In 2018, it felt hard to reach consensus on anything—including music. The heavy-hitters of pop and hip-hop returned, but many disappointed; in fact, sometimes, they were just confounding (cough Kanye cough). More than ever, music felt like a playing field where new, exciting artists were sharing the discussion with the veterans, if not taking it over outright. A sea change was underway, the borders eroded—and music was better for it. Here are the best albums of the year.
Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.
SOB X RBE: Gangin
The quiet miracle of friendship is that it is almost always accidental. Adjacent seats, matching hats, shared cul-de-sacs—any random moment of connection can be the beginning of a lifelong bond. SOB X RBE formed in Vallejo, California, around shared commitments to Call of Duty, basketball, and rap—and on their debut album, Gangin, you can feel both the looseness of those links and their intensity. Lul G, Yhung T.O., DaBoii, and Slimmy B make ruffian rap that bruises and bounces in equal measure; their record is a marvel of perpetual motion and brotherhood.
Gangin plays like a cartoon fight cloud set to music: At any given moment, you can snap your fingers or a neck. The record often feels limitless and unbound; the members appear on songs in unpredictable order, sometimes alone, other times as a trio or duo. In lieu of ad-libs or layered vocals, there’s constant fluidity. Flows are passed along and riffed. Verses are packed toe-to-toe, the ideas firing too quickly to pause. The beats are smooth but fleet, complementing and contrasting the group's harried delivery. Now the future of the group is uncertain, but perhaps that, too, is par for the course. Entropy is enabling until it isn’t. –Stephen Kearse
Listen: SOB X RBE, “Anti Social”
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Overload
For years, Georgia Anne Muldrow was underground R&B’s greatest utility player. She provided yin to Dudley Perkins’ yang, dropped Roberta Flack rose petals on Mos Def, crafted loopy old soul with Madlib, and teamed with fellow priestess Erykah Badu to bring the notion to “stay woke” to the world at large. But the restlessly creative and bountiful artist has also had a remarkable solo career—and Overload, her 17th album in 12 years, is her best one yet.
All of Muldrow’s powers as singer, songwriter, and producer are on display here. A hundred years of the African-American pop vernacular are, too: Astral jazz wafts through pop confections, boom-bap turns into soul-quaking confessionals, and Muldrow daydreams Stevie Wonder doing a second-line strut. She makes Afrofuturism resound right here, in the present moment. –Andy Beta
Listen: Georgia Anne Muldrow, “Aerosol”
Kamasi Washington: Heaven and Earth
Pity the jazz artist whose work garners major acclaim across genre lines—usually, whether they asked for it or not, a responsibility for the entire art form will be hefted onto his or her shoulders. Luckily, the most recently anointed, California tenor saxophonist and bandleader Kamasi Washington, has an omnivorous creative ambition that continues to expand. This double album is a conceptual trip through outer and inner space, stacked with an ace ensemble cast of players. They go big, as on the frenzied, endlessly ascending jam “One of One,” and deep, with an elongated meditation on the Brill Building gem “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” The dizzying trip navigates hybrid terrain that includes shimmering exotica and slinky G-funk grooves, moving from the bodily pleasures of soul jazz and funk to the spiritual and cerebral ecstasies of gospel and psychedelia. –Alison Fensterstock
Listen: Kamasi Washington, “One of One”
Skee Mask: Compro
Techno doesn’t get more sensual, tactile, or inviting than Compro. The music—a ripe and septic mix of dub and breakbeats, bangers and ambient interludes—feels so alive and unpredictable that it barely fits that genre tag for more than a minute at a time. As Skee Mask, Munich producer Bryan Müller uses his mix of analog and digital equipment to conjure a boggy landscape out of which all kinds of sumptuous notes emerge. The sharp, steely drum pads—which cut through “Soundboy Ext.” and “Dial 274” like wires passing through clay—are rough enough to keep you dancing in some cement basement all night, but Compro could also soundtrack an evening spent on an abandoned train platform, staring up at the sky. It’s some of the most astonishing and alive electronic music of the year; it thrashes, it seethes, it wails, it breathes. –Jayson Greene
Listen: Skee Mask, “Soundboy Ext.”
Blood Orange: Negro Swan
Blood Orange’s Negro Swan opens the door to a more appealing universe—somewhere without requirement to shrink yourself in order “to quote-unquote belong,” as the transgender writer/activist Janet Mock puts it in an interlude here. Dev Hynes’ inquiry into black depression exhumes his trauma and insecurities, school bullying encounters, and early thoughts of death, delivering diary entries in a yearning tone sometimes reminiscent of Elliott Smith—too tired to shout, too exhausted to keep quiet.
Negro Swan is indulgent in the best way, like a loner showing you around their obsessively decorated bedroom: It has glimmers of angsty Prince, petty Marvin Gaye, desolate psychedelia, bluesy mysticism. Poised between escapism and self-examination, the album welcomes the dispossessed and extends tender, melancholy encouragement to take up space in the world. –Jazz Monroe
Listen: Blood Orange, “Nappy Wonder”
Cat Power: Wanderer
Chan Marshall pulled off one of the year’s great conjuring tricks on Wanderer, her first album in six years. Rarely has music this well constructed sounded so utterly effortless, as if blown along by the wind rather than stitched together in the studio. Wanderer is so low-key that it could easily pass you by, but this delicacy is also its charm. The understated textures on songs like “Nothing Really Matters” and the Rihanna cover “Stay” feel like a whisper in the ear or a nap under a tree, deliciously simple pleasures that linger. Wanderer’s warm-hearted sound is all soft vocal strokes, muted guitar, and hushed piano. It is a triumph of quiet introspection and musical restraint, a spellbinding record that works its magic by sleight of hand. –Ben Cardew
Listen: Cat Power, “Stay”
Camp Cope: How to Socialise & Make Friends
Camp Cope singer-guitarist Georgia Maq’s voice is a beacon of resilience. On the razor-sharp songs that make up her Australian trio’s second record—a mix of folk-rock intimacy, punk incision, and loud emo catharsis—she shares her path forward. How to Socialise & Make Friends spins a bracing narrative of feminist solidarity and self-sufficiency in the face of toxic men, and it offers empathy in response to the havoc they wreak.
On “The Opener,” the album’s first track and its rallying thesis, Maq sarcastically stitches together a selection of the belittling comments that music industry men have made to Camp Cope since they formed in 2015—undervaluing their abilities, equating their success with their gender. Maq’s biting delivery here carries throughout all of How to Socialise: She turns single syllables into triumphs. The title track finds Maq breezing along on her bike with no hands on the handlebar, thriving, humming a mantra: “I can see myself living without you.” It’s one lifesaving sentiment on an album full of them. –Jenn Pelly
Listen: Camp Cope, “The Opener”
Sleep: The Sciences
As Juuling has taken over high schools around the country, it’s only appropriate that some lifelong stoners in their 40s would come back to remind us that the only acceptable way to inhale vapor is through a bong. Sleep started when its members were teenagers; back then, their now-legendary guitarist Matt Pike had white dreads that flopped around as his guitar solos ascended to heaven. Aside from a new drummer (and Pike’s hair), not much has changed for the band. Sleep are still dedicated freaks and effortless doom metal masters who use their skill to write praise songs to the sweet leaf. Their extended odes boast very sick solos and repetitious bass that burrows deep into your skull. The Sciences, the band’s first album in more than a decade, dropped by surprise on the international marijuana holiday, April 20, and while that’s cute and all, it’s a good listen all year round. Throw your vape in the trash, call your dealer, and crank it. –Matthew Schnipper
Listen: Sleep, “Marijuanaut’s Theme”
Adrianne Lenker: abysskiss
Adrianne Lenker’s abysskiss is a hushed but intense affair for acoustic guitar and voice. The Big Thief frontwoman asks painful questions—“What Can You Say” addresses waning love in the most melancholy terms imaginable—but also reassuring answers like those found in “10 Miles,” a rural picture of domestic contentment as seen from a life’s latter half. The album is bookended by death: Its specter ripples through both the opening and closing songs, though the softness of Lenker’s voice belies the starkness and even severity of her imagery—an earthy menagerie shot through with wild animals, forests, and other kaleidoscopic fragments of the sublime. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Adrianne Lenker, “What Can You Say”
Ty Dolla $ign / Jeremih: MihTy
As two of R&B’s most generous collaborators, Ty Dolla $ign and Jeremih are so consistently the best part of any song they’re featured on that a shared project from the two was bound to be an exercise in decadence. And sure enough, the peanut butter/chocolate pairing of Ty Dolla’s nonchalant croon and Jeremih’s frictionless falsetto is a triumph of creature comforts. MihTy frees the two unshowy showmen to indulge in the tropes of ’90s R&B, a style there isn’t much room for on the charts these days. But the duo’s forward-looking producers ensure this isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia. They continually introduce sly, contemporary twists on these classic sounds, especially lead architect Hitmaka, whose plush, pillowy inversions of trap provide the singers a backdrop every bit as sumptuous as their voices. –Evan Rytlewski
Listen: Ty Dolla $ign / Jeremih, “Ride It”
Iceage: Beyondless
Iceage make bold moves, and Beyondless is their boldest yet. This time around, the Danish punks’ arsenal is particularly robust, as brass and violins and hammered dulcimers throw momentum and sophistication behind the slurring poet up front, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt. Their aesthetic palette has widened well beyond the confines of their punk origins: Just look at “Showtime,” which features the band diving into a trombone-heavy burlesque pastiche. It’s a fun bit of vaudeville—until you realize the central character is a singer who shoots himself in the head in front of a packed audience.
Rønnenfelt has talked about how he wrote the album after touring a changing planet—one with more barbed-wire barriers, more refugee camps, and a more palpable sense of fear. This discouraging state of affairs pervades the record. There are sarcastic celebrations about the horrors of war (“Hurrah”) and stomping meditations on how death is around the corner (“The Day the Music Dies”). Even the album’s banger, “Pain Killer,” bolstered by a Sky Ferreira guest turn, is about toxic codependency. That’s the pull of Beyondless—an album that pairs bleak narratives with frenzied, over-the-top rock’n’roll. –Evan Minsker
Listen: Iceage, “Pain Killer” [ft. Sky Ferreira]
The Internet: Hive Mind
The Internet’s fourth album, and their first in three years, represents a reunion of sorts. The members took their time between projects to follow their own curiosities, in both solo work and collaboration. The clearest beneficiaries of this branching-out are in Syd’s renewed vocal confidence, dancing around tracks in melodies that are pleading, catchy, and coy all at once, crooning her way through all manner of romantic conquests. Steve Lacy’s guitar work unfolds into a more romantic and playful bounce, painting the backgrounds.
The Internet’s main bag has long been trying to keep a foot in so many genres that the genres themselves become useless. Here they still dip into smooth R&B, as in “Stay the Night,” and funky dance tracks like “Roll (Burbank Funk)” and bossa nova like “La Di Da,” but it all serves their greater, unified sound. Hive Mind is the full realization of what the Internet has been reaching for since their inception: They have finally become a genre unto themselves. –Hanif Abdurraqib
Listen: The Internet, “Roll (Burbank Funk)”
Kali Uchis: Isolation
In the abundant femme art-pop brilliance of this year, Kali Uchis’ bilingual debut album, Isolation, announces her as a genre-defying visionary. Like Janelle Monáe, St. Vincent, or latter day-Beyoncé, Colombian-American Uchis pays tribute to pop’s past while making it sound new through glowing homage to black and Latinx jukebox favorites and a global roster of collaborations housed in classic soul/R&B aesthetics. She’s a stylist for sure, but her retro dream world sounds more OutKast downtempo psych funk and less Bruno Mars roller rink pander. That said, her solid songcraft should win her fans across all generations, while her lyrics, full of POC feminist empowerment aphorisms and frank millennial sex-positivity, speak to how to grow up and love right. And if that doesn’t work, her breakup anthem “Dead to Me” will hex the ex, and the gooey G-funk groove “After the Storm” will salve the wounded soul. –Daphne Carr
Listen: Kali Uchis, “Dead to Me”
JPEGMAFIA: Veteran
First, you notice the beats. JPEGMAFIA—raised in Brooklyn and across the South but established as an artist in Baltimore—is a preternaturally gifted producer, the textures of his beats all jagged and interlocking just so. It’s ordered anarchy, informed by noise music and screeching dial-up modems; on Veteran’s “Real Nega,” he uses a vocal gag from the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard as sonic scaffolding. But what makes “Peggy”—as his cultish and rapidly expanding fanbase refers to him—such a magnetic artist is his ability to gobble up all the broken syntaxes, unhinged YouTube comments, and Senatorial screeds that define this era and regurgitate them back in a focused burst. He has that unique ability as a writer to make verses that are dripping in irony seem, in aggregate, to convey a sincere and unmistakable message. Veteran is the sort of album that will spawn hundreds, if not thousands, of imitators in basements and bedrooms across the country—and not a single one will replicate it. –Paul A. Thompson
Listen: JPEGMAFIA, “Real Nega”
Rico Nasty: Nasty
Nasty marks the capstone in a breakout year for DMV upstart Rico Nasty. The album blends her sugar-rush raps with a mosher’s fury for maximum thrash, all while she perfectly balances the aesthetics of her awesomely named alter-egos (primarily Tacobella and Trap Lavigne). It can be dizzying to keep pace with her many styles throughout the record, from sing-song teases to punchy romps with blistering flows. Soundtracked in large part by one of the year’s most impactful producers, Kenny Beats, doing some of his most dynamic work, Nasty pushes Rico to the front of a class of rap shapeshifters. And in running the full gamut of her talents, she reveals more of herself than ever before. –Sheldon Pearce
Listen: Rico Nasty, “Countin Up”
A.A.L (Against All Logic): 2012 - 2017
Throughout this decade, Nicolas Jaar has cultivated a brand of shadowy electronic music that aims to subvert, challenge, and disrupt everything we know about electronic music. These brainy exercises are great at poking at our preconceptions, but by consciously avoiding repetition, sticky melodies, and cresting dynamics, they can also come across as impenetrable, distant. In this context, 2012 - 2017, a compilation of tracks under Jaar’s A.A.L (Against All Logic) moniker, plays like a dancefloor-filling complement to all those head games—a record for the body. It’s one of the most accessible things he’s ever released, a contemporary house album stuffed with bass that thumps where you expect it to and glorious soul samples that wail to the heavens. And yet, no one would confuse this album with something by, say, Disclosure. Jaar still manages to work in some of his offbeat moves, like the pointillistic drums on “I Never Dream,” or the subterranean clatter that shades the ebullient piano chords of “Cityfade.” Jaar is a genius when it comes to upending dance music traditions, but here, he’s just as masterful at honoring them. –Ryan Dombal
Listen: A.A.L (Against All Logic), “Cityfade”
Neneh Cherry: Broken Politics
What a welcome surprise that this decade may wind up containing Neneh Cherry’s most sustained, rewarding creative peak. No disrespect to her 1989 breakthrough, Raw Like Sushi; it’s just math, as she’s released two strong solo albums, one vibrant jazz project, and a sizzling remix collection since 2010. Broken Politics reunites her with producer Four Tet, whom she paired with on 2014’s Blank Project, but they don’t repeat their steps; while that first collaboration favored starkly thumping electronic compositions, Broken Politics pursues a supple variety.
That is the case even when it stomps—as on the uptempo highlight “Natural Skin Deep,” which offers a battery of whirling samples, metallic percussion elements, sirens, and even a saxophone break. A similar timbral sensitivity carries over to the more reflective pieces. On “Synchronised Devotion,” Cherry sings beautifully of “living in the slow jam” as a political stance—one that emphasizes the connection that remains possible inside a song while the broader culture is crumbling. –Seth Colter Walls
Listen: Neneh Cherry, “Natural Skin Deep”
Sheck Wes: MUDBOY
When some people hear the words “New York” and “rap” in the same sentence, the first things that come to mind are “lyrical” and “boom bap”: terms that speak to both revered and reviled styles of rap, with roots in the late-’80s to mid-’90s Golden Age of Hip-Hop. But the sound of New York rap in 2018 isn’t monolithic, nor is it trapped in a time capsule. Sheck Wes, the son of Senegalese immigrants and a Harlemite, is an example of this diversity. His debut, MUDBOY, contradicts any notion of what New York is supposed to sound like. Propelled by “Mo Bamba,” Wes’ smash with the producers 16yrold and Take a Daytrip, the sound of MUDBOY is a melting pot of the 20-year-old Wes’ influences. Largely produced by homegrown teen beat-makers Lunchbox and Redda, the record features robotic post-EDM synthesized highs (“Gmail”) and thunderous low ends (“Live Sheck Wes,” “Wanted”) in the vein of the 808 sound that old-school New York producers introduced and Southern producers perfected. As for Wes the rapper, his nasal baritone is used to great effect to exclaim “Bitch!” and tell stories of mobbin’ through the city, causing mayhem and being banished to Senegal (“Jiggy on the Shits”). Looking for New York rap? This is what it sounds like. –Timmhotep Aku
Listen: Sheck Wes, “Jiggy on the Shits”
Let’s Eat Grandma: I’m All Ears
Not long ago, Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton were twin Alices in Wonderland: two teens from Norwich, England who wore matching outfits and wrote fanciful songs about mushrooms and treehouses. But with I’m All Ears, their second album as Let’s Eat Grandma, the pair bridge the gap between eccentricity and innovation. Their playful curiosity persists, but it is put to use exploring disparate corners of the pop and pop-adjacent world, from stirring piano balladry on “Ava” to disco pomp on “Donnie Darko.” “Hot Pink” stands out for its grating industrial noise and weaponized emblem of girlishness; it flashes a colorful middle finger to the duo’s detractors. However, it is blue—the ubiquitous, pallid blue of glowing screens—that more noticeably tints the record. Hollingworth and Walton apply an effortlessly contemporary lens to tried-and-true themes of togetherness, aloneness, and the transitional state between the two, adroitly capturing both IRL emotions and those refracted through phone keyboards. At 19 and 20, the pair are certainly young, but don’t call them the future of pop: They’re the present. –Olivia Horn
Listen: Let’s Eat Grandma, “Hot Pink”
Arctic Monkeys: Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
The Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino isn’t the most appealing vacation spot. The views are incredible, but the VR masks are grimy and unreliable. The on-site taqueria’s not bad, but there’s better food down near Clavius if you’re willing to leave the resort. The performers all seem to experience existential crises as soon as they take the stage. It all sounds a little sleazy. What’s more remarkable is that it all feels real.
Arctic Monkeys’ bold gambit—a hairpin turn from good, ol’ fashioned rock’n’roll into bachelor-pad psych-pop—only pays off because of their commitment to world-building. It’s what gives Alex Turner’s one-liners and commentaries on screen-addled modernity their emotional ballast. All of the album’s narrators are looking for an escape, whether from our planet’s charring husk or a lover who’s haunted them for years. It’s an album for a near-future where technology is better but everyone’s still miserable, and you leave it with immense empathy for the sad-sack lounge lizards just looking for a new friend or two. –Jamieson Cox
Listen: Arctic Monkeys, “Star Treatment”
Christine and the Queens: Chris
In a year in which our rights to be whoever we want to be and love whoever we want to love were increasingly threatened, art that blows up the gender binary and shatters traditional ideas of sexuality feels more necessary than ever. On her second album, Christine and the Queens’ Hélöise Letissier invents a new persona—the tough, in-your-face androgyne Chris—to challenge and question the things male rock stars get away with. Over sinuous new wave funk, Chris sings about paying for sex (“5 dollars”) aggressively pursuing pleasure (“Damn [what must a woman do]”), and shrugging off commitment (“girlfriend”)—the kinds of things that would be seen as “masculine” if you believed in that concept. “Some of us just had to fight/For even being looked at right,” Chris sings on “5 dollars,” summing up the way it feels when the world expects you to behave a certain way, but you just can’t play by their rules. And in 2018, that was a whole lot of us. –Amy Phillips
Listen: Christine and the Queens, “5 dollars”
boygenius: boygenius EP
Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are three beloved indie rock singer-songwriters with their own distinct styles and standalone careers, and their self-titled debut EP as boygenius is a testament to the magic of collaboration. Each song is arranged around each woman’s artistic quirks, and they elevate their individual strengths while finding dynamic harmony. On “Me & My Dog,” Bridgers’ gauzy folk-rock is brought into focus by the immediacy of Baker’s disruptive vocals and Dacus’ keen, steady guitar. Dacus’ introspection is made full and sweet on “Bite the Hand” with the help of Baker and Bridgers’ cascading vocals, while Baker’s cutting delivery on the confrontational “Stay Down” is softly centered by piano and hushed harmonies. The trust and appreciation between band members is palpable throughout. –Braudie Blais-Billie
Listen: boygenius, “Bite the Hand”
Deafheaven: Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
In 2018, the Smashing Pumpkins (sort of) got back together, and an excellent Smashing Pumpkins album was released. But these two things have absolutely nothing to do with one another, because that excellent Smashing Pumpkins album was actually made by Deafheaven.
For the past half-decade, the San Francisco-bred band have been experimenting with the soluble qualities of black metal, heating it up and melting it down until it evaporates into dream pop. But more than ever before, on Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, their atomic fusion of melancholy and infinite madness assumes the lighter-waving splendor and communal ecstasy of arena rock. The elegant piano-led build of “You Without End” (aka Deafheaven’s “Tonight, Tonight”) and serene, stargazing sway of “Near” are disarming enough, but it’s the 11-minute “Honeycomb” that best illustrates Deafheaven’s shifting priorities: What begins as a blast-beat blur gradually dissolves into a Siamese Dream of an outro that’ll have you scouring the liner notes for a James Iha cameo. Of course, George Clarke’s tonsil-ripping growl remains several degrees more fearsome and ferocious than even Billy Corgan’s most anguished wails, but then, what do you think a raging rat in a cage is supposed to sound like? –Stuart Berman
Listen: Deafheaven, “You Without End”
Soccer Mommy: Clean
Nashville songwriter Sophie Allison’s debut studio album as Soccer Mommy is one of 2018’s most affecting portraits of romance. Allison’s longings are humble: She self-identifies as more of a dying flower than a sunbeam on “Last Girl,” idolizes an ice cold heartbreaker on “Cool,” and just wants to be “the one you’re kissing when you’re stoned” on “Skin.” On Clean’s hushed centerpiece, “Blossom (Wasting All My Time),” dreams are consistently darkened by reality. But despite this vulnerable (and often self-loathing) sense of self, Allison looks forward with confidence. She knows that untangling the mysteries of life and love can’t be rushed; after all, spirits are governed by our blood and the stars (as she suggests on “Scorpio Rising”). By the time Allison concludes “I want to be who I wasn’t” on the closer “Wildflowers,” Clean faces a horizon full of hope. –Quinn Moreland
Listen: Soccer Mommy, “Cool”
Vince Staples: FM!
Dropped in angst-ridden, pre-midterms early November, Vince Staples’ FM! is the exact length of a television sitcom—22 minutes—and as snappily edited as one. “We gon’ party til the sun or the guns come out,” Staples sings on the opener, “Feels Like Summer,” tire-slashing the idyllic illusion of California, his home. Throughout FM!, he applies that sardonic, pitch-perfect wit to a wild, compressed experiment of twitchy songs made with California collaborators Ty Dolla $ign, Earl Sweatshirt, Kamaiyah, and more, in a format that mimics the iconic rap radio show “Big Boy’s Neighborhood.”
With the album’s cover art, Staples deliberately borrows the gleeful, cartoonish vibe of Green Day’s Dookie, playing up the contrast between those anthems of teenage angst and his own. He may sing “We just wanna have fun,” but references to “dead homies” resurface in song after song; what purports to be party jams become hymns to the fallen. Reality inevitably intrudes: “My black is beautiful, but I’ll still shoot at you,” he says, unflinching. Experimental and abrupt, the album ends all too soon, yet it feels convincing and complete, and Staples’ sobering revelations linger. –Rebecca Bengal
Listen: Vince Staples, “Feels Like Summer”
Playboi Carti: Die Lit
Playboi Carti’s debut studio album is a little darker and much stranger than the Atlanta rapper’s previous work. Instead of the jovial trap of his 2017 debut mixtape, the mosh pit invades Die Lit’s personal space. Producer Pi’erre Bourne brings a more luxurious version of the manic energy that he bottled on last year’s “Magnolia,” with features from Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, and Young Thug, who all dig deep into their pools of personality for more exaggerated takes on their signature sounds. The result makes for a take on rap that’s more rambunctious than lyrical—and all the stronger for it. On Die Lit, Carti sounds more alive than ever before. –Trey Alston
Listen: Playboi Carti, “Poke It Out” [ft. Nicki Minaj]
Julia Holter: Aviary
Dense, sprawling, and hugely varied across its 90-minute length, Julia Holter’s Aviary is an art-pop album that unapologetically puts the emphasis on art. Like Robert Wyatt, Laurie Anderson, or Scott Walker, Holter’s music is so idiosyncratic and instantly identifiable that it could come from no one else, and her admirable commitment to the form and structure of a double-album-sized idea leads to a work that is challenging and rewarding in equal measure. Aviary takes strengths from Holter’s earlier records—an ear for delicate melody and an expert fusion of pop form and modern composition—and boils them down to their essence, then twists them into gnarled and sometimes frightening new designs. –Mark Richardson
Listen: Julia Holter, “Turn the Light On”
Travis Scott: Astroworld
Young rap fans and radio programmers have loved Travis Scott for awhile, but Astroworld propelled awareness of his sound-design flair to a new level. Critics had previously tended to view Scott as a skillful convenor of other talents, rather than a talent in his own right. While that networking and curatorial skill was still evident on Astroworld—which recruits everyone from Stevie Wonder to the ghost of the Notorious B.I.G.—what’s striking about the album is how it all sounds like Travis Scott. The host rarely gets overshadowed by the guests; the broth is never spoiled by the ridiculous number of cooks.
“Sicko Mode” splits its song publishing between 30 names and involves five producers, yet still triumphs as the album’s banger. “5% Tint” is another killer, with its stereo-panning growls and vocals like anesthetic gas seeping under the door in a ’60s spy movie. Doubts persist about Scott ever becoming the Kanye-level major artist he aspires to be; his lyrics, rarely memorable, mostly traffic in hollow hedonism. But you don’t turn to Scott for insights into our contemporary decadence, you come for the exquisitely intricate ear candy: queasy stereo-sculpted effects, dilated smears of texture, startling vocal treatments. More about mood than meaning, Scott’s music is a glistening vapor that fills headphones and car interiors with cocooning unreality. File under “ambient.” –Simon Reynolds
Listen: Travis Scott, “Sicko Mode” [ft. Drake]
U.S. Girls: In a Poem Unlimited
U.S. Girls is the work of solo artist Meghan Remy, who—now a decade into her career—has grown cynical and sinister, but hasn’t lost her gift as a reliable and sharply focused narrator. In a Poem Unlimited plays as a book might read, with the speaker’s gaze always directly honed and a storyline unfolding eagerly but not so loosely that it can’t be followed. Remy’s targets are largely men, from St. Peter to Barack Obama to the vast specter of maleness haunting each corner of a country’s violence. From the haunting opener “Velvet 4 Sale” to the danceable anti-war “M.A.H.,” the songs work because Remy sings earnestly and patiently about revenge and reckoning—something she knows is coming. The album also plays host to over 20 guests, and the collaborations echo the album’s tone: There is a fight and the fight cannot be approached alone. In a Poem Unlimited manages to be a record for the times, without bowing to the vastness of all miseries. It knows its targets. –Hanif Abdurraqib
Listen: U.S. Girls, “Velvet 4 Sale”
The 1975: A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
The 1975 are, in a word, unsubtle. On A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, they grapple with obvious questions—Is true love deeply felt and simply expressed? Is the internet bad? Is Trump bad?—and answer in the affirmative every time. It’s also clear that “Love It If We Made It,” the big set piece of their third album, is a 2018 redux of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” with its topical shouts-outs of everything from fossil fuels to kneeling on football fields—and for a band that has historically drawn from the crystalline guitars of the ’80s, pulling from Billy Joel isn’t really out of step. Cultural references pour out of frontman Matty Healy’s mouth in a barrage, a litany of blunt phrases ranging from the death Lil Peep to the figurative death of Kanye West.
A Brief Inquiry is a Saturn Return of an album, the sound of turning over new leaves, kicking heroin (or Twitter), and not letting the waves of modernity knock you down. The band is at their most luxurious and diverse here; their pop gently beckons. The way the album goes from acoustic confessions to a choir-backed neo-soul jam to pleading ballads spangled with vocoder and digital gloss has a way of disarming each and every layer of cynicism. It is a weapon of mass sincerity, deployed in these worst of times. It may be the only thing that works. –Jeremy D. Larson
Listen: The 1975, “Love It If We Made It”
Beach House: 7
Beach House have characterized the vibe of 7, the band’s seventh record, as “pre-apocalyptic,” which also feels like a fitting way to describe the various devastations and dark omens of 2018. How does a person keep on, knowing that the present path could very well end in ruin? 7 suggests lunging toward the unknown in the most glamorous way possible; it’s the fuck-it spirit of Prince’s 1999, filtered through a throbbing synthesizer and played only at twilight, just as the temperature starts to dip and stars begin speckling the horizon. Aggressively layered synthesizers and guitars build a wall of sound that’s both forceful and enveloping. Victoria Legrand’s wispy-but-menacing vocals express some vague melancholy, but they’re filled with hope, too—nobody knows, after all, what might happen next, and in those dusky moments, anything is still possible. –Amanda Petrusich
Listen: Beach House, “Drunk in LA”
Cardi B: Invasion of Privacy
After breaking out last year with “Bodak Yellow,” Cardi B had a lot to live up to. But with her debut album, Invasion of Privacy, she didn’t just meet expectations: She soared over them. The project cements her evolution from self-described “stripper hoe” to bonafide rap star, without losing any of the infectious personality that made her a cultural beacon in the first place.
The full complexity of her Cardi-ness is on display here. She teams up with fellow boss-bitch SZA on “I Do,” where she deploys brash one-liners about not needing a man for anything. She’s just as charismatic while flashing her vulnerable side on “Be Careful,” when she warns a cheating partner that he’s on his last strike, and spills out words of gratitude on the wholesome “Best Life” with Chance the Rapper. That sense of range also transfers to her exploration of genre, as she expertly flips between boogaloo-inspired Latin trap, Southern hip-hop twerk anthems, tender R&B jams, and neck-snapping freestyles. It’s not so much a question anymore whether you like Cardi or not: it’s which Cardi you like most. –Michelle Kim
Listen: Cardi B, “Be Careful”
SOPHIE: OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES
Graduating from the glossy, cyborg music crafted with her PC Music collaborators to a dynamic world of lurching machinery, heavily distorted pop, and uncanny beauty, SOPHIE came into her own on her auspicious debut album. OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES is a vivid artistic statement made by a musician finally prepared to step into the spotlight, a fact made manifest on opener “It’s Okay to Cry.” It finds SOPHIE singing her own lyrics for the first time, delicate yet unerringly passionate. Elsewhere, the record renders SOPHIE’s world in bold pops of color and mercurial transitions, from the serrated, post-club squeals of the dom-sub fantasy “Ponyboy” and the beauty complex-defying “Faceshopping” to the stirring, stripped-back atmospherics of “Is It Cold in the Water?” SOPHIE’s willful deconstruction of self and form, tearing away at expectations and norms with cacophony and ambience alike, makes OIL a startling, moving experience. –Eric Torres
Listen: SOPHIE, “It’s Okay to Cry”
Pusha T: Daytona
Pusha-T’s long-awaited third solo album also happens to be the most accomplished release of Kanye West’s high-concept 2018 albums series produced in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Across Daytona’s lean 21 minutes, Pusha’s elocution-deliberate, quasi-malevolent midtempo flow jumps out of the speakers, offering up snarling lyrics about street life and clapbacks to Lil Wayne, Birdman, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and his nemesis, Drake. As producer, West serves up a seven-track array of finely diced ’n’ sliced, gritty soul samples, showcasing head-bopping, hooky production on opener “If You Know You Know” and chilling forlornness on “Santeria,” a track about Pusha’s murdered road manager. Confident and flexing, Daytona is Pusha-T’s most compelling solo album; who says hip-hop MCs can’t do their best work after age 40? –Jason King
Listen: Pusha-T, “If You Know You Know”
Jon Hopkins: Singularity
Jon Hopkins is a master sound manipulator: a bass technician, a texture craftsman, and a pastoral abstractionist. Five years after the release of his breakthrough album, Immunity, the British producer returned with Singularity, which further expands the scope of his heady electronic compositions. Tracks like “Emerald Rush” and “Everything Connected” are designed to translate in peak hours at the club and in meditative headphone sessions alike; songs like “Echo Dissolve” and “Recovery” display Hopkins’ penchant for raw piano, blending his performances with field recordings and digital noise.
Within each song—and the album as a whole—Hopkins paints enormous sonic cliffs and valleys worthy of the psychedelic California desert adventures that inspired the record. It’s this understanding, combined with his earnest quest for spiritual catharsis, that informs every sternum-rattling drop and wistful synthesizer expanse on Singularity. Like all great producers, he knows that a song’s impact is only as great as its dynamic arc. –Noah Yoo
Listen: Jon Hopkins, “Emerald Rush”
Noname: Room 25
Room 25 is the soundtrack to Fatimah Warner coming into her own—not just as an artist, but as an adult and self-actualized black woman. Within the 35 minutes of her second record as Noname, she gives us the full range of who she has become: a confident rapper, a passionate lover, a survivor of heartbreak, and a reluctant public figure. On “Blaxploitation,” she expresses a consciousness of her blackness and its meaning in the world without veering into performative wokeness; her personhood isn’t couched in bravado as much as it is steeped in self-awareness. On “Don’t Forget About Me,” she exposes her own hurt and insecurity while finding strength in vulnerability.
The evolution of Noname’s skills matches the evolution of her music itself. Words tumble, somersault, and stick landings in a style that owes its swagger to rap and its cadence to spoken-word poetry. The production straddles genre lines as well, with producer and multi-instrumentalist Phoelix providing sonic backdrops replete with live instrumentation that are part jazz, part neo-soul, and all grounded in hip-hop. If her 2016 mixtape Telefone was the introduction to Noname’s talent, Room 25 is the proof that she’s arrived. –Timmhotep Aku
Listen: Noname, “Blaxploitation”
Amen Dunes: Freedom
Freedom is the first Amen Dunes album to feature Damon McMahon’s face on the cover, his familiar frizzy curls shorn into a tidy buzz cut. It proves to be an unsubtle advertisement for the music contained within, as the Brooklyn singer-songwriter emerges from the psych-folk sprawl of 2014’s Love with a newfound clarity and concision; where he once let his voice drone and decay into the haze, McMahon delivers Freedom’s meditations on survival and faith with a confession-booth candor. But even as his songs adopt the ebullient rhythms of ’80s Paul Simon and liberally quote Phil Collins hits, McMahon is still chasing transcendence through hypnotic, shape-shifting arrangements and wandering melodies that gradually become unglued from their established structures. “We play religious music/Don’t think you’d understand, man,” he sings atop the ethereal funk of “Blue Rose,” but it proves to be less a word of warning than an invitation to get lost. Freedom presents no less profound a spiritual journey than McMahon’s previous work; he’s just guiding us down a better lit, more smoothly paved path into the unknown. –Stuart Berman
Listen: Amen Dunes, “Blue Rose”
Tirzah: Devotion
Tirzah’s debut EP, 2013’s I’m Not Dancing, turns out to have been prophetically titled. Collaborating with her longtime friend Mica Levi—the visionary, Oscar-nominated film score composer and Micachu and the Shapes mastermind—the London singer-songwriter offered a rough-hewn take on dance-pop that the pair would sharpen on 2014’s No Romance EP. On Devotion, Tirzah’s debut full-length and latest team-up with Levi, she again pursues a sparse, sketch-like approach that is beautifully made, though not for the dancefloor.
Turning away from club-ready UK grime and garage sounds, Devotion redirects Tirzah’s grainy vocals and Levi’s destabilizing production into an extraordinary set of pared-down and scuffed-up R&B reflections on adult love. With its unvarnished loops and disarmingly blunt lyrics, Devotion dreams up a unique space somewhere between the lo-fi cello epiphanies of Arthur Russell and the digital pop futurism of Kelela. The album varies impressively within its distinct niche, finding room for crunching distortion, sad-robot vocal textures, and gritty drum shards. Devotion truly is like a prayer, a hushed offering from Tirzah’s private world. –Marc Hogan
Listen: Tirzah, “Gladly”
CupcakKe: Ephorize
As CupcakKe, Chicago rapper Elizabeth Eden Harris alchemizes high raunch and vigorous navel-gazing. On her third album, Ephorize, her prickles have sharpened and her introspection has gotten more vivid: It’s like watching a flowering cactus grow tall and bloom. Her songwriting is also at its most generous, attending to her own insecurities on “Self Interview” and giving a messy group-hug to queerdom on “Crayons.”
But it’s not all wholesome, thank God: There is sex aplenty on Ephorize, and CupcakKe has not receded from her role as a character annihilator. She relishes in piercing hypocrisies, often to establish her standards. At her most low-voiced and vulnerable on “Total,” CupcakKe starts examining mediocre relationships via their opportunity cost. “Post Pic” praises the timesaving joys of a sexting-only arrangement, with fun, gear-shifting swerves. The album’s standout, the magnificent “Duck Duck Goose,” is a playground of sloppy, bodily thrills. Ephorize is busy and porny, but the deep current of the album asks us to be good to one another. We have time to treat each other well, Ephorize tells us, and still make it to all our dick appointments. –Maggie Lange
Listen: CupcakKe, “Duck Duck Goose”
Ariana Grande: Sweetener
In some ways, big-budget pop was stuck in purgatory in 2018. Rap dominated the charts, and young guns like Troye Sivan, Billie Eilish, and Normani didn’t cross the “household name” threshold; many of the heavyweights, the Katys and Rihannas and Biebers, didn’t do much. And yet Ariana Grande fully ascended to Mount Olympus with Sweetener, an album filled with barnburners but also tremendous personality and even pathos.
There are so many moments of catchy ecstasy on Sweetener, like the one-two punch of “everytime” followed by “breathin.” But beneath the soft edges and the streaming-friendly pop sheen, there’s also a deep sense of grace, growth, and self-expression. What is it about the soaring quality of Grande’s voice that sounds so much like eyes-closed, fists-clenched freedom? Between a terrorist bombing and breakups, here is a woman who has had a trying and, at times, terrifying few years; she puts it all in her music. “no tears left to cry” is a classic, convincing diva ode to resilience, and a song like “pete davidson” chronicles her personal life so closely, it’s basically a chapter in her memoir. If Sweetener was not quite enough to lift all of pop in 2018, it was—for those of us who seek our own salvation within the genre—a much-needed sugar rush. –Alex Frank
Listen: Ariana Grande, “breathin”
Yves Tumor: Safe in the Hands of Love
Listening to Safe in the Hands of Love is like entering freefall. There are reference points, landmarks—a snare drum, a funk bassline, a pop vocal—but they whir past the ear. The drums tower over the mix; the bass fizzles; the vocal melodies tease but never coalesce into hooks. Samples begin midway through a note, as though someone has pressed play on a tape recorder a half-second too late. Where there should be the calming harmonies of a backup singer, anguished screams surface instead. Thorns choke the whole album.
In Sean Bowie’s third album as Yves Tumor, the experimental musician obscures the usual entryways to a pop song, demanding that the listener clear a new route. It’s immediate and arresting work; plenty of music soothes pain, but little engages so directly with the mechanism of how the body responds to trauma, by assuming a new shape for survival. Safe in the Hands of Love approaches this process with a stark, unflinching gaze, holding the promise of resilience in its chaotic, beautiful brutality. In a year when any given day could be a new opportunity to wake up and hurt, Safe in the Hands of Love offered a disorienting form of reassurance. –Sasha Geffen
Listen: Yves Tumor, “Licking an Orchid“ [ft. James K]
Tierra Whack: Whack World
Fifteen songs, 15 minutes: Tierra Whack did that. Whack World is a surreal audio-visual album that reveals the vivid imagination of the Philadelphia-raised artist, jumping from ideas with the snap of a finger. In her debut record’s short runtime, Whack explores the power of less as more, using every chance to land a new style, flow, or sound. She taps into her moody, sing-rap side on songs like “Flea Market,” then she gets on her Philly street-tale spitter tip with “4 Wings,” then widens her sound entirely, floating into the realm of current pop-rap radio stars on “Fruit Salad.” The 15 minutes thing isn’t a gimmick; it’s Tierra cutting all the fat, getting straight to the point, and giving everyone the rare album that demands instant replay. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Tierra Whack, “Fruit Salad”
Low: Double Negative
Twenty-five years ago, when blaring angst was in, Low emerged as part of the slowcore movement—a group of bands who discovered untapped expressive possibilities in slowing down and dreaming away. The Duluth, Minnesota, outfit has continued to evolve unpredictably, delivering a long string of thoughtful, progressively rewarding albums. With Double Negative, their best work yet, Low once again rise above the cacophony by subverting it.
In a year when all art could be mined for political subtext, Double Negative captured its pervasive dread like nothing else. Digitally deconstructed with producer BJ Burton, the record’s electronic noise attempts to strangle the human voice. Static prevails and flickering tones are almost untraceable to the instruments that made them. As austere as Double Negative gets, the mournful harmonies of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk keep it from ever seeming impenetrable. “It’s not the end, just the end of hope,” Sparhawk murmurs into the maelstrom. Call them slowcore if you must, but this is also pretty hardcore. –Marc Hogan
Listen: Low, “Dancing and Fire”
Earl Sweatshirt: Some Rap Songs
Earl Sweatshirt has a lot weighing on his mind, and Some Rap Songs finds him wading through his thoughts. In this self-exploration, the 24-year-old hip-hop veteran created the most introspective record of his career to date, surveying the widening chasm between his spitfire youth and the family legacy he aspires to honor. This is roots music that repurposes sounds of the past (dusty vintage rap, African jazz, black American soul) in compact loops, influenced by a community of musicians that includes MIKE and Standing on the Corner, and inspired by his parents—especially his late father, the celebrated poet and political activist Keorapetse Kgositsile.
Though primarily written and recorded before his father’s death in January, Some Rap Songs is a profound and often pointed rumination on connection, and in turn a searing personal statement. Few rappers possess Earl’s natural lyrical acumen, but even fewer possess the penetrating, perceptive gaze he has developed over time. Most rare are those who would use such insightfulness to work through their own issues. On “Peanut”—half eulogy, half psyche autopsy—he unscrambles the complex emotional brew that comes with mourning a distant parent whom you barely knew. On “Nowhere2Go,” he burrows through depression and seeks fulfillment. As Earl considers his poetic birthright amid a tangled personal history, things start to come into focus, and he begins a healing process. –Sheldon Pearce
Listen: Earl Sweatshirt, “The Mint” [ft. Navy Blue]
Rosalía: El Mal Querer
The moment that Rosalía’s “Malamente (Cap.1: Augurio)” hit YouTube in May, it was clear that the young Spanish singer had struck upon something startlingly new. Where her largely acoustic 2017 album Los Ángeles had rendered flamenco tradition with skeletal brushstrokes, “Malamente” blew it up into widescreen HD and juiced it with THX-caliber bass. Co-produced by Pablo Diaz-Reixa, aka El Guincho, El Mal Querer makes thrillingly good on that single’s promise and the subsequent one, “Pienso en Tu Mirá (Cap.3: Celos),” flipping lightning-fast guitar runs and flickering castanets into hypnotic electronic fusions with unfamiliar scales that only add to their otherworldly qualities. To say the record plays up the tension between tradition and rupture would be an understatement: In “De Aquí No Sales (Cap.4: Disputa),” revving motorcycle engines are deployed as percussive accents over haunting a cappella fragments based on centuries-old folkloric melodies. At the center of it all is Rosalía’s showstopper of a voice. Whether breathy or belting, she’s as commanding a presence as Spanish-language pop has encountered in ages—less an ambassador for flamenco than the inventor of her own fascinating hybrid. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Rosalía, “Pienso en Tu Mirá (Cap.3: Celos)”
Snail Mail: Lush
There were few moments in music as clear-eyed, emotionally courageous, and resonant this year as Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan calmly asking the love of her life, “Don’t you like me for me?/Is there any better feeling than coming clean?” As the guitars swirled around Jordan like comet trails, her gaze felt like it was fixed directly on you. The song’s name was the song’s feeling: “Pristine.” Listening to it felt like staring into the bottom of a riverbed and being able to count every pebble.
Incredibly, the album enfolding “Pristine” contains at least four or five other moments as sharp, poignant, and honest. Anyone with a lifelong codependent relationship to indie rock will sense the echoes stirred by Jordan’s sour-apple guitars, the muted arrangements, and rich, conversational vocals: Pavement, the Spinanes, Liz Phair, Sebadoh, Hope Sandoval. But those references are just murmurs beneath the surface: It’s Jordan who demands your attention. Time and again, she approaches the chorus of her slow-burn rock songs like the kicker to the heartrending speech you never quite managed to give to your unrequited adolescent love: “And did things work out for you/Or are you still not sure what that means?” she asks on “Stick.” “I hope whoever it is holds their breath around you/Because I know I did,” she declares on “Heat Wave.” Over and over on Lush, Jordan’s heart pumps out like a reservoir, carrying us all aloft with it. –Jayson Greene
Listen: Snail Mail, “Pristine”
Robyn: Honey
Robyn’s first album in eight long years reveals how she spent at least part of that time: drifting away from and then back to her longtime beau. Honoring the arc of that heartbreak, the songs on Honey are presented in the order in which they were written. The record’s first half—its strongest run of songs—is heaviest in theme, yet Robyn’s musical touch is deft. A deceptive slice of disco cheesecake, “Because It’s in the Music” cuts to the core of why heartbroken people need music to survive, and how those same sounds betray us with every nostalgic rewind. You can almost envision Robyn playing the same song on repeat all night before waking up to write “Baby Forgive Me,” a light-touch house ode subtly built up by syncopated drums, reverent organ, and the faint cheers of a crowd.
Honey then abruptly shifts in tone. In the record’s big diva-house vocal moment, “Send to Robin Immediately,” she turns what might sound like an ultimatum into a rallying cry for staying true to oneself: “If you’ve got something to say, say it right away.” With these words, Robyn sets Honey free from her own sorrow and regret. She reaps the benefits immediately on the glorious title track, in which nearly every musical line sounds like it is panting. The possibilities rise alongside the BPMs, percussion galloping like the racing hearts of lovers entwined in rediscovery. By the closing credits of “Ever Again,” with a funk-lite band in tow, Robyn declares a ban on loneliness. Her happy ending is the faith that love can endure, and the knowledge that she will survive no matter what. –Jillian Mapes
Listen: Robyn, “Send to Robin Immediately”
DJ Koze: Knock Knock
Many voices float through Knock Knock, like spirits. One of them is the sampled croak of what sounds like a thousand-year-old man. He talks about his kinship with music—how he sells it, listens to it, and plays it during most of his waking hours. In a metaphysical flourish, the old-timer boasts, “Look at my teeth: You see music on it.” The line is a joke, but he means it—and it’s easy to think of this mysterious guru as an avatar for DJ Koze himself. The German DJ, producer, and label owner has spent the last few decades cultivating a parallel musical universe, one based on a collector’s knowledge and a sense of play, where the histories of dance music and hip-hop and psychedelia are all pulled together by the same gravitational force. In this utopia, Knock Knock, a life’s work, plays on a continuous loop, and no one tires of it.
Koze created much of the album in a remote Spanish village, a locale that he has described as “totally different from the desperate big city, where you try to make cool music.” The isolation plays out in Knock Knock’s bespoke frequencies: Each synth wobble is crafted with a watchmaker’s care, every snare hit manicured for maximum swing. And Koze has no truck with of-the-moment trends. The record’s featured vocalists—including Swedish folkie José González, Speech from the ’90s rap group Arrested Development, and modern dancefloor diva Róisín Murphy—are surprising and varied, the product of admiration rather than any type of algorithmic cross-referencing. So we get what could be a lost Van Morrison classic alongside an impossibly soulful Old Kanye-type beat alongside techno built for flying cars, everything holding everything else up. There are no barriers between genres, eras, origins—only freedom. –Ryan Dombal
Listen: DJ Koze, “Illumination“ [ft. Róisín Murphy]
Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour
“Are we here just once or a billion times?” Kacey Musgraves asks on “Oh, What a World.” She wishes she knew but knows it also doesn’t matter: Who needs wholesale reincarnation when new love offers daily rebirths? Especially the kind that give renewed inquiry to questions that were once the preserve of stoners. Musgraves’ first two major albums concentrated on small-town existence, a lens that yielded slightly smaller returns by 2015’s Pageant Material. Golden Hour’s focus is existential: The newlywed singer-songwriter is learning to savor time, and to let it pass.
Her inviting outlook is wrought through the record: softly strummed acoustic guitars that blur into sepia haze; boundless pedal steel as conduit for eternity, communing so effortlessly with touches of space-age funk that you wonder why nobody ever did it before. The latter provides one of Golden Hour’s most touching moments: On “Oh, What a World,” a robotic voice marvels at its surroundings and worries about how little time it has left—immortal, unfeeling machinery having a Pinocchio moment. Golden Hour is filled with these awed revelations, undercut with enough anxiety—and, more than once, snappy in-the-pocket disco—to keep Musgraves from floating off into a fever dream. Her wit isn’t diminished, but she’s less interested in scathing portraits or barbed payoffs than she once was. “And I think we’ve seen enough, seen enough/To know that you ain’t ever gonna come down,” she muses on one such dancefloor burner, “High Horse.” As ever, Musgraves sings about drinking, smoking, and acid, but her most prized high on this gorgeous album is rising above it all to see life in a different light. –Laura Snapes
Listen: Kacey Musgraves, “Oh, What a World”
Mitski: Be the Cowboy
At high noon, in the Wild West of our collective imagination, America began to romanticize the wrong kind of power. The cowboy strolled in—spraying bullets down Main Street, burning saloons to cinders—and his reckless bravado became something to be admired, not scorned. But in a year likewise full of ugly, macho confrontations shot from the hip, Mitski Miyawaki reclaimed the gunslinger’s confidence for herself. Channeling brash new characters on her fifth album, she embraced the opposite of her experiences, and the gambit paid off: This is Mitski’s most triumphant record to date, a refining of her many strengths, splashed across the largest canvas her arms can carry.
Mitski’s familiar charms—scrappy guitars, cutting observations, nervy synths—return as conduits for deeper intimacies and grand declarations. Be the Cowboy finds her ready for the arena, with nimble, airtight songs full of broad pop choruses and big, irrepressible emotions presented as candidly as dry-cleaning receipts. Even in her 10-gallon hat, she fixes her gaze on universal torments: loneliness, devotion, wistfulness, defiance. With “Nobody,” her disco-piano romp of a single, Mitski turns the song’s title into the biggest sing-along of her career, those three syllables locking in all the lint of isolation: the despair, the self-loathing, the cruel and ever-dwindling hope for pardon. In “A Pearl,” she wails and pounds the crumbling walls of a toxic relationship, papering over the pain with power-ballad feedback, her lithe vocals carrying a wisp of forsaken echo.
Mitski sets her credo on “Geyser,” Cowboy’s stunning opener. She weaponizes passionate, tenacious intensity—something women can be shamed for, particularly in non-Western cultures—and celebrates herself for it. In a Broadway belt, she cries of her desire, “Feel it bubbling from below/Hear it call, hear it call,” as wind-whipped guitars crest below. In the past, Mitski has never shown an interest in playing a role, whether that of the submissive Asian-American stereotype or the rebuker of such fetishism. Adopting hotshot narrators on Cowboy becomes even more significant in this context; in doing so, she’s said, she found the inverse of her apologetic experiences as a Japanese-American woman, and the empowerment ripples outward. Her character work is also a rebellion against the “confessional” pejorative foisted onto so many female singer-songwriters, the idea that women must be helplessly spilling these disclosures instead of savvily employing them. All of this makes her defiance even more liberating to hear. It’s good to have Mitski firing back for all of us; it’s even better to hear this true original growing into her limitless future. –Stacey Anderson
Listen: Mitski, “Geyser”
