Dummy's 25 Best Albums of 2018

Back when he was still one-half of Clipse, Pusha-T dazzled listeners of the Virginia duo\'s mixtape series *We Got It 4 Cheap* by annihilating popular beats of the day. The project\'s sole criticism was that the production was already so good, it could carry anyone. *DAYTONA*, copiloted by hip-hop production genius Kanye West, upends that conceit, with contemporary boom-bap built from luscious soul samples that would swallow a lesser MC. With Pusha at the absolute top of his game, *DAYTONA* is somehow more than the sum of its parts, a fact the rapper acknowledges proudly on “The Games We Play”: “To all of my young n\*\*\*\*s/I am your Ghost and your Rae/This is my Purple Tape.”

It\'s not enough that rising Spanish star ROSALÍA ingeniously blends traditional flamenco with contemporary pop on her second album—she also gets a narrative based on medieval literature in there, too. Inspired by *Flamenca*, a 13th century book about a woman imprisoned by her jealous fiancé thought to be the first modern novel, each of the 11 songs on this collaboration with producer El Guincho (Pablo Díaz-Reixa) serves as a “chapter” of a running story about a doomed relationship. ROSALÍA went through the album track by track with Beats 1. **MALAMENTE (Cap. 1 Augurio)** “It’s a premonition—this moment when you know in the beginning of the story how it’s gonna end, but even then you go and do it. I was trying to compose a song everybody could understand, doing experimentation with electronic sound but also connected with my roots and flamenco. It’s combining these worlds.” **QUE NO SALGA LA LUNA (Cap. 2 Boda)** “This song is about commitment and that feeling you get when you get in a relationship with somebody. Sometimes you lose something of yourself in the process. It\'s the dark side of getting engaged—it\'s something beautiful but at the same time, there\'s another part, right?” **PIENSO EN TU MIRÁ (Cap. 3 Celos)** “It’s ‘Thinking About Your Gaze.’ This was a song that started from a sample of Bulgarian voices. I did the bassline on an island in Spain, El Hierro. I was so inspired in this place.” **DE AQUÍ NO SALES (Cap. 4. Disputa)** “It’s the most aggressive part of the record...and one of the most risky. I wanted to use the motorcycles in this song with this crazy rhythm that combines \[chapters\] three and four. Khalid told me he liked the song—I would love to do music with him.” **RENIEGO (Cap. 5. Lamento)** “It’s a traditional melody from flamenco. \[Spanish singer\] Camarón was singing with an orchestra; he created the arrangement. I think it sounds very magical.” **PRESO (Cap. 6 Clausura)** “You can hear Rossy de Palma’s voice—she’s an iconic actress from Spain. You can feel the experience in her voice. It’s heavy, you know?” **BAGDAD (Cap. 7 Liturgia)** “I was very inspired by an erotic club in Barcelona called Bagdad and by ‘Cry Me a River’ by Justin Timberlake. He heard the song and said, ‘Yes, you can use the melody’; I was so excited because he never approves anything.” **DI MI NOMBRE (Cap. 8 Éxtasis)** “It’s a very flamenco vibe, very traditional, \[but\] the structure is very pop. It’s about this connection between two people; the sexual moment. The lyrics—\'Say my name, say my name\'—I\'m such a big fan of Destiny\'s Child. \[It\'s\] paying tribute to all these artists I heard when I was a teenager. ” **NANA (Cap. 9 Concepción)** “This is a traditional flamenco melody used when you have a child you’re trying to make fall asleep. I was very inspired by what James Blake does—the space and the production he uses in his songs. I feel like in 50 years, people in universities will study him.” **MALDICIÓN (Cap. 10 Cordura)** “We’d been working with Pablo on the production and composition for a year and a half, and I didn’t like it enough. Then: This Arthur Russell sample—I think it’s perfect in this moment.” **A NINGÚN HOMBRE (Cap. 11 Poder)** “The last song of the record is the first I composed. Pablo was very excited by it and we saw that we sound good together, so I was like, ‘Let’s do the entire record together.’ It’s about the power of a woman.”

w&p by Skee Mask

Domino are honoured to introduce Devotion; the hugely anticipated debut album from one of London's most exciting underground talents, Tirzah. Arriving on the back of a lauded run of releases on Greco Roman, Devotion shines a brilliant new light on Tirzah's unique experimental pop, exquisitely soulful voice and potent contemporary lyricism.

Music for the weak. Comprised of vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes, the London-based five-piece began as school boys. From the outset, Shame built the band up from a foundation of DIY ethos while citing Eddy Current Suppression Ring and The Fall among their biggest musical influences. Utilising both the grit and sincerity of that musical background, shame carved out a niche in the South London music scene and then barrelled fearlessly into the angular, thrashing post-punk that would go on to make up Songs of Praise, their Dead Oceans debut. From “Gold Hole,” a tongue-in-cheek take-down of rock narcissism, to lead single “Concrete” detailing the overwhelming moment of realising a relationship is doomed, to the frustrated “Tasteless” taking aim at the monotony of people droning through their day-to-day, Songs of Praise never pauses to catch its breath.

Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow,” the most chantable song of 2017, introduced the Bronx MC’s lively around-the-way-girl persona to the world. Her debut album, *Invasion of Privacy*, reveals more of Cardi\'s layers, the MC leaning forcefully into her many influences. “I Like It,” featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin, is a nod to her Afro-Caribbean roots, while “Bickenhead” reimagines Project Pat’s battle-of-the-sexes classic “Chickenhead” as a hustler’s anthem. There are lyrical winks at NYC culture (“Flexing on b\*tches as hard as I can/Eating halal, driving a Lam”), but Cardi also hits on universal moments, like going back and forth with a lover (“Ring”) and reckoning with infidelity (“Thru Your Phone”).

Sheck Wes’ “Mo Bamba,”—named for his friend, the Orlando Magic center who shares Wes’ Senegalese heritage and Harlem upbringing—has a horror movie-like menace that builds gradually into a bridge, wherein Wes screams a handful of expletives to start his verse. In the press leading up to the release of *Mudboy*, Wes maintained that his story is much deeper than the mosh pits the song consistently inspires and the album is nothing if not proof of that. *Mudboy* is “The Sheck Wes Story”in the artist’s own words, some of which are even delivered in his native Wolof (“Jiggy Wit on the Shits”). He addresses his parents shipping him back to Senegal as a troublesome kid on “Never Lost” and the aforementioned “Jiggy,” and then realities of growing up fast on “Live Sheck Wes.” Basketball, one of Wes’ passions, is a constant reference, including (but not limited to) the songs named after actual players (“Mo Bamba” and “Kyrie,” as in Irving). He’s described his music as “bipolar” and his delivery exists at the furthest ends of the mood spectrum. There is “Danimals,” which finds Wes at a delicate whisper and and then “F\*ck Everybody,” a refrain Wes repeats throughout the song at shout that sounds filtered through a bullhorn. In all, *Mudboy* is a portrait of a young MC coming into his own, happy to tell his story to all who would listen.

Speaking to *The Guardian*, British singer-songwriter-producer Dev Hynes described his fourth LP under the Blood Orange name as “an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color.” Recorded on-the-go in studios around the world (Tokyo, Florence, Copenhagen) with whatever was lying around at the time (“If I go to a studio and they only have an acoustic guitar, then I’ll go with that.”), *Negro Swan* splices Hynes’ impressionistic R&B with recorded conversation and spoken word, the most haunting snippets taken from writer and transgender-rights activist Janet Mock (“Family”) and a surprisingly vulnerable Puff Daddy (“Hope”). The result is dreamy but incisive, melancholic but alive, lonesome but communal. “When you wake up/It’s not the first thing you wanna know,” he sings on “Charcoal Baby,” a highlight. “Can you still count/All the reasons that you’re not alone?”

Producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter and vocalist Devonte Hynes returns with his fourth album as Blood Orange, Negro Swan. Raised in England, Hynes started out as a teenage punk in the UK band Test Icicles before releasing two orchestral acoustic pop records as Lightspeed Champion. In 2011, he released Coastal Grooves, the first of three solo albums under the moniker Blood Orange. His last album, Freetown Sound, was released to critical acclaim in 2016, and saw Hynes defined as one of the foremost musical voices of his time, receiving comparisons to the likes of KendrickLamar and D’Angelo for his own searing and soothing personal document of life as a black man in America. He has collaborated with Solange Knowles, FKA Twigs, and many other artists, and was recently one of four artists invited to the Kennedy Center to perform alongside Philip Glass. In addition to his production work, he scored the film Palo Alto, directed by Gia Coppola and starring James Franco. Hynes’ newest album, Negro Swan, was written and produced by Hynes. Says Hynes: "My newest album is an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color. A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all. The underlying thread through each piece on the album is the idea of HOPE, and the lights we can try to turn on within ourselves with a hopefully positive outcome of helping others out of their darkness."

France-born, London-raised Oliver Godji originally planned to call his debut mixtape *Revenge* as a riposte to anyone who’d doubted his ability to make a success of a music career. He eventually settled on *SPACEMAN*, but his defiant stance still holds. “We all live in space, everyone lives in space, you can create your own space,” he explained to Julie Adenuga on Beats 1. “I have my own space—this is my space.” The 14 tracks here establish his outlying place in the UK rap universe while showcasing a restless, progressive talent that has previously earned a co-sign from Drake. Drifting between rapping, singing, and spoken word, his voice crackles with the experience and emotion of someone way beyond his 22 years, while his kaleidoscopic music cycles through psychedelic trap (“Don’t Cry”), reflective R&B (“Think Twice”), and a fusion of mournful bass music and rave euphoria (“Lightning”). The murky atmospheres and mutating rhythms are offset by a pop writer’s instinct for inescapable hooks, and songs rarely reach three minutes—when you’ve got this many good ideas, there’s no point lingering on one for too long.

After two concept albums and a string of roles in Hollywood blockbusters, one of music’s fiercest visionaries sheds her alter egos and steps out as herself. Buckle up: Human Monáe wields twice the power of any sci-fi character. In this confessional, far-reaching triumph, she dreams of a world in which love wins (“Pynk\") and women of color have agency (“Django Jane”). Featuring guest appearances from Brian Wilson, Grimes, and Pharrell—and bearing the clear influence of Prince, Monae’s late mentor—*Dirty Computer* is as uncompromising and mighty as it is graceful and fun. “I’m the venom and the antidote,” she wails in “I Like That,” a song about embracing these very contradictions. “Take a different type of girl to keep the whole world afloat.”

serpentwithfeet is an avant-garde vocalist and performance artist whose growing body of work is rooted in dueling obsessions with the ephemeral and the everlasting – key components of his artistic journey from a childhood stint as a choirboy in Baltimore through his time at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied vocal performance before relocating to New York City. His forthcoming debut full-length album soil is a return to the sensibilities and wide-eyed curiosity of his musical youth before symmetry and sterile soundscapes ruled the roost. With the release of soil the chameleonic serpentwithfeet (born Josiah Wise) rediscovers and ultimately returns to the unhinged version of himself he was sure he had outgrown. “soil is about me returning home then realizing that i carry home with me daily.” Following the release of Blisters – his 2016 foray into hybridized pop produced by Björk collaborator The Haxan Cloak – and two big tours, serpentwithfeet returned to the studio in 2017. There, he explored the fullness of his voice and became increasingly interested in playful singing which intrigued recording engineer Jason Agel. That vocal performance was only complicated by his feverish rumination on the dissolution of an impassioned love affair that left him stunned and speeding toward the inevitable – a more intimate relationship with himself. One in which he embraces and mocks his own flaws with abandon, lets an uncharacteristic shock of hair down over his infamously provocative forehead tattoos, makes room for his most pressing sexual desires and returns to the gospel that dominated his formative years. In this embrace of imperfection and romantic failure, serpentwithfeet has found soil; the forthcoming album is his first release for the label partnership between Tri Angle Records and Secretly Canadian. soil features contributions from rising experimental producer mmph, sound manipulator Katie Gately, A$AP Rocky contemporary Clams Casino, and Paul Epworth – one of the Grammy Award-winning minds responsible for Adele’s critically-acclaimed album 21. The project recorded between New York City’s WhiteWater production house and Epworth’s London studio was co-produced by serpentwithfeet. On this outing he trades glossolalia and peacocking showmanship for intricately layered harmonies, a sumptuous bottom register that appears for the first time to challenge his fluttering tenor, and ballsy sonic experimentation encouraged by Gately, whose talent he describes as “making voices sound like elephants and elephants sound like car engines.” Together they develop an unctuous sound that suggests billowing clouds and the dense, plodding stomp of 12-bar blues. Once concerned with perfect execution of gospel runs and dishing up a gossamer falsetto, serpentwithfeet is out of balance and reveling in the concept of mess on soil. Particularly, what it means to part ways with sterility and the urge to uncoil himself in order to occupy more space. soil is the moment at which he unfolds himself with zero intention of closing back up. “I’m constantly talking about how black men are always manspreading and pushed to be these super masculine, bovine – seven foot niggas. For a long time I was interested in what would happen if we rebelled against that and we were small. I was into the minutiae and then I realized I wanted to take up space again. I have practiced that smallness and quietness and that’s fine, but now I don’t want to be that delicate. I’m not interested in that right now. This album definitely pushed me in that way. There’s a certain naivete in this new music. With the blisters EP, I was trying to prove a point to myself and the listener. I was trying to string together a lot of ideas before. This time I wasn’t trying to sound smart. I was as crafty as I could be with the words, but I just wanted to keep my eyes open and be accountable for what I was seeing .” Evocative of the stillness of lying down and feeling the gravitational pull of the earth beneath the body, soil is a writhing, electronic melodrama that pairs synth woodwinds and sinister transitions with serpentwithfeet’s extra-terrestrial timbre. The album elevates his most persistent weaknesses, and revisits the trinity of r&b, gospel, and pop that drove earlier projects. serpentwithfeet busies himself with a manic range of emotion which includes sobbing, laughing, mocking his own truculence and identifying his proclivity to smother lovers as a trait antithetical to the kind of intimacy they seek. He speaks as tenderly to the mythical men of his dreams as he does former lovers. His humor is apparent on songs like “seedless,” “messy,” and “slow syrup,” which poke fun at his overbearing presence in the lives of partners. serpentwithfeet tinkers with the extremes of his ideals to illustrate the ways in which past partners have felt oppressed by his needs; he likens them to unreasonable questions like, “Will you show up for me if I ask you to sharpen your teeth because we don’t have any knives and I need someone to cut this food?” “cherubim” and “fragrant” elucidate the connection between romantic obsession and the sentiments of church songs about unwavering devotion to god in statements like, “I get to devote my life to him, I get to sing like the cherubim.” In seeking to commune with a higher power across a number of bodies, from the individual self to the embrace of a lover and the sanctity of partnership, serpentwithfeet is responsible for a compilation that forces consciousness of the myriad intersections at which god exists. At once whimsical and mechanical, soil traverses the depths of human emotion in search of love. The music inspired by “intense collaborative work” is an extension of the mourning ritual a crestfallen serpentwithfeet first created to grieve heartbreak. He cites influences as varied as lullabies, an affinity for pungent body odor, his doll collection, and his mother’s love of traditional hymns. soil conjures his early fascinations with Brandy and Björk as easily as it references the pageantry of anthemic compositions by Antonin Dvorak and the ecstatic praise of the black church; the abiding prayer house rhythm is established by industrial washing machines on Gately’s opener “whisper.” serpentwithfeet is explicit, however, in breaking with the condemnations of taboo subjects in order to deliver the language necessary to provide black, queer people with a heartfelt, futurist folk –– a new mother tongue constructed to override his prolonged inability to articulate his love life because he had no knowledge of an established standard for speaking about intimate experiences beyond the binary lens of heterosexuality. In being vulnerable enough to vocalize his journey, serpentwithfeet encourages a systematic dismantling of the shame that is appended to homosexuality through the creation of a sonic space buoyed by radical acts of love and sustained repetition of his innermost thoughts. “I remember growing up there was language for how men and women interact. I don’t have a lot of examples of black gay men that are out here thriving. Because of social media we see more examples but at the time when I was thinking about this and dealing with my own relationship, I had difficulty articulating my feelings. I hate to say it , but I think there is still a lot of shame around two black men dating and loving on each other and I was very aware of that. While working on soil, i was exploring and trying to make sense of my needs and my love language.  Because of this process, I’ve fallen in love with my idiosyncrasies. I’m growing my hair again. With this album I gave myself permission to let the leaves grow, let the flowers bloom, let myself be hairy and let my sound be hairy. I’m excited about the way things naturally come out of my body. I am always going to embrace discipline and streamlining. But I’m in a space at the moment where I don’t need or desire the corset. It’s time for expansiveness.”

*FM!* plays like a radio station takeover with Vince Staples at the controls. Over a tight and tidy 11 tracks, three of them skits, the LBC rapper enlists producers Kenny Beats and Hagler for some top-down West Coast perspectives. The mood is especially lifted on Bay Area-style slaps like “Outside!,” reaching maximum hyphy levels on “No Bleedin” and “FUN!” with (naturally) E-40. Other guests chop it up: Picture Ty Dolla $ign in neon jams wielding a Super Soaker (“Feels Like Summer”), Jay Rock and Staples defending their corner (“Don’t Get Chipped”), and Kehlani searching for peace of mind (“Tweakin’”). From the artwork that draws on Green Day’s *Dookie* to the station-break interludes featuring LA radio personality Big Boy, *FM!* presents an anarchic sense of creativity, warmed by the California sun.

“We were so inspired last year,” Kevin Abstract told Beats 1 host Julie Adenuga about the making of the sprawling LA mega-group BROCKHAMPTON’s fourth album. “I can’t really explain where the inspiration was coming from. Success messes with the way artists create at times.” So does adversity: Ameer Vann, who was literally the face of the self-styled boy band’s three previous projects, was ousted in 2018 amid allegations of domestic abuse. While he was regarded as one of the group’s best rappers, BROCKHAMPTON has a particularly deep bench; rhyming skill is hardly the only draw. Assembled in part via a Kanye West fan-club message board, the group’s 14 members hail from different corners of the United States, save one from Belfast. The evolving musicality, divergent perspectives and inspirations, and emotional honesty that sent the collective into orbit are all present, if not elevated, on their major-label debut *Iridescence*. An abundance of vocal distortion that sometimes makes it difficult to identify individual contributors lends a sense of cohesion, and underneath it, the album plays as a beautiful hodgepodge of genres. There’s the traditional gangsta rap bounce of “NEW ORLEANS,” the UK grime-inspired charge of “WHERE THE CASH AT,” and an acoustic guitar ballad in “SAN MARCOS,” all emblematic of a group whose ambition is commensurate with its head count. “We’re nowhere near where we wanna be,” said Abstract. “I’m tryna do Travis Scott numbers.”

It was worth the wait for Colombian-American songstress Kali Uchis’s first full-length. A romantic collage of artists and sounds she’s encountered along the way—Tyler, The Creator and Bootsy Collins on “After the Storm”, and Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn on the surfy “In My Dreams”—the album draws on Latin pop (“Nuestro Planeta”), hypnotic R&B (“Just a Stranger”), and high-flying psych-rock (“Tomorrow,” with production from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker). It’s a sign of Uchis’ artistic vision that she pulled so many creative minds into a single body of work that sounds so distinctly her own.

If *ye*, Kanye West’s solo album released one week prior, was him proudly shouting about his superpower—bipolar disorder—from the peak of a snowcapped mountain, *KIDS SEE GHOSTS* is the fireside therapy session occurring at its base. Both Kid Cudi and West have dealt with controversy and mental illness throughout their intertwined careers. It’s all addressed here, on their long-awaited first joint album, with honesty and innate chemistry. Kanye’s production pulsates and rumbles beneath his signature confessional bars and religious affirmations, but, centered by Cudi’s gift for melodic depth and understated humility, his contributions, and the project overall, feel cathartic rather than bombastic and headline-grabbing. On “Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2),” the sequel to *ye* highlight “Ghost Town,” both men bellow, “Nothing hurts me anymore…I feel free” with such tangible, full-bodied energy, it feels as though this very recording was, in itself, a moment of great healing.

If Robyn has found peace or happiness, you wouldn’t necessarily know it by listening to her first album in eight years. Opener “Missing U” sets the mood, with wistful lines about stopped clocks and empty spaces left behind. Yet it’s somehow one of *Honey*’s more upbeat tracks, with an insistent rhythm and glittery arpeggios that recall the brightest moments of 2010’s *Body Talk*. At its best, Robyn’s music has always straddled the line between club-ready dance and melancholy pop, and her strongest singles to date, “Dancing On My Own” and “Be Mine!,” strike this balance perfectly. But never before have we heard the kind of emotional intensity that possesses *Honey*; in the years leading up to it, Robyn suffered through the 2014 death of longtime collaborator Christian Falk and a breakup with her partner Max Vitali (though they’ve since reunited). A few one-off projects aside, she mostly withdrew from music and public life, so *Honey* is a comeback in more ways than one. Produced with a handful of collaborators, like Kindness’ Adam Bainbridge and Metronomy’s Joseph Mount, the album mostly abandons the disco of \"Missing U,\" opting to pair Robyn’s darker lyrics with more understated, house-influenced textures. She gives in to nostalgia on “Because It’s in the Music” (“They wrote a song about us...Even though it kills me, I still play it anyway”) and gets existential on “Human Being” (“Don’t shut me out, you know we’re the same kind, a dying race”). But for all the urgent and relatable rawness, *Honey* is not all doom and gloom: By the time closer “Ever Again” rolls around, she’s on the upswing, and there’s a glimmer of a possible happy ending. “I swear I’m never gonna be brokenhearted ever again,” she sings, as if to convince herself. “I’m only gonna sing about love ever again.”

Even before Playboi Carti’s breakout single, “Magnolia,” early fans were expressing an insatiable demand for new music from the rapper. *Die Lit* comes a year after the self-titled album that brought us that hit, with 19 tracks to make up for the wait. Having joked openly about being called a “mumble rapper,” Carti aggressively leans into the distinction here, thickening his Atlanta accent and even pitching up his delivery on songs like the spacey “Fell in Luv” and “FlatBed Freestyle,” where his couplets devolve into rhythmic yet indecipherable vocals. On the whole, *Die Lit* is a collection of earworms built on minimal and bass-heavy production from Pi\'erre Bourne, assisted occasionally by contributors like Lil Uzi Vert, Skepta, and Nicki Minaj.

*BALLADS 1* marks a turning point for the singer, producer, and former viral video star. On his full-length debut, 88rising’s resident soul man opens the studio door to collaboration with artists like Shlohmo, Thundercat, RL Grime, Clams Casino, Jam City, and rapper Trippie Redd. “The growth has definitely been crazy,” Joji told Beats 1. “I had to stop being so stubborn and work with other people to explore new sounds. I don’t ever want to be boxed in.” Mission accomplished. On his debut, the Osaka-born, New York-based artist blows up traditional R&B and reconstructs it in his own image, splicing in electronic, trip-hop, and post-punk accents. He tackles balladry from multiple angles: depression (“YEAH RIGHT,” “TEST DRIVE”), giddiness (“CAN’T GET OVER YOU”), rage (“WANTED U”). Joji’s late-night confessionals shift from soothing falsetto to dusted moan; it’s sometimes downcast, sometimes grimy, but always honest and pure.

Marie Davidson’s new album turns the mirror on herself. "Working Class Woman” is the Montreal-based producer’s fourth and most self-reflective record: it’s a document of her state of mind, a reflection of the past year she’s spent living in Berlin, and a comment on the stresses and strains of operating within the spheres of dance music and club culture. Drawing on those experiences, as well as an array of writers, thinkers and filmmakers who’ve influenced her, Davidson’s response to such difficult moments is to explore her own reaction to them and poke fun. “It comes from my brain, through my own experiences: the suffering and the humour, the fun and the darkness to be Marie Davidson.” It’s an honest document of where she currently stands. As she puts it, “It’s an egotistical album – and I’m okay with that.” She builds on the dancefloor-minded trajectory charted by her previous record "Adieux Au Dancefloor” [Cititrax / Minimal Wave], which drew praise from the likes of Pitchfork (“a project that indicates exciting and near-exponential growth in her ability as a writer and producer”), The Fader and Resident Advisor, and opened up her sound to a new, wider audience, earning support from peers such as Nina Kraviz and Jessy Lanza. The record is informed by a career which has spanned an ambient-influenced album as Les Momies De Palerme for Montreal’s Constellation label (home to Godspeed! You Black Emperor); her synth-disco styled duo DKMD with David Kristian; and Essaie Pas, signed to DFA, and with whom she’s shaped minimal synth and "cyberpunk coldwave” (the Guardian) sounds into a fresh mould, in partnership with husband and collaborator Pierre Guerineau. The sound of "Working Class Woman" is more direct than any of her previous outings. She still mines the same influences, from Italo Disco, to proto-industrial and electro, but leadens them with a gut-punching weight, making for a record that’s more visceral than any she’s released before. It’s combined with her characteristically-deployed spoken text – rather than spoken word, which she sees as a distinct tradition – that carries a more darkly humourous edge than before, making observations on both aspects of club culture as well as more oblique critiques of the modern world. It’s a record poised between dark and light. Industrial heaviness is balanced by Davidson’s words; dark, textured soundscapes are counterweighted by statements or observations which never take themselves too seriously. It’s something that’s encapsulated in the driving momentum of ‘So Right’: it matches pared back lyrics with a melodic bassline and bright synths, her words sketching out a euphoric feeling that chimes with the music. It’s the first single from the record, and comes backed by a John Talabot remix, where he slows down the momentum, creating a mellow pace guided a languorous bassline. In ‘Work It’, she probes her workaholic nature. In her opening spoken line, she declares, “You wanna know how I get away with everything? I work, all the fucking time.” The track is, appropriately, unrelenting: it’s a robotic, jacking groove that’s short but sweet. This track also hints at another influence on the record, which is Davidson's response to her life as a touring musician. Both under her own name, and with Essaie Pas, touring has taken up the best part of her last year and is an experience which she’s found both enriching and draining. Her stops have included Sonar Festival - where she performed her "Bullshit Threshold” show, combining performance, spoken text, video projections and analogue hardware - Primavera, Dekmantel and MUTEK in recent times. On the one hand, her live set is a creative endeavour that feeds back into her music. Playing, and travelling, on her own - which means marshalling a table of gear including sequencers, synths and a mic for her to sing and talk into (as well as transporting them between each of her shows) - allows her to improvise and play each set in a different way to the last. But at the same time, it requires her to project a persona: a demand that can become dispiriting. Another of the album’s early moments is ‘The Psychologist’, carried by a moody techno swagger that suggests a playfulness evident throughout the record. On ‘Day Dreaming’, soft chimes provide a moment of colourful respite, swirled around with a soft-focus ambience. In contrast, ‘The Tunnel’ is an ominous deep-dive into industrial sound-blasts, where Davidson darkly narrates, “I'm in the tunnel with all the other monsters and it's so messy.” And in ‘Burn Me’, she takes a turn at a more straightforward club rhythm, building up drones, an acid bassline and flashes of percussion into a tense slow-burn. Part of her response to these difficult scenarios is to turn to writers whose work offers guidance or inspiration. Recently, this has meant the likes of psychologist Alice Miller, physician Gabor Maté and filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (in particular, his book Psychomagic). Their work explores ideas of the self and the ways in which people develop; relating their theories or stories to herself, it’s pushed her to explore the notion of therapy in relation to art and dreams. In turn, she has filtered her own reflections through their ideas. She’s always reached outward for the diverse influences that have informed her music, touching on big concepts and musical touchstones alike. But it’s with this release that she’s applied the same degree of focus to herself. The album is the product of a personal process: she looks inward to project a more expansive vision to the world.

In an interview with the BBC in 2018, Iggy Pop called Mitski “probably the most advanced American songwriter that I know”—a rave that briefly tempted the Japan-born, New York-based singer to call it a career. “I thought maybe it would be best to quit music now that I’d gotten to the whole point of it, which is to be known by your personal saints,” Mitski tells Apple Music. “Very unfortunately, I can’t seem to quit music.” But even with a widening chorus of cosigns—and a recent stint opening for Lorde in stadiums and arenas—Mitski revels in solitude on her fifth album. The 14 tracks feature precise thoughts on loneliness and self-discovery, encased in ambient textures (“Blue Light,” “Come into the Water,” “A Horse Named Cold Air”) and tempos that range from dance music (“Nobody”) to pensive balladry (“Two Slow Dancers”). On the latter—one of her favorites on the album—she put old anxieties to rest. “For once, I didn’t let my deep-seated fear of losing someone’s attention interfere with doing what I felt was best for a song,” Mitski explains, “which was to make it slow, long, and minimal.” “Washing Machine Heart” uses the metaphor of laundering a partner’s soiled kicks for sonic and lyrical inspiration. “I imagined that’s the sound of someone’s heart going wild,” she explains, “and I thought about what would create that painful sort of exhilaration.” From the dejected sigh that opens “Me and My Husband,” an unflinching peek into relationship doldrums and suburban ennui, to the alone-on-Christmas levels of “Nobody” that Morrissey himself would eat a bacon sandwich to reach, Mitski knows her album is a mood: “I guess I\'m just incredibly tapped into that specific human condition.”

Mitski Miyawaki has always been wary of being turned a symbol, knowing we’re quick to put women on pedestals and even quicker to knock them down. Nonetheless, after the breakout success of 2016’s 'Puberty 2', she was hailed as the new vanguard of indie rock, the one who would save the genre from the white dudes who’ve historically dominated it. Her carefully crafted songs have often been portrayed as emotionally raw, overflowing confessionals from a fevered chosen girl, but in her fifth album, 'Be The Cowboy', Mitski introduces a persona who has been teased but never so fully present until now—a woman in control. “It’s not like it just pours out,” she says about her songwriting, “it’s not like I’m a vessel. For this new record, I experimented in narrative and fiction.” Though she hesitates to go so far as to say she created full-on characters, she reveals she had in mind “a very controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. Because women have so little power and showing emotion is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount of control she can get. Still, there is something very primordial in her that is trying to find a way to get out.” Since 'Puberty 2' was released to widespread acclaim, ultimately being named one of the best albums of 2016 by Rolling Stone, TIME, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, NPR, and SPIN, Mitski has been touring nonstop. She’s circled the globe as the headliner, as well as opening for The Pixies, and most recently, Lorde. The less glamorous, often overlooked aspect of being a rising star is the sheer amount of work that goes into it. “I had been on the road for a long time, which is so isolating, and had to run my own business at the same time,” Mitski explains, “a lot of this record was me not having any feelings, being completely spent but then trying to rally myself and wake up and get back to Mitski. I was feeling really nihilistic and trying to make pop songs.” We want our artists to be strong but we also expect them to be vulnerable. Rather than avoiding this dilemma, Mitski addresses directly the power that comes from appearing impenetrable and loneliness that follows. In 'Be The Cowboy', Mitski delves into the loneliness of being a symbol and the loneliness of being someone, and how it can feel so much like being no one. The opening song, “Geyser,” introduces us to a woman who can no longer hold it in. She’s about to burst, unleashing a torrent of desire and passion that has been building up inside. While recording the album with her long-time producer Patrick Hyland - “little by little in multiple studios between tours” - the pair kept returning to “the image of someone alone on a stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room. For most of the tracks, we didn’t layer the vocals with doubles or harmonies, to achieve that campy ‘person singing alone on stage’ atmosphere. We also made the music swell louder than the main vocals and left in vocal errors like when my voice breaks in “Nobody,” right when the band goes quiet, all for a similar effect.” Not a departure so much as an evolution forward from previous albums, Mitski was careful this time to not include much distorted guitar because “that became something people recognized me for, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t repeat myself or unintentionally create a signature sound.” The title of the album “is a kind of joke,” Mitski says. “There was this artist I really loved who used to have such a cowboy swagger. They were so electric live. With a lot of the romantic infatuations I’ve had, when I look back, I wonder, Did I want them or did I want to be them? Did I love them or did I want to absorb whatever power they had? I decided I could just be my own cowboy.” There is plenty of buoyant swagger to the album, but just as much interrogation into self-mythology. The music swerves from the cheerful to the plaintive. Mournful piano ballads lead into deceptively up-tempo songs like “Nobody” where our cowboy admits, “I know no one will save me/ I just need someone to kiss”. The self-abasement of desire is strewn across these 14 songs as our heroine seeks out old lovers for secret trysts that end in disappointment, and cannot help but indulge in the masochistic pleasure of blowing up the stability of long-term partnership. In “A Pearl” Mitski sings of how intoxicating it is to hold onto pain. “I wrote so many songs about being in love and being hurt by love. You think your life is horrible when you’re heartbroken, but when you no longer have love or heartbreak in your life, you think, wasn’t it nice when things still hurt? There’s a nostalgia for blind love, a wonderful heady kind of love.” Infused with a pink glow and mysterious blue light, the performer in Be The Cowboy makes a pact with her audience that the show must go on, but as we draw nearer to the end, a charming ditty recedes into ghostly, faded melancholia, as an angelic voice breaks through to make direct communication. “Two Slow Dancers” closes out the album in a school gymnasium, though we’re no longer in the territory of adolescence. Instead, we’re projected into the future where a pair of old lovers reunite. “They used have something together that is no longer there and they’re trying to relive it in a dance, knowing that they’ll have to go home and go back to their lives.” It’s funny how only the very old and the very young are permitted to indulge openly in dreams, encouraged to reflect and dwell in poetry. In making an record that is about growing old while Mitski herself is still young, a soft truth emerges: sometimes we feel oldest when we are still young and sometimes who we were when we were young never goes away, leaving behind a glowing pearl that we roll around endlessly in the dark. --Jenny Zhang