Clash's Albums of the Year 2022

On his third solo album, Fred Gibson (better known as Fred again..) returns with his fingers firmly on the pulse of everything around him. Rounding out a deeply personal trilogy, *Actual Life 3* sees the London-based producer, DJ, and singer-songwriter once more thrive on the challenges of sound reinvention and renewal. “I think the feeling that I’ve become really obsessed with is taking very fleeting moments and exposing as much beauty as is in them,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “You know how sometimes if you see something in normal timing, and then you see it in slow-mo, like, ‘Oh wow. There\'s a whole new emotional framing for this.’” Fred first envisioned this unique narrative in 2020 for his debut, *Actual Life*, released over lockdown as a remedy to the melancholic uncertainty of the time. Delivering three distinct chapters across 2021, the BRIT Award-winning producer (and longtime mentee of Brian Eno) dives deeper in his cache of bright snippets and samples from everyday scenes, fusing soul, R&B, and bass house elements for jaw-droppingly euphoric and intimate tracks. “Sometimes I’m conscious of it and sometimes I’m not,” he says. “But one thing I know is that when I’m there, I make loads of ideas.” Much of this LP was made on the move, via long airport stops, tube journeys, or lunchtime breaks. And, like its predecessors, this collection is predominantly influenced by this process, with tracks labeled after the people he’s worked with, or the inspirations behind them. Here, Gibson draws euphoria from fleeting emotions, filtering vocals from names including London rapper and singer BERWYN, Toronto poet Mustafa Ahmed, and G.O.O.D Music’s 070 Shake across woozy synths and deep, intrepid basslines. But *Actual Life 3* also differs in its greater worldly experience. As is the case with hits he’s penned for the likes of Ed Sheeran, BTS, George Ezra, and Stormzy, tracks including “Delilah (pull me out of this)” (sampling Delilah Montagu’s 2021 single “Lost Keys”) and “Bleu (better with time)” (slicing verses from Yung Bleu’s 2020 track “You’re Mines Still”) arrive with the boost of rapturous unveilings at Gibson’s online DJ sets and gig slots. Although getting the music to people’s ears on these occasions offered an ideal proving ground for his blossoming tracks, it was moments of solitude that gave him the most to work with. “When you\'re on your own,” he explains, “you can just be in the world—any place that gives you a conveyor belt of humanity, buzzing away in the background, often when there\'s a bubbling undercurrent of slight excitement, I think that’s just the ultimate gift.”

True to its title, Carly Rae Jepsen’s sixth album is an examination of solitude through catchy, chatty pop cuts like the spiky, synthy \"Talking to Yourself\" and the sweetly wary \"So Nice,\" as well as quite a few tracks that feel very *of* Jepsen\'s catalog. Take its title track, a thumping yet wistful duet with singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright that, thanks to its disco strings and Jepsen\'s spoken-word interlude, squarely falls under the \"sad banger\" category. \"This song is very much about that fantasy of going over to your ex\'s in the middle of the night and pouring rain to rekindle what was not finished,\" Jepsen tells Apple Music. \"It\'s just a terrible idea in real life, but it\'s really fun to sing about.\" But the Canadian singer also spreads her wings with the poison-pen online-dating chronicle \"Beach House\" showing off her sardonic side and the California chronicle \"Western Wind\" possessing dream-pop vibes. \"Go Find Yourself or Whatever,\" which Jepsen co-wrote with frequent collaborator Rostam Batmanglij, is the starkest sonic departure—a downcast ode to a restless lover, with a country vibe. \"I definitely have been in love with the traveler before,\" she says. \"Looking back on the song when I perform it live now, there are elements of this song that just speak to me, too, as the traveler: \'You feel safe in sorrow/You feel safe on an open road/Go find yourself or whatever.\'\" Jepsen recalls that Batmanglij reminding her of \"Go Find Yourself\" helped her blow open the idea of her sound: \"Rostam sent me an email, being like, \'Remember this?\' I listened, and I was like, \'Huh. Am I allowed to do songs like that?\' Challenging that question and answering with an absolute \'yeah, there are no rules\' is really what this album\'s about. That rebellion led me to fit songs like \'Beach House\' and \'Go Find Yourself or Whatever\' on the same album. It\'s an old idea that a pop artist has to be one thing. We contain multitudes. Why can\'t this album allow that exploration a little bit?\"

We only hear acclaimed hip-hop producer Kenny Beats’ voice one time—that we can be sure of—on *LOUIE*. On “The Perch,” a young Beats can be heard interacting with his father, Kenneth Blume II, as co-host of a fictional radio show his father conjured up to give personality to the mixtapes he would make for friends and family. *LOUIE* is likewise a gift, from Beats (Kenneth Blume III) to his father, created in December 2020 after finding out his dad had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Though *LOUIE* contains a heap of vocalist features—including contributions from Vince Staples, Mac DeMarco, slowthai, JPEGMAFIA, Thundercat, Omar Apollo, and Fousheé, among others—there is very little in the way of formal verses. The project is much closer to an audio collage, with Beats curating moods across the project’s 17 tracks through a combination of sampling and live musical arrangement. None of the directions he takes things in are particularly obvious for the man who’s produced entire albums for artists like Vince Staples, 03 Greedo, KEY!, and Denzel Curry, to name but a few. Here, he’s spotlighting some of his favorite musical factors, exalting bright guitar licks on “Hold My Head,” a pacing akin to lovers rock reggae on “Hooper,” and on “Rotten,” a neo-soul aura so true it would make the Soulquarians proud. The beat for “Still,” which features contributions from JPEGMAFIA, is maybe the single thing a classically operating MC might rush to rap over. Without speaking directly to Beats, or even Kenneth Blume II, it’d be impossible to decipher the musical connections and/or messages *LOUIE* carries for Beats’ father. Most of the speech is distorted, and few samples therein are anywhere near as recognizable as the usage of Foster Sylvers’ “Misdemeanor” on “Drop 10.” But the fact that we’ve been granted access to what is essentially a love letter from a son to his ailing father—Beats’ original plan for *LOUIE* did not include releasing it publicly—is proof that no matter how far the producer goes, he’ll never forget where he got his rhythm.

*“You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM. You’ve been in the dark for way too long. It’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms. Scared? Don’t worry. We’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through this painless transition. But what’s the rush? Just relax and enjoy another hour of commercial ‘free yourself’ music on 103.5 Dawn FM. Tune in.”* The Weeknd\'s previous album *After Hours* was released right as the world was falling into the throes of the pandemic; after scrapping material that he felt was wallowing in the depression he was feeling at the time, *Dawn FM* arrives as a by-product of—and answer to—that turmoil. Here, he replaces woeful introspection with a bit of upbeat fantasy—the result of creatively searching for a way out of the claustrophobic reality of the previous two years. With the experience of hosting and curating music for his very own MEMENTO MORI radio show on Apple Music as his guiding light, *Dawn FM* is crafted in a similar fashion, complete with a DJ to set the tone for the segments within. “It’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms,” the host, voiced by Jim Carrey, declares on the opening track. “Scared? Don\'t worry.” Indeed, there is nothing to fear. The Weeknd packs the first half with euphoric bursts that include the Swedish House Mafia-assisted “How Do I Make You Love Me?” and “Sacrifice.” On the back half, he moves into the more serene waters of “Is There Someone Else?” and “Starry Eyes.” Despite the somewhat morose album cover, which reflects what many feel like as they wade through the seemingly endless purgatory of a life dictated by a virus, he’s aiming for something akin to hope in all of this gloom.

Porridge Radio are one of the most vital new voices in alternative music, having gone from being darlings of the DIY underground to one of the UK’s most thrilling bands in the space of less than a year. Their barbed wit, lacerating intensity and potent blend of art-rock, indie-pop and post-punk sounds like little else around, and led their 2020 album Every Bad to make the nominees list for the coveted Mercury Music Prize. For frontperson Dana Margolin, drummer Sam Yardley, keyboardist Georgie Stott and bassist Maddie Ryall – who met in the seaside town of Brighton and formed Porridge Radio in 2014 – global recognition has been a long time coming, after years of self-releasing and music booking their own tours. In those eight years, Dana has gained a reputation as one of the most magnetic band leaders around with an ability to “devastate you with an emotional hurricane, then blindside you with a moment of bittersweet humour” (NME). But if Every Bad established Dana’s lemon-sharp, heart-on-sleeve honesty, Porridge Radio’s third album takes that to anthemic new heights. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky is the sound of someone in their late twenties facing down the disappointment of love, and life, and figuring out how to exist in the world, without claiming any answers. It’s also catchy as hell. The title – which was partly inspired by a collage by the British surrealist Eileen Agar – speaks to the “joy, fear and endlessness” of the past few years. Dana’s songwriting and delivery is more confident, with the emotional incisiveness of artists like Mitski, Sharon Van Etten and Big Thief. Though it’s softer and more playful in places than Every Bad’s blowtorch ferocity, there are moments of powerful catharsis, ones that occur when you allow the full intensity of an experience to take hold. In places, that no-holds-barred rawness is on a par with bands like Deftones (their panoramic metal is a key touchstone of Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky) or American emo, elevated by Yardley’s ambitious instrumentals. “I kept saying that I wanted everything to be 'stadium-epic' - like Coldplay,” says Dana. With Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky, Porridge Radio have distilled their myriad influences down like they’re flipping through their own singular dial: dreamy yet intense, gentle but razor-edged, widescreen and yet totally intimate. People tell Dana that Every Bad got them through their cancer diagnosis, their break-up, their isolated lockdown. But with their new album, the band are taking a step up and spring-boarding into a bright, exciting unknown.

“I just wanted to branch out,” beabadoobee tells Apple Music of making her second album *Beatopia*. After 2020’s insular, bedroom-crafted debut *Fake It Flowers*—on which she unflinchingly delved into the chaos of her teenage years—the London singer-songwriter was ready to get out of her own four walls, and her head. And so, once the worst of the pandemic restrictions lifted, beabadoobee (aka Beatrice Laus) holed up in a studio in South West London with friend and producer Jacob Bugden to try a new way of making music. “I feel like this record was the first time I was really intimately collaborative with another musician,” Laus tells Apple Music. (Three of this album’s songs were also written with The 1975’s Matty Healy, alongside a collab with PinkPantheress.) “I felt so much more comfortable. Everything just made sense.” Having turned to the sounds of the ’90s artists she idolized growing up for *Fake It Flowers*, she was also ready to broaden her horizons. “There were no rules,” remembers Laus. “We created a really long playlist of all the songs we love, and they were all so different. I don’t want to be tied to one genre. I realized I can make anything I want.” The result is an album that reveals a lighter side to beabadoobee, and on which the clouds that lingered over *Fake It Flowers* seem to have cleared. These are songs about being in love, staying out late on a weeknight, remembering to take care of yourself, and, most of all, appreciating the support network of true friends. “I feel like with *Fake It Flowers*, I talked quite a lot about negative experiences, and it really helped me through those situations,” says Laus. “But I think *Beatopia* was the moment that I finally accepted my past.” As for this album’s title (which Laus says should be pronounced *bay-a-topia*)? That’s all about self-acceptance too, a reference to a fantasy world a seven-year-old Laus had created to escape into, and which she disregarded after a primary school teacher shamed her for it. “Bringing back the idea of Beatopia was finally accepting things inside of me that I wasn\'t so confident about,” she says. “I finally felt myself just becoming a better person and being more comfortable with who I am.” Read on as beabadoobee guides us through her dreamlike second album. **“Beatopia Cultsong”** “It was quite experimental and different. And I think it was the best way to start *Beatopia*. I was really appreciating the people around me, and me and Jacob had made it with \[Laus’ boyfriend\] Soren and \[Bugden’s girlfriend\] Molly, and I guess it just happened out of nowhere. And I thought that was the best way to start the album, because it\'s like friendships and really just accepting and appreciating everyone who\'s helped me throughout my life. It was a way to thread into ‘10:36,’ which is more like, ‘You’re here.’” **“10:36”** “I honestly just wanted to have fun with this song. The main sonic inspiration was Frou Frou, and for the breakdown, we kind of riff off \[French band\] The Teenagers. I\'ve sat on that riff since before *Fake It Flowers*, and I just didn\'t know what to do with it. But afterwards we got in the studio, everything made sense. I just wanted something loud. I wanted something super catchy and repetitive and quite brutal. With *Fake It Flowers*, I was like, ‘Everything has to be about my life.’ This was the first time I really played with the idea that sometimes I don\'t have to write about my experiences. It was refreshing.” **“Sunny Day”** “I had always wanted to write a song like ‘Sunny Day’; I\'ve always wanted to make something quite R&B. And the only thing that was stopping me was what people thought. It was \[written\] during a really productive time with me and Jacob. It was easy, and I just wanted something quite poppy and hooky and just that sticks in your head, almost like a fun lullaby to dance to. I love Nelly Furtado, I love Corinne Bailey Rae. I was like, ‘I need something like that.’” **“See you Soon”** “I was 100% looking towards Broken Social Scene. Sonically, this song really matches the actual lyrics of the song. And I feel like Broken Social Scene would usually sing one lyric over and over again, and it would just hit you hard, because it just makes sense with it musically. I had written it just after I took shrooms, and I had such a crazy experience that I wanted to write something that reminded me of that. It was almost like a realization of everything in my life. This is still my favorite song off *Beatopia*. It\'s almost like talking to myself, like, ‘I\'ll see you soon,’ because I\'m tripping the hell out, almost leaving my body.” **“Ripples”** “Finding the balance with this song was quite challenging. The night before, Matthew \[Healy, of The 1975\] had shown me this video of Paul Simon writing a song on a TV show from scratch. And I realized I just wanted to make a good songwriter\'s song—a classic song. This is such a personal song: It’s about self-growth and reflection and depending on the friends around you to feel okay. But then I go away on tour and then I\'m alone. Sometimes going away makes you come back and appreciate everything around you so much more.” **“The Perfect Pair”** “The lyrics were quite difficult, because it was quite specific. It’s about realizing that the thing you hate about a person is the thing that reminds you of yourself, which is why it’s called ‘The Perfect Pair.’ It was a song I’d never made before—I just really wanted to make something with a bossa-nova-like beat. It was the first time I also really explored what my voice could do, too.” **“Broken Cd”** “I’ve been sitting on this since I was 17. I wanted it to sound like a broken CD, saying the same thing over and over again. I feel like this song in particular really showcases me and Jacob as two individuals working together. The saving grace of the song is where it’s like, ‘Oh, you can finally breathe and be happy.’ But then you come back to the beginning of it, and even though it’s the same lyrics and same chord progression, it’s almost feels different—like a different journey.” **“Talk”** “This is a song I knew I could write and do well. It’s the best I am at my craft. It was the first time we all played as a band live, and it was so fun and so messy, it was great. The main riff was like ‘Maps’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but the four-track demo version. The whole idea for the song is it’s a Tuesday night, and it’s like, \'Fuck it.’ It’s not that deep. I wanted something really catchy in the chorus and something that was easy to understand. Again, I was like, ‘Let’s take the path of not taking everything so seriously.’” **“Lovesong”** “I love writing love songs. You can come up with the weirdest shit, and it would only relate to you. This is probably one of the most personal ones about my boyfriend. I always have to have a song on my record about my boyfriend, because he’s such a big part of my life. With the lyric ‘I missed the train again/I called your name as if you\'d drive it back,’ I feel like it best describes you when you are falling in love. When you\'re in love, it consumes your mind. All you think about is that person, and it just comes out without really realizing.” **“Pictures of Us”** “I give all the credit to Jacob and Matthew for this. It was Matty’s song: He gave it to me and I changed the first lyrics, which were about his childhood. I wanted to write about my childhood and a girl I knew, who I actually wrote about on *Fake It Flowers*. It was about the crazy shit we used to do back when we were teenagers. The lyric that Matty wrote was ‘She reminded me that God started with a capital letter.’ It’s so open to interpretation. To me personally, it means someone that you truly, truly admire, but not being able to be on the same page. But you’re trying to be.” **“Fairy Song”** “I wanted to make a song that was almost like the Ten Commandments, but my rules. I’ve also always wanted to make something that was very Cibo Matto-inspired. There’s a lyric in it that’s ‘I know you’re sad, because someone died, but I’m not gonna sit inside and do nothing.’ Jacob wrote it after MF DOOM died, because it affected him quite deeply. This song is about not being tied down to anything that makes you feel like shit and just focusing on things that you want to do actively to get better.” **“Don’t Get the Deal”** “I\'ve always wanted to make a song where it’s almost a call and response between the boy and girl. The male vocalist is Jacob, and we had written the song with Jack from Bombay Bicycle Club. He found the chords, and I felt like it just happened so naturally. It gets quite heavy at times, too, and then you have the middle eight where it almost takes you back to the kind of bossa nova section of the album. I think this song is just about the idea of manipulating someone or just not being the best person for that person, but you\'re just so co-dependent.” **“Tinkerbell Is Overrated”** “These are my favorite lyrics out of the whole record, because I talk about the crows that live on top of my room and the bugs that live in my room and just going fucking insane. I had written it in the studio, but I was thinking about the time I was isolating for COVID where I literally went crazy. But it was also one of the best times in my life, because I felt like I needed that. I wanted something very playful, and PinkPantheress really suited it—she encapsulated the melody really well. She’s a good friend of mine. I didn’t realize it at the time, but listening back to this album, it’s very friendship-related. It’s about people around me and appreciating everything. It made sense that the only collab I’d have would be with a friend.” **“You’re Here That’s the Thing”** “This is the last song on the album, and it’s 100% meant to be when the credits come on the screen. I wanted this whole album to feel like a movie or like a movie soundtrack, because that’s something I really, really want to do. It’s almost reminiscent to ‘You\'ve Got a Friend in Me’ from *Toy Story*, like something super sweet and cheeky and cute. I co-wrote this one with Matty Healy, too. I wrote the verses, and he showed me his chorus idea. I was like, ‘What do you mean by it?’ He said, ‘You know what? I don\'t know, but it\'s really fun.’ It was like, ‘Okay, go with it. It doesn\'t really matter what\'s illegal in California. It could be anything.’”

On the cover of Sharon Van Etten’s sixth album *We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong*, the singer-songwriter gazes into the mid-distance, the sky behind her red-hot from wildfires. The home she stands before is her own in LA, where she witnessed blazing fires up close in 2020 and sheltered with her family during the global pandemic. It is also where *We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong* was crafted, the album becoming Van Etten’s attempt to make sense of the pandemic years, our unequal world, and the shaky future she’s raising her son into. “Up the whole night/Undefined/Can’t stop thinking ’bout peace and war,” she sings on “Anything,” a soaring ballad on which she also explores the numbness induced by the monotony of the pandemic. But *We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong* isn’t just about the collective experience of recent events. Here, Van Etten is also a mother assuaging guilt that her career keeps her away from home (“I need my job/Please don’t hold that against me,” she sings to her son on “Home to Me”), a partner trying to keep intimacy alive (“Come Back,” a track reminiscent of Van Etten’s “Like I Used To” collaborator and indie peer Angel Olsen), and a citizen of the world who’ll do what she can to make it a better place: “Let’s go march/I’ll go downtown,” she sings on the shimmering, anthemic “I’ll Try.” There’s much of what you might expect from a Van Etten record: acoustic guitars, lonesome minor-chord vocals, driving drums, and the jagged electro-pop of 2019’s *Remind Me Tomorrow* (see the hooky “Headspace” or the self-forgiveness anthem “Mistakes”). But despite it being constructed in a shrunken world, this is also an album on which one of America’s foremost singer-songwriters pushes her sound—and voice—to astonishing new heights. That perhaps reaches a peak on “Born,” which begins as a slow-marching piano moment before exploding into a stop-you-in-your-tracks album centerpiece on which Van Etten’s vocals sound not unlike a celestial choir amid swirling synths and cascading, cathartic drums. Like many of this record’s tracks, “Born” is gargantuan and rich, but elsewhere things are more simple. On the raw, delicate “Darkish,” for example, Van Etten includes the birdsong she (and so many of us) heard during lockdown, a poignant reminder of the quietest days of the pandemic. *We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong* might have been shaped by moments of crisis, but it isn’t colored with despair. Just as something like a smile hovers across her expression on *We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong*’s cover, optimism breaks through across this record. “Better stay light/I’m looking for a way,” she sings on opener “Darkness Fades,” before offering her ultimate worldview on “Darkish”: “It’s not dark/It’s only darkish.” We’ve been going about this all wrong, Van Etten seems to be saying, but there’s still time for that to change.

Sharon Van Etten has always been the kind of artist who helps people make sense of the world around them, and her sixth album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, concerns itself with how we feel, mourn, and reclaim our agency when we think the world - or at least, our world - might be falling apart. How do we protect the things most precious to us from destructive forces beyond our control? How do we salvage something worthwhile when it seems all is lost? And if we can’t, or we don’t, have we loved as well as we could in the meantime? Did we try hard enough? In considering these questions and her own vulnerability in the face of them, Van Etten creates a stunning meditation on how life’s changes can be both terrifying and transformative. We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong articulates the beauty and power that can be rescued from our wreckages. We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is as much a reflection on how we manage the ending of metaphorical worlds as we do the ending of actual ones: the twin flames of terror and unrelenting love that light up with motherhood; navigating the demands of partnership when your responsibilities have changed; the loss of center and safety that can come with leaving home; how the ghosts of our past can appear without warning in our present; feeling helpless with the violence and racism in the world; and yes, what it means when a global viral outbreak forces us to relinquish control of the things that have always made us feel so human, and seek new forms of connection to replace them. Since the release of Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten has collaborated with artists ranging from Courtney Barnett and Joshua Homme to Norah Jones and Angel Olsen. Earlier releases were covered by artists like Fiona Apple, Lucinda Williams, Big Red Machine and Idles, celebrating Sharon as a legendary songwriter from the very beginning. When the time came to return to her solo work, Van Etten reclaimed the reins, writing and producing the album in her new recording studio, custom built in her family’s Californian home. The more she faced – whether in new dangers emerging or old traumas resurfacing – the more tightly she held onto these songs and recordings, determined to work through grief by reasserting her power and staying squarely at the wheel of her next album. In fact, that interplay of loss and growth became a blueprint for what would become We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. The artwork reflects that, too, inspired as much by Van Etten’s old life as her new one. “I wanted to convey that in an image with me walking away from it all” says Van Etten, “not necessarily brave, not necessarily sad, not necessarily happy…” We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is intensely personal, exploring themes like motherhood, love, fear, what we can and can’t control, and what it means to be human in a world that is wracked by so much trauma. The track “Home To Me,” written about Van Etten’s son, uses the trademark “dark drums” of her previous work to invoke the sonic impression of a heartbeat. Synths grow in intensity, evoking the passing of time and the terror of what it means to have your child move inevitably toward independence, wanting to hold on to them tightly enough to protect them forever. In contrast, “Come Back” reflects on the desire to reconnect with a partner. Recalling all the optimism of love felt in its infancy, Van Etten begins with the plain beauty of just her voice and a guitar, building the arrangement alongside the call to “come back” to anyone who has lost their way, be it from another person or from themselves. Hovering between darkness and light, “Born” is an exploration of the self that exists when all other labels - mother, partner, friend - are stripped back. Throughout, and as always, we are at the mercy of Van Etten’s voice: the way it loops and arcs, the startling and emotive warmth of it. What started as a certain magic in Van Etten’s early recordings has grown into confidence, clarity and wisdom, even as she sings with the vulnerable beauty that has become her trademark. Nowhere is that truer than on “Mistakes,” where Van Etten creates a defiant anthem to the mistakes we make, and to everything we gain from them. Unlike Van Etten’s previous albums, there will be no songs off the album released prior to the record coming out. The ten tracks on We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong are designed to be listened to in order, all at once, so that a much larger story of hope, loss, longing and resilience can be told. This is, in itself, a subtle act of control, but in sharing these songs it remains an optimistic and generous one. There is darkness here but there is light too, and all of it is held together by Van Etten’s uncanny ability to both pierce the hearts of her listeners and make them whole again. Things are not dark, she reminds us, only darkish.

Shygirl toyed with simply self-titling her debut album, but *Nymph* felt far more evocative—and fitting. “A nymph is an alluring character but also an ambiguous one,” the artist and DJ, whose real name is Blane Muise, tells Apple Music. “You don’t quite know what they’re about, so you can project onto them a little bit of what you want.” Co-written with collaborators including Mura Masa, BloodPop®, and longtime producer Sega Bodega, it’s an album that defies categorization, its stunning, shape-shifting tracks blending everything from rap and UK garage to folktronica and Eurodance. Along the way, it reveals fascinating new layers to the South London singer, rapper, and songwriter. While *Nymph* contains moments that match the “bravado” (her word) of earlier EPs *Cruel Practice* and *ALIAS*, Shygirl says this album is “ultimately the story of my relationship with vulnerability.” As ever, sensuality is central, but she resists the “sex-positive” label. “With a track like ‘Shlut,’ I’m not saying my desire is good or bad,” she says. “I’m just saying it’s authentically who I am.” Read on as Shygirl guides us through her beguiling debut album, one song at a time. **“Woe”** “This song is me acclimatizing to the audience’s presence and how vocal they are. Sometimes it’s annoying to have all these other voices \[around you\] when you’re trying to figure out your own. But then, on the flip of that, isn’t it nice that people actually want something from you? I often do that: give myself space to express some frustration or an emotion, then look at it in different ways. Sometimes I do that with sensitivity, and sometimes I’m just taking the piss out of myself. Like, ‘OK now, just get over it.’” **“Come For Me”** “For me, this song is a conversation between myself and \[producer\] Arca because we hadn’t met in person when we made it. She would send me little sketches of beats, then I would respond with vocal melodies. Working on this track was one of the first times I was experimenting with vocal production on Logic, manipulating my voice and stuff. It was really daunting to send ideas over to Arca because she’s such an amazing producer. But she was so responsive, and that was really empowering for me.” **“Shlut”** “I said to Sega \[Bodega\], ‘I want to use more guitar.’ I love that style of music, more folky stuff, because I used to listen to Keane and Florence + the Machine in my younger days. So, that’s definitely an undercurrent influence here, but the beat is a horse galloping. The horse was a very prevalent idea when I was making this album because it’s this powerful animal that is oftentimes in a domestic setting being controlled by someone. At the same time, there’s an element of choice in that relationship because the horse could easily not be tamed. I love that and relate to it a lot.” **“Little Bit”** “I have to give Sega credit for the beat. The way I work, mostly, is in the same room \[as my collaborators\], and we start from scratch. When most producers send me beats, I’m not inspired by them. But when Sega plays me stuff, I’m like ‘Wait, no—can I have that?’ I think because we started working together in 2015, he can probably anticipate what I want now. I never imagined hearing myself on a beat like this. It reminds me of a 50 Cent beat, which takes me back to my childhood. So, even the way I’m rapping here is nostalgic. I’m being playful and inserting myself into a sonic narrative that I didn’t think I would occupy.” **“Firefly”** “I started this song with Sega and \[producer\] Kingdom at a studio in LA, but then Sega had to leave for some reason. I was feeling a bit childish because I was like, ‘What’s more important than being in this room right now?’ So, then, with just me and Kingdom, I was like, ‘If I was going to make an R&B-style song, this is what it would sound like.’ I’d been listening to a lot of Janet Jackson, and I’d just watched her documentary. But really, I was kind of just taking the piss as I started freestyling the melodies. I really like being a bit flippant with melodies and not being too formulaic.” **“Coochie (a bedtime story)”** “The title is a Madonna reference. When I was shooting a Burberry campaign last year, her song ‘Bedtime Story’ was playing on repeat. It became the soundtrack to this moment where I was acclimatizing to a space \[in my career\] that was bigger than I had anticipated. I started writing this song at an Airbnb in Brighton with Sega and \[co-writers\] Cosha, Mura Masa, and Karma Kid. We were up super late one evening, and I was just sitting there, humming to myself. And I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have a cute song about coochie?’ Growing up as a girl, there’s not even a cute word for \[your vagina\]. Everything is so sexualized or anatomical. I was like, ‘I need to make this cute song that I would have liked to hear when I was younger.’” **“Heaven”** “This track is quite experimental. The production started quite garage-y, but then it got weird fast. And then we reworked it again because I wanted it to sound sweet. I was thinking about when I broke up with my ex-boyfriend; there were moments where I was like, ‘Can we just forget everything and get back together?’ Obviously, you can’t just forget everything—it’s childish to want to erase those parts, but I can have that space in my music. In some moments, my ex was my peace and my place of absolute escape. And that’s what I equated to heaven at that point.” **“Nike”** “This is me revisiting my childhood, being that teenager at the back of the bus. It started when \[co-writer\] Oscar Scheller played me this recording he’d made of girls talking on the bus, and in the original production, we even had that \[chatter\] in there. You know when a girl is talking and saying nothing but also saying everything? I was that person! My friends used to ask me for advice about stuff I had no experience in, and I would dish it out with such vim. I thought it would be funny to dip back into that space on this track and be playful with it. Because no matter how sensitive I get, there is always this part of me with real bravado.” **“Poison”** “I love Eurodance music. When I DJ, it’s what I play the most. I just find it really fun and sexy and flirtatious, and I relate to the upfront lyrics. Some of my audience probably isn’t as familiar with my musical references here, such as Cascada and Inna, so it’s fun to introduce them to that sound a little bit. And I love that we found a real accordion player to play on the track. I really enjoy the tone and texture that you can get from using a real instrument.” **“Honey”** “I made this track predominantly with \[producer\] Vegyn. It came out of a real jam session where we had music playing in the room, and I was speaking on the mic over it. You get the texture of that as the song starts. There’s a lot of feedback that reminds me of The Cardigans and stuff with that ’90s electronica vibe. For me, this track is all about sensualness. I had this idea of being in an orgasmic experience that keeps on intensifying, so I wanted to replicate that sonically. That’s why I’m repeating myself a lot and why the melody tends to rearrange just a little bit as I rearrange the order of the words as well.” **“Missin u”** “This song is about me being annoyed at my ex-boyfriend. We’d broken up like six times, and we weren’t even together at this point, and I was just being really petulant about that. I write poems when I’m feeling any intensity of emotion, and so I wrote this poem where I was just really dismissive of the whole situation. Then, when I was in the studio with Sega, I put the poem to the beat he was working on. I wanted this track to feel a bit disruptive at the end of the album. Because no matter how sensitive I get, there is also this sharper energy to me and my approach to lyrics.” **“Wildfire”** “This track has a very Joshua Tree title because I wrote it with Noah Goldstein at his house there. I was imagining looking across a bonfire at someone I don’t even know but kind of fancy and seeing the fire reflecting in their eyes. I romanticize situations a lot in this way, so this song is really me riffing off that idea. It’s main-character syndrome, I guess! I don’t really like closed beginnings and endings. If I was to write a story, I would always give myself space for it to continue, and I think ‘Wildfire’ does that a little bit. That’s why it’s the final track.”

Josh Tillman, aka Father John Misty, has released five albums in the last decade—and each one is an expansion of and challenge to his indie-folk instrumental palette. From the stark rock/folk contrasts of *Fear Fun*’s ballads and anthems to the mariachi strains of *I Love You, Honeybear*’s love notes to the wry commentary and grand orchestrations of *Pure Comedy* and *God’s Favorite Customer*, Tillman has a penchant for pairing his articulate inner monologue with arrangements that have only grown more eclectic and elaborate. *Chloë and the Next 20th Century* builds on all of the above—the micro-symphonies, the inventive percussion, the swift shift from dusty country-western nostalgia to timeless dirges plunked out on a dive-bar piano. A swooning sax solo in a somber jazz number (“Buddy’s Rendezvous”) is immediately followed by the trill of a psychedelic harpsichord (“Q4”); “Goodbye Mr. Blue” recalls the acoustic inclinations of his early work, and warm strings wash over the record, from its first single, the romantic “Funny Girl,” through “The Next 20th Century,” the album’s sardonic closer, which resurfaces the ever-simmering existential dread of *Pure Comedy*. “If this century’s here to stay,” he sings on the track, “I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the love songs/And the great distance that they came.”

Father John Misty returns with Chloë and The Next 20th Century, his fifth album and first new material since the release of God’s Favorite Customer in 2018. Chloë and the Next 20th Century was written and recorded August through December 2020 and features arrangements by Drew Erickson. The album sees Tillman and producer/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson resume their longtime collaboration, as well as Dave Cerminara, returning as engineer and mixer. Basic tracks were recorded at Wilson’s Five Star Studios with strings, brass, and woodwinds recorded at United Recordings in a session featuring Dan Higgins and Wayne Bergeron, among others. Chloë and The Next 20th Century features the singles “Funny Girl,” “Q4,” “Goodbye Mr. Blue,” and “Kiss Me (I Loved You),” and will be available April 8th, 2022 worldwide from Sub Pop and in Europe from Bella Union.