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fieldsofplay · 1 year

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Michael Gorwitz’ Top Albums of 2022

25. Daphni – Cherry

Hello and welcome to 2022. You made it. We made it. Things kinda seem like they’re getting better, no? So what better way to kick off this annual survey than with a perfect little dance record, Daphni’s Cherry. Daphni is the pure dance alter-ego of Dan Snaith, better known as Caribou (and once upon a time, Manitoba). So if you ever wished the song craft would stop getting in the way of albums like Our Love or Swim, then Cherry is the record for you. Side projects often let artists flex muscles that don’t get enough workout in their main gigs, and thus often provide simple pleasures in unadorned forms, and Cherry is no exception. No one is reinventing the wheel here, but more importantly, nor is anyone trying to do so. The first track “Arrow” tells it all, a steady, brisk beat, a fun vocal loop, and that’s it, but really, what more do you need to get your booty shaking? More importantly, that simple purple and pink cover is just too beautiful to behold, so it had to go first to set a lovely hue for all the good music to follow.

24. Vince Staples – Ramona Park Broke My Heart

Vince Staples is approaching a similar place to Kevin Morby (see below) where his supreme consistency is starting to almost work against him. Ramona Park Broke My Heart is Staples’ fifth album, and its just as perfect as the proceeding four, which does create a bit of indistinguishability with each successive release. Unlike Morby however, Staples’ string of releases do chart more a stylistically-varied path, even if it’s a bit circular. Summertime ’06 was the stark Clams Casino produced statement of purpose, Big Fish Theory was a fascinating detour into club beats, FM! was experiment in minimalism. Last year’s self titled was the first without a formalistic construct, and thus felt closest to Summertime ’06, and this year’s Ramona Park is more of the same. However, that same remains some of the best hip hop around. The one-two of “Papercuts” into “Lemonade” are some of Staples’ best songs. If this is what it sounds like to be in a rut, why not revel in a place of such excellent output.

23. Toro y Moi – MAHAL

MAHAL is emblematic of a fun phenomenon, namely, where you pick up a release from artist you once cared about, but not a ton and haven’t checked in in a minute, and you’re pleasantly surprised that they’ve still got it. Toro y Moi was simultaneously kind of a chillwave also ran, and also someone who seemed like would be around after the hype-wave crested. MAHAL is definitely not chillwave, but it’s definitely good. It has a 70s skronk to it, and a summer bounce, like T. Rex it’s equally good for a sunny road trip and to chill out to.

22. King Gizzard – Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava

Jam bands (whom I do not like) often try to cloak their musical meanderings in the intentionality of jazz, as if to say “we’re not bullshitting here, we’re engaged in serious praxis,” when in reality, they’re just hitting the bong, then the record button, and just going with whatever wanders out of their instruments. This year’s King Gizzard album (I’m not typing that whole title out, banner year for long-ass album names, shouts Sufjan!) is dangerously close to being a jam-band record, but I’ll point to one key stylistic divergence. Unlike a jam band pretending its playing a version of jazz, King Gizzard here are working in funk, with all the looseness, energy, and yes, jams, that that genre entails. For generations, funk has given artists room to spread out, find a groove, and lock in, taking the listener along for the funky ride. Am I splitting hairs? Perhaps. But if you swapped out of the vocals on “Ice V” I think you’d be hard pressed to tell it wasn’t a deep cut from Sly’s Family Stone.

21. The Reds, Pinks and Purples – Summer at Land’s End

When I write these lists I normally try and serve two masters: the first is the larger story of music in a given year, the second are my own idiosyncratic predilections. Summer at Land’s End is definitely me looking in the mirror and doing finger guns, and hey, its my list, so why not? One of my favorite forgotten records of the last 20 years is Wild Nothing’s Gemini, and while Summer at Land’s End lacks that record’s uptempo jangle, it traffics in the same gauzy reverb guitars and sad structures. As pop music and R&B continue to steamroll the “discourse,” I continue to light a candle for these little off kilter guitar albums.

20. Sorry – Anywhere But Here

Sorry got a lot of hype two years ago for their debut 925. Honestly, it never did much for me, it just kinda sounded like a band that liked the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as much as I did (not a knock, well it’s kind of a knock, but liking the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is cool). Normally, that means I wouldn’t have paid much heed to their follow up, but when I heard it was breakup album, I was interested enough to give the band another go (I don’t know what it says about me that I thoroughly love a good breakup album, but here we are). Less interested in being “experimental” for its own sake, and more focused on channeling those artsy influences into rock solid songwriting, Anywhere But Here takes Sorry’s conflicting interests in pop and trip hop and channels them into a rain soaked album (there’s literally a song called “Screaming in the Rain”) that surmounts the sum of its parts rather than always breaking apart into arch referents. Take “Baltimore” for example, a tiny piano intro is passed along to bass and guitar, with the vocals hopping along in lock step with the bass in classic post punk fashion. On Anywhere But Here, Sorry live up to the initial hype.

19. Kevin Morby – This is a Photograph

As briefly discussed above with Vince Staples, Kevin Morby is fully a victim of his own consistency at this point. This is a Photograph is arguably the best album he’s ever released, and if that’s the case, why is it down here at 19? The reason is by putting out great albums of similar sounding (or, at least, structured) music every single year, it becomes impossible for any one release to break through not only the crowd of music in a given year, but even amongst his own catalogue. If this was Morby’s third release instead of his eighth (!) it might top this list, it’s that good. Gelling all the elements that have come to define prior Morby releases, This is a Photograph stands as his best statement of freewheeling americana. “Stop Before I Cry” actually moves me to tears, it’s that beautiful.

18. Wild Pink – ILYSM

Wild Pink’s ILYSM is an interesting pair with Morby’s This is a Photograph. Billed months before it came out as the band’s Yankee Hotel, that advanced praise actually proved to be a bit of a disservice, setting the expectation bar at unreachable heights. However, unlike Morby’s eternal consistency, ILYSM actually does take some big swings at stylistic experimentation, which of course, are what generated those Yankee Hotel comps in the first place. Opener “Cahooting the Multiverse” sets the stage perfectly, opening portals to different universal variants of this band’s maudlin country pop. The music cuts out for a few off-kilter beats, backup singers join in, and the music warbles through processors. “Cahooting” presents several different versions of a Wild Pink track, all withing the same song. The title cut employs a robotic chorus to chant the album’s mantra (“I LOVE YOU SO MUCH”), and the whole song comes off as the most interesting War on Drugs song in several years.

17. MJ Lenderman – Boat Songs

While Lenderman’s main act Wednesday made waves with Twin Plagues, it was their cover album Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘Em Up that caught my ear, and on his solo album Boat Songs he continues the drift into more countrified sounds evinced on Mowing the Leaves. While his lyrics—fixated as they are on ‘90s sports icons—have garnered a lot of attention, I sometimes find them too cute by half. What makes Boat Songs truly great is the way Lenderman is able to make big sounds out of low fidelity. He gets a lot of comparisons to Jason Molina, and you can hear why. These are capital “G” guitar songs that share Molina’s reverence for Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr., but whereas Songs:Ohia tracks usually collapsed back into themselves, Lenderman’s tend to burst outward from the speakers, taking the listener along for a ride through his twangy tales of Dan Marino and actual Dolphins.

16. Beach House – Once Twice Melody

Beach House have no business being relevant in 2022. Perhaps it’s just because I’m old and they’re not actually relevant, but I’m still seeing lots of love for Once Twice Melody on the year end lists (though again I could just be reading the lame lists). Except for the brief period when the band employed an actual human drummer, the band has spun gold from nothing more than Victoria Legrand’s narrow vocals & lush synths, stuttering drum machines, and Alex Scally’s slide guitar. As all of the great bands of their (read: my) generation have slowly faded away into irrelevance (Deerhunter, Animal Collective) or broke up (the Walkmen) somehow Beach House remain at the same level they were at when their self titled debut first made me swoon way back in 2006. I’m not going to go so far as to say Once Twice Melody is their best album (Teen Dream still holds a special place in my broken heart), but the fact that its in the conversation is a testament to their unparalleled abilities. “Another Go Around” is not only one of the best songs of their career, but a perfect encapsulation of this record’s place in 2022.

15. The Soft Pink Truth – Is it Going to Get Any Deeper?

The Drew Daniel half of Matmos continues his excellent recent run of form with the cheekily titled Is it Going to Get Any Deeper? Whereas his last full length, the stellar Shall we Go Sinning so that Grace May Increase?, was devotional music disguised as house music, the equally questioning Is it Going to Get Any Deeper? worships at the altar of the dancefloor. While I can’t imagine actually dancing for the entire 11 minutes of opener “Deeper,” this is house music in the sense of envelopment, of losing one’s self, if not always in the sea of the dancefloor, then at least in the gently undulating currents of the throb of the music itself.

14. Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry

King Push is back. Splitting production between Pharrell (😍) and Kanye (☠️) It’s Almost Dry is fascinating as it shifts back and forth between Neptunes-style slinky bangers (“Let the Smokers Shine the Coupes”) and vintage Kanye’s trademark chipmunk soul (“Rock n Roll”). It’s Almost Dry is Pusha’s strongest release since 2013’s My Name is My Name, if not his Clipse days. From top to bottom, this album is filled with songs that live up to the strength of the production. While many knock his continued lyrical fixation on coke dealing, “Diet Coke” was probably one of the biggest songs of the year. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Beyond merely continuing a proven recipe, on It’s Almost Dry Pusha elevated his craft to its highest levels, constantly pushed there by Pharrell and Kanye’s first rate production.

13. Palm – Nicks and Grazes

These days it seems like the most interesting ideas in what used to be called good old fashioned indie rock are coming out of Philadelphia, but on seeing Palm live this year I realized the Philly band have more in common with Baltimore’s Animal Collective. It isn’t necessarily that Palm sound like Animal Collective (they don’t really), but Palm meld ecstatic exuberance with odd time signatures and vocals that are more tonal layers than sense conveyors that is spiritually, if not sonically, akin Animal Collective in their heyday. What was so cool about that Palm show was that it was readily apparent that this was a bunch of kids who grew up post Animal Collective and managed to import their spirit without aping their sound. Sometimes seeing the torch passed from generation to generation can you make you feel ancient, but other times it makes you thrilled to see the youth pick up the spirit of something you once cherished and make of it their own. So long as there are weirdos making fun music who barely seem to know how to play their instruments, there’ll be bands like Palm.

12. JID – The Forever Story

In a year where Kendrick Lamar put out a (bad) record, it was JID who to my uneducated ear put out the most technically interesting flows. While speed is impressive (see: Twista), and JID can unfurl 20 words in the time it takes zanax rappers to get out a single syllable, these aren’t speed trials devoid of rhythm or sense. While a bit overstuffed at 15 songs with an hour runtime, on The Forever Story JID continues to match top notch chops with first rate story telling. In a year in which Kendrick put his first foot wrong, give JID a chance instead.

11. Panda Bear & Sonic Boom – Reset

Speaking of Animal Collective, even though Time Skiffs was well-reviewed, I had long ago given up on them doing anything of interest, which is totally fine seeing as they put out five consecutive albums that completely rewrote the possibilities of “folk” music. (2003’s Here Comes the Indian through 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion). It’s arguable that the most important album of that run wasn’t even put out by Animal Collective proper, but was Panda Bear’s seismic Person Pitch (2007). While he continued to release great solo albums, often produced by Sonic Boom, like his main act, Noah Lennox seemed to be gradually receding from the center of cultural relevance. While Reset doesn’t rewrite the fabric of pop music like his previous towering achievements, it does make you remember why we all fell in love with Panda Bear in the first place. Pared down to pop perfection, songs like “Getting’ to the Point” and “Edge of the Edge” remind you that when Panda Bear gets his Brian Wilson on, there is almost no one who can write a better pop song.

10. They are Gutting a Body of Water – S

Despite possessing the worst band name of 2022, They are Gutting a Body of Water put one of the year’s most interesting albums. If you liked last year’s release from Spirit of the Beehive (a very narrow group of people) then S is precisely for you. Without sounding much like them, They are Gutting a Body of Water remind me a lot of the Unicorns, but maybe that’s just because their lead singer also put out a hip-hop album this year. (Th’ Corn Gangg Anyone??? [This is a joke just for Brad Romsa if he is reading this]). On S, They are Gutting a Body of Water (I can’t believe I have to keep typing that out, but I hate acronyms so here we are) are constantly shifting shapes, but most of the songs are sonically tied together by shimmering processed guitars that sound like they came from Broken Social Scene’s early records. The songs that aren’t outright instrumentals often featured chipmunked vocals, or shoegazy coos that barely constitute “vocals” proper. If you’re looking for 2022’s most sonically adventurous rock record, look no further than S.

9. Axel Boman – Luz

Along with Kornel Kovacs (whom I love) and Petter Nordkvist (not familiar), Boman founded the influential Swedish label Studio Barnhus. With Luz, Boman put out my favorite electronic album of the year. Like the aforementioned Kovacs, and DJ Koze, Boman traffics in house music shot through with psychedelia. The normally steady rhythms of house tend to bend and shift across the course of his tracks, as the music takes you more on a voyage of the mind rather than getting your hips moving. Take, for example, penultimate track “Grape.” What starts out as a bouncy Herbert homage, gradually picks up cascading vocals, and then stuttering jungle, until finally dissolving as the sea of rhythms it had gradually built up begin to recede like the tide. Each track on Luz is a journey, so why not see where it takes you.

8. Anteloper - Pink Dolphins

2022 not only was a big year for jazz, it was a big year for Jeff Parker (see below). On Pink Dolphins, the sadly dearly departed trumpeter Jaimie Branch and percussionist / electronics guy Jason Nazary (who combined constitute Anteloper) paired with Parker in the role of producer, to stunning effect. If not for They are Gutting a Body of Water, Pink Dolphins would probably be the strangest record I’ve heard this year. The review I read compared the album to Live-Evil era Miles Davis, and that was basically all I needed to know. Pink Dolphins is like a new age version of that Miles, and I’ve also read the album’s sound described as aquadelica (aquatic psychedelica). The pairing of Anteloper and Jeff Parker is a match made in heaven, as he helps the duo push their sound out to the moon, where Branch’s trumpet functions more like a stab of noise rather than a source of melody. On “Earthlings” the driving force of the song is Nazary’s scattershot drum beat paired with a haunting bass line, as a series of electronic effects and Branch’s understated but effective vocals swirl around like a whirlpool. Her trumpet doesn’t cut through the swirl of noise until about 4 and ½ minutes into the song. It is terrible to comprehend that Pink Dolphins is the last thing we will ever get from Branch, but at least it’s a hell of a way to go out.

7. Beyonce – Renaissance

We can keep this one short. You don’t need me to tell you anything about Beyonce. All I need to say is someone derisively said of lead single “Break My Soul” that “it sounds like C+C Music Factory.” My only complaint with Renaissance is that I wish it sounded more like C+C Music Factory.

6. Yard Act –

The Overloard

Yard Act are the most british band on this list, by a mile. There is just some sort of bratty nonchalance that only the Britsh can pull off, and The Overloard is soaked in it. While most post punk—especially the vein currently back in vogue—is defined by dark brooding, Yard Act practice a different type of post punk always very close to my heart, the minimalist, strutting, arty variety perfected by The Fall, Wire, and Buzzcocks several decades ago. So long as there is someone somewhere sipping a coffee, smoking a cigarette, reading a book (Kafka?) over the top of wayfarers perched archly at the end of their nose, but more importantly, always aware of the ludicrousness of such a pose, there will be bands like Yard Act. According to internet-based statistics, “Dead Horse” was my most played song of the year, and there is no surprise there. It’s everything I love in a song and nothing else.

5. Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

For a folk-rock outfit that doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, Big Thief’s permanent position towards the top of this and most other lists year after year is fairly outstanding. It’s not that their sound has changed from Masterpiece to Capacity to U.F.O.F./Two Hands to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, but their sound has somehow gotten better with each successive release. A sprawling double album in the truest sense of the word, Dragon New Warm Mountain is where it all should have gone wrong. Their familiarity should have grown a little tiresome as they drowned in the sea of their self indulgence. Instead, the name of their first album notwithstanding, Dragon New Warm Mountain stands as their clear masterpiece. Like the Beatles on the White Album (which has become my favorite Beatles’ record as I’ve aged), here the double album format allows Big Thief to focus a little less on perfecting their folk gems and allows them to spread their wings a bit. Like the Beatles, rather than resulting in a slip-shod series of half baked results, the looseness of the double album allows their genius to shine through all the brighter. Top to bottom, start to finish, this thing is absolutely stuffed with perfect little songs. For my money (which is none, because this is free) of all their small gems, “Certainty” is the best they’ve ever penned.

4. Destroyer - Labryinthitis

Well Dan Bejar, you’ve done it again. I have no idea what number Destroyer release this is (I just checked, it’s the project’s 13th!) but with Labryinthitis Bejar continues his recent run of excellent form. Destroyer never really puts out bad records, but his sea of releases has crests and troughs just like any body of water controlled by the moon. To my ear, those peaks occur every three or four albums or so (Streethawk, Rubies, Kaputt), and while I really enjoyed Have we Met, I think Labryinthitis is his best release since Kaputt. Mixing the electronic textures of Ken and Have we Met with Kaputt and Poison Season’s chill, Labryinthitis is a culmination of all of Bejar’s recent preoccupations (see “June.”) If “The Last Song” were not only the cap to this excellent album, but to an outstanding career, it would be a fitting testament. And as someone who once thought “I used to live in New York” constituted a personality, there is no biting line than “you wake up / you stand up / you move to LA / you’re just another person that moves to LA.”

3. Cola – Deep in View

There’s a pretty easy test for whether or not you’ll love Cola as much as I do: does the phrase “the slow Strokes” appeal to you? If so, this is your band. Formed out of the ashes of the occasionally great Ought, Cola take Ought’s nervous, angular guitar rock, give it a nice glass of white wine on a balmy day, and unwind that pent up energy into the best chilled out strummers this side of Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond Jr. At one point I declared Deep in View to be the “album of the summer,” and now with a little perspective I stand by my own dashed off opinion. This is music for driving around with the windows down and nowhere in particular to go.

2. Jeff Parker – Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy / Forfolks

If Alex G had the best album of the year (spoiler alert!), no one had a better year than Jeff Parker. In addition to producing Anteloper’s Pink Dolphins as discussed above, he also put out two outstanding, and completely different, albums under his own name. While I enjoyed Suite for Max Brown, Forfolks is the record that really got me into Jeff Parker (not counting all his excellent records with Tortoise of course). Comprised almost entirely of looped acoustic guitars, it somehow sounds the most like Django Reinhardt of anything put out since the days of that unequaled gypsy. While Forfolks is excellent, and would have made this list somewhere in here, Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is Parker’s best achievement in a year filled with his excellent music. Comprised of recordings from a two year period (presumably on Monday nights) at the LA cocktail bar (to which I have never been, but now hold in almost religious esteem based on my time listening to this record), Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is one of the most hypnotic jazz albums I’ve ever heard. Fitting in perfectly with Nala Sinephro’s excellent album from last year, this is ambient jazz of an entirely different variety. The product of a quartet—Jay Bellerose on drums, Anna Butterss on bass, Josh Johnson on saxophone, and Parker of course on guitar—locked in to one another with laser-like focus, on these four recordings you can hear the air in the bar hum with the energy of their playing, and also the tinkling of the bar patrons’ glasses from time to time, which gives the album a lived in energy. These songs are somehow simultaneously taught and languid, electric and unplugged, looping and driving. Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is the product of four players at the absolute heights of their powers, and probably the best “modern” (i.e. post 70s Miles) jazz record I’ve ever heard.

1. Alex G – God Save the Animals

Without having gone back through my records, I’m not sure a single artist has ever topped these lists more than once, but with God Save the Animals, Alex G has once again proven himself to be the best around (and lets be fair, if I was publishing these lists in the mid Aughts, I would have put every Sunset Rubdown release at number one). It isn’t that God Save the Animals is somehow different from, or better than, House of Sugar, but instead it feels like a continuation of the slight turn Alex G took on that exceptional record. While all his albums have trafficked in the same basic building blocks (pitch shifted vocals, acoustic guitars, little pieces of Elliott Smith without ever really sounding like Elliott Smith) on House of Sugar things got just a little bit weirder, and the results were absolutely stunning. With God Save the Animals, I continue to be stunned. While these songs seem fixated on God / the divine, Alex G never loses his connection to the here and now. Before the album even came out my friend John sent me a live version of “Miracles” and told me it brings him to tears, which is perfectly understandable. What is strange is that another song on the same album, “After All,” has the same effect on me. To my ear, it’s not only the most beautiful song on the record, but one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. In an album filled with God, blessings, and miracles, the truly divine thing is we continue to get more albums like this from Alex G.

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sinceileftyoublog · 1 year

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32 (Technically 36) Albums We Loved That Happened To Come Out in 2022

Cake image courtesy of Oren Ambarchi’s Shebang album art

As more music is being released than ever, it can be hard to pick out trends or even commonalities among our favorites. A post-pandemic world that saw a more full-fledged return to live music and in-person collaboration certainly influenced the records released last year, but from our eyes and ears, it was the artists that ignored physical boundaries, not taking for granted their ability to create, that put out the albums that moved us most. From “solo” records that were truly synergic to songs that work towards toppling the powers that be, innovative producers to stalwarts of indie rock, here are 32 (technically 36) albums that came out last year that we truly loved.

700 Bliss - Nothing To Declare (Hyperdub) / Moor Mother - Jazz Codes (Anti-)

Prolific poet and musician Camae Ayewa, who records as Moor Mother, released two more albums in 2022 that explored genres new and old. On Nothing To Declare, the debut LP from 700 Bliss, her project with DJ Haram, the two make a formidable team. Haram combines clattering beats with Moor Mother’s forceful delivery and incomparable flow, as the duo traverse techno, noise, and sound collage worlds. You’ve never heard Moor Mother in front of instrumentals like this, spitting words that are equal parts deftly serious and humorous. She pays tribute to choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham on “Anthology”, declaring that Dunham “danced America on stage” over DJ Haram’s hard techno beat, a melding of tenets of Black music. On “Candace Parker”, which features breakbeats from Palestinian producer Muqata’a, Moor Mother laments, “They rape our mothers while y’all just record.” There’s an urgency to Nothing to Declare, manifested in Special Interest’s Alli Logout screaming, “I’m a motherfucking agitator!” on “Capitol” and Moor Mother’s cinematic lines about guerilla warfare against billionaires and imperialist overloads on the trap-inflected “Discipline”. Yet, even 700 Bliss know that they can be tongue-in-cheek, hilariously on interlude “Easyjet”, a facetious conversation featuring two people making fun of Moor Mother’s vocal tendencies and DJ Haram’s penchant for percussive chaos. It’s a welcome break on an album whose main question appears in the final track: “How much more can we take?”

Jazz Codes is Moor Mother’s second solo album for Anti-, a companion piece to last year’s great Black Encyclopedia of the Air. Like Nothing to Declare, it’s chock full of collaborators, but this time, Moor Mother plays the role of ethnomusicologist, juxtaposing rap, singing, and scholarly spoken word interludes to explore the history of jazz and its descendants. “Dance through the trials of my father,” Moor Mother raps on opener “UMZANSI”, where Mary Lattimore’s harp trickles below horns and footwork-esque drums. Interpolating free jazz and quiet storm R&B and referencing boom bap and juke, Jazz Codes, like the genre it’s named after, reveals new truths after every listen. Moor Mother’s “MEDITATION RAG” is somewhat of a mission statement, her wish to embed herself in “Sun Ra halo, CHAI Congo, Mississippi to East Texas,” in efforts to reclaim the Black music referenced on both this album and Nothing to Declare. Fatboi Sharif groans, “You took the blues away from me” on “BLUES AWAY”; the album’s thematic climax, “THOMAS STANLEY JAZZCODES OUTRO”, places the academic Stanley over an instrumental from Irreversible Entanglements. Jazz should become code for sex again, he posits, rendering something that was once abstract to be again physical and tangible. - Jordan Mainzer

Bartees Strange - Farm to Table (4AD)

Bartees Strange has had an exciting few years, and Farm to Table, the follow up to his excellent debut, only adds to the thrill of his ascent. Strange bends indie rock to fit the album’s vision, from the bright horns on “Heavy Heart” to the electronic flourishes of “Cosigns” and “Wretched” and even the mingling of home audio clips and the gentle fingerpicked guitar of “Black Gold”. Lyrically, the album wrestles with duality: of celebration and grief, home and touring, the comfort of family and the unknown of charting your own path. Strange takes what worked so well on Live Forever and digs deeper, continuing to show off his ability to world-build, which really is all you could want from an innovative artist. - Lauren Lederman

Beyoncé - Renaissance (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia)

“Renaissance, purportedly the first installment of a trilogy of albums, celebrates Black and LGBTQ+ music and the judgement-free zones they honor. Representative of Beyoncé’s state of mind during the pandemic, it exemplifies her self-love and desire to break free in a time of isolation. And of course, it’s full of braggadocio and skill with the research and credentials to back it up.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Binker & Moses - Feeding the Machine (Gearbox)

“For their new album Feeding the Machine, the saxophone and drums duo of Binker Golding and Moses Boyd brought their live partner to the studio to add tape loops and electronics to the ingredient list. The result is a major sonic shift, feeding their improvisations through machines, Luthert’s modular synthesis reordering acoustic tracks and drums in a way that’s so distorted it doesn’t even sound acoustic. From the opening moments of ‘Asynchronous Intervals', though you recognize Golding’s saxophone, echoing loops clue you into the sea change. This is different, and it’s here to stay.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Death Cab For Cutie - Asphalt Meadows (Atlantic)

It’s not that I had given up on Death Cab for Cutie. The stalwart indie rock band has been cranking out albums for years, but what was it about Asphalt Meadows that struck me more than their other recent releases? A five-minute, mostly spoken word track. “Foxglove Through the Clearcut” gives us the contemplative lyrics we come to expect from Benjamin Gibbard but packaged in a way that serves the slowly unfolding story until it reaches its guitar solo crescendo. And I realize that this is the element that’s drawn me back fully into Death Cab’s orbit. The album feels a little rougher around the edges, the guitar fuzzier in moments, not afraid to get a little sharp, which feels apt after the last few years. Asphalt Meadows captures a reflection of our recent post-lockdown history and the urgency of trying to make sense of where we go next. “Now it seems more than ever there’s no hands on lever,” Gibbard sings, a fitting statement on an album that isn’t afraid to dive into the unknown of our current moment. - LL

Florist - Florist (Double Double Whammy)

“The idea of a person who has faced heartbreak or grief retreating to solitude to create art is oft-romanticized, perhaps to a fault. Emily Sprague has certainly created masterful albums by herself, whether the ambient music released under her own name or Emily Alone, a solo album released under the Florist moniker following her mother’s death and a move out west. But in June 2019, Sprague moved back to New York and rented a house in the Hudson Valley with the band’s original lineup: Jonnie Baker, Rick Spataro, and Felix Walworth. They’d spontaneously record their instruments beside their surrounding natural woods during a hot and rainy summer, the first time they’d ever recorded this way, for this long. The result is Florist’s latest self-titled record, a reinvention of sorts, and one that perhaps shows Sprague and the music listening public that great art can come out of reflecting on troubling times with a loving community by your side, too.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Immanuel Wilkins - The 7th Hand (Blue Note)

“Wilkins’ lack of fear in not just challenging the listener but purposefully bypassing their understanding is what makes The 7th Hand a monumental album. His debut Omega was just as socially conscious, a record about the Black experience in America. But The 7th Hand breaks the rules while establishing some of its own. The first track, 'Emanation', ends in the middle of a vamp. Each track from then on out relates to the next by a triple meter, going down and then back up until the free 'Lift'; if, in Biblical terms, 6 represents man and human weakness, 7 represents divine intervention, a concept represented at first by an instrument and later by the freedom of the album’s final track.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - Recordings from the Åland Islands (International Anthem)

“Independent of its context, the album is a pleasure to listen to, one that allows you to create your own associations with the sounds. Warbling synth harmonics, birdsong, and crunchy noises like a train in the rain pervade opener ‘In Åland Air’ (which features processing from Tortoise’s John McEntire). ‘On the Other Sea’ is reminiscent of Boards of Canada’s penchant for finding eerie atonality in otherwise beatific timbres, with its wind chimes, synths, and horns. ‘Rocky Passage’ creaks along, full of noises like hearing a woodpecker on a hike, unable to spot the bird cascading up and down its tree. The synth arpeggios on ‘By Foot By Sea’ sound, of course, like the up-and-down current of waves. But I find the album even more rewarding when you do know the stories behind the songs, the way the instruments try to emulate nature. Honer’s viola leads my favorite, ‘Snåcko’, a track named for the island next to Kumlinge, as keys circle in the background, purportedly inspired by the feeling of your eyes slowly adjusting to multi-colored moss in the forest of the island.”

Read “Press Record”, out interview with Chiu and Honer.

Kevin Morby - This Is A Photograph (Dead Oceans)

“The last few years have given us a sense of perspective, perhaps even urgency when faced with the prospect of our own mortality. Yeah, it happens when you’re surrounded, whether in person or even just on the news, with so much death. For Kevin Morby, the illumination happened before the pandemic. His father collapsed at the dinner table and had to be rushed to the hospital in early 2020. Though his dad ended up okay, that night, in order to distract himself from worrying, he flipped through old family photos. He found a picture of his father, carefree and shirtless, sitting in the front yard. But it wasn’t just a photograph: It was a moment, captured, a document of hopes, moods, dreams, and fears at a point in time. Morby decided to travel to Memphis and chase some more ghosts. What resulted from that decision is This Is a Photograph, his best album yet.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Lucrecia Dalt - ¡Ay! (RVNG Intl.)

Following incredible albums like 2018′s Anticlines and 2020′s No era sólida, Berlin-based experimental musician Lucrecia Dalt released her most thematically ambitious album to date with ¡Ay!, but you wouldn’t even know it. Recalling growing up in Colombia and, generally, the music of the Latin American diaspora, ¡Ay! is also a vague sci-fi story about an alien named Preta visiting Earth and trying to figure out humanity. Cleverly, as much as Dalt sings from Preta’s perspective, she puts us in the shoes of those traversing the unknown, and we spend most of the album simply marveling at the sounds entering our ears. Beautiful and strange, opener “No tiempo” features wind instruments in lockstep with percussion and Dalt’s singing. Lina Allemano’s muted trumpet Mickey Mouses with Edith Steyer’s clarinet on “La desmesura”. “Atemporal” sports warped, circus-like drums and horns. Independent of the album’s aims and context, ¡Ay! is an undoubtedly playful expression of Dalt’s musical language. She whispers, “No obedezco a tu verdad lineal” on “El Galatzó”, winking alongside Isabel Rößler‘s double bass, flute, synthesizers, and wooden stick bongos; “I don’t obey your linear truth,” goes the line in English, like if the aliens from Arrival learned how to play bolero. - JM

Mary Halvorson - Amaryllis / Belladonna (Nonesuch)

In May, jazz composer and guitarist (and MacArthur Grant winner) Mary Halvorson released two albums that couldn’t sound more different, yet have tying threads in personnel and spirit. The first, Amaryllis, is a six-song suite for the largest ensemble for which Halvorson has ever written. Produced by Deerhoof’s John Dieterich, it features Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), as well as The Mivos String Quartet on three of the songs. “Night Shift” is slinky and sneaky, Halvorson’s arpeggiated guitar bubbling beneath a bed of bass, drum, vibes, and horns, Brennan and O’Farrill taking the song out with solos. Her and Dunston’s lines tangle with the horn section on the title track, propelled by Fujiwara’s forward-marching drums and melodies and countermelodies. The Mivos Quartet introduces “Side Effect” with string harmonics, previewing Brennan’s kickstarting vibraphones that send the band into a swaying, funky jam. Equally impressive are the songs that are groove-less and strange either partially or for their entirety, like the woozy “Anesthesia” and the squeaking, atonal “Hoodwink”.

It’s those experimental tunes that mirror Belladonna, five compositions written for Halvorson and the Mivos Quartet, representing another first for Halvorson: her first music written for a string quartet. Her parts improvised, the music is abstract and expansive, filled with contrast. On “Nodding Yellow”, the pulses of Halvorson’s electric guitar represent a stark difference with the lushness and pluckiness of the strings. She creates worlds of sound on “Moonburn” and “Flying Song”, with the expressive, upward bends of her chords. And on the stunning, 10-minute “Haunted Head”, the string parts take their turn one by one, washing over each other with varying degrees of dissonance and fluttering flourishes. A microcosm for both albums, the players are given space to take their own journey, but in tandem. - JM

Matmos - Regards/Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer / The Soft Pink Truth - Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? (Thrill Jockey)

You can always count on Drew Daniel to be adventurous. Making an album constructed from washing machine noises? Check. Asking 99 musicians to contribute to an album with anything they wanted, but it had to be at 99 bmp? You bet. Making dance covers of black metal songs? Absolutely. This year, two albums he released, one with Matmos and one his ever-burgeoning solo project The Soft Pink Truth, were again based on very specific concepts, toeing the line between asking abstract, academic questions and answering them with twisted good times. For Regards/Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer, Matmos were given access to the entire catalog of the Polish electronic artist after whom the album was named, encouraged to do whatever they wanted with it. With some trusted collaborators in hand, they bent the existing material into something entirely new, anti-ASMR anthems for the avant garde. Rubbery vocals, drippy synths, honking horns, and mousy strings allude to the work Schaeffer did for orchestras as much as his own strange worlds. Yet, Matmos don’t want us to listen for clues. “If All Things Were Turned to Smoke / Gdyby wszystko stało się dymem” takes harp and musique concrète from Schaeffer’s 1970 composition “Heraklitiana”. As electronics from Horse Lords’ Max Eilbacher and harp from Úna Monaghan layer on top of the source material, our desire to pick apart where the text ends and the composition begins leaps out the window.

The Soft Pink Truth’s Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? attempts to answer a much more obtuse question that was once posed by a woman at a club to one of Daniel’s DJ friends, and does so through the peaks and valleys of compositions and musical expressions of queer sexuality. The poolside funk of “Deeper” leads into the chirpy goth club music of “La Joie Devant La Mort”, Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart building off of a sentence in French by philosopher and erotica author Georges Bataille. The song, and the album in general, is fun because of, not in spite of, how unabashedly dramatic it is. Wye Oak and Flock of Dimes’ Jenn Wasner gets her diva moment on “Wanna Know”, cooing, “I just really wanna know / Is it going to get any deeper than this?” over an earworm house instrumental. Nate Wooley’s muted trumpet buoys “Moodswing”, which opens with a champagne cork pop and later falls into broken glass. It’s a reminder that with every celebration comes the potential for shards, a reminder to live fully in the moment, to go deeper when you can. - JM

MUNA - MUNA (Saddest Factory)

MUNA has always had an uncanny ability to spur deep emotions in the compact form of a pop song, and their self-titled third release only gives them more room to expand their sound. Part of the band’s power comes from their celebration of queer joy and love, to unabashedly be themselves. If it’s heartbreak, they embrace it with a welcoming sincerity. A crush is giddy and unapologetic. “There’s nothing wrong with what I want,” vocalist Katie Gavin asserts. Their broader sound brings the band to new heights. The glitchy vocals of “Runner’s High” make the break-up song feel jagged in the way it feels to be dancing under a strobe light. The country-tinged pop of “Kind of Girl'' adds a soaring optimism to finding yourself. They’re the band that can get Phoebe Bridgers to embrace her pop side on the sparkling, joy-filled ode that’s “Silk Chiffon”. - LL

Nilufer Yanya - PAINLESS (ATO)

“Until you fall, it’s painless,” sings Nilufer Yanya on “shameless”, and it’s a through-line you can find over and over again on PAINLESS. Yanya explores different dimensions of heartbreak on the album, and each song unfolds into its own sonic world. “L/R”’s marching drum beat pairs perfectly with the almost staccato delivery of her lyrics as she rearranges sentence structure, which then evolves into the more intimate lush vocal of “Shameless”. The album is filled with moments like these, and Yanya perfectly constructs an album where each song offers something engaging and unexpected. - LL

Nina Nastasia - Riderless Horse (Temporary Residence)

“Riderless Horse was produced by Nastasia, Steve Albini, and Greg Norman, recorded at a house in upstate New York. By the end, you realize it’s an empowering album for Nastasia; as much as she feels ‘sadness and guilt’ the process of writing and recording an acoustic album that features only her showed her how powerful she could be on her own.”

Read our preview of Nina Nastasia’s opening set for Mogwai at Metro.

NNAMDÏ - Please Have A Seat (Secretly Canadian)

The thrill of a NNAMDÏ album is that you never know what you’re going to get, but you know it’s going to work. A polymath and Chicago music scene hero, NNAMDÏ’s latest album shows an artist who’s consistently upping his game. Constantly surprising, NNAMDÏi’s skill as a musician and lyricist means you know he’ll pull off any left-field flourish: intricate math rock guitar, gentle falsetto, frenetic percussion, and even the untamed instrumentals he explored on his album KRAZY KARL all appear here. Fans know this, and Please Have a Seat is a perfect introduction to any newcomers. Pull up a seat, get to know the album, and you’ll find yourself also asking: What can’t Nnamdi do? - LL

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, & Andreas Werliin - Ghosted / Oren Ambarchi - Shebang (Drag City)

Prolific guitarist Oren Ambarchi released two records this year, one with bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin, and a solo record. Ghosted, as we wrote when interviewing the trio earlier this year, is “comprised of four numerically titled tracks that build in different ways. ‘I’ sports a Latin groove, shaky percussion, and spindly bass, Ambarchi’s guitar adopting organ-like tones. ‘II’ is lighter in timbre and more spacious and minimal, its circular rhythms increasing in volume instead of in groove. ‘III’ is the longest track on the album at over 15 minutes, a mélange of sprawling guitar drone textures. And ‘IV’ is a spritely, to-the-point slow-paced jazz tune, with melancholy swirls of guitar and deep bass.”

Shebang, Ambarchi’s solo record, features contributions from Berthling as well as Chris Abrahams, BJ Cole, Sam Dunscombe, Jim O'Rourke, Julia Reidy, and Joe Talia. Like Quixotism and Hubris, it’s a single piece divided into movements, each person recording individually as Ambarchi fit their contributions together like a puzzle, giving each player a time to shine. Though Ambarchi himself introduces the piece with gorgeous, sparkly picking, he eventually gives way to the other constant throughout, Talia’s drumming. Making space for, in order, Dunscombe’s bass clarinet, Cole’s off-kilter pedal steel, Abrahams’ inimitable piano, Berthling’s steady upright bass, Reidy’s ping-ponging 12-string guitar, and O’Rourke’s sharp modular synths, Ambarchi’s always beneath the surface. Whether contrasting Cole’s textures with rubbery synths or Abrahams’ propulsive notes with synaptic blasts, Ambarchi reminds us of the celebratory nature of collaboration, even when you’re not in the same room. - JM

Prince & The Revolution - Prince & The Revolution: Live (Remastered) (Legacy)

“Syracuse, New York, March 30th, 1985. Jim Boeheim would go on to coach many great Syracuse Orange men’s basketball teams in the Carrier Dome, but the best thing to ever appear there was on that night. Mere months after releasing Purple Rain, Prince decided to cut that album’s tour short so he could keep working on material. (If you’ve ever heard Sign O’ the Times, you know it was the right decision, not to mention Around the World in a Day and Parade.) But what a swan song he and The Revolution gave the Purple Rain tour. The remastered version of Prince & The Revolution: Live, released last month, shows the perfected live show of one of the greatest albums of all time.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Quelle Chris - DEATHFAME (Mello Music Group)

On the surface, if albums like Everything’s Fine and Guns put Detroit rapper Quelle Chris on the map, DEATHFAME seems more casually great. That’s because it’s also his most reflective, one that considers his place with in the rap game and the pros and cons of success. Throughout the record, he mourns the music industry’s exploitative tendency to capitalize on rappers’ talents after they’ve passed away. “You can keep your feast and wine / I just want my peace of mind,” he raps on the soulful and slow “Alive Ain’t Always Living”. The atonal production mirrors Chris’ unease and mixed feelings towards a career in rap as he grows older, like the music box creepiness of the title track and the metallic drums and synth loops of “Excuse My Back”. Because Chris’ delivery is laid back and his words verbose, he’s often pigeonholed with conscious rap, something he addresses on highlight “King In Black”: “Listing me next to these Yo Gabba Gabba emcess / And these old stone age-ass ‘yabba-dabba’ emcees.” (Funny enough, with his different vocal inflections, Chris reminds me of the late, great MF Doom multiple times throughout DEATHFAME, an ironic twist considering the album’s main concerns.) Still, from his words of wisdom on “So Tired You Can’t Stop Dreaming” (“If heaven’s got a ghetto, hell’s got a resort”) to his remarkable vocal about-face on depressive piano ballad “How Could You Love Something Like Me?”, Chris proves once again that with his versatility and talent, he very well shouldn’t be taken for granted while he’s still here to bless us with his rhymes. - JM

Rosalia - MOTOMAMI (Columbia)

“‘La ambición, delirio de grandez’ sings Rosalía on a cover of Justo Betancourt’s ‘Delirio de Grandeza”’ from her incredible third album MOTOMAMI. Meaning ‘Ambition, delusions of grandeur”’ in English, the phrase is appropriate for a song on an album full of similarly wild ones. To Rosalía, delusions of grandeur and ambition are one in the same, all part of a constantly transformational aesthetic. The Spanish folkloric singer-songwriter turned pop star, a woman who has been charged with appropriating Romani culture with her remixed flamenco, has actually done her research and then some. On MOTOMAMI, she fully delves into a further cultural melting pot. Jazz rubs elbows with reggaetón. Bachata, propulsive champeta, and dembow songs are triple decker sandwiched between Burial-sampling electronica, piano ballads, and deconstructed club music. When she throws in a sample of ‘Delirious’ by Vistoso Bosses and Soulja Boy at the end of ‘DELIRIO DE GRANDEZA’, you can’t imagine the original tune without it.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Sarathy Korwar - Kalak (The Leaf Label)

London-based drummer, composer, and producer Sarathy Korwar, the mind behind such inspired jazz fusion records like Day To Day and More Arriving, has released his self-described Indo-futurist manifesto, and perhaps his magnum opus. Based on a rhythm and symbol he projected on the walls during recording that was the basis for improvisation, Kalak is a percussive, circular album that puts you in a trance. With often-wordless vocals, rhythmic woodwinds, deep bass drums, and zippy synths, Korwar and his band bridge the gap between Indian classical music and Western dance. “Utopia Is A Colonial Project” is a skittering rave-up. “Back In The Day, Things Were Not Always Simpler” loops vocals from Noni-Mouse with wobbly instrumentals and shruti boxes, like an acid house drum raga. “Remember Begum Rokheya”, dedicated to the Bengali feminist author, sides Magnus Mehta’s hand-claps with saxophone lines and chanted vocals in polyrhythmic harmony, complex in structure but clear in feeling. As Kalak thumps and shuffles along, Korwar’s tablas and drumming in general constantly remind us where the music comes from. - JM

S.G. Goodman - Teeth Marks (Verve Forecast)

S.G. Goodman continues to explore the intersections of love, life, and survival in southern small towns, and does so on Teeth Marks in such vivid detail. The intimacy of her storytelling brings each track into a clear picture, the specificity working in tandem with universal feelings. It surfaces immediately in the title track through the lasting mark of a bite, sweet or sinister. One of my favorite moments of the album is around the midpoint, when the ghostly acapella of “You Were Someone I Loved” rolls seamlessly into the slinky fire of “Work Until I Die”. The latter simmers, providing a beat to groove to while damning the culture of work that only feeds a “company’s holy name”. - LL

Soul Glo - Diaspora Problems (Epitaph)

“The album is chock full of existential weight; as a Black person suffering from sometimes debilitating mental illness, Jordan thinks about death a lot, referencing both state-sanctioned violence and suicidal ideation. The idea that his music might never come out, or come out posthumously in a way that the white hegemonic music industry can profit off of it, is a frighteningly real one. It makes Diaspora Problems a difficult, but ultimately essential and especially urgent listen.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Special Interest - Endure (Rough Trade)

Shedding some of the musical ferocity of their last album, Special Interest’s Endure captures the same energy and push against capitalism and corruption with pop, disco, and house flourishes. Endure’s songs make you want to both strut and smash something, harnessing the power in both actions. Vocalist Alli Logout makes it clear on the stunning “(Herman’s) House”: “No question, the solution / Always the same conclusion / Burn it down to build it again”. - LL

Sudan Archives - Natural Brown Prom Queen (Stones Throw)

“Natural Brown Prom Queen, the incredible second album from R&B singer-songwriter and violinist Sudan Archives, is a remarkably loose affair. Brittney Denise Parks is able to achieve the same level of academic thoughtfulness she did on her stunning debut Athena while expanding her sonic personality and avoiding definition. The songs on Natural Brown Prom Queen are often brief, dense layers of sound and feeling.”

Read the rest of our review of Sudan Archives’ live stream from earlier this year.

SZA - SOS (Top Dawg Entertainment/RCA)

“Sure, there are moments of bleakness on SOS, like on ‘Used’, where SZA shares she’s essentially used to feeling used, the amount of death she’s experienced in her personal life and witnessed along with the world making her numb to exploitation. When she sings, ‘My pussy precedes me,’ on ‘Blind’, it’s a flex, but it’s also delivered with a sigh, as if this is all that there is. But the more she lets her voice soar, the closer she gets to self-acceptance, if not self-actualization. She bends around the skitter of the hi hats and the whirring synths on the subtly thrilling ‘Notice Me’. Her flow is better than it’s ever been on ‘Blind’; the pitch-shifted melisma of the title in the chorus sounds like she’s traversing the page as well as the scales, showing what she can be in one fell swoop. Most impressive is how effortlessly SZA fronts rock instrumentals, whether the pop punk bursts of ‘F2F’ or the ‘Fade Into You’-esque strumming of ‘Nobody Gets Me’.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Tanya Tagaq - Tongues (Six Shooter)

“You can’t have our tongues,” declares Canadian Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq on the title track to Tongues, her most fully realized album to date. Produced by Saul Williams and mixed by Gonjasufi, its uncomfortable atonal instrumentals--synth hues, pummeling drums, pulsating bass, unraveling strings--match the ferocity and intensity of Tagaq’s words. The record centers around the legacy of residential schools and the violence of colonialism in the past and the present; in context of Canadian authorities’ repeated discoveries of unmarked graves of Indigenous children at the site of these schools, Tongues is sadly prescient and ever-relevant. When Tagaq sings, “You can’t have our tongues,” she’s talking about bodily autonomy and her desire to reclaim the Inuktitut language for herself and her community. As someone who attended a residential school and was the victim of abuse, Tagaq uses Tongues as both a personal journey, touching on themes of trauma, self-love, and self-forgiveness, and a paean to the strength of the Inuk people. “Eat your morals,” she directs at white vegans who call out Indigenous people for eating meat on “In Me”. On “Colonizer”, her vocal intonations are looped as if they’re all-encompassing; “Oh, you’re guilty,” she sings sweetly, lulling the listener in before making you realize she’s talking about present-day Canadians, too. “Touch my children / And my teeth welcome your windpipe,” she shudders on industrial techno jam “Teeth Agape”, a rebuke of the contemporary day foster care system that’s essentially an extension of residential schools. And the emotional climax of Tongues is also its sweetest song, “Earth Monster”, written for her daughter Naia over 10 years ago but not recorded till now. The song reclaims the idea of monstrosity as both loving tenderly while remaining ready to fight, a concise encapsulation of Tagaq’s essential ethos. - JM

The Wonder Years - The Hum Goes On Forever (Hopeless)

There’s a reason The Wonder Years have endured and built such a devoted audience, and part of that is due to the lyrics of Dan Campbell. The Hum Goes on Forever is what happens when the pop punk genre grows with its band. Tackling new fatherhood and the world shift that is your thirties, Hum provides the familiarity of massive choruses with lyrics that continue to explore the depths of depression, love, and ultimately hope. “I’ve never been so afraid of failing at anything,” Campbell sings on “Wyatt’s Song”, a song for his son. “Well, I’m gonna go, start to dig, plant the seed, keep the birds away / Gonna grow you a place safer than this.” This theme of not just being a first-time parent but of looking towards the light in the dark runs through the entire album. It surfaces again in a lovely parallel on “Laura & the Beehive”, an ode to his grandmother and parental figures everywhere, perfectly capturing an image of unconditional love in only a few minutes. Pop punk can be a tricky genre, but there’s a reason The Wonder Years have continued to succeed. - LL

Tomberlin - i don't know who needs to hear this... (Saddle Creek)

Tomberlin’s latest album encapsulates the sound of change, of new beginnings and the constant questions that come with finding yourself. “I don’t know who needs to hear this,” she sings on the title track, “Sometimes it’s good to sing your feelings.” She displays the joy and hope that comes with self-discovery, and the delicate nature of the album’s sound reflects that. There is both a fragility and power in those moments, a gentleness we should allow ourselves, it seems to say. Tomberlin still beautifully tackles questions of the self, wrestling with relationships and the tenets of religion, but it feels lighter on IDKWNTHT, both in her voice and music. It’s less of a wrestle, perhaps, and more of a gentle contemplation. - LL

Various Artists - Summer of Soul (...Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) [OST] (Legacy)

“If Questlove’s documentary is one of the best and arguably the most important concert film ever made, you could argue that its soundtrack is a worthwhile bonus. But as an accessible introduction to a once forgotten moment in cultural history, its widespread potential is nothing short of powerful, its aura nothing short of awe-inducing.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Wet Leg - Wet Leg (Domino)

“In fact, most of the songs on Wet Leg are more interesting than ‘Chaise Lounge’, as cheeky as it is. ‘Wet Dream’ is an immediate highlight, a tune based on Teasdale’s experiences of her ex texting her post-breakup telling her he was dreaming of her. Call-and-response cheerleader chants and limber, four-on-the-floor drums turn into a hilarious scene poking fun at softbois. ‘You climb onto the bonnet and you’re licking the windscreen / I’ve never seen anything so obscene,’ deadpans Teasdale. Drummer Henry Holmes’ backing vocals effectively make him the male character in this absurd nightmare. ‘Piece Of Shit’ is another aesthetic outlier, relatively speaking, a scraping loud-quiet-loud jam that sees Teasdale gnash her teeth at her ex. ‘You’re like a piece of shit,’ she states, before being unexpectedly literal: ‘You either sink or float.’ And then there’s closer ‘Too Late Now’, which perhaps hints at a new direction for the band, a dream pop beauty with echoing drums and tremolo hazy guitars.”

Read the rest of our review here.

Whatever the Weather - Whatever the Weather (Ghostly International)

With albums like For You And I and Reflection, British producer Loraine James has proven to be one of the most exciting new IDM-adjacent artists of the past few years. In the spring of 2022, just in time with sudden shifts in temperature, James decided to debut her side project Whatever the Weather, emphasizing keyboard improvisation, vocal experimentation, and ambient textures over the club music she had mastered prior. Similar to the fickle nature of weather, the songs on Whatever the Weather--each titled to mirror a different literal temperature--abruptly change moods and approaches while reflecting on divergent influences. A lonely synth line and glacial techno beats comprise “0°C”, while “10°C” juxtaposes cold electric piano, layered on top of itself, with chirpy synths, almost like the sound of birds hatching after a long winter. “6°C” and “30°C” sport James’ clever emo inspiration, the twinkles on the former recalling cascading guitars on an American Football song, her vocals on the latter channeling the breathiness of Deftones’ Chino Moreno. And when the synths on “36°C” become wrapped in an overarching sense of melancholic summertime sadness, you can’t help but look back at the entirety of Whatever the Weather and remember that the outside world, like yourself, is ever-changing. -JM

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