themes on his contributions to Luca Guadagnino film Call Me by Your Name, hinting at sexuality in a way he hadn’t since 2010’s Age of Adz. His eighth studio album, The Ascension, shares more with Adz than anything else in his catalogue, shielding his fragile, emotive songwriting in clattering electronics. It’s his most outwardly romantic piece of work, and his most musically direct; early standouts “Run Away With Me” and “Video Game” move closer to lovelorn pop than he’s ever dared to venture before. For longtime fans, the shift here can be alienating - Stevens has long been regarded as one of contemporary music’s most gifted, esoteric songwriters, and Ascension deals mostly in fragmented, heart-on-sleeve refrains. But that’s not to suggest that it’s any less complex than his most cherished works; for every sugar-rush shot at the bloodstream, there’s a heaving, circuit-bent epic to match. It all culminates in two of the best songs Stevens has ever composed: title track “The Ascension” is aching and mournful, a spiritual cleansing that reckons with the afterlife as adeptly as anything on Carrie & Lowell; and “America,” a twelve-minute voyage through the bruised heart of a broken society. What ultimately makes The Ascension so fascinating is its embrace of paradox - in its more conventional take on love, loss, and heartbreak, it only further complicates an artist we thought we had pinned.

32. Lyra Pramuk Fountain

The debut offering from German sound artist Lyra Pramuk is a testament to the power of the human voice. Fountain is a sonic cocoon, comprised almost entirely of Pramuk’s vocals - at times spliced, warped, stretched, and mangled - and its impact lies in her ability to create something singular and totally foreign from the world’s most universal instrument. The album also honors a rich history of queer experimental music - in addition to contemporaries Holly Herndon and Colin Self, with both of whom she’s collaborated, she channels the energies of foremothers ANOHNI, Arca, and Meredith Monk. As a transfeminine woman, Pramuk has embraced the biological fixture of her voice’s depth and timbre, and she pushes it to the full extent of its power, layering her vocals into legions of shrieking warriors. In its absolute force, Fountain stands an indestructible monument to acceptance and discovery of self.

31. MIKE weight of the world

New York-based rapper and producer MIKE makes hip hop that feels intensely private, each release a collection of careful sketches. weight of the world finds the musician adjusting to life in the wake of his mother’s death, a tragedy addressed in depth on last year’s Tears of Joy. His verses are complex and instinctive, hiding emotional breakthroughs in plain sight. The production here, handled almost entirely by MIKE, whispers secrets around him; on interlude “never thought (tribute),” a muted sample speaks to continuing grief: “I never thought I’d put another woman first.” weight is hefty but cathartic, digging through drug abuse and depression to find a resilient flame still burning. On centerpiece “weight of the word*,” MIKE rediscovers purpose in the weight of his pen - “I only dive in when it’s deep.”

30. Neil Young Homegrown

This long-lost artifact from Neil Young’s winding and eclectic catalogue dates back to 1975, recorded between masterpiece (and personal favorite) On the Beach and the Crazy Horse-assisted Zuma. Young decided to scrap the product of these sessions, opting instead to release his harried, drugged-out opus, Tonight’s the Night. In this context, Homegrown could be written off as an afterthought, excess byproduct of a wildly fertile period in the Canadian rocker’s career. That would be a mistake - apart from its obvious allusion to pot, Homegrown’s title is befitting its earthiness, sonically more Harvest than, say, Tonight’s the Night. At least one of the songs here, “Love is a Rose” (recorded more famously by Linda Ronstadt), found new life apart from its home album. But Homegrown remains beguiling in its own right, a tantalizing slice of Young’s titanic back catalogue.

29. The Weeknd After Hours

In the years since his breakthrough mixtape, House of Balloons, Toronto native Abel Tesfaye has struggled to pin down an identity, even as he’s become a pop culture icon and radio mainstay. On After Hours, he comes closer than ever before, forming a convincing composite of all of his previous incarnations. “Blinding Lights” recreates the woozy, strobe-lit magic of “Can’t Feel My Face,” “Too Late” revisits the UK garage influence that powered 2018’s My Dear Melancholy, and “Snowchild” recalls the rattling trap of post-breakthrough highlights like “King of the Fall.” After Hours’ best moments, however, find new territory for The Weeknd to cultivate - the title track is a twisting, atmospheric expedition, and single “In Your Eyes” gracefully marries chunky Europop to glitzy ‘80s adult contemporary. Both of these highlights owe much of their success to new collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never, who met Tesfaye through their contributions to last year’s blockbuster film Uncut Gems. Ultimately, After Hours becomes the moment every long-haul Weeknd fan had lost hope we’d ever see, a fulfillment of the promise we knew was there before we’d even seen his face.

28. Beatrice Dillon Workaround

London-based electronic musician Beatrice Dillon makes left-field techno that crackles with detail. On her debut full-length, Workaround, she draws skittery rhythms around tablas, upright bass, classical guitar, scraping acoustics, and sunburst synth chords, a bracingly organic and collaborative take on synthetic music. It’s almost telescopic in its careful, intentional arrangements, a headphone album that rewards mindful listening. Her creative drum sequencing completely ditches the four-on-the-floor footing of traditional techno, hewing closer to Chicago footwork and UK garage-inspired syncopation. The essence of Workaround, however, lies in its use of negative space, daring the listener to find beauty in the in-between.

27. HAIM Women In Music Pt. III

The Haim sisters are at their best making soul-stirring, sun-soaked Cali rock, and on their third studio album, they’ve got it down to a science. Women in Music Pt. III is their sturdiest effort yet, weary in its world-beaten beauty, but characteristically resilient. On opener “Los Angeles,” Danielle ponders leaving the dream-eating city, invoking Joni Mitchell’s escapist treasure “California.” The Laurel Canyon-inspired folk rock here is saturated in regret - when highlight “Gasoline” reaches a resounding “I get sad!!!”, it feels like a revelation more than a simple feeling. HAIM are experts at painting complicated emotions in pastel tones, and on Women in Music, they make heartbreak sound inviting.

26. Touché Amoré Lament

In spite of its title, the fifth studio effort from California hardcore outfit Touché Amoré is a document of internal repair. 2016’s Stage Four was a devastating account of loss, a barb-wired journey through the death of lead vocalist Jeremy Bolm’s mother. On Lament, Bolm sets his sights on healing; originally conceptualized as a love letter to his fiancée, the album finds its ultimate purpose in gripping self-reflection. The title track finds the band in habitual form - “you’d think by now I’d know my place / but I lose it almost every day,” Bolm howls, “so I lament / then I forget.” But there’s soaring development here, both in sound and emotional scope. Standout “Reminders” leans towards more palatable, pop-wise emo, but delivers a ten-ton wallop in its chorus: “I need reminders of the love I have / I need reminders, good or bad.” “A Broadcast” weaves petal steel into its sparer, more acoustic framework, and “Limelight” creates a space between desolate, existential dwelling and anthemic, hard-headed durability. In the shadow of tragedy, Touché Amoré have created a shrine to the perpetual evolution of grief, making Lament their most evocative and hopeful work to date.

25. Róisín Murphy Róisín Machine

“I feel my story is still untold,” Róisín Murphy proclaims in the waking moments of her fifth solo album, “but I’ll make my own happy ending.” It’s a bold assertion from an artist two-and-a-half decades into her career, even if she’s spent each successive release building herself up from scratch. On the cleverly titled Róisín Machine (roe-sheen mah-sheen), the Irish musician two-steps past expectation yet again, crafting a humongous dance record that pulses with confidence and drips with adrenaline. The album’s strength lies in its head-on embrace of emotional complexity, more akin to Robyn’s Body Talk than any of this year’s more escapist fantasies. “Something More” finds a raw spot in the emptiness of excess, and on the staggering “Incapable,” Murphy zeroes in on the pitfalls of continued resilience - “never had a broken heart / am I incapable of love?” The album’s opening declaration reappears in centerpiece “Murphy’s Law,” a career highlight that fits this year like a diamond-studded glove. “Just when everything is going alright, all my hard work goes down the drain,” she grins. It doesn’t matter - she’s making her own happy ending.

**PMR, Friends Keep Secrets, Interscope, Virgin EMI • 2020**

24. Jessie Ware What’s Your Pleasure?

British songstress Jessie Ware has described her fourth album as a return to her roots in dance music, and its sculpted grooves feel appropriately refined, matured like fine wine. What’s Your Pleasure is stately, glimmering disco, drawing from the futuristic pulse of Giorgio Moroder-era Donna Summer and Nile Rodger’s organic, jangling guitar funk. Impressive as ever, Ware’s instrument is an anchoring force, sultry and sharp, lending the bubbling nu-disco arrangements here a velvety depth. There’s a treasure chest’s worth of sparkling standouts (the title track and “Save A Kiss,” for example, are immaculate), but several of the album’s most delectable cuts break away from the confines of its steady, four-on-the-floor groove - “In Your Eyes” brings the pace to a moonlit simmer, and closer “Remember Where You Are” swells into glamorous, metropolitan soul. Every one of Ware’s previous projects has pushed the singer into thrilling new territory, but on What’s Your Pleasure, she sounds excited to be back home.

23. U.S. Girls Heavy Light

In the waning minutes of Meghan Remy’s seventh album as U.S. Girls, a troubled past is placed into perspective. Closing number “Red Ford Radio” appeared in gestational form on 2010’s Go Grey as a suffocating fog of anxious energy. Its appearance here trades needling distortion for warmth and close detail, an act of conscious reframing. Throughout Heavy Light, Remy revisits childhood trauma, sifting through years of repression for wisdom and understanding. She’s not alone in her journey, however - the set was recorded live with a cast of 20 musicians (notably including the E Street Band’s Jake Clemons), and its collaborative spirit blankets wounded insights in loving camaraderie. “4 American Dollars” is rollicking, maximalist disco that traces lost innocence to the broken promise of capitalism, and the sparse, reverent arrangement on “IOU” gives Remy the space to make peace with a long-lost hostage of angry adolescence. The Jungian concept of the “divine child,” known better today as the “inner child,” exists at the heart of Heavy Light - in the album’s cover art, Remy embraces a younger incarnation of herself, making amends for decades of neglect. She’s likened the repression of trauma to “losing the colour (sic) in your life;” here, she’s gotten it back.

22. Laura Marling Song for Our Daughter

Singer/songwriter Laura Marling has spent her career tying the complex beauty of femininity to the trappings of womanhood. On her seventh album, Song for Our Daughter, she sounds worn in her wisdom; Marling recorded her debut, Alas, I Cannot Swim, at seventeen, and at thirty, her songwriting hints at sheer exhaustion. Not to suggest that the music on Song doesn’t still buzz with a strange, kinetic liveliness - early highlights “Alexandra” and “Strange Girl” verge on freak folk, borrowing liberally from the loose-knit jazz of Court and Spark-era Joni Mitchell. But Marling, now a veteran of the early ‘00s folk revival scene, is done with conforming to male expectation: “I won’t write a woman with a man on my mind,” she hisses on “Only the Strong,” “[I] hope that didn’t sound too unkind.” It’s a perspective that has shaped the bedrock of her podcast, Reversal of the Muse, an examination of the music industry’s skew towards the masculine, and it gives the essence of Song for Our Daughter an immense and urgent depth. On its title track, Marling passes the knotted torch of experience to an imaginary daughter, but in its unflinching prophecy - “you mourn in your childish loss / innocence gone but it's not forgot / you'll get your way through it somehow” - you get the sense that she’s singing to herself.

21. Blake Mills Mutable Set

Rising indie virtuoso Blake Mills is better known as a producer than a singer/songwriter, having lent his talents to meticulously sculpted releases by Perfume Genius (including this year’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately) and Laura Marling. Mutable Set, his fourth studio album, is bound to change that - while his mastery of sound design remains on wide-screen display, his songwriting takes center stage. Mills’ thoughtful poetry recalls indie folk hero Bill Callahan, crackling with detail and heartbreaking beauty, and his hushed vocal treatments fall somewhere between Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth and Sufjan Stevens. True to its title, Mutable Set is stark and subtle, made for intent headphone listening. With full attention to its careful beauty, Blake Mills’ flourishing vision comes into full focus.

20. Gil Scott-Heron & Makaya McCraven We’re New Again

Released shorty before his death, 2010’s I’m New Here was the final living revelation from jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, the uneasy epilogue to an immeasurably influential body of work. Its fertile bed of dank, foreboding folk has sprouted more than one posthumous breakthrough; Jamie xx colored outside its boundaries on 2011’s We’re New Here, which, in turn, gave life to Drake’s colossal Rihanna collab “Take Care.” This year, a decade after I’m New Here, jazz drummer and bandleader Makaya McCraven was commissioned by XL Records to reinvent Scott-Heron’s closing masterpiece yet again. We’re New Again feels like less of a creative overhaul than Jamie xx’s treatment, honoring Scott-Heron’s vision by yielding him the spotlight. Rather than splicing his rich baritone into a set of ghostly suggestions, McCraven structures his shuffling arrangements around the singer’s unvarnished vocals, building the late artist’s compositions up to transcendent heights. It’s an astounding success, a warm and organic celebration of Scott-Heron’s continuing legacy, and, in an era during which we’ve turned to holograms to bring our legends back to life, We’re New Again feels like an authentic rebirth.

19. Run the Jewels RTJ4

Hip hop’s reining anarchist vigilantes return for the fourth installment in their explosive, irreverent Run the Jewels saga. Killer Mike and El-P are sharp as ever on RTJ4, taking aim at crooked corporations, racist institutions, and wack-ass competitors with impeccable precision. Their tongue-twisting manifestos feel just as fresh as they did on 2013’s collaborative debut, carving into our crumbling society with dire sincerity (“I can't let the pigs kill me, I got too much pride”) and comedic flair (“we cool as penguin pussy on the polar cap peninsula”). Decades into each of their respective careers, it’s remarkable that these two continue to innovate: on peak cut “JU$T,” the duo trace systemic injustice through centuries of false idols, teasing out the evils of the federal reserve. In its boundless militancy, RTJ4 feels tailor-made for the times, a Molotov cocktail of furious rap finesse.

18. Jay Electronica A Written Testimony / Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn)

Thirteen years after his breakthrough, 2007’s Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge), Jay Electronica made his endlessly-awaited return with A Written Testimony. It’s a marvelously complex, deeply spiritual piece of work, achieving its mastery in skillful interplay with Jay-Z. One of the year’s early highlights (read my review here), its impact was accented further by the unearthing of Act II: The Patents on Nobility, his long-lost debut album, completed back in 2012. Act II is a rougher, more playful take on Testimony’s themes of mysticism and inner awakening, but Electronica sounds no less enlightened - as an emcee, he’s always been lightyears ahead of his contemporaries. It stands out, eight years later, one of 2020’s unexpected joys, a showcase of dexterity and intuition that have only sharpened with time.

**In Real Life Music, AWAL Recordings • 2020**

17. Liv.e Couldn’t Wait to Tell You…

The full-length debut from L.A.-based musician Liv.e (pronounced Liv) is all butterflies, the fluttering soundtrack to a romantic awakening. Couldn’t Wait to Tell You... is grounded in self-love, blanketing its internal, stream-of-consciousness poetry in warm, compressed lo-fi. She explores her surroundings here with wide-eyed curiosity, musing on intimacy, love, and spirituality with clarity and wisdom beyond her years. Liv.e’s enveloping R&B recalls Georgia Anne Muldrow, Erykah Badu, and tour-mate Earl Sweatshirt, but on Couldn’t Wait, she revels in a sound all her own, slipping into the shoes of characters she’s described as “different parts of [herself].” On standout “Moving on Felt Great and This Feels (good) Too,” she pieces them all together, gently daring in the album’s quintessential ask: “are you curious about the journey?”

16. Adrianne Lenker songs / instrumentals

Fresh off the duel success of her band’s 2019 stunners, U.F.O.F. and Two Hands, Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker delivered another double whammy with this year’s songs / instrumentals. Its first half recalls the stripped-down enchantment of 2018’s abysskiss, spindling haunting tapestries of voice and guitar. But where her previous solo outing quietly pleaded for fuller arrangements, songs finds its magic in its graceful quietude. Lenker is an immense talent, gifted as a poet as much as she is a guitarist and vocalist. She explores new dimensions, however, with instrumentals - its two improvisational compositions are beautifully engineered, creating deep, meditative spaces of due release. Her music has always dealt in the internal, making concrete epiphanies of emotions that often elude expression. But when a giggle emerges from the seams of “music for indigo,” it says all it needs to say, allowing calm and joy to coexist with this year’s universal hurt.

15. Yves Tumor Heaven To A Tortured Mind

On 2018’s Safe in the Hands of Love, Miami-born artist Yves Tumor emerged at the vanguard of experimental electronic, a freaked-up cyborg sent back in time to destroy music as we know it. On their fourth studio album, Heaven to a Tortured Mind, Sean Bowie leans into funk rock and acid-eaten soul, summoning the spirits of Prince, Eddie Hazel, and Rick James to do their bidding. The influences here are easier to pin down than they were on Safe in the Hands - Diana Gordon duet “Kerosene” feels like the natural evolution of James’ and Teena Marie’s classic “Fire and Desire,” and “Folie Imposée” sneakily interpolates Cherrelle’s 1985 crossover smash, “Saturday Love.” The music on Heaven feels familiarly apocalyptic, but less space-bound than on Tumor’s breakthrough (save for late highlight “Asteroid Blues”). This go-round, Yves lets the world burn around them, content to make out in the interim.

14. Yaeji WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던

Before this year, every taste of Yaeji’s singular house-pop had been in short form - her pair of 2017 EPs were bite-sized trips to a woozy, neon-lit world of sound. On her first full-length, WHAT WE DREW, the Korean-American musician lets her instincts roam free, delving into hip hop, electro, deep house, and jungle, all bound with a sticky ambition. The mixtape feels much shorter than its 38-minute runtime, whizzing by in prismatic color; many of the tracks here clock in at under three minutes, just long enough to instill a craving for more. On closer “NEVER SETTLING DOWN,” Yaeji finds her mantra, a declaration of freedom and a proper summation of WHAT WE DREW’s many modes: “I’m never settling down/I’m never touching ground/I’m never backing out.”

13. Lomelda Hannah

The fifth album from singer/songwriter Lomelda is fleshy and sincere, hushed indie rock meant for private listening. It often seems as if she’s writing to herself - apart from its title, Hannah, her first name appears three times here: “Hannah Sun,” “Hannah Happiest,” “Hannah Please.” Its glowing centerpiece, however, is “It’s Lomelda,” where she retreats into her headphones, name-checking Low, Yo La Tengo, the Innocence Mission, and Frank Ocean, all of whom emerge in essence though her open-weave songwriting. In interviews, Hannah Read has been open about her struggle with anxiety, mentioning ASMR as a reliable balm. It comes through in her close-mic’d, small room approach music - though it may not utilize the technique in a traditional sense, Hannah evokes the same spine-tingling comfort.

12. keiyaA Forever, Ya Girl

Raised on a diet of jazz and church music, Chicago-born and New York-based musician Chakeiya Richmond makes soul-plunging R&B that reaches toward the rigorous spirituality of John Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders. Her debut, Forever, Ya Girl, is searching and existential, layered in themes of black liberation and systemic inequality. It sounds like growth in real time - although it was grafted together in two weeks, pieces of the album date all the way back to 2014, encompassing years of struggle and experience. keiyaA wrote, composed, and produced the majority of Forever herself, lending the project an organic, home-grown air that speaks to her profound sense of self. On highlight “It! Gits! Weary!”, she reckons with increased visibility: “should I give up privacy so I can pay my rent?” It’s a reasonable dilemma for music this marvelously vulnerable.

11. The 1975 Notes on a Conditional Form

On the follow-up to their critically acclaimed A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, the 1975 sound like they’re combusting under the sheer intensity of their creative drive. It’s a messier album than its predecessor, but it’s unrelentingly charming and often bewitching. Marty Healy’s songwriting has never been rawer or less guarded, peeling back layers of sexuality, lust, and drug abuse to reveal something almost uncomfortably bare. They’ve almost completely abandoned the eighties synth-pop revival that made them famous (single “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” being the sole exception), instead delving into nineties alt rock, UK electronic, indie folk, and thrashing punk with complete abandon. Notes was marketed as a sister album to Brief Inquiry, but it reads more like a natural progression, a widening of the 1975’s ever-ambitious scope.

10. Fleet Foxes Shore

Indie folk giants Fleet Foxes are known for their grand, pastoral soundscapes, imposing in their ornate beauty like delicate art meant to be admired from afar. Their fourth studio album, however, feels newly intimate and tactile, both sunny and elegiac in its reflective beauty. Shore is the product of an emotional uprooting - written by frontman Robin Pecknold in the relative grace of this summer, the songs here ripple with gentle contemplation. Opener “Sunblind” allows a long-building reserve of grief to crack through the surface, mourning contemporaries Richard Swift and David Berman (both of whom passed over the last few years) in the same space as musical ancestors Elliott Smith and Judee Sill. Shore’s sad, warm nostalgia recalls the Beach Boys’ early-‘70s masterpiece Surf Up, and Brian Wilson acts as a guiding force here as well - “For a Week or Two” invokes the composer’s most solemn, pensive works, and “Cradling Mother, Cradling Woman” even opens with a Pet Sounds-era sample of Wilson counting his band off. Though Pecknold enlists a staggering cast of outside collaborators (members of Grizzy Bear and the Dap-Kings among them), he’s the only member of Fleet Foxes that appears consistently here, and the album’s seclusive spirit feels like a product of our quarantine-shaken times. In a year during which we’ve all been forced to take stock, Shore is a significant work of spiritual and artistic renewal, and holds forth as Pecknold’s most affecting effort to date.

9. Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways

Almost six decades into his celebrated career, Bob Dylan returns to form once again on Rough and Rowdy Ways. In the shadows of his last collection of original songs (2012’s Tempest), the fabled musician surrendered his talents as a poet to the burning end of a cigarette, relegating himself to the smoky taverns of Frank Sinatra fetishism. He’s fought his way back from worse; Dylan’s late-‘70s dive into born-again Christianity wandered its way into a artistic desert that lasted through 1997’s much-acclaimed Time Out of Mind. His thirty-ninth studio album evokes the world-weary grandeur of that masterpiece, saturated in wisdom and wise-cracking wit. Dylan sounds even further ripened at seventy-nine - on Rowdy Ways, he pens the densest, most self-referential songs of his career with serpentine precision. On opener “I Contain Multudes,” he’s a textured caricature of himself, folding Anne Frank, Indiana Jones, and Beethoven into his rotating cast, and on “Black Rider,” he sizes up the creeping specter of death. He’s as yet unmatched, however, in his ability to slip into character - the astounding, seventeen-minute closer “Murder Most Foul” sounds like it’s taken a lifetime to design, a bottomless expedition through the still-reverberating aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. In its own bizarre twist, Rough and Rowdy Ways is the culmination of an artistry that’s been gestating for an almost identical length of time, the ultimate appraisal of an untamable creative flame.

8. Waxahatchee Saint Cloud

Katie Crutchfield conceptualized her fifth album as a “return to [her] roots,” and the music on Saint Cloud sounds appropriately homespun. The project is named after her father’s Florida hometown, and its country-indebted sound is clear departure from the shoegaze-leaning indie rock of Out in the Storm. Raised in Alabama, Crutchfield leans into her upbringing, even embracing a southern drawl less present in her previous works. She’s cited Lucinda Williams, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris as inspirations, and highlights “Can’t Do Much” and “Hell” are grounded in a tradition of rich, earthy folk. Saint Cloud was recorded in the midst of Crutchfield’s reckoning with alcoholism, and her struggle to get sober permeates the music here, clear-headed in its plunging emotion. The stunning “War” lays its burden out in plain-spoken self-awareness - “but I mostly keep to myself / what I’m going through / I’m in a war with myself / it’s got nothing to do with you” - and in its unwieldy catharsis, Crutchfield finds a truer, fuller vision of herself.

7. Bad Bunny YHLQMDLG

In the two years since his massive 2018 debut, X100PRE, Bad Bunny has become the leading voice in reggaetón and urbano. His rapid ascension is no fluke - there’s no one else on the pop charts making music this ecstatic or assured. This year, the Puerto Rican star dropped two albums and an EP, ranging in quality from great to superb. At the top of Bad Bunny’s sky-scraping ladder sits YHLQMDLG, an abbreviation for “Yo hago lo que me da la gana,” or “I do whatever I want”), and the album’s titular credo rings true - intro “Si Veo a Tu Mamá,” for example, finds the artist crooning over a MIDI-trap interpretation of “The Girl from Ipanema.” The majority of the music here pushes reggaetón into novel spaces, crossing into twinkling pop on “Vete” and strummed acoustic on “<3.” The absolute peak here is “Safaera,” a five-minute survey of urbano as we know it, tracing its history and future with uncontainable ambition. Idols Jowell & Randy dominate a large stretch of the track, but when Bad Bunny interjects, it’s clear that he’s the reigning champ of reggaetón.

6. Lil Uzi Vert Eternal Atake

With 2017’s Luv is Rage 2, SoundCloud rap vanguard Lil Uzi Vert approached transcendence; just when the world needed him most, he disappeared. A few tantalizing scraps and three long years later, the Philly spitfire returned with the long-mythologized Eternal Atake, a space-age opus that made good on the hype, and then some: early highlights “POP” and “You Better Move” are hungrier sounding than anything Uzi has offered up before. The record’s latter half, however, is where the rapper finds his sweet spot, a candied synthesis of early-oughts electro-pop, third-wave emo, and syrupy ATL hip hop. In Atake’s closing moments, Vert revisits his crown jewel, 2017’s “XO Tour Llif3,” with sharpened skill and hard-earned wisdom, at last bridging the chasm between Uzi the man and Uzi the legend.

5. Perfume Genius Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

Mike Hadreas has been spinning gorgeous, tortured yarns on the queer experience for over a decade now. His early releases clawed for breath in tangles of tape hiss, pleading for a sense of belonging. On his fifth album as Perfume Genius, Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, he’s created an insular, star-speckled universe of his own, at peace in its deep longing. His partnership with producer Blake Mills (who also appears on this list) has yielded some of the century’s most thrilling music, beginning first with 2017’s enrapturing No Shape. This time around, they’ve made a true masterpiece, where spacious, Lynchian visions coexist with graceful synth-pop and fuzzed-out shoegaze. All of it is pieced together by Hadreas’ one-of-a-kind vocal talent, overwhelming in its sheer depth and wisened maturity. Set My Heart on Fire is a pristine act of self-immolation, the moment Perfume Genius has been building toward his entire career.

4. Phoebe Bridgers Punisher

No album affected me this year quite like Punisher. On the sophomore solo effort from L.A.-based singer/songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, every single bittersweet moment of the three years since her debut is placed into high definition context. In the time between, she’s found chemistry with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus (boygenius) and Conor Oberst (Better Oblivion Community Center), sharpening her wit and insight on each successive release. Bridgers has also developed a cheeky, often hilarious social media persona, matching levity to the emotional intensity of her music. Her comedic chops shine through the cracks on Punisher - on the marvelous “Kyoto,” she darkly quips “You called me from a payphone / they still got payphones / It cost a dollar a minute / to tell me you’re getting sober.” But its moments of humor are undercut with stinging sadness; “Kyoto” is a complex, conflicted letter to her father. Punisher can be difficult to process in one sitting, but its even bleakest elements are met with subtle optimism that’s easy to overlook. A skim over closer “I Know the End” might register as nothing more than an apocalyptic fever dream, but its subtext offers a glimmer of hope in this seemingly endless year - “no, I’m not afraid to disappear / the billboard said “the end is near” / I turned around, there was nothing there / yeah, I guess the end is here.” On Punisher, Bridgers zooms in on quiet moments of fear, hurt, and relief, emerging with catharsis and acceptance.

3. Moses Sumney græ

Aromanticism, the debut full-length from soul folk auteur Moses Sumney, created a lush, insulated pocket of anxious solitude. On its follow-up, he approaches the same ethos of isolation from the opposite direction. græ fearlessly builds on its predecessor in every dimension possible: the singer’s gymnastic voice stretches to impossible highs and lows, hugging the dynamics of each genre-bursting arrangement with fined-tuned precision. The record’s overarching theme is one of duality - strength and vulnerability, the ephemeral and the eternal, and most notably, the masculine and the feminine. “If I split my body into two men, would you then love me better?” he ponders on “Polly,” building on a career-long focus on in-between. Perhaps it’s all there in the title, græ as in area, the characters a and e inextricably bound. On his debut, Sumney shuddered at the concept of surrendering part of oneself for another - three years later, he sounds unwilling as ever to sacrifice his own complexity.

2. Taylor Swift folklore

2020 will be remembered as landmark year for contemporary music, a turning point at which even our brightest stars shifted inward towards the softer and more reflective. Taylor Swift’s entry is one of many big name stunners this year, but no other made an impact as dramatic or unexpected - when the ink inevitably dries on the “quarantine album” timestamp, folklore will be its high watermark.

Swift’s eight studio effort is an indie album on a major label budget. A photo negative of last year’s hyper-glossy Lover, folklore is a presentation of the Taylor we’ve only caught in brief glimpses since her evolution into a pop megastar. She’s always been at her best as a storyteller - the greatest songs of Swift’s career blur the line between skillful introspection and prodigious imagination - and here, she breaks her own artistic ceiling several times over. Early highlight “cardigan” feels like an emotional unearthing, a quilted masterpiece of regret and longing. It’s followed immediately by “the last great american dynasty,” unquestionably Swift’s finest moment as a raconteur and a novel’s worth of intricacies in under four minutes.

folklore recalls 2019’s album-of-the-year, Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, in its tendency towards stark intimacy and muted arrangements (uncoincidentally, NFR!’s Jack Antonoff produces several cuts here). The majority of the production, however, is handled by The National’s Aaron Dessner, who lends the set an insular warmth and elegance. It compliments a quieter, more introspective Taylor, who hasn’t sounded this assured since 2012’s Red. On Lover, Swift seemed torn between worlds, half-embracing technicolor pop while flirting with darker, more intimate sounds. On folklore, she commits to the latter, and she’s never been more at home.

In the final weeks of 2020, Swift released evermore, her second effort in less than five months. Marketed as a companion album, its harder-edged, more traditional folk rock lands further down the same path as folklore, continuing the reconstruction of Taylor and the modern pop star as we know them.

1. Fiona Apple Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Fiona Apple has always been a bit of a mystery, equally endearing and frustrating in her reclusive genius. She has a keen sense of timing, though; as if an instinct, she peels back the layers of her shrouded artistry just when we need her most, emerging weirder and wilder each consecutive time. On April’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Apple matched the early buds of an unpredictable year with an absolutely, beautifully unhinged masterpiece. In the eight years since her previous outing, 2012’s The Idler Wheel..., the singer/songwriter has been building steam, waiting to detonate, and the music here sounds accordingly dire. Opening number “I Want You to Love Me” thrashes onto the stage with total ferocity, and the insanity never lets up - all the way through the howling coda of closer “On I Go,” Apple sounds positively possessed, delivering each carefully sculpted line with urgency.

The album’s surprise release caused an immediate ripple effect, spawning acclaim from critics (see my original review here) and a slew of memes from giddy fans in the following twenty-four hours. It was a needed source of joy and excitement in April, when COVID-19 case numbers were beginning to skyrocket, and though the album’s instant buzz has calmed, it’s a novel and exhilarating experience eight months later. Bolt Cutters is a complete contrast to the oppressive greyscale of this year’s artistic output, bursting with cutting humor and characteristic wit. Apple has described the recording process as willfully imperfect, an open pursuit for what she’s called “aliveness.”

In its unguarded sincerity, Bolt Cutters sounds like the album she’s been working toward for almost two-and-a-half decades. On “For Her,” Apple releases the demons of an assault that’s haunted her music since Tidal. On “Shameika,” she finds profound gratitude for a high school classmate that helped her stand up to her bullies. (The song’s refrain of “she got through to me and I’ll never see her again” was flipped on her head later this year when the two reconnected.) And on the title track, Apple faces a lifetime of self-doubt and criticism head-on - “I’m ashamed of what it did to me / what I let get done / it stole my fun.” At long last, Fiona has snapped her chains, and she’s never sounded quite so alive.

100+ releases you should hear

070 Shake - Modus Vivendi

2 Chainz - So Help Me God!

Actress - Karma & Desire

Against All Logic - 2017-2019

Angel Olsen - Whole New Mess

Arca - KiCk i

Ariana Grande - Positions

ARTHUR - Hair of the Dog

Bad Bunny - EL ÚLTIMO TOUR DEL MUNDO

Bbymutha - Muthaland

beabadoobee - Fake It Flowers

Bill Callahan - Gold Record

Boldy James & The Alchemist - The Price of Tea in China

Bonny Light Horseman - s/t

Brandy - b7

Bright Eyes - Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was

Bruce Hornsby - Non-Secure Connection

Caribou - Suddenly

Carly Rae Jepsen - Dedicated Side B

Charli XCX - how i’m feeling now

The Chicks - Gaslighter

Chloe x Halle - Ungodly Hour

Childish Gambino - 3.15.20

Christine and the Queens - La vita nuova

Code Orange - Underneath

Coriky - s/t

Damien Jurado - What’s New, Tomboy?

Dehd - Flower of Devotion

Desire Marea - Desire

Destroyer - Have We Met

Drakeo the Ruler - Thank You For Using GTL

Duval Timothy - Help

dvsn - A Muse in Her Feelings

Ellie Goulding - Brightest Blue

Empress Of - I’m Your Empress Of

Fireboy DML - APOLLO

Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - Alfredo

Gabriel Garzón-Montano - Agüita

Gunna - WUNNA

Halsey - Manic

Hamilton Leithauser - The Loves of Your Life

Hayley Williams - Petals for Armor

Hook - Crashed My Car

Hum - Inlet

India Jordan - For You

J Hus - Big Conspiracy

Jamie Wyatt - Neon Cross

Jeff Parker - Suite for Max Brown

Jeff Rosenstock - NO DREAM

Jehnny Beth - I’m the Man

Jessy Lanza - All the Time

Jockstrap - Wicked City

Joji - Nectar

JoJo - good to know

Junglepussy - JP4

Jyoti - Mama, You Can Bet

Kacy Hill - Is It Selfish If We Talk About Me Again

Kamaiyah - Got It Made

Kari Faux - Lowkey Superstar

Kate NV - Room for the Moon

Kehlani - It Was Good Until It Wasn’t

Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song

Kesha - High Road

KEY! - I Love You Say It Back

The Killers - Imploding the Mirage

King Krule - Man Alive!

Kylie Minogue - DISCO

Lady Gaga - Chromatica

Lianne La Havas - Lianne La Havas

Lil Keed - Trapped On Cleveland 3

Lil Wayne - Funeral

Little Simz - Drop 6

Lucinda Williams - Good Souls Better Angels

Lucretia Dalt - No era sólida

Machine Gun Kelly - Tickets to My Downfall

Mac Miller - Circles

Mandy Moore - Silver Landings

Mary Lattimore - Silver Ladders

Moodymann - Taken Away

Nadine Shah - Kitchen Sink

Naeem - Startisha

Nick Hakim - WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD

Nicolas Jaar - Cenizas

No Joy - Motherhood

Nubya Garcia - SOURCE

Obongjayar - Which Way is Forward?

Omar Apollo - Apolonio

Oneohtrix Point Never - Magic Oneohtrix Point Never

Onyx Collective - Manhattan Special

Pa Salieu - Send Them to Coventry

Pallbearer - Forgotten Days

Pat Metheny - From This Place

Pinegrove - Marigold

Popcaan - FIXTAPE

Poppy - I Disagree

Porridge Radio - Every Bad

Remi Wolf - I’m Allergic To Dogs!

Riz Ahmed - The Long Goodbye

Rod Wave - Pray 4 Love

SahBabii - Barnacles

SAULT - Untitled (Rise)

Selena Gomez - Rare

Serengeti & Kenny Segal - Ajai

serpentwithfeet - Apparition

Shamir - Shamir

SLINGBAUM - SLINGBAUM ONE

Soakie - Soakie

Soccer Mommy - color theory

The Soft Pink Truth - Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?

Special Interest - The Passion Of

The Stokes - The New Abnormal

Tame Impala - The Slow Rush

Tems - For Broken Ears

Teyana Taylor - The Album

The-Dream - SXTP4

Theo Parrish - Wuddaji

Throwing Muses - Sun Racket

Thundercat - It Is What It Is

Tkay Maidza - Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2

Tricky - Fall to Pieces

Troye Sivan - In a Dream

Ty Dolla $ign - Featuring Ty Dolla $ign

Westerman - Your Hero Is Not Dead

Westside Gunn - Pray for Paris

WizKid - Made In Lagos

Young Nudy - Anyways

Yves Jarvis - Sundry Rock Song Stock

Zebra Katz - LESS IS MOOR

Zora Jones - Ten Million Angels

Various Artists - Paul Institute - Summer 2020

The 50 Best Albums of 2019

December 12, 2019 Zack Free

2019 is a bittersweet close to a complicated decade. At its most rewarding, this year’s music offered solace from a troubling time, even when it faced crisis head on. As we head into a new era, here are fifty of the releases that captured the ‘10s’ waning moments the best.

50. ZUU Denzel Curry

Difficult to categorize and impossible to stop, Denzel Curry has been creeping on ah come up for years now. The Florida MC’s fourth album might be the one that gets him the exposure he deserves - lead single “RICKY” is the hip hop record of the year, a crash course in the school of hard knocks that reverently melds Miami bass music to trap with flabbergasting prescience.

49. basking in the glow Oso Oso

Pop punk outfit Oso Oso makes music gloriously reminiscent of turn-of-the-century emo, simultaneously anthemic and intimate, like whispers meant to be screamed. Their third studio album feels like their breakthrough record, packed to the gills with some of the year’s best indie rock songs.

48. Brandon Banks Maxo Kream

Maxo Kream is one of the most exciting talents to emerge from the Houston hip hop scene since its heyday. Brandon Banks feels like a refinement of his excellent debut, a masterful exercise in storytelling and an emotive contextualization of the rapper’s familial lineage.

47. WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? Billie Eilish

Billie Eilish is truly pop music’s bad guy. The seventeen-year-old rises to the top of the heap with one the most unique and fully-realized debuts in recent history, unprecedentedly cohesive in its hushed terror and winking humor.

46. Immunity Clairo

One of the year’s most affecting indie pop records comes courtesy of shooting star Clairo, a bedroom music whiz who quickly rose to fame with a series of self-produced viral hits. The production here, assisted by ex-Vampire Weekender Rostam Batmanglij, is glossy and professional, a striking shift from her early material. But the talent remains - Clairo is a marvelously gifted songwriter with a penchant for lonely pop treasures.

45. Cheap Queen King Princess

The major label debut from King Princess is assured and brilliantly gay. The singer-songwriter is a gender-queer force of nature, brutally honest and unwilling to bite her tongue. She rose to prominence with the gender role-smashing “1950” and delivers on its promise here with a collection of confident, sex-positive radio jams that posits her as one of pop’s most exciting rising talents.

44. The Center Won’t Hold Sleater-Kinney

The punk rock mainstays team recruit St. Vincent for their humongous, metallic ninth studio album. It’s a willful shift in direction, one that alienated drummer Janet Weiss and led to her departure from the band later this year. In context, it’s a very bittersweet victory - the music here is often spectacular, and the songwriting remains as viciously charged as ever. But it might be the end of Sleater-Kinney as we know them, the end of an era for one of modern rock’s most consistent forebearers.

43. Athena Sudan Archives

Stones Throw songstress and violinist Sudan Archives writes songs that ache with insight. Her debut Athena finds her straddling and making peace with the rough edges of life as a black woman, gifted with an adventurous musicality that swells her stature ten times its natural size.

42. No Home Record Kim Gordon

It’s hard to believe that Sonic Youth founder Kim Gordon hasn’t released a solo album until this year; her echoing legacy as a leading woman of indie rock has been an inspirational feedback loop for generations. That said, No Home Record is a revelation, unexpected in all the right ways. It’s born from the same ethic as Sonic Youth’s most experimental works, hissing with fresh, dark energy. Highlights such as “Sketch Artist” and “Don’t Play It” are bracingly stream-of-consciousness, layering Gordon’s evocative growl over shredding electronics in a way that feels familiarly inventive.

41. PUNK CHAI

From the opening chords of glitter-bomb introduction “Choose Go!”, the sophomore album from Japanese electro-punks CHAI is a hyper-speed blast. The group’s “neo kawaii” manifesto is all-inclusive and outrageously fun, a reconceptualization of Japanese beauty standards that deserves to be heard worldwide.

40. Miss Universe Nilüfer Yanya

In 2014, London singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya turned down a spot in a girl group curated by One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson, a decision that eschewed possible fame in preservation of personal and artistic integrity. Yanya’s first album, Miss Universe, suggests that she made the right move; her sound is not the kind you can fit in a box. Highlights “Paralyzed” and “Baby Blu” blend R&B, indie rock, and pop with unflappable ease, and her songwriting is clever and open. She’s still developing her sound, sure, but Miss Universe stands as a captivating and utterly unique debut.

39. American Football (LP3) American Football

The second-wave emo legends sound inspired as ever on the second album released since their 2014 reunion. On LP3, the band leans into the music like they did in their early days, allowing their songs to envelop and consume. An added dimension here is the noted presence of female voices, including those of Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell. It feels like a purposeful revisiting of a genre once notorious for its toxic lack of feminine perspective, and as a result, the band’s third album moves past solitary monologue into conversation.

38. Reward Cate le Bon

Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio effort feels deserved, its title fitting and descriptive. The mountainous synth-pop she grafts here is her most accesible material to date, but it sacrifices none of her song craft or straightforward emotionality. High points “Daylight Matters” and “Home to You” stand out as some her most fruitful and gratifying work yet.

37. Bandana Freddie Gibbs & Madlib

The Gary, Indiana MC’s second collaborative album with Madlib matches its predecessor in quality and outdoes it in experimentalism. The storied producer stitches his traditionally murky sample work to trap-infused drum programming, and Gibbs is sharp and versatile as ever. The project is also peppered with stunning guest spots from Pusha T and Anderson .Paak, among others.

36. Life Metal Sunn O)))

Drone metal wizards Sunn O))) have spent a career finding the intricacies in greyscale. On the first of two albums released by the duo this year, their trademark sludge becomes something truly blissful. Life Metal was recorded and mixed by Steve Albini, who brilliantly utilizes analog recording to bring out the warmest elements of the band’s sound. It’s a fully immersive listen, the real-time expansion of drone metal’s sonic and conceptual boundaries.

35. The Practice of Love Jenny Hval

On her seventh album, the Norwegian iconoclast finds transcendent middle ground between the densely conceptual and the unexpectedly approachable. The Practice of Love draws on themes of sexuality, body image, and female reproduction in radical and imaginative ways, draped across a surging electronic soundscape. Jenny Hval’s releases are consistently challenging and always captivating; this just happens to be her best yet.

34. Sinner Moodymann

Sinner is the first album in five years from Detroit techno legend Moodymann, a wild ride through Prince-indebted funk, minimalist house, and twisting jazz. Twenty-plus years into the game, Moodymann remains one of the most vital and creative forces in electronic music.

33. Fever Megan Thee Stallion

Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion has quickly emerged as hip hop’s it-girl. Razor-sharp and brazen, her first-full length is one of the most thoroughly engaging hip hip projects of the year. Its cataclysmic one-liners are sexed up and confrontational, sizzling with radiance of a star in the making.

32. Agora Fennesz

Christian Fennesz makes some of the most enthralling ambient music in existence. His first project in five years makes wide, reverberating landscapes out of claustrophobic spaces, ever expanding and endlessly fascinating.

31. Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest Bill Callahan

The seventeenth album from indie folk auteur Bill Callahan is his longest to date, a graceful and flowing patchwork of allegory and intensely personal narrative. It’s a searching, optimistic piece of work that beams with newfound acceptance.

30. Beware of the Dogs Stella Donnelly

One of last year’s greatest and most devastating achievements was Stella Donnelley’s “Boys Will Be Boys,” a timeless and powerfully empathetic reflection on rape culture. Her debut album is cut from the same cloth, keenly written and beautifully performed, airing out misogynistic douchebags and rallying women who have held their tongues for far too long. Beware of the Dogs puts Donnelley in the big league, courageous in its unflinching honesty and stunning craft.

29. FEET OF CLAY Earl Sweatshirt

With his second EP, Odd Future graduate Earl Sweatshirt continues to shape a singular and revelatory sound that dodges expectation at every turn. Even in the direct shadow of masterstroke Some Rap Songs, FEET OF CLAY feels like a massive development - the music here is bewildering and dense, rewarding replay with endless wisdom and astonishing detail.

28. uknowhatimsayin¿ Danny Brown

Long held as one of hip hop’s most innovative and charismatic MCs, Danny Brown tops off a spectacular decade with an uncharacteristically polychromatic head trip. It’s vibrant and clear-headed, a tremendous shift in gear from the spiraling dread of 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition, and a tremendous display of Brown’s surreal lyricism.

27. X 100PRE Bad Bunny

On his major label debut, Latin trap superstar Bad Bunny offers a wide-range dream of reggaetón without boundaries. His music is a seemingly bottomless well of energy and possibility, and he’s not afraid to ruffle some feathers - “Caro,” with its gender-bending masterpiece of a music video, is a massive statement within the context of a genre that is still moving towards acceptance. In his sheer disregard for convention, Bad Bunny is restructuring Latin pop in his own vision.

26. This is How You Smile Helado Negro

On his most explorative and soul-stirring effort yet, Helado Negro digs deep into the sepia tone innocence of childhood with a journeyed heart. Among its moments of devastating grief lie swatches of untouched happiness, artfully preserved in capsules of cloud. This is How You Smile is an album about getting older, a meditation on identity, and a celebration of the years before life gets so impossibly complicated.

25. House of Sugar (Sandy) Alex G

(Sandy) Alex G is a genius songwriter and a goofball, and his eighth (!) studio album is his most refined yet, a stunning synthesis of all of his charms. House of Sugar is ostensibly a record about addiction, opener “Walk Away” its hypnotizing statement of intent: as guitars whirl and foam, glitched-out versions of the same mantra circle themselves dizzy: “someday I’m gonna walk away from you/not today.” This set-up frames two of the most indelible tracks in his catalogue, “Hope” and “Southern Sky,” a pair or Elliott Smith-summoning reflections on substance abuse and depression. Sugar is a remarkably heavy record, and Alex G’s trademark quirks are a comforting relief - “Bad Man” is delivered in a smirking southern accent, and “Cow” is a recklessly beautiful love song that may well be about a cow. It all culminates in live closer “SugarHouse,” a breathtaking denouement that sounds like great Bruce Springsteen, mostly because Alex thought it would be funny. Ultimately, House of Sugar ends up as one of the year’s best records because it’s utterly human. It’s vulnerable and imperfect and worth knowing for those exact reasons.

24. Patience Mannequin Pussy

On the Philadelphia hardcore quartet’s third studio effort, patience is multifaceted and complex. It dulls the pain of trauma only if you let it; patience is a crawling journey, one through which you cultivate respect for yourself and your own boundaries. On the title track here, frontwoman Marisa Dabice reflects on the gendering of patience - in a culture where men are praised for lack of such a virtue, women are often forced to flex theirs with twice the effort. Dabice recounts a partner’s teeth-gnashing at the denial of her body, a foreboding and gruesome opener that culminates in “Drunk II,” the best and most immediate song here. Harrowing and bloodshot, the song ends up exactly where you fear it will: “at the end of the night, I am walking home/I pretend that I was wet, wanting them/No means please stop, I need to be alone.” In the song cycle that follows, the band works through the aftermath of rape with empathy and honesty, coming out at the end with the patience to start over. The brief, 25-minute duration of Patience was most likely intended - it’s a journey in miniature, and the rest is up to you.

23. Emily Alone Florist

The title of Emily Sprague’s third album with Florist (and her first as a solo act) is a perfect summation of its sound and introspective songwriting. It draws to mind the distinction between the words “lonely” and “alone,” the former inferring sadness and the latter only isolation. Opener “As Alone” sounds blissfully alone, but not lonely - here Emily finds peace in nature, pondering the flowers and her own body with an all-encompassing wonder. There’s plenty of loneliness here too, a void-shaped force that informs songs like “Moon Begins.” But even on that track, like most here, she balances her morbid reflections with a graceful serenity: “death will come/then a cloud of love.” The carefully picked guitar work and plaintive songwriting here call to mind the works of fellow queer indie folk artist Dear Nora and the unmatched poise of Nick Drake’s seminal Pink Moon. She shares with those artists a marvelously open approach to songwriting, but Emily Alone finds in all of its searching an essence that is, indeed, Sprague’s alone.

22. Titanic Rising Weyes Blood

On her fourth studio album as Weyes Blood, Natalie Mering invokes her signature blend of stately, Carol King-style folk and sweeping chamber pop majesty in unforeseen ways. She also throws some sunset-stained pedal steel into the mix, preening country music for its loneliest bits on “Andromeda” and “Something to Believe.” The music on Titanic Rising is striking in its intimacy, but it sounds enormous, like she’s playing from the bottom of the ocean (fittingly, the album cover features a bedroom submerged in water). The centerpiece here is “Movies,” a breathtakingly spacious ballad that fills every empty space in its architecture with light, spotlighting Mering’s immaculate voice and heart-stopping harmonies. Her last album, 2016’s excellent Front Row Seat to Earth felt rooted in scorched desert, but on Titanic Rising, Weyes Blood has crafted a subaquatic masterpiece that effortlessly evokes the spectacle and tragedy of its titular shipwreck.

21. Father of the Bride Vampire Weekend

Father of the Bride is the New York band’s first studio album since their opus, 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City, and the first to follow the departure of multi-instrumentalist and producer Rostam Batmanglij. Bearing the weight of Vampire Weekend’s ever-growing critical legacy, their forth studio album has been breathlessly anticipated for years, and it mostly avoids reckoning with expectation by dodging it altogether. Bride is a restless double-album that is at times self-deprecating (the winking “Unbearably White”), apocalyptic (“How Long?”) and monstrously inspired (the towering, Paul Simon-esque “This Life”). Many of the tracks here feel like products of an outrageous jam session, unusually relaxed and freeform in composition. Although Rostam is present as a songwriter, the production here is handled by frontman Ezra Koenig and super-producer Ariel Rechtshaid, a folksier departure from the stadium-sized sonics of Modern Vampires. Danielle Haim and Steve Lacy are notable collaborators here, and Father of the Bride ends up being the funnest and wildest release of Vampire Weekend’s career, even its moments of existential dread and soul-wrecking sadness.

20. So Much Fun Young Thug

His first official studio album, So Much Fun is Young Thug’s victory lap. Not that he shows any signs of slowing down - this is some of the most engaging and mind-warping music he’s ever made - Fun just happens to be the last release in a decade’s worth of incredible music. The confidence and weirdo grandeur of modern classics like Barter 6 and JEFFERY call into question what exactly makes this Thugger’s only album, especially since the best of his mixtape releases are unquestionably album-quality. However, I suppose that if any particular entry in the artist’s catalogue is fit for that distinction, it’s this one; Fun is Young Thug’s most cohesive effort yet, all thriller and no filler. The highest points here include the unreasonably gorgeous Lil Uzi Vert duet, “What’s the Move,” and the album’s biggest hit, the superb and regal Gunna collab “Hot,” but there’s honestly no track here that you should go without hearing. Ten years in, Thug’s singular and inventive sound has already spawned a sea of disciples and knock-offs, and So Much Fun is the perfect cap-off for a truly game-changing run.

19. Jimmy Lee Raphael Saadiq

Raphael Saadiq has long been one of music’s most valuable and under-regarded songwriters. He’s consistently pushed the boundaries of modern soul, from his early achievements with Tony! Toni! Toné! to his essential contributions on Solange’s A Seat at the Table, even if he’s never quite secured his deserved rank as a household name. Jimmy Lee is his most courageous work yet, a haunting and thematically dense eulogy for a brother of the same name that contracted HIV and died of a heroin overdose. It deftly traces the lines between mass incarceration and drug abuse in the black community, talking alternately to the devil and god in-between breaths. It’s a heavy but immeasurably rewarding listen, and Saadiq has never sounded more in charge of his craft - peaks such as “This World is Drunk” and “My Walk” are gorgeously composed, produced, and performed, a testament to this man’s sweeping legacy and never-ending ambition.

18. Nothing Great About Britain Slowthai

Slowthai’s debut landed at the perfect time - Britain is in the middle of a spectacularly muddled Brexit disaster, Boris Johnson is the prime minister, and the social climate is understandably tense. The brilliantly titled Nothing Great About Britain follows in the storied tradition of anti-Royal punk kiss-offs, and Slowthai is a witty and capable messenger. The Northampton MC is the spitfire of grime’s most recent wave, and his debut album is a furious, churning account of modern life in the UK. It’s an eclectic affair, as indebted to grime forefathers like Dizzee Rascal as it is to the trunk-rattle of American trap. It’s also tremendously introspective (the simmering “Peace of Mind”) and lots of fun (the anthemic Skepta collaboration “Inglorious”), a heaping victory for UK hip hop and a definitive document of the Brexit-era resistance.

17. Remind Me Tomorrow Sharon Van Etten

On Remind Me Tomorrow’s cold open, the flattening “I Told You Everything,” singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten is in the midst of total, unguarded intimacy - “sitting at the bar, I told you everything/you said, “holy shit, you almost died.” It’s almost intrusive in its purity, a seat at the bar where she and her partner break down as one in empathy and release. The rest of Van Etten’s fifth studio effort follows suit, courageous and bare in its raw flesh. The album marks a dramatic shift in the artist’s sound, its pounding percussion and winding synths the product of a new partnership with producer John Congleton, and the eclectic pallet here adds an extra wallop. Van Etten’s writing is similarly expansive in its range, reaching new heights in the bittersweet nostalgia of “Seventeen.” During the writing of Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten was pregnant with her first child, and at 38, she surveys her growth with a well-deserved cynicism: “Now you’re a hotspot, think you’re so carefree/but you’re just seventeen, so much like me.” The album aches with experience, and Van Etten frames her journey with an awe-inspiring openness.

16. Originals Prince

The posthumous additions to Prince’s catalogue have offered peaks into his artistry that might have seemed impossible while he was alive. Famously guarded and critical of online access to his music, Prince would likely have kept the contents of Originals vaulted. It’s unfortunate, because this compilation is a seismic revelation, a testament to his strengths as a songwriter and a visionary. All of the tracks here are demo versions of songs Prince eventually sold to other artists, many of whom (Apollonia 6, The Time) branched from the “Minneapolis sound” lineage. That said, almost every one of these scrappy takes outshines its eventual, more polished incarnation, and the ones that might not - The Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” - are thrilling glimpses at the songs they could’ve been. The sky-scraping peak of Originals is “Baby, You’re a Trip,” a boundless funk ballad that sunk into obscurity in the hands of artist Jill Jones. It’s almost unfair in its beauty and power, and the fact that he let it out of his own hands is astonishing, a hint at the sheer depth of the artist’s creative well.

15. Charli Charli XCX

Read the Free Review’s take on Charli here.

14. LEGACY! LEGACY! Jamila Woods

Chicago singer-songwriter Jamila Woods has been rising like candle smoke since her scene-stealing appearance on Donnie Trumpet’s “Sunday Candy,” a Chance the Rapper collaboration that introduced the world at large to her honey-lathered croon. It’s at times sultry and often cutting, and with LEGACY! LEGACY!, Woods pushes it into the definitive. She doubles down on the revolutionary overtones of her superb debut, HEAVN, by moving the spotlight inward, finding the personal in political. “BETTY” is a moving and empowering tale of self-discovery, an arc of internal redemption in the face of systemic oppression, and the scorching “MILES” finds her perched upon on bedazzled throne of her own creation. Appropriately titled, the album grapples most explicitly with the specter of black legacy, contemplating mortality and the lasting impact of social upheaval with a steadfast curiosity. The track listing reads like a study in great black and brown visionaries (“ZORA,” “FRIDA,” “BASQUIAT”) and in the album’s soaring apex, she finds greatness in herself: “Don’t call me legend ‘til I kick the bucket.”

13. ANIMA Thom Yorke

Following last year’s Suspiria, Thom Yorke’s soundtrack for the Luca Guadagnino film of the same name, the Radiohead frontman reemerges from the void for his finest solo album to date. ANIMA is an expectedly harrowing listen - in 2016, his ex-wife Rachel Owen succumbed to cancer - and the most outwardly apocalyptic fever dream he’s offered since his band’s 2000 epoch, Kid A. It grinds and shuffles and twitches, demons seeping through the cracks of its clattering drum programming. Synths burble and pop like fluorescent magma, and Yorke stares, dead-eyed, into the darkness. His lyrics are seething and hopeless here, a suffocating sheet of paranoia and panic, making highlights such as “Dawn Chorus” and “Not the News” some of the best work Yorke has ever done. His previous solo albums (2006’s The Eraser and 2014’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes) have hinted at ANIMA’s horrifying grandeur, but they seem like sketches in the retrospect - this is Thom Yorke in prime form, the sound of one of music’s strangest geniuses finding his own jagged groove.

12. Ghosteen Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

Nick Cave’s previous album, 2016’s tragic Skeleton Tree, dealt with the immediate emotional aftermath of his son’s accidental death. It was a ten-ton listen, the sound of Cave working through an impossible grief in real time. This year’s Ghosteen is a sprawling account of what happens next, the sound of the day after. It can be a similarly taxing listen, but Cave balances the heavy biblical allusions used to similar effect on Skeleton Tree with a near-magical catharsis. Opener “Spinning Song” soundtracks the exact moment when acceptance replaces disbelief, as Cave distills his demons into a revelatory mantra: “peace will come, peace will come, and peace will come in time.” Ghosteen brims with sorrow, for sure, but also gestures with bravery towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

11. Jaime Brittany Howard

The first solo statement from Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard is one of the year’s most assured and deepest-reaching efforts. Named after a sister that died in her teenage years, Jaime draws on themes of race, religion, family, and queer love, all with a clarity of mind and heart that are hard to achieve. “He Loves Me” radiates confidence in God’s love, even in the consideration of the sinful ways in which we get by, and “Georgia” finds its sweet spot somewhere between civil rights anthem and unrequited love song. The album is also a thrilling listen sonically, alternately rafter-shaking and sweetly meditative, recalling in its fullness the meticulous funk sculpturing of D’Angelo’s Black Messiah. The players here include jazz keyboardist-to-the-stars Robert Glasper and Nate Smith of the Dave Holland Quintet, but the listener’s attention is never pulled too far from Brittany Howard’s greatest asset: her earth-shaking, spirit-summoning, heartrending howl of a voice. It’s what rockets Jaime into the stratosphere, wrapping tales equally painful and sincere in a muscled confidence.

10. i,i Bon Iver

Here’s a leadoff: i,i might be Bon Iver’s least consequential album. It’s doesn’t hold the genre-molding power of For Emma, Forever Ago, and it’s not as stunningly cohesive as Bon Iver or as gorgeously corrosive as 22, A Million. It lags in spots and, rather unusually, it probably won’t reconstruct your concept of what a Bon Iver album should sound like. i,i is the first of the band’s albums that sounds like they’ve settled into a style, and as a result, it’s the kind you have to live with to fully appreciate. But once you do, dear god, is it incredible. The mountainous “iMi” sets the scene as a collage of Bon Iver’s most grandiose and ambitious tendencies, layering acid-warped vocal samples over thundering drum programming and surging synth work, all awash in Justin Vernon’s gorgeous walls of harmony. The glossy and anthemic “Hey Ma” is an honest-to-god pop song, and “U (Man Like),” brilliantly pairs Moses Sumney and Bruce Hornsby (the latter of whom released an excellent Vernon-assisted project this year) - somehow, all of it comes out sounding exactly like Bon Iver. Once you move past the initial shock of its lived-in and familiar soundscape, i,i is the kind of album you get lost in; though it’s probably not the band’s most important record, it’s certainly their truest-to-form, and that’s a distinction worth celebrating.

9. Tunes 2011-2019 Burial

Right before the year-end list deadline, Hyperdub dropped this gargantuan compilation of Burial’s output from the last nine years. It’s an essential listen, even if you’ve heard all of the material before now. At an intimidating two-and-a-half hours, it’s a comprehensive reframing of the British recluse’s post-Untrue catalogue that puts his frustratingly sporadic releases into perspective. In the gaping twelve-year absence of a third studio album, it might be tempting to write off Burial’s decade-plus career as top heavy, but that would be a vital error. Tunes 2011-2019 is arranged in a loose reverse chronology, and the inspired sequencing sheds light on the immense artistic growth he’s endured since Untrue. The front end of Tunes is largely beatless, a sharp turn for a producer whose early works reimagined the rackety shuffle of 2-step and UK garage. The rest, however, showcases just how eclectic his percussion driven work has become - “Rival Dealer,” from the definitive EP release of the same name, sits weightlessly on the breakbeat from the Soul Searchers’ “Ashley’s Roachclip,” and career highlight “Ashtray wasp” remains stunning in its stretching of UK electronic music’s rhythmic boundaries. But the real kicker has always been Burial’s mastery of atmosphere - the omnipresent crackle, the enormous, new-age-gone-bad synth pads, and the unreasonably affective vocal chops. This is the producer’s legacy, and Tunes couldn’t display it any better.

8. IGOR Tyler, the Creator

One of the most fascinating and thorough metamorphoses of the decade has been that of Tyler, the Creator. Emerging first as the virtuosic ringleader of L.A. collective Odd Future, the musician has spent the past few years peeling back the layers of shock value that was initially his calling card. The artist left underneath has made some of the most sensitive, soulful music of the century, and IGOR, a funk odyssey that draws heavily on themes of queer longing, registers as his most honest and exciting work yet. Whereas 2017’s Flower Boy felt like an HD rendering of an existing vision, IGOR feels like a complete reinvention. Tyler sings much more than he raps here, a stylistic transition he’s been hinting at for several years, and his production work has never been so colorful and nuanced. Early highlight “EARFQUAKE” sounds like what might happen if George Clinton was artificially preserved and continued to make Parliament records into the year 3000, and closer “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?” draws upon Tyler’s noted Stevie Wonder influence in epic and innovative ways. By the end of the record, Tyler has spread his wings, a remarkable achievement for an artist that, ten years ago, might have insisted he didn’t have them at all.

7. HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM Beyoncé

Beyoncé’s last live album was released in support of 2008’s I AM… SASHA FIERCE, the megastar’s least cohesive, most stylistically confused body of work. The live album itself is a generally outdated concept, and it made much less sense toward the end of the previous decade, before streaming services took over the music industry and album sales became an afterthought. As a result, 2010’s live take on I AM… has sunk into the recesses of a legacy that has expanded to unfathomable dimensions over the past ten years. As the crown jewel of this truly legendary stretch, HOMECOMING is an indisputable victory - the album is a fabulously mastered recording of Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella performance, and it feels like a live recording in the purest and most rewarding sense, pulsing with adrenaline. It also feels tailored to a music culture that has, over the past several years, reinvigorated the significance of on-stage performance. Beyoncé makes the most of this platform, retracing the expanses of her career with grace and verve and transforming the Coachella stage into an HBCU football field. HOMECOMING is a tremendous salute to black excellence from an artist who consistently celebrates its possibilities.

6. Purple Mountains Purple Mountains

After the 2009 dissolution of David Berman’s seminal band Silver Jews, the artist retired from the public eye, ostensibly leaving behind a legacy of brilliant and searingly observational indie rock. A decade into the future, Berman reemerged with this year’s Purple Mountains, an endearingly crafted behemoth of an album that is both sidesplittingly funny and overwhelmingly sad, often at the same time. Less than a month later, he was gone again - having dealt with severe depression his entire life, David Berman hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. His death marks an intense blow for indie rock and humanity at large, with Purple Mountains as primary evidence. This is some of the singer-songwriter’s finest work, inscribed carefully with the kind of thoughts that are usually scribbled without the intention of recitation. In the wake of Berman’s death, it’s temping to reframe the project as a last will and testament of sorts, akin to David Bowie’s Blackstar, but it’s not easy to tell and it might not matter - the artist had been writing music this beautiful and despairing his entire life, and Purple Mountains is a fitting bookend, whether it was intended as so or not.

5. U.F.O.F. / Two Hands Big Thief

Adrianne Lenker and her band Big Thief have quickly emerged as indie folk’s great new hope, musically dexterous and tremendously emotive. The two albums they released this year, U.F.O.F. and Two Hands, are like different sides of the same coin; U.F.O.F. is twisting and uneasily serene, like the product of some brilliant dark magic, and Two Hands heaves with life, sturdy and organic. Each album, however, makes its case as one of the year’s most compelling pieces of work, showcasing Lenker’s otherworldly voice and blistered songwriting, as well as the band’s magnetic chemistry. Two of the songs on U.F.O.F. (“terminal paradise” and “from”) appeared in solo form on one of last year’s most bewitching releases, Lenker’s acoustic abysskiss, but they’re ten times as powerful here, fleshed out in intricate and marvelous detail. Big Thief have been on a tear since 2017’s Capacity, but their dual success here puts them in a league all their own.

4. All Mirrors Angel Olsen

Each successive release in Angel Olsen’s remarkably sturdy catalogue has expanded the singer-songwriter’s sound in unprecedented and spell-binding ways. 2016’s MY WOMAN, for example, flipped the torch-lit indie rock of her breakthrough Burn Your Fire For No Witness into a set of wide-lens blues epics. It’s predictable, then, that Olsen’s fourth studio effort does its predecessor one better - if MY WOMAN constructed a world all its own, All Mirrors threatens to swallow it whole. Opener “Lark” is positively terrifying in its immensity, a scream into the void of hurt and heartache. The title track is a monstrous synth-pop ballad that gives recklessly into a steamrolling dread. “New Love Cassette” is the closest Olsen has ever hewed to pop, and it suggests that if she wanted to, she could obliterate mainstream radio too. As a whole, All Mirrors is sweeping and universe-sized, a dare from Olsen to guess where she’s going next.

3. When I Get Home Solange

2016’s A Seat at the Table stands as a benchmark of 21st century music, a cinematic and all-encompassing masterpiece that pushed an ever-rising Solange to the forefront of black music and culture. In the three years since that album’s explosive arrival, Donald Trump has become the most powerful man in America, tensions constantly threaten a fever pitch, and the world has breathlessly awaited new Solange. While ASATT’s follow-up, the magnificent When I Get Home, revolves around similar themes of self-empowerment and black pride, the album’s overarching focus is liberation through radical sensuality. With a vast team of producers that includes New York jazz outfit Standing on the Corner, Metro Boomin and Pharrell, Solange crafts a pillowy songscape that celebrates blackness from a strikingly settled-in perspective. Highlights such as “My Skin My Logo,” a lighthearted but empowering duet with Gucci Mane, and “Almeda,” which features an incredible turn from Playboi Carti, are absolutely flooring in their flowing confidence and scope. Home is not quite the era-defining statement that ASATT has proven itself to be, but that might be the point - here we see Solange basking in her mastery, defiant to expectation and more comfortable in her skin than ever before.

2.MAGDALENE FKA twigs

Considering that FKA twigs has always worn her technicolor heart on her sleeve, it seems almost redundant calling MAGDALENE her most personal work yet. Even so, it’s undeniable; twigs’ second studio album practically heaves with emotion, tangled and gnarly and almost unbearably gorgeous. She works with an almost entirely new cast of collaborators here (the likes of which include Nicolas Jaar, Oneohtrix Point Never, Skrillex, Jack Antonoff, and Kenny Beats) and there’s certainly a big budget feel to the album. But what makes it so stunning is its moments of quiet - “home to you,” in particular, might be her finest moment yet, an endlessly building and completely heartbreaking opus of a song that turns silence into an open wound. MAGDALENE is largely an album about the unique pains of being vulnerable in the public eye, and it works through the wreckage in real time, marvelously brave and crushing in its honesty.

1. Norman Fucking Rockwell! Lana Del Rey

The most remarkable thing about Lana Del Rey’s expectation-shattering Norman Fucking Rockwell! is its harrowing synthesis of everything that has made the songstress an alluring force from the start. Even her introduction to the world-at-large, a puzzling performance of “Video Games” on Saturday Night Live, felt like a train-wreck you couldn’t peel your eyes from. As she quite literally spiraled her way through a tale of perfect love in a broken age, contradictions flew fast and furious - it was willfully nostalgic but unquestionably rooted in the present, reckless but marvelously poised. Over the following seven years, Del Rey has matured immeasurably as a singer, a songwriter, and a performer, but the draw is exactly the same: absolutely no one else is writing odes to a failing society as stark, damning, or timeless. Rockwell is unquestionably Lana’s most personal work to date, shedding almost entirely the “gangster Nancy Sinatra” role that dominated her earlier albums. Though her lyrics have always suggested a profound appreciation for the complexities of America and its icons, she emerges here as a genuine treasure of the heartland, surveying our culture with the deftness of the writers she admires. Though Rockwell is full of twisting and affecting epics, album’s absolute peak is “The Greatest,” which eulogizes a crippled country and a dying earth with gripping immediacy: “the culture is lit and I had a ball/I guess that I’m burned out after all.”