Consequence of Sound's Top 50 Albums of 2017

Four years after Lorde illuminated suburban teendom with *Pure Heroine*, she captures the dizzying agony of adolescence on *Melodrama*. “Everyone has that first proper year of adulthood,” she told Beats 1. “I think I had that year.” She chronicles her experiences in these insightful odes to self-discovery that find her battling loneliness (“Sober”), conquering heartbreak (“Writer in the Dark”), embracing complexity (“Hard Feelings/Loveless”), and letting herself lose control. “Every night I live and die,” she sings on “Perfect Places,” an emotionally charged song about escaping reality. “I’m 19 and I\'m on fire.\"

In the two years since *To Pimp a Butterfly*, we’ve hung on Kendrick Lamar\'s every word—whether he’s destroying rivals on a cameo, performing the #blacklivesmatter anthem *on top of a police car* at the BET Awards, or hanging out with Obama. So when *DAMN.* opens with a seemingly innocuous line—\"So I was taking a walk the other day…”—we\'re all ears. The gunshot that abruptly ends the track is a signal: *DAMN.* is a grab-you-by-the-throat declaration that’s as blunt, complex, and unflinching as the name suggests. If *Butterfly* was jazz-inflected, soul-funk vibrance, *DAMN.* is visceral, spare, and straight to the point, whether he’s boasting about \"royalty inside my DNA” on the trunk-rattling \"DNA.\" or lamenting an anonymous, violent death on the soul-infused “FEAR.” No topic is too big to tackle, and the songs are as bold as their all-caps names: “PRIDE.” “LOYALTY.” “LOVE.” \"LUST.” “GOD.” When he repeats the opening line to close the album, that simple walk has become a profound journey—further proof that no one commands the conversation like Kendrick Lamar.

*Prisoner* continues to refine the sound that Ryan Adams first explored with his 2014 self-titled album: a sure-handed mix of *Tunnel of Love*-era Springsteen, ‘80s college rock, and soft-focus synths. A track like “Anything I Say to You Now” illustrates how perfectly this formula suits him; a Smiths-esque jangle of guitars gives sentimental depth to his plain-spoken refrain, “Anything I say to you now is just a lie.” As he works through the rest of the emotional wreckage, highlights like \"Shiver and Shake” prove that Adams’ poignancy as a songwriter can still bring us to our knees.

“WE IN YEAR 3230 WIT IT,” Vince Staples tweeted of his second album. “THIS THE FUTURE.” In fact, he’s in multiple time zones here. Delivered in his fluent, poetic flow, the lyrical references reach back to 16th-century composer Louis Bourgeois, while “BagBak” captures the stark contrasts of Staples’ present (“I pray for new McLarens/Pray the police don’t come blow me down because of my complexion.”) With trap hi-hats sprayed across ’70s funk basslines (“745”) and Bon Iver fused into UK garage beats (“Crabs in a Bucket”), the future is as bold as it is bright.

Some bands take a few years to regroup for their next move; dream-pop pioneers Slowdive took 22, a return all the more bittersweet given how many bands their sound has influenced since. Combining the atmospherics of ambient music with rock ’n’ roll’s low center of gravity, *Slowdive* sounds as vital as anything the band recorded in the early ‘90s, whether it’s the foggy, countryish inflections of “No Longer Making Time” or the propulsive “Star Roving.”

“It felt like we were in a movie that had a totally implausible ending...” Slowdive’s second act as a live blockbuster has already been rapturously received around the world. Highlights thus far include a festival-conquering, sea-of-devotees Primavera Sound performance, of which Pitchfork noted: “The beauty of their crystalline sound is almost hard to believe, every note in its perfect place.” “It was just nice to realise that there was a decent amount of interest in it,” says principal songwriter Neil Halstead. The UK shoegaze pioneers have now channelled such seemingly impossible belief into a fourth studio opus which belies his characteristic modesty. Self-titled with quiet confidence, Slowdive’s stargazing alchemy is set to further entrance the faithful while beguiling a legion of fresh ears. Deftly swerving what co-vocalist/guitarist Rachel Goswell terms “a trip down memory lane”, these eight new tracks are simultaneously expansive and the sonic pathfinders’ most direct material to date. Birthed at the band’s talismanic Oxfordshire haunt The Courtyard – “It felt like home,” enthuses guitarist Christian Savill – their diamantine melodies were mixed to a suitably hypnotic sheen at Los Angeles’ famed Sunset Sound facility by Chris Coady (perhaps best known for his work with Beach House, one of countless contemporary acts to have followed in Slowdive’s wake). “It’s poppier than I thought it was going to be,” notes Halstead, who was the primary architect of 1995‘s previous full-length transmission Pygmalion. This time out the group dynamic was all-important. “When you’re in a band and you do three records, there’s a continuous flow and a development. For us, that flow re-started with us playing live again and that has continued into the record.” Drummer and loop conductor Simon Scott enhanced the likes of ‘Slomo’ and ‘Falling Ashes’ with abstract textures conjured via his laptop’s signal processing software. A fecund period of experimentation with “40-minute iPhone jams” allowed the unit to then amplify the core of their chemistry. “Neil is such a gifted songwriter, so the songs won. He has these sparks of melodies, like ‘Sugar For The Pill’ and ‘Star Roving’, which are really special. But the new record still has a toe in that Pygmalion sound. In the future, things could get very interesting indeed.” This open-channel approach to creativity is reflected by Slowdive’s impressively wide field of influence, from indie-rock avatars to ambient voyagers – see the tribute album of cover versions released by Berlin electronic label Morr Music. As befits such evocative visionaries, you can also hear Slowdive through the silver screen: New Queer Cinema trailblazer Gregg Araki has featured them on the soundtracks to no less than four of his films. “When I moved to America in 2008 I was working in an organic grocery store,” recalls Christian. “Kids started coming in and asking if it was true I had played in Slowdive. That’s when I started thinking, ‘OK, this is weird!’” Neil Halstead: “We were always ambitious. Not in terms of trying to sell records, but in terms of making interesting records. Maybe, if you try and make interesting records, they’re still interesting in a few years time. I don’t know where we’d have gone if we had carried straight on. Now we’ve picked up a different momentum. It’s intriguing to see where it goes next.” The world has finally caught up with Slowdive. This movie could run and run...

Pushing past the GRAMMY®-winning art rock of 2014’s *St. Vincent*, *Masseduction* finds Annie Clark teaming up with Jack Antonoff (as well as Kendrick Lamar collaborator Sounwave) for a pop masterpiece that radiates and revels in paradox—vibrant yet melancholy, cunning yet honest, friendly yet confrontational, deeply personal yet strangely inscrutable. She moves from synthetic highs to towering power-ballad comedowns (“Pills”), from the East Coast (the unforgettable “New York”) to “Los Ageless,” where, amid a bramble of strings and woozy electronics, she admits, “I try to write you a love song/But it comes out a lament.”

Until a late flurry of percussion arrives, doleful guitar and bass are Solána Rowe’s only accompaniment on opener “Supermodel,” a stinging kiss-off to an adulterous ex. It doesn’t prepare you for the inventively abstract production that follows—disembodied voices haunting the airy trap-soul of “Broken Clocks,” “Anything”’s stuttering video-game sonics—but it instantly establishes the emotive power of her rasping, percussive vocal. Whether she’s feeling empowered by her physicality on the Kendrick Lamar-assisted “Doves in the Wind” or wrestling with insecurity on “Drew Barrymore,” SZA’s songs impact quickly and deeply.

ORDER A PHYSICAL COPY HERE: www.pwelverumandsun.com P.W. ELVERUM & SUN box 1561 Anacortes, Wash. U.S.A. 98221 WRITTEN AND RECORDED August 31st to Dec. 6th, 2016 in the same room where Geneviève died, using mostly her instruments, her guitar, her bass, her pick, her amp, her old family accordion, writing the words on her paper, looking out the same window. Why share this much? Why open up like this? Why tell you, stranger, about these personal moments, the devastation and the hanging love? Our little family bubble was so sacred for so long. We carefully held it behind a curtain of privacy when we’d go out and do our art and music selves, too special to share, especially in our hyper-shared imbalanced times. Then we had a baby and this barrier felt even more important. (I still don’t want to tell you our daughter’s name.) Then in May 2015 they told us Geneviève had a surprise bad cancer, advanced pancreatic, and the ground opened up. What matters now? we thought. Then on July 9th 2016 she died at home and I belonged to nobody anymore. My internal moments felt like public property. The idea that I could have a self or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea leftover from a more self-indulgent time before I was a hospital-driver, a caregiver, a child-raiser, a griever. I am open now, and these songs poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house. I make these songs and put them out into the world just to multiply my voice saying that I love her. I want it known. "Death Is Real" could be the name of this album. These cold mechanics of sickness and loss are real and inescapable, and can bring an alienating, detached sharpness. But it is not the thing I want to remember. A crow did look at me. There is an echo of Geneviève that still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this obliteration. That’s why. - Phil Elverum Dec. 11th, 2016 Anacortes

You can purchase this album on vinyl or CD at store.spoontheband.com.

R&B singer Kelela’s deeply personal debut LP does just what it says on the label. Over beats from Jam City, Bok Bok, Kingdom, and Arca—which swerve from warped and aqueous to warm and lush to icy and danceable—Kelela turns her emotions inside out with a sultriness and self-assuredness that few underground artists can muster. She’s tough and forthright, tender and subdued on songs about breakups (“Frontline”), makeups (“Waitin”), and pickups (“LMK”)—and the way she spins from one mode to the next is dizzying in the best way possible.

Since emerging onto the scene in 2014, Moses Sumney has ridden a wave of word-of-mouth praise, hushed recordings, and dynamic live performances. It's an organic, patient ascent all too rare in today's musical climate. In a voice both mellifluous and haunting, Sumney makes future music that transmogrifies classic tropes, like moon-colony choir reinterpretations of old jazz gems. His vocals narrate a personal journey through universal loneliness atop otherworldly compositional backdrops. Following the self-release of his debut cassette EP, Mid-City Island, and 2015's 7", Seeds/Pleas, Sumney has performed around the world alongside forebears like David Byrne, Karen O, Sufjan Stevens, Solange, James Blake and more. With his 2016 Lamentations EP, The California and Ghana-raised troubadour widened the spectrum of his heretofore "bedroom" music, incorporating songs that feature more elaborate production and evocative songwriting. Now his inspired ascent continues. His proper debut album, Aromanticism is a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to interrogate the social constructions around romance. The debut will include the devastating, billowing synths of "Doomed,” which in a way serves as the album’s thesis statement, as well as new versions of standouts "Lonely World" and "Plastic.” It’s a deliberate, jaw-dropping statement that can leave you both enlightened and empty.

Album out January 27th, 2017 Dylan Baldi maintains simple, admirable standards in quality. “A thing I like to do with all of my records is drive around with them,” the 25-year-old Cloud Nothings frontman says. “In high school, I would listen to music for hours like that: just driving through the suburbs of Cleveland. And if it sounds good to me in that context and I can think of high school me listening to it and saying, ‘That’s okay,’ I feel good about the record. This is the one that’s felt best.” “This” is "Life Without Sound", the radiant, far-far-better-than-okay fourth full-length his rock outfit has recorded since he began writing and releasing songs on his own under the Cloud Nothings alias in 2008. While its highly acclaimed predecessor—2014’s "Here and Nowhere Else"—came together spontaneously, in the little time that touring allowed, "Life Without Sound" took shape under far less frenetic circumstances. For more than a year, Baldi was able to write these songs and flesh out them out with his bandmates—drummer Jayson Gerycz and bassist TJ Duke—before they finally joined producer John Goodmanson (Sleater Kinney, Death Cab for Cutie) at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Texas, for three weeks in March of 2016. The result is Baldi’s most polished and considered work to date, an album that speaks to his evolving gift with melody while also betraying the sort of perspective that time provides. You can hear it in the aerodynamic guitar pop of “Modern Act,” and feel it in the devastating wisdom of “Internal World,” a lullaby-like howler that dwells on “the fact that being yourself can be uncomfortable and even potentially dangerous at times.” “Generally, it seems like my work has been about finding my place in the world,” Baldi says. “But there was a point in which I realized that you can be missing something important in your life, a part you didn't realize you were missing until it's there—hence the title. This record is like my version of new age music,” he adds. “It’s supposed to be inspiring.” It is.

Released within two weeks of his 2017 self-titled project, *HNDRXX* is a master statement of soulful, sly R&B from the Atlanta rapper. If *FUTURE* echoed the spontaneity and double-time flow of his now-classic mixtapes, the follow-up is stacked with anthems that are calibrated for a massive mainstream audience. Two marquee cameos—The Weeknd and Rihanna—add extra star power, but highlights like “Damage,” “Incredible,” and “Fresh Air” are all about Future’s brilliant mix of brutal honestly and unchecked hedonism.

Venezuelan producer Arca typically makes compelling, lyrical music without saying a word, twisting digital dissonance and gorgeously rendered synth tones into songs you could practically hang on the walls of the Guggenheim. But on his self-titled third album, words become the focus. While an abrasive, intricately programmed instrumental like \"Castration\" says a fair bit on its own, \"Anoche\" and \"Piel\" reach a spellbinding new level for Arca, as he sings Spanish-language poetry about shedding identities and the messiness of love over truly haunting textures.

2014’s 'Too Bright' showcased Mike Hadreas stepping out saucily onto a bigger stage, expressing, with the production help of Portishead’s Adrian Utley, emotions arranged all along the slippery continuum from rage to irony to love. Here in 13 new ferocious and sophisticated tracks, Mike Hadreas and his collaborators blow through church music, makeout music, an array of the gothier radio popular formats, rhythm and blues, art pop, krautrock, queer soul, the RCA Studio B sound, and then also collect some of the sounds that only exist inside Freddy Krueger. Tremolo on the electric keys. Nightclubbing. Daywalking. Kate Bushing, Peter Greenawaying, Springsteening, Syreetaing. No Shape was produced by Blake Mills, the man behind Alabama Shakes’ Grammy Award winning album. He added precision and expansion. Some things are pretty and some are blasted beyond recognition. Records like this, records that make you feel like you’re 15 and just seeing the truth for the first time, are excessively rare. They’re here to remind you that you’re divine.

Pallbearer’s third album stretches the Arkansas outfit’s brand of doom metal to mountainous new heights. More polished—but no less punishing—than *Sorrow and Extinction* or *Foundations of Burden*, *Heartless* is a gleaming bulldozer of a record, shifting effortlessly from the operatic melancholy of “Cruel Road” to “A Plea for Understanding,” which blows out the spacey grandeur of Pink Floyd to nearly 13 minutes.

Pallbearer’s third album, Heartless, is an inspired collection of monumental rock music. The band offers a complex sonic architecture that weaves together the spacious exploratory elements of classic prog, the raw anthemics of 90’s alt-rock, and stretches of black-lit proto-metal. Lyrics about mortality, life, and love are set to sharp melodies and pristine three-part harmonies. Vocalist and guitarist Brett Campbell has always been a strong, assured singer, and on Heartless, his work’s especially stunning. This may in part be due to the immediacy of the lyrics. Written by Campbell and bassist/secondary vocalist Joseph D Rowland, the words have moved from the metaphysical to something more grounded. As the group explains: “Instead of staring into to the void—both above and within—Heartless concentrates its power on a grim reality. Our lives, our homes and our world are all plumbing the depths of utter darkness, as we seek to find any shred of hope we can." Pallbearer emerged from Little Rock, Arkansas in 2012 with a stunning debut full-length, Sorrow and Extinction. The record, which played like a seamless 49-minute doom movement, melded pitch-perfect vintage sounds with a triumphant modern sensibility that made songs about death and loss feel joyfully ecstatic. Pallbearer possessed what many other newer metal groups didn't: perfect guitar tone, classic hooks, and a singer who could actually sing. For their 2014 followup, Foundations of Burden, the band worked with legendary Bay Area producer Billy Anderson (Sleep, Swans, Neurosis) for an expansive album that was musically tighter and especially adventurous. Armed with a more technical drummer, Mark Lierly, Foundations feels like it was built for larger shared spaces—you could imagine these songs ringing off the walls of a stadium. It was a hint of things to come. While the debut earned the band a Best New Music nod from Pitchfork and rightly landed the band on year-end lists at places like SPIN and NPR, along with the usual metal publications, Foundations of Burden charted on the Billboard Top 100 and earned the band album of the year from Decibel and spots on year-end lists for NPR and Rolling Stone. Returning to where it all began, the quartet recorded their third full-length, Heartless on their own in Arkansas, and it’s grander in scope, showcasing a natural progression that melds higher technicality and more ambitious structures with their most immediate hooks to date. The collection, which follows the 3-song Fear & Fury EP from earlier this year, was captured entirely on analog tape at Fellowship Hall Sound in Little Rock this past summer and then mixed by Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, Melvins, Soundgarden). From the gloriously complex, sky-lit opener “I Saw the End” to the earth-shaking (and heartbreaking) 13-minute closer “A Plea for Understanding,” the entire group puts forth the full realization of their vision: More than a doom band, Pallbearer is a rock group with a singular songwriting talent and emotional capacity. Heartless finds the group putting forth their strongest individual efforts to date: Campbell and Rowland, along with guitarist/vocalist Devin Holt and drummer Mark Lierly, turn in peak marathon performances. Both Campbell and Rowland also handle synthesizers alongside their normal duties, and there are plenty of gently strummed acoustic guitars amid the crunchy electric ones, adding a moody, ethereal spareness to the towering metal. The almost 12-minute “Dancing in Madness” opens with dark post-rock ambience and moves toward emotional blues before exploding into a sludgy psychedelic anthem. A number of the seven songs feature a humid rock swagger. By fusing their widest musical palette to date, Pallbearer make the kind of heavy rock (the heavy moments are *heavy*) that will appeal to diehards, but could also find the group crossing over into newer territories and fanbases. After having helped revitalize doom metal, it almost feels like they’ve gone and set their sights on rock and roll itself. Which doesn’t seem at all impossible on the back of a record like Heartless.

After his breakthrough *Lost in The Dream*, Adam Granduciel takes things a step further. Marrying the weathered hope of Dylan, Springsteen, and Petty with a studio rat’s sense of detail, *A Deeper Understanding* feels like an album designed to get lost in, where lush textures meet plainspoken questions about life, loss, and hope, and where songs stretch out as though they\'re chasing answers. For as much as Granduciel says in words, it’s his music that speaks loudest, from the synth-strobing heartland rock of “Holding On” and “Nothing to Find” to ballads like “Clean Living” and “Knocked Down,” whose spaces are as expansive as any sound.

Phoebe Bridgers wrote her first song at age 11, spent her adolescence at open mic nights, and busked through her teenage years at farmers markets in her native Los Angeles. By age 20, she'd caught the ear of Ryan Adams, who listened to her perform her song "Killer" in his L.A. studio, inviting her to come back and record it there the next day. The session blossomed into the three-song ‘Killer’ EP, released to much acclaim on Adams’s Pax-Am label in 2015. In the two short years since, Bridgers has toured or played with Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, City and Colour, Violent Femmes, Mitski, Television and Blake Babies among others. On September 22nd, Phoebe Bridgers will release her debut full-length, Stranger In The Alps. From the weeping strings and Twin Peaks twangs of opening track Smoke Signals, to the simple heartbreak of Funeral and melancholic crescendo of Scott Street, Stranger in the Alps is a swooningly beautiful record with a gothic heart.

Planet Mu are very excited to announce Jlin's long awaited second album “Black Origami”. A percussion-led tour de force, it's a creation that seals her reputation as a unique producer with an exceptional ability to make riveting rhythmic music. “Black Origami” is driven by a deep creative thirst which she describes as “this driving feeling that I wanted to do something different, something that challenged me to my core. Black Origami for me, comes from letting go creatively, creating with no boundaries. The simple definition of origami is the art of folding and constructing paper into a beautiful, yet complex design. Composing music for me is like origami, only I'm replacing paper with sound. I chose to title the album "Black Origami" because like "Dark Energy" I still create from the beauty of darkness and blackness. The willingness to go into the hardest places within myself to create for me means that I can touch the Infinity.”  Spirituality and movement are both at the core of “Black Origami”, inspired largely by her ongoing collaborations with Indian dancer/movement artist Avril Stormy Unger whom she met and collaborated with at her debut performance for the Unsound festival – ”There is a fine line between me entertaining a person and my spirituality. Avril, who collaborates with me by means of dance, feels the exact same way. Movement played a great role in Black Origami. The track "Carbon 7" is very inspired by the way Avril moves and dances. Our rhythms are so in sync at times it kind of scares us. When there is something I can't quite figure out when it comes to my production, it’s like she senses it. Her response to me is always "You'll figure it out". Once I figure it out it's like time and space no longer exist.”  Similar time shifting/folding/disrupting effects can be heard throughout the record – especially on “Holy Child” an unlikely collaboration with minimalist legend William Basinski. She also collaborates again with Holly Herndon on “1%”, while Halcyon Veil producer Fawkes' voice is on “Calcination“ and Cape Town rapper Dope Saint Jude provides vocals for “Never Created, Never Destroyed“. Jlin will be touring extensively this year and is currently lining up appearances including Sonar festival. She also has plans to collaborate with acclaimed UK choreographer Wayne McGregor who played her music recently on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and described her music as “quite rare and so exciting".

Rocket is Philadelphia-based artist Alex G’s eighth full-length release—an assured statement that follows a slate of humble masterpieces, many of them self-recorded and self-released, stretching from 2010’s RACE to his 2015 Domino debut, Beach Music. Amid the Rocket recording process, Alex made headlines for catching the attention of Frank Ocean, who asked him to play guitar on his two 2016 albums, Endless and Blonde. More than any stylistic cues, what Alex took from the experience was a newfound confidence in collaboration. Rocket wears this collaborative spirit proudly, and in its numerous contributors presents a restless sense of musical experimentation - effortlessly jumping from distorted sound collage to dreamy folk music to bouncing Americana. Rocket illustrates a cohesive vision of contemporary American experience; the cast of characters that Alex G inhabits have fun, fall in love, develop obsessions, get in trouble, and—much like rockets themselves—ultimately they burn out. Alex, though, in a collection of songs that’s both his tightest and most adventurous, is poised only for the ascent.

Intended as an examination of 21st-century femininity and masculinity, Laura Marling’s sixth album drills into her friendships and relationships with absorbing intimacy. Musically, it’s one of her finest records too. She consistently finds a captivating balance between immediacy, nuance, and adventure—whether she’s plucking cascading acoustic melodies on “Nouel” or creating a suspenseful union of hushed electronic beats, filmic strings and snaking electric guitar on “Don’t Pass Me By.”

After a six-year break during which frontman Robin Pecknold vanished to the Washington woods then reappeared as a college student in New York, Fleet Foxes return with a fresh sense of purpose. Expanding on the harmony-driven sound of their first two albums, *Crack-Up* boasts both pretty, straightforward folk tunes (“Naiads, Cassadies,” “Fool’s Errand”) and sprawling, suite-like explorations (“Third of May / Odaigahara,” “I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar”) that are at once comforting and quietly avant-garde. It’s a balance that allows the band’s natural sweetness—and wild ambition—to shine.

Crack-Up, Fleet Foxes' long-awaited and highly anticipated third album, comes six years after the release of Helplessness Blues and nearly a decade since the band's self-titled debut. "Rewarding, involving, and meticulous," says the AP, "Crack-Up has been well worth the wait." "Likely to be the most remarkable album you will hear this year," exclaims the Times (UK). "The return of one of the most original bands of this century." Pitchfork calls it "their most complex and compelling album to date."

“I feel weird,” repeats Stephen Bruner on “Captain Stupido”. That’s encouraging because the leftfield moments have always lent his jazz/funk/soft-rock fusions singular charm—even here when he meows through “A Fan’s Mail (Tron Song Suite II)”. By those standards, the melancholy “Walk On By”, with its pensive verse from Kendrick Lamar, and “Show You the Way”—co-starring soft-rock icons Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins—feel irresistibly straightforward, but their velvet melodies are as beguiling as Bruner’s falsetto harmonies.

The L.A. rap collective’s second album of 2017 is a victory lap for their brand of gonzo boasts and unbridled creativity (or, as they put it on “QUEER,” “Spaceship doing donuts/It’s written I’m the POTUS”). Rage and joy go hand-in-hand on songs like “GUMMY,” a tough-as-nails G-funk bruiser, while “JUNKY” is a harrowing tour of the psyche’s dark side. “SWEET,” though, is an effervescent celebration of being at the top of one’s game, with each rapper twisting his voice up “like licorice” over an effortlessly irresistible beat.

The album that finally reveals a superstar. Sampha Sisay spent his nascent career becoming music’s collaborator à la mode—his CV includes impeccable work with the likes of Solange, Drake, and Jessie Ware—and *Process* fully justifies his considered approach to unveiling a debut full-length. It’s a stunning album that sees the Londoner inject raw, gorgeous emotion into each of his mini-epics. His electronic R&B sounds dialed in from another dimension on transformative opener “Plastic 100°C,” and “Incomplete Kisses” is an anthem for the broken-hearted that retains a smoothness almost exclusive to this very special talent. “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano,” meanwhile, makes a solid case for being 2017’s most beautiful song.

Nearly 20 years into the band\'s career, The National have reached a status attained only by the likes of Radiohead: a progressive, uncompromising band with genuinely broad appeal. Produced by multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner in his upstate New York studio (with co-production from guitarist Bryce Dessner and singer Matt Berninger), *Sleep Well Beast* captures the band at their moody, majestic best, from the propulsive “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” to “Guilty Party,” where Berninger’s portraits of failing marriage come to a sad, gorgeous, and surprisingly subtle head.

Sleep Well Beast was produced by member Aaron Dessner with co-production by Bryce Dessner and Matt Berninger. The album was mixed by Peter Katis and recorded at Aaron Dessner’s Hudson Valley, New York studio, Long Pond, with additional sessions having taken place in Berlin, Paris and Los Angeles.

Few things have moved Kanye West to action like the blowback he received upon removing Vic Mensa from 2015 *Pablo* standout “Wolves.” They’d premiered it (alongside Sia) during an SNL performance, an introduction to Mensa that many apparently cherished. Kanye would bring Mensa back via another edit, but it would take his guest’s debut album for the world to really know who he is. The Autobiography covers Mensa’s upbringing in Chicago’s violent South Side (“Memories on 47th St.”), his struggles with drug use and infidelity (“Wings”), and his most pronounced legacy to date, Mensa’s Black Lives Matter activism (“We Could Be Free”). The alt-rock-tinged “Rage”—which Mensa once claimed was a favorite of Beyoncé\'s—and “Omg (feat. Pusha T)” appear as bonus tracks.

Khalid\'s soft-lit ’80s synths and heartfelt, raspy vocals will catch your attention from the start, but it’s his effortless warmth and sincerity that will keep you coming back. An alumnus of the Apple Music Up Next program and a 2018 GRAMMY® Award contender, the Texas songwriter is one of the year’s most impressive newcomers. *American Teen*, his sensational debut album, is all about summer sunshine, young love, and the adventures of tight-knit friends—subjects perfectly matched with the elegant blend of throwback R&B, ‘80s pop, and glitchy future-soul.

Following 2013’s *Paramore*, Hayley Williams became “tired of self-doubt and losing friends” and considered decommissioning the band. It makes this rich, vibrant, defiantly poppy return as surprising as it is satisfying. On an album indebted to the ’80s, there are echoes of Talking Heads (“Hard Times”) and Blondie’s forays into reggae (“Caught in the Middle”), while guitarist Taylor York’s love of Afro-pop informs “Told You So.” Darker moods sit beneath the shiny surface though, and Williams’ lyrics offer compelling studies of frustration and self-sabotage.

On her first proper album as Jay Som, Melina Duterte, 22, solidifies her rep as a self-made force of sonic splendor and emotional might. If last year's aptly named Turn Into compilation showcased a fuzz-loving artist in flux—chronicling her mission to master bedroom recording—then the rising Oakland star's latest, Everybody Works, is the LP equivalent of mission accomplished. Duterte is as DIY as ever—writing, recording, playing, and producing every sound beyond a few backing vocals—but she takes us places we never could have imagined, wedding lo-fi rock to hi-fi home orchestration, and weaving evocative autobiographical poetry into energetic punk, electrified folk, and dreamy alt-funk. And while Duterte's early stuff found her bucking against life's lows, Everybody Works is about turning that angst into fuel for forging ahead. "Last time I was angry at the world," she says. "This is a note to myself: everybody's trying their best on their own set of problems and goals. We're all working for something." Everybody Works was made in three furious, caffeinated weeks in October. She came home from the road, moved into a new apartment, set up her bedroom studio (with room for a bed this time) and dove in. Duterte even ditched most of her demos, writing half the LP on the spot and making lushly composed pieces like "Lipstick Stains" all the more impressive. While the guitar-grinding Jay Som we first fell in love with still reigns on shoegazey shredders like "1 Billion Dogs" and in the melodic distortions of "Take It," we also get the sublimely spacious synth-pop beauty of "Remain," and the luxe, proggy funk of "One More Time, Please." Duterte's production approach was inspired by the complexity of Tame Impala, the simplicity of Yo La Tengo, and the messiness of Pixies. "Also, I was listening to a lot of Carly Rae Jepsen to be quite honest," she says. "Her E•MO•TION album actually inspired a lot of the sounds on Everybody Works." There's story in the sounds—even in the fact that Duterte's voice is more present than before. As for the lyrics, our host leaves the meaning to us. So if we can interpret, there's a bit about the aspirational and fleeting nature of love in the opener, and the oddity of turning your art into job on the titular track. There's even one tune, "The Bus Song," that seems to be written as a dialog between two kids, although it plays like vintage Broken Social Scene and likely has more to do with yearning for things out of reach. While there's no obvious politics here, Duterte says witnessing the challenges facing women, people of color, and the queer community lit a fire. And when you reach the end of Everybody Works, "For Light," you'll find a mantra suitable for anyone trying, as Duterte says, "to find your peace even if it's not perfect." As her trusty trumpet blows, she sings: "I'll be right on time, open blinds for light, won't forget to climb."