//

The 50 Best Albums of 2021

The best albums of 2021 prove that, despite all the chaos in the world, music’s pulse is stronger than ever.

Lana Del Rey
Photo: Interscope Records

Digital technology has made it easier than ever to create and distribute music—often from the privacy of one’s bedroom. So when Hollywood was forced to shut down at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, many musicians thrived in insolation. And the fruits of that labor continue to be enjoyed by the masses.

Though not all of it can be categorized as “bedroom pop,” the best albums of 2021 are a testament to that independent spirit, from indie-pop act Japanese Breakfast’s surprisingly exuberant Jubilee, to Saharan-rock artist Mdou Moctar’s captivating Afrique Victim, to Halsey’s below-the-pop-radar collaboration with Nine Inch Nails. Even major label darlings like Lana Del Rey, who have built loyal fanbases but don’t fit easily into mainstream radio playlists, have thrown out the rulebook: The already-prolific singer-songwriter dropped two new albums this year and, to be perfectly honest, we had trouble agreeing on which one was better.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Slant list without at least a little bit of pop (Olivia Rodrigo’s eclectic Sour), hip-hop (Young Thug and company’s Slime Language 2 compilation), and country-soul (Valerie June’s ambitious The Moon and Stars). All of these albums prove that while the live concert market is still struggling to rebound, music’s pulse is stronger than ever. Alexa Camp



Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land

50. Marina, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land

Marina Diamandis’s fifth album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, is as much a return to form as her most overt foray into the political pop fray. As on her debut, 2010’s The Family Jewels, Marina places not only her theatrical extroversion but also her femininity at the center of her persona. But over a decade later, her point of view is broader and more intersectional. The title track is an invigorating, high-drama callback to Marina’s boisterous early work and to the message she’s sought to send since she began making music: “You don’t have to be like everybody else/You don’t have to fit into the norm/You are not here to conform.” “Purge the Poison,” a likely answer to “drain the swamp,” is especially explicit, with Marina firing off indignant references to climate change, the Me Too movement, and conspiracy theories. But even in her moments of heartbreak, Marina doesn’t sacrifice her self-worth. “Highly Emotional People” seeks to teach self-awareness to a partner whose masculinity isolates him, just as “Goodbye” skips defeatism for a commitment to renewal, promoting healing as a process that is both personal and political. Eric Mason



Heaux Tales

49. Jazmine Sullivan, Heaux Tales

Destiny’s Child’s docile “Cater 2 You” is part of an R&B tradition that enshrines serving a man as the highest realization of a woman’s love. At first glance, “Put It Down,” a highlight from Jazmine Sullivan’s Heaux Tales, would seem to echo Beyoncé’s croons of wanting to dress and groom her partner, with Sullivan breathlessly promising to cook and even pay rent for a man. But the Philadelphia singer-songwriter decidedly spurns that sort of selfless, self-sacrificing affection throughout Heaux Tales, asserting that love must be rightfully earned, usually either through sexual prowess or deep pockets and especially since the supply of sexual partners is plentiful. Confessional monologues honoring sexual autonomy, economic independence, and sisterhood are interspersed throughout the album in the style of the skits on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. In fact, you could say that Sullivan addresses these songs to the women raised by Hill’s morals, correcting the hip-hop icon’s more sanctimonious leanings. Sullivan revels in messy drunk nights out, all-consuming lust, and the thrill of giving herself over to a partner, always on her own terms. Her gospel-colored ad-libs add soulful dimension and sanctity to subjects that hardly see the light of day, or at least the world outside the tell-all group chat. Sophia Ordaz

Advertisement



For the First Time

48. Black Country, New Road, For the First Time

On Black Country, New Road’s audacious debut, For the First Time, frontman Isaac Wood’s fragmented narratives, delivered in a spoken-word style, are draped atop the U.K. band’s syntheses of post-punk, experimental jazz, and math-rock. “Athens, France” opens with a driving mix of drums and guitars but quickly segues into a more austere sax-and-keyboard arrangement. On “Science Fair,” the group moves from a static-filled intro to what sounds like an ebullient film score, Wood relaying a circuitous story about meeting a woman at a science fair in Cambridge, before transitioning into a hyper-seductive synth-riff. “Track X” features a repetitive guitar part and flurry of accents, Wood’s strained voice infusing the track with angst. On the closing track, “Opus,” Black Country, New Road juxtaposes euphonic composition and cacophonic improv a la Bitches Brew, the band demonstrating their musical prowess and attunement to the discombobulations of contemporary life. John Amen



Haram

47. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist, Haram

The nature of repurposing found recordings means that sampling is a medium that can provoke both life-affirming nostalgia and death-embracing doom. The grisly Haram, a collaboration between New York City underground hip-hop duo Armand Hammer and producer the Alchemist, decidedly elicits the latter. In many ways a critique of the legacy of slavery and colonialism, Haram possesses a manic, catastrophic atmosphere, almost as if the Alchemist were attempting to distill those crimes against humanity into sound. Throughout, the album’s 14 tracks unravel into convoluted tangles of disembodied voices, discordant jazz piano, and droning synths. Rappers Billy Woods and Elucid have mastered a stream-of-consciousness lyrical delivery that often prioritizes images, sensation, and rhythmic tension above easy comprehension. The group also turns their attention to the taboo, the immoral, and the inhumane: Where one’s first instinct might be to look away in disgust or horror, they would rather scrutinize, poke, and prod, and exaggerate the taboo. On “Indian Summer,” Woods recalls moving back to the U.S. from Africa, painting a hellish landscape out of the racism encountered in American suburbia and declaring, without the slightest hesitation, “I swore vengeance in the seventh grade/Not on one man, the whole human race/I’m almost done, God be praised.” Ordaz



A Color of the Sky

46. Lightning Bug, A Color of the Sky

Flipping a popular meme on its head, Lightning Bug’s A Color of the Sky demonstrates what many who turned to the outdoors for solace during the pandemic have realized: that nature is, indeed, healing. The album is an enchanting cache of guitar pop with echoes of Talk Talk, Cocteau Twins, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, and Emmylou Harris. The band recorded together live for the first time for this album, trading the lo-fi charm of their previous efforts for a more refined, organic sound. Perhaps more significant than the album’s sound, though, is what it represents. While it may be easy to surrender to despair and pessimism, A Color of the Sky radiates a subdued optimism. James Gui



Vince Staples

45. Vince Staples, Vince Staples

Throughout his eponymous fourth album, Vince Staples keenly draws contrasts between his upbringing and the life he now enjoys. At his best, he peerlessly interrogates his anxieties with a bone-chilling sense of morbidity: “Hangin’ on them corners, same as hangin’ from a ceiling fan/When I see my fans/I’m too paranoid to shake their hands,” he confesses on “Sundown Town.” The album’s production is the least showy of any of the rapper’s projects to date. Handled almost entirely by Kenny Beats, it’s sturdy but unobtrusive, favoring slower BPMs to match Staples’s less hurried pace and allowing the snares to smack resoundingly. Composed of two-minute fragments that function as snapshots of his dim view of humanity, Vince Staples is another brief but trenchant effort from the rapper, his leisurely approach suggesting a newfound confidence. Charles Lyons-Burt

Advertisement



Slime Language II

44. Young Stoner Life, Young Thug & Gunna, Slime Language 2 (Deluxe)

Seemingly everyone in Young Thug’s orbit features in some way on the 31-song, 98-minute deluxe edition of Slime Language 2, including friends-in-high-places Drake and Travis Scott, longtime right-hand man Lil Duke, up-and-comers Lil Keed and Yak Gotti, even his eight-year-old daughter, billed as MEGO. But the album’s prime attractions are Thug and Gunna, a star fashioned in the former’s image who might now be more famous than his mentor. The two exercise a fantastic interplay on standouts like “Slam the Door” and “Diamonds Dancing,” with Gunna taking over the chorus from Thug at the end of the latter track before the two joyfully harmonize in unison. Despite its length, the album is well-paced and sequenced, breaking up the high-profile, high-energy cuts with measured, low-key material like “Real” and “Trance.” Slime Language 2 employs the crew’s go-to producers Wheezy, Turbo, and London on da Track to cook up ornate, brassy beats for “Pots N Pans” and “Warrior” so that even the lesser talents featured on the album have superior tools to work with. Slime Language 2 doesn’t reinvent Atlanta trap music, but it’s a good reminder of Young Thug and company’s continued dominance and vitality in the genre. Lyons-Burt



Bright Green Field

43. Squid, Bright Green Field

Brighton’s Squid excels in balancing playfulness and drama, landing somewhere at the crossroads of Dry Cleaning’s cut-and-dry drollness and Black Midi’s noise-rock maximalism. Expanding on the post-Brexit disillusionment of their Krautrock-indebted hit “Houseplants,” Squid’s debut album, Bright Green Field, contrasts Wordsworthian pastoralism the political realities of today’s England, that dystopic island in the grips of right-wing populism, class disparity, environmental degradation, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Against this chaotic backdrop, lead vocalist and percussionist Ollie Judge channels the soul-crushing mundanity of a 9-to-5 job in the spirit of absurdist pencil pushers like Franz Kafka and Fernando Pessoa. For all its significations and referents, Bright Green Field never feels overburdened or contrived. Judge delivers his revelations with a frantic, improvisatory air, almost as if he’s speaking in tongues, and the band’s arrangements, unbeholden to any sort of traditional structure, churn and rattle like a train going off its tracks. Squid is leery of conventional song structures: “Boy Racers” melts into an otherworldly passage played on a rackett, a Medieval wind instrument, and “Resolution Square” was recorded by hanging a microphone from the ceiling and spinning it round a ring of guitar amps playing sounds from nature. Originating as a quintet schooled in modal jazz, Squid’s transformation into post-punk disruptors is indicative of a band that relentlessly bucks against their limits. Ordaz



Sour

42. Olivia Rodrigo, Sour

Despite having so much of human history literally in the palm of their hands, Gen Z seems almost exclusively interested in post-20th-century pop culture. Eighteen-year-old Olivia Rodrigo, though, is an apparent exception to the rule: She name-checks Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” on Sour’s “Deja Vu,” and credits her mom’s record collection for her enthusiasm for ’90s-era alternative rock. But Rodrigo isn’t a nostalgia act, as she’s clearly plugged in to her generation’s insecurities and preoccupations, and she effortlessly alternates between a disaffected vocal style similar to that of Billie Eilish and distorted yelps reminiscent of a young Kim Deal. Even when her lyrics venture beyond the purview of her own adolescent anxieties, as on the shoegaze-y closing song, “Hope Ur Ok,” they’re thematically limited in scope, revolving around heartbreak and, to quote the title of one searing track, “jealousy, jealousy.” Like Eilish and Lorde before her, Rodrigo possesses both a knack for stealthy pop hooks and a vocal control beyond her years. And even if Sour doesn’t quite transcend its myriad influences, it might at least inspire her fans to Google the Piano Man. Sal Cinquemani



Little Oblivions

41. Julien Baker, Little Oblivions

Julien Baker’s first two studio albums, Sprained Ankle and Turn Out the Lights, found the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist pairing her tremulous voice, gossamer instrumentation, and stark lyrical approach with themes of self-loathing, interpersonal dysfunction, and profound loneliness. On her latest, Little Oblivions, she broaches similar topics but with even more confidence, embracing harder-edged indie-rock textures to broaden her brand of “thanatoid pop,” a subgenre characterized by pained vocals, haunting melodies, and lyrics that alternate between auto-criticality and auto-apotheosis. With Little Oblivions, Baker upgrades her erstwhile folk style to accommodate a harder rock approach, though lyrically she’s as vulnerable as ever. Like A.A. Williams, Snail Mail, and Soccer Mommy, she successfully translates her confessional tone and subject matter into melodically and atmospherically engaging songs, resulting in an album that represents a significant step for one of contemporary music’s most eloquent artists. Amen

Advertisement


The Moon and Stars

40. Valerie June, The Moon and Stars: Prescription for Dreamers

Valerie June’s The Moon and Stars: Prescription for Dreamers is an ambitious, dizzying jumble of genres and tones, and the singer manages to hold everything together on the power of her beguiling voice and charisma. The album’s two best songs epitomize June’s emotional and musical multitudes. “Two Roads” begins as a soul pastiche but quickly morphs into a gorgeous country song, drenched in honey-sweet pedal steel. “Call Me a Fool,” by contrast, is immediate, focused, and raw, featuring a powerhouse performance whose classic soul lineage is underscored by the presence of legendary Memphis singer Carla Thomas on backing vocals. New sensations seem to be exploding out of June almost as fast as she can process them, and The Moon and Stars is the controlled chaos that results. Jeremy Winograd



Sinner Get Ready

39. Lingua Ignota, Sinner Get Ready

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Kristin Hayter has demonstrated throughout her career that she can pen an evocative confession and seductively deliver a melodic line. But her more essential talent is an ability to simultaneously embody and channel a range of psychological and spiritual states. Sinner Get Ready is driven by a penetrative imagination, a preternatural sense of empathy, and an innate awareness of the paradoxical nature of human existence. Like 2019’s Caligula, the album sees the so-called forces of good and evil as inextricably bound, the singer moving between various voices and identities, often within the same verse. On “I Who Bend the Tall Grasses,” she moans, “Glorious father intercede for me/If I cannot hide from you,” inverting a passage in the Book of Genesis and, perhaps, alluding to John Donne’s Holy Sonnets. Caligula provided little hope for earthly reprieve, but Sinner Get Ready suggests, at least by its end, that it’s possible to experience moments of wholeness and existential respite. Amen



New Long Leg

38. Dry Cleaning, New Long Leg

A quirky visual artist with no performing experience fronting a post-punk band is a wacky idea straight out of 1979, and with its spiky guitar lines, thudding bass, and stiff-as-a-whiskey-shot drumming, the music on the London-based Dry Cleaning’s debut, New Long Leg, sometimes does too. But frontwoman Florence Shaw doesn’t sound like anyone else in rock ‘n’ roll, past or present. Unlike her talk-singing forbearers, such as the Fall’s Mark E. Smith and Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, Shaw makes almost no attempt at any sort of emoting, much less actual singing. Instead, with Tom Dowse’s busy, multi-tonal guitar work providing the requisite dynamics and melodicism, she narrates the songs on New Long Leg in a dry, phlegmatic tone that only ups the bemusement factor of her postmodern, observational ramblings about, well, seemingly anything and everything. “Just an emo dead stuff collector, things come to the brain,” she declares of herself on “Strong Feelings,” and do they ever. It’s all delightfully weird and frequently, amusingly gastric-minded. Later in the same song, she muses: “I’ve been thinking about eating that hot dog for hours.” Mmmm. Winograd



For Those I Love

37. For Those I Love, For Those I Love

On his debut album, Dublin’s David Balfe confronts life head-on in a full, dazzling range of emotions from grief to love. Inspired in part by the loss of his lifelong best friend, For Those I Love is house music rendered with cinematic clarity, its entrancing dance beats undergirding impassioned spoken-word stories. The album is rich in detail, its collage of samples, voice memos, and touching anecdotes creating not only a summation of a life, but a celebration of it. While a number of artists this year have employed spoken word to great effect, few have dedicated an entire album to the medium in such an inspired and innovative way. Like fellow spoken-word artist Kae Tempest, Balfe pays meticulous attention to the links between the individual and the collective, making For Those I Love a unifying and life-affirming experience. Mason

Advertisement



Dedicated 2 Disrespect

36. LSDXOXO, Dedicated 2 Disrespect

LSDXOXO’s Dedicated 2 Disrespect is a bracing EP of techno and house whose pulverizing four songs hammer you from every conceivable angle. There’s a sense of play to the subject matter: Raushaan Glasgow has a blast with themes revolving around sexual kinks and transgressions, especially on “The Devil” and “Sick Bitch,” where he deadpans about fucking the devil and “the limits of [his] gag reflex.” With this in mind, the mounting tensions and explosive releases of energy feel like they’re channeling Glasgow’s irrepressible desires. The songs’ taboo declarations are brought to life with beats that quiver with momentum. “You gotta make it hurt/if you wanna make it squirt,” Glasgow quips on “Sick Bitch,” and the hard-hitting sting is indeed is as potent as the rush. Lyons-Burt



333

35. Tinashe, 333

On her fourth studio album, one of pop’s most prolific and dynamic artists continues to refine the opposing poles of her musical sensibilities. On one end are songs that, if there were any justice, would top the charts—Jeremih-assisted trap banger “X” and “Undo (Back to My Heart)”—and on the other are highly original experimental tracks such as the chopped-n-screwed “Bouncin’, Pt. 2” and the wonky and meditative title track. But at its best, 333 merges these instincts, offering songs that are eccentric and catchy in equal measure. “Pasadena,” “Bouncin,” and “I Can See the Future” are earworms with unconventional production, all showcasing Tinashe’s nimble and skillful vocals. Mason



Far In

34. Helado Negro, Far In

With his seventh studio album, Far In, Roberto Carlos Lange, a.k.a. Helado Negro, further refines the electro-pop that he explored on 2016’s Private Energy and 2019’s This Is How You Smile. The album mixes sleek production values with an au courant DIY vibe, a sense of melancholic bliss emanating throughout. On “Wake Up Tomorrow,” Lange’s voice shimmers amid flamenco-style guitar, crisp beats, and subtle ambient flourishes, while on the next track, “Gemini and Leo,” the South Florida native makes even sharper use of a Latin-inflected percussive palette. On the latter, he especially showcases his impressive vocal range, moving seamlessly from verse to chorus and flaunting his skills for breathwork and cadence. Exemplifying the album’s lo-fi aesthetic, these songs juxtapose staccato beats and watery synths, highlighting Lange’s knack for constructing minimally psychedelic but seductively melodic soundscapes. Amen



Mirrors

33. DJ Seinfeld, Mirrors

On Mirrors, Armand Jackobssen’s aching house beats use the titular image to show how closely linked love and loneliness really are. On the album’s featherweight opening track, “She Loves Me,” guest vocalist Stella Explorer softly asks, “She loves me/Why does she?” as keys punctuate the insistent, pattering drum line, mimicking how doubt pokes through romantic security. More than on past projects, Jackobssen dabbles in some cheese and sentimentality—a sparkly shimmer of chimes on “Walking with Your Smile,” the chirping, squeaky synth of “Someday”—but in just the right proportions to amplify the emotional tenor of the album. The soundscapes on Mirrors are lush, bathed in wistful textures, and full of little surprises and revelations. Lyons-Burt

Advertisement



I Don’t Live Here Anymore

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

On their fifth album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, the War on Drugs leans into the grandeur that they reined in on 2014’s Lost in the Dream and 2017’s A Deeper Understanding. The album displays the band’s fascination with ’80s rock, but where their last few releases blurred Springsteenian choruses under layers of psychedelic guitars and synthesizers, I Don’t Live Here Anymore places its vibrant hooks front and center. But while the War on Drugs may take a slightly more straightforward approach here than they have in the past, they still find new ways to engage with complex arrangements. The result is a nimble balancing act of accessible pop-rock anthems and experimental soundscapes. Jordan Walsh



Donda

31. Kanye West, Donda

On Donda, Kanye manages to dramatize his struggles with bipolar disorder and his commitments to his faith with both more coherency and dynamism than ever before. This is arguably the most vulnerable and broken that the rapper has allowed himself to appear on record. The instrumental choices follow suit, with Kanye and his collaborators, for example, stripping down “God Breathed” to just an undulating bassline and menacing choral baritones. Likewise, the swarm of demonic chirps that emerge behind Kanye’s vocal on “Heaven and Hell” as he discusses the devil are massive, twisted, and unsettling. If previously there was a sense that Kanye’s foregrounding of his Christianity, something that was always an undercurrent in his work, would stifle his artistry, Donda emphatically disproves that notion. Lyons-Burt


Nurture

30. Porter Robinson, Nurture

In the seven years since he released his EDM-focused debut, Worlds, Porter Robinson worked to improve his mental health, connecting with nature and confronting his emotions head-on. Robinson’s deepening psychological wisdom is evident on Nurture, a therapeutic and enthralling collection of cleansing affirmations and reflections. Many of the songs are introspective dialogues with Robinson duetting with a pitch-shifted version of himself, often employing folktronica samples to ground the album in organic sonic textures. And while this focus on contemplation might lend itself to a subdued sound, Nurture is frequently explosive, as on “Get Your Wish,” “Mirror,” and “Unfold.” But perhaps even more often, the album is cathartic and incisive. On “Look at the Sky,” Robinson turns to nature to cope with depression, and on “Sweet Time,” he affectingly hopes that love can extend beyond death. Mason



Planet Her

29. Doja Cat, Planet Her

Like any of the albums from Rihanna’s unbeatable run in the late 2000s to early ’10s, Doja Cat’s Planet Her is stacked with potential hits. The album also compares to those of Rihanna—who Doja namechecks on the hypnotic opener “Woman”—in its fusion of pop, R&B, and reggae, sewn together with sparkling production. But like Bad Bunny and Drake, Doja raps as skillfully as she sings: Many of the songs here begin with silky vocals and then merge with ease into motormouthed bars. What is singularly her own is her intonation, delivered as if with a scheming grin, and the filthy, candid explorations of sex and desire, rendered with startling veracity on a song like “You Right.” Planet Her sees Doja Cat creating her own ecosystem, thick with hooky melodies and sultry attitude. Lyons-Burt

Advertisement



Mood Valiant

28. Hiatus Kaiyote, Mood Valiant

In the six years since Australian neo-soul outfit Hiatus Kaiyote released their last album, lead singer and guitarist Nai Palm was diagnosed with and overcame breast cancer. And a certain resilience animates the group’s third album, Mood Valiant, which finds Palm taking solace in sensory comforts, like the glow of a bedroom illuminated by a sunset (“Red Room”) and an elixir inspired by a perfume concocted by a friend (“Rose Water”). The album is characterized by the band’s unpredictable playing style and volatile energy. Perrin Moss’s athletic drumming and Paul Bender’s fluid bass guitar form the jazz-funk foundation of every track, luxuriating in one speed and then switching time signatures with ease, matched by Palm’s adventurous runs and trills. Tonally, Hiatus Kaiyote segues from the pretty and delicate to the fierce and almost confrontational. Like the best jazz-inflected works, Mood Valiant prizes spontaneity and moments of beauty. Lyons-Burt



The Horses and the Hounds

27. James McMurtry, The Horses and the Hounds

James McMurtry’s The Horses and the Hounds features no shortage of great stories, but some of the details betray a self-aware preoccupation with aging that lend the album a more endearingly personal bent than his previous efforts. The singer-songwriter had already produced a pretty definitive treatise on the art of getting older in one of his most beloved songs, “Just Us Kids.” But that ambitious, decades-spanning character study doesn’t seem as directly culled from McMurtry’s own experience as Horses and the Hounds standouts like “Canola Fields” or “If It Don’t Bleed,” which approach the subject with affirming acceptance and characteristically wry humor. He may be getting old, but The Horses and the Hounds proves that McMurtry’s nearly peerless ability to tear our hearts out with a good yarn hasn’t waned a bit. Winograd



A Beginner’s Mind

26. Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, A Beginner’s Mind

While in the past Sufjan Stevens has drawn inspiration from his personal history, the United States, and the cosmos, for A Beginner’s Mind, he and collaborator Angelo De Augustine looked to the movies. On some of these songs, the connections are immediately evident and logical. For instance, the bizarre horror of Hellraiser III is a clear influence on the ominous “The Pillar of Souls,” and the serene “Olympus,” based on Clash of the Titans, is, predictably, filled with mythological figures. But other songs reach far beyond the kernels of inspiration offered by their respective sources to arrive at the unexpected and empathetic conclusions for which Stevens is known. On the De Augustine-led stunner “Murder and Crime,” the duo spins the dystopia of Mad Max into a dirge for an unjust world, and on “Fictional California” (titled after an out-of-context phrase from the Wikipedia page for Bring It On Again), they reinterpret a cheerleading competition as a story about vulnerability. Leave it to Stevens and De Augustine to find true emotion in unconventional sources. Mason



Pressure Machine

25. The Killers, Pressure Machine

The isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic reportedly brought the Killers’s promotional tour for their sixth album, Imploding the Mirage, to a grinding halt, forcing frontman Brandon Flowers into a more insular creative process. The result, Pressure Machine, stands as the band’s most sonically restrained effort to date. The hooks are still there, and songs like “Quiet Town” and “In the Car Outside” nod to the group’s early synth-driven sound, but the album’s 11 songs take their sweet time unfurling, luxuriating in subtle details like the swooning strings of the title track. Pressure Machine pays tribute to Flowers’s childhood hometown of Nephi, Utah, a tiny rural hamlet that he describes on one song as a “cobweb town where culture is king.” Named after a central figure in the Book of Mormon, Nephi is a distinctly American city filled with rubber factories, “hillbilly heroin pills,” and “good people [who] still don’t deadbolt their doors at night.” And songs like “In Another Life” paint a vivid portrait of small-town ennui centered around the kind of people who never got out. Cinquemani

Advertisement



Valentine

24. Snail Mail, Valentine

On Valentine, Lindsey Jordan, a.k.a. Snail Mail, expands on the aesthetic and songwriting styles that she established throughout her 2018 debut, Lush. This time around, though, Jordan’s arrangements are more ambitiously layered and her lyricism is more diaristic and direct, partly the result of the 22-year-old’s recent stint in rehab. The album, then, represents a plunge into sober self-assessment and burgeoning autonomy. “I’ve got the devil in me,” Jordan admits on the trip-hop-infused “Ben Franklin,” apologizing for—and drolly accepting—her past mistakes and summarizing Valentine’s primary themes. She eschews the disempowerment that characterized her debut, instead considering her history and default patterns while displaying a matter-of-fact melancholia. If Lush presented a snapshot of a particular mindset, a woman trapped in a psychological limbo, Valentine captures the blurry nature of an inquiry still in progress. Amen



Sometimes I Might Be Introvert

23. Little Simz, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert

With Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, rapper Little Simz offers personal confessions and societal diagnoses, homing in specifically on the injustices that women routinely endure. The album’s instrumentation is more stripped down than on 2019’s Grey Area, functioning primarily as a complement to Little Simz’s rhymes. On “Woman,” amid crisp beats and synth hooks, she portrays various women, all of whom command respect in their own ways. “I Love You, I Hate You” opens with a musical flourish reminiscent of a Golden Age Hollywood film score, with Little Simz voicing her ambivalence about her father. On “Standing Ovation,” she asks herself, “Why the desperate need for an applause?,” her voice framed by roiling strings. When she proclaims on the album’s closing track, “Miss Understood,” that “there’s a bigger picture God is painting,” Little Simz comes full circle, expressing gratitude that she, like all of us, is part of a higher order. Amen



Afrique Victime

22. Mdou Moctar, Afrique Victime

Most new releases within the desert blues genre, which originated in late-20th century Saharan Africa, don’t register as even a blip on the radar of the vast majority of chronically Western-centric Americans. Then again, most Tuarag guitarists don’t play like Jimi Hendrix in the throes of a desert-vision quest. Mdou Moctar’s Afrique Victime is a dazzling feat of cultural transcendence that electrifies the traditional form, playing up familiar American blues and psych-rock influences. When Moctar and his band work up to a fever pitch on “Chismiten” and the jammed-out title track, the results are explosive, with Moctar conjuring fireballs from his lefty Stratocaster. But the acoustic material is just as captivating. Moctar sings mostly in Tamasheq, but the emotion in the pleading melody of “Tala Tannam” runs deep in any language. Winograd



Reflection

21. Loraine James, Reflection

It’s a compliment to say that Loraine James’s Reflection is equal to the sum of parts, because its moving pieces are so varied and rich. Sonically, the album is the accumulation of highly satisfying details: the hiss of a snare, the hum of the low end, the drone of electric feedback. These are stuttering and shuddering effects that sound, to quote James on the seven-minute “Change,” like “technical difficulties”—beguiling aberrations in a faulty system. James recruits various guest vocalists to help her provide insight into modern life, be it identity (as Le3 bLACK does on “Black Ting”) or a politically charged vision of an imagined future (Iceboy Violet on “We’re Building Something New”). As the cover art of a contorted, discolored human face suggests, Reflection is a vision of reality and community that’s skewed but still recognizable. And James fascinatingly wields IDM and grime to propel us through her perception. Lyons-Burt

Advertisement


If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

20. Halsey, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

“A girl says nothing. A girl keeps her mouth closed,” one of the Faceless Men of Braavos tells Arya Stark in season two of Game of Thrones. It’s a theme that courses through Halsey’s fourth studio album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, which was reportedly inspired by the HBO series and homes in on similar notions of self and identity. Halsey describes the project, which was co-written and produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, as “a concept album about the joys and horrors of pregnancy and childbirth.” But while there are few, if any, explicit references to motherhood in the songs themselves, an overarching theme of feminism, specifically institutionalized misogyny, courses through the album, as on “You Asked for This”: “Go on and be a big girl/You asked for this now/Or everybody’s gonna drown you out.” Cinquemani



The Turning Wheel

19. Spellling, The Turning Wheel

Tia Cabral’s first two albums as Spellling, 2017’s Pantheon of Me and 2019’s Mazy Fly, centered eerie minimalist synth-pop full of peril and foreboding. In contrast, The Turning Wheel is a baroque-pop fantasia, as elaborate as her past music but markedly more focused on wonder than dread. With its soul influences and uniquely wiry vocals, the album weaves oblique love songs (“Little Deer”) with whimsical political allegories (“Emperor with an Egg”), displaying Cabral’s deft ability to lend even her darkest music a mystical charm. “Lay down all your weapons/We don’t have to fight/Holy hounds of Heaven are at our side,” she sings on the triumphant title track, merging warmth and the uncanny like the very best art pop of recent decades. Mason



Sensational

18. Erika de Casier, Sensational

While the album’s stories of romantic misadventures and fusions of R&B, soul, bossa nova, and synth-pop often recall the pop of the turn of the millennium, Erika de Casier’s Sensational never feels dated, nor does it rely on nostalgia. Instead, the album succeeds on its subtle elegance, with the Danish singer’s hushed vocals and plainspoken lyrics accentuated by plush and deeply layered production that’s as likely to reference Y2K acoustic and electronic pop (“All You Talk About,” “Someone to Chill With”) as it is to incorporate elements of U.K. garage (“No Butterflies, No Nothing,” “Busy”). But perhaps most of all, Sensational is an album about self-worth. On “Polite,” de Casier chides her date for being rude to a waiter, and on “Better Than That,” she sees through a man’s lies, claiming the upper hand over someone who tries to hurt her. Mason



Thirstier

17. Torres, Thirstier

On her fifth album, Thirstier, Mackenzie Scott conveys her yearning with some of her most nuanced, delightfully disparate songs to date. The dramatic tension that results from the stylistic differences between songs is most apparent in the transition between the album’s first and second halves. The angst that Scott builds on the ambient-pop “Big Leap,” a pained account of nearly losing her lover, is released on “Hug from a Dinosaur,” a ’90s rock-style earworm that, as its title suggests, finds Scott at her most eccentric since 2017’s “Helen in the Woods.” While many of the album’s themes are universal, Scott approaches them with a unique and often surprising perspective. On “Constant Tomorrowland,” an off-kilter reinterpretation of ’70s folk, Scott praises her lover as a “bringer of consciousness, bearer of justice, harbinger of progress.” To those accustomed to hearing love described as something that blurs judgment and breaks hearts, bringing about intoxicating disorientation at its best and total ruin at its worst, Scott’s adulation is a refutation of pop conventions. Mason

Advertisement



Menneskekollektivet

16. Lost Girls, Menneskekollektivet

Singer-songwriter Jenny Hval’s music, whether it’s the post-rock of her earlier work or her more recent electronic-leaning fare, is distinguished by stream-of-consciousness lyrical explorations of the body and mind. The blunt, wryly funny songs on Menneskekollektivet, a collaboration with fellow Norwegian artist Havård Volden, weave skeletal dance beats with Hval’s matter-of-fact, observational musings. Throughout, she explores death and finality and the brief impermanence of time on Earth, as well as intimacy, touching, and what makes something exist or be classified as real. It sounds esoteric, and it can be quite heady, but there’s a transparency and an acceptance of human error to her prodding inquiries. Befitting the album’s focus on flesh and contact, there’s also a corporeal tactility to the mesmerizing grooves, with plentiful drum patter, chiming bells and synths, and outbursts from Volden’s guitar. Lyons-Burt



An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

15. Cassandra Jenkins, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

The serene atmosphere and delicate textures of Cassandra Jenkins’s sophomore album, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, are as enchanting as they are a challenge to classify. Jenkins’s singular vision of music as a conduit to universal truths falls at the intersection of the surreal, the whimsical, and the philosophical. The pensive spoken-word passages and gentle brass of “Hard Drive” give way beautifully to the country-inflected guitars and watercolor-translucent strings of the stunning “Crosshairs.” Likewise, Jenkins’s lyrics, distinctive in their broad vocabulary and vivid imagination, evoke both dreamlike free association and lucid, real-time journaling as she closely inspects strangers’ beliefs, words, and ephemera from all angles. “The poetry/It’s not lost on me/I walk around alone/Laughing in the street,” she sings on “Ambiguous Norway,” and it’s tempting to imagine these lines as a record of how An Overview on Phenomenal Nature came into being: an inquisitive singer-songwriter observing the world from the outside, quietly remarking to herself on its strangeness and its wonder. Mason



Call Me If You Get Lost

14. Tyler, the Creator, Call Me If You Get Lost

Tyler, the Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost continues the recent strides that the rapper-producer has made in production finesse—his beats are immaculate without being showy, replete with horns and shuffling drums—but marries that to the immediacy of his early work. Across 16 varied tracks, Tyler Baudelaire (his chosen alter ego this go-round) addresses race, fame, wealth, and love in clever, dense verses full of humorous asides and conflicted resolutions. It’s also easily one of the most purely fun listens of the year, with a bevy of ecstatic guest spots, mixtape staple DJ Drama interjecting puffed-up commentary after every other line, and Tyler tossing off some of the best rap boasts in some time (“Got so much self-respect, I wash my hands ‘fore I piss”). The MC morphs his delivery in so many different ways here, offering up skulking mutters, brash declarations, and soft croons. Lyons-Burt



Home Video

13. Lucy Dacus, Home Video

Across Home Video’s 11 tracks, singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus doesn’t view the past through rose-colored glasses or much of a filter beyond whatever measure of clarity she’s attained with time and age. The album’s tales of adolescence and young adulthood seemingly tell it how it really was and how it really felt to her: It can feel comforting to return to the past, but as Dacus reminds us, it can also be full of pain, messiness, confusion, and still-unresolved conflict. Like her Boygenius bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, who sing backup on two songs here, Dacus has established a track record of transcending moody-girl-with-a-guitar stereotypes with an ear for dramatic arrangement and a knack for sharp, pop-leaning songcraft. But on Home Video, her songwriting has taken leaps in sophistication and immediacy, beyond even what Bridgers and Baker displayed on their most recent solo efforts. Winograd

Advertisement



Red (Taylor’s Version)

12. Taylor Swift, Red (Taylor’s Version)

If Fearless (Taylor’s Version) demonstrated the potential for Taylor Swift’s singing to improve upon her early recordings in substantive ways, its follow-up proves that she’s willing to make riskier changes to her catalog that might elevate a good album to a truly great one. Throughout Red (Taylor’s Version), the singer-songwriter shows a surprising willingness to kill—or at least revise—her darlings, tweaking the arrangements and varying her phrasing in ways that are even smarter and more incisive than the originals. The album’s centerpiece is, of course, “All Too Well,” a song about remembrance and regret that’s only deepened by an additional nine years of lived experience. And having both the unabridged and the condensed versions of the song for direct comparisons testifies to Swift’s newfound capacity to revise herself. It’s the editing over the entirety of Red, however, that elevates it from an album that seemed destined to be remembered as a transitional work in Swift’s catalog into a confident, refined album that demands inclusion in the pop canon. Jonathan Keefe



Yard Sale

11. Suzanne Santo, Yard Sale

Singer-songwriter Suzanne Santo’s Yard Sale is less aggressive, both sonically and lyrically, than her 2017 solo debut, Ruby Red, but it’s no less emotionally charged. While a deep backstory looms over much of the album, it’s often positioned just outside the frame. On the ominous “Bad Beast,” Santo is tormented by a demon that may represent addiction, infatuation, or something else, describing the experience with arresting urgency, but the beast itself is scarier for having never been made corporeal. Like Ruby Red and her work with Ben Jaffe as the duo honeyhoney, Yard Sale is most remarkable for its sharp and forthright songwriting. Santo’s voice sounds richer and more confident here than in the past, and that fact, combined with production that isn’t afraid to untether itself from roots-music conventions, results in her most compelling, forward-looking album to date. Jim Malec


Things Take Time, Take Time

10. Courtney Barnett, Things Take Time, Take Time

Courtney Barnett’s Things Take Time, Take Time captures something deeply true and profound about how she, and her contemporaries, relate to the world and each other. As we constantly yearn for real human connection across the digital void, the singer’s latest batch of sweet, open-hearted songs not only give voice to a generation’s endemic social anxieties, but even provide an endlessly empathetic blueprint for confronting them. Barnette wrote most of the album in 2020, holed up alone in a Melbourne apartment while riding out the Covid-19 pandemic, and the results are cozy and intimate. There are no stomping rock songs like “Pedestrian at Best” here, with several tracks—“Here’s the Thing,” “Splendour”—instead reveling in their languidness. Despite this, and despite Barnett’s candid explorations of her struggles to accomplish so much as getting out of bed, Things Take Time, Take Time is never given over to despondency. In fact, this is Barnett’s most joyous album to date, the result of her persistence in reaching out to the rest of the world rather than retreating from it. Winograd



To Hell with It

9. PinkPantheress, To Hell with It

At just 19 minutes long, PinkPantheress’s To Hell with It might initially seem like a compilation of musical sketches. In reality, the 20-year-old Brit’s debut mixtape is a concise and exhilarating collection of pop songs that are as indebted to the music of the past as they are forward-thinking. The 10 tracks here preserve the adolescent turbulence of bedroom pop but trade the genre’s traditional acoustic instrumentation and twee simplicity for complex drum-n’-bass arrangements that update ’90s-era jungle music for the internet age. Beyond helping to fuel this genre revival, To Hell with It also succeeds at delivering sublime pop moments like the atmospheric but dynamic “Passion” and the infectious yet melancholic “Just for Me.” Between her pop acumen and TikTok virality, PinkPantheress represents the music of both Gen Z and the future. Mason

Advertisement



Deacon

8. serpentwithfeet, Deacon

Josiah Wise’s second full-length album, Deacon, scales back the divine aspirations and melodramatic tendencies of his 2018 debut, Soil, for a more intimate approach. When Wise observes, “I began to believe nature’s magic was reserved for bees/Not for the men I meet” on “Hyacinth,” it becomes clear that Deacon is predicated on a newfound realization that perhaps the universe, and even the singer’s own world, doesn’t revolve around his love life. At times looking beyond both a higher power and a quest for partnership, the album further expands the artist’s purview: “Fellowship” forgoes romance altogether and celebrates the comforts of platonic companionship. Still, Wise’s exploration of queer sexual roles is welcome in a culture that’s noticeably short on such depictions, and all the more fascinating for how he ties these themes to traditional gospel and R&B frameworks. On Deacon, Wise continues to prove how insightful he is at weaving his romantic obsessions with painfully honest, emotional expressions of his personal fuck-ups. Lyons-Burt



Carnage

7. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, Carnage

As a duo, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have already built up a formidable discography that, until now, has been composed entirely of film scores. Their work in that arena clearly informed parts of Carnage, like the atmospheric mix of low-key Reznor-esque electronics and sinewy strings on “Hand of God” and the swooning, orchestral “Lavender Fields.” You can just picture the heartsick cowboy riding out across the plains in one of the westerns scored by Cave and Ellis. But even as the album finds Cave continuing to veer away from traditional pop song structure, the singer is as himself as ever, reeling off passages of alternating deep terror and profound beauty in his indomitable baritone. He shows his full range on the spectacular “White Elephant,” starting at a low, wrathful grumble (“I’ll shoot you in the fucking facе/If you think of coming around here,” he growls) before suddenly breaking into a fit of religious euphoria for one of his more buoyant choruses to date. Winograd



Happier Than Ever

6. Billie Eilish, Happier Than Ever

Happier Than Ever nudges Billie Eilish beyond the trip-hop and trap sounds that dominated her debut, resulting in a more sonically diverse set that allows the singer to explore the more textured, melodic aspects of her voice. And when the songs don’t seamlessly segue into one another, they’re thoughtfully sequenced to trace Eilish’s path to happiness—or something close to it. The title of Happier Than Ever is, in part, a statement of intent. “I’m happier than ever, at least that’s my endeavor/To keep myself together and prioritize my pleasure,” she sings on “Getting Older.” Of course, Eilish faces the added obstacle of pursuing happiness while under the glare of the spotlight, and fame or its tangential effects on her life are referenced on nearly every song here. “Would you like me to be smaller, weaker, softer, taller?/Would you like me to be quiet?” she asks on “Not My Responsibility.” When, on “Therefore I Am,” she re-appropriates French philosopher René Descartes’s famous dictum “Cogito, ergo sum,” Eilish isn’t just trying to prove her existence, but manifesting her own happiness. Cinquemani



Hey What

5. Low, Hey What

Hey What finds Low’s Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker fully embracing sonic expressionism while further honing their impeccable songcraft. “Days Like These” boasts the album’s most buoyant and pop-friendly hook, though the track’s sprawling distortion soon conjures a sense of impending doom. The song’s final two minutes feature some of Low’s more texturally articulate and precisely balanced sonic experiments to date: arrhythmic flourishes, an elegant vocal wafting in the background, and a swirl of static that fades toward silence, conjuring a universe smoldering toward extinction. If the band’s 2018 album Double Negative is, as a friend once described, a haunted house, then Hey What is the home after it’s been exorcised. Inside, two people serenade each other, expressing undying affection as they wander through empty, sterile rooms. The album seamlessly blends the nightmarish and the romantic, interweaving our perennial hopes and the terrors we can’t shake off. Amen

Advertisement



Chemtrails Over the Country Club

4. Lana Del Rey, Chemtrails Over the Country Club

The way Lana Del Rey connects different songs to one another, even across different albums (like Lust for Life’s “Cherry” and Norman Fucking Rockwell’s “Venice Bitch”), is peerless—perhaps rivaled only by Taylor Swift—and partly what makes her work so enveloping. On Chemtrails Over the Country Club, Del Rey delights in dropping breadcrumbs: Her discussions of jewels on the title track links with mentions of the same on a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “For Free,” and she sings fondly of her ranch near Coldwater Canyon, which “sometimes…feels like [her] only friend,” on “Tulsa Jesus Freak” and “Dance Till We Die.” These thoughtfully connected threads make the album feel as if it’s in dialogue with itself and the rest of Del Rey’s catalog. And while it doesn’t engage with our current moment or hot-button issues as urgently as Norman Fucking Rockwell does, it’s also part of a larger pop-cultural conversation—or at least, it has some hilarious and apt references to astrology, Kings of Leon, and How Green Was My Valley. Lyons-Burt



Blue Banisters

3. Lana Del Rey, Blue Banisters

“Let’s keep it simple, babe/Don’t make it complicated,” Lana Del Rey purrs at the start of “Beautiful,” a track from her eighth studio album, Blue Banisters. The lyric serves as a statement of purpose, reflecting the album’s pared-down arrangements. The decision to keep the music sparse draws focus to the lyrical content, which is some of the most razor-sharp and bitingly funny of Del Rey’s career. A fascination with color, a recurring thread that’s ever-shifting in its meaning, is weaved throughout Blue Banisters. When, on “Beautiful,” Del Rey quips, “What if someone had asked/Picasso not to be sad…there would be no blue period,” we understand “blue” to represent not just a state of depression, but one that yields inspiration. Del Rey’s vocals are as cherubic and distant as ever, stuck in a daydream but exactingly so. Sure, there’s an odd bit at the end of “Living Legend” where Del Rey’s trilling is processed through a wah-wah pedal, and there are several, perhaps inevitable, instances of thematic retreads from past albums. But by stripping back the sonic density of her previous work and taking its sweet time to unfold, Blue Banisters further fleshes out Del Rey’s increasingly vivid personal world. Lyons-Burt



Daddy’s Home

2. St. Vincent, Daddy’s Home

It’s always been easy to imagine Clark as an artist transported from the ’70s, cutting a lithe, androgynous figure on a concert stage right alongside Lou Reed, Marc Bolan, or the Spiders from Mars. The strutting “Pay Your Way in Pain,” the opening track of Daddy’s Home, will certainly do nothing to quell the Bowie comparisons, as the track is clearly indebted to the late icon’s classic “Fame,” down to the way Clark pleadingly elongates the vowel in “paaaiiin.” But the rest of the album doesn’t hit any of the obvious glam notes, as producer Jack Antonoff and Clark ensconce these songs in clavichord, Wurlitzer, electric sitar, and a dampened heartbeat drum sound that, in toto, perfectly capture the style and vibe of classic ’70s funk, soul, and folk-rock. Winograd



Jubilee

1. Japanese Breakfast, Jubilee

Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner can make a word last a lifetime, or at least several seconds. She sings in a breathy register, as if caught in a reverie, painstakingly extending notes or running two or more lines together in a burst of feeling. While the emotions Zauner is sifting through across Jubilee’s 10 tracks are at once recognizable and powerfully vulnerable, they aren’t always easy to pin down. Zauner frequently crafts metaphors and imagines situations that are at times compellingly contradictory or unclear. On “Paprika,” for instance, after declaring that she finds “no rush,” she proclaims, “It’s a rush!” Is she being sarcastic, or just making space for multiple truths? The ambiguity gives the music a tantalizing quality, insistently throwing us off her trail. The juggling of conflicting perspectives is also on fine display across Zauner’s depictions of love, as she insightfully explores the dangers of buying into agreed-upon fantasies with a romantic partner. For this singular artist, music is the chance to conceive of the exuberant possibilities of life and love while teasing out their more bracing realities. Lyons-Burt

Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.