Gaffa (Sweden)'s Best Albums of 2022



Published: December 20, 2022 08:56 Source

1.
by 
Album • Mar 18 / 2022
Neoperreo Art Pop
Popular Highly Rated

“I literally don’t take breaks,” ROSALÍA tells Apple Music. “I feel like, to work at a certain level, to get a certain result, you really need to sacrifice.” Judging by *MOTOMAMI*, her long-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s award-winning and critically acclaimed *EL MAL QUERER*, the mononymous Spanish singer clearly put in the work. “I almost feel like I disappear because I needed to,” she says of maintaining her process in the face of increased popularity and attention. “I needed to focus and put all my energy and get to the center to create.” At the same time, she found herself drawing energy from bustling locales like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, all of which she credits with influencing the new album. Beyond any particular source of inspiration that may have driven the creation of *MOTOMAMI*, ROSALÍA’s come-up has been nothing short of inspiring. Her transition from critically acclaimed flamenco upstart to internationally renowned star—marked by creative collaborations with global tastemakers like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Oneohtrix Point Never, to name a few—has prompted an artistic metamorphosis. Her ability to navigate and dominate such a wide array of musical styles only raised expectations for her third full-length, but she resisted the idea of rushing things. “I didn’t want to make an album just because now it’s time to make an album,” she says, citing that several months were spent on mixing and visuals alone. “I don’t work like that.” Some three years after *EL MAL QUERER*, ROSALÍA’s return feels even more revolutionary than that radical breakout release. From the noisy-yet-referential leftfield reggaetón of “SAOKO” to the austere and *Yeezus*-reminiscent thump of “CHICKEN TERIYAKI,” *MOTOMAMI* makes the artist’s femme-forward modus operandi all the more clear. The point of view presented is sharp and political, but also permissive of playfulness and wit, a humanizing mix that makes the album her most personal yet. “I was like, I really want to find a way to allow my sense of humor to be present,” she says. “It’s almost like you try to do, like, a self-portrait of a moment of who you are, how you feel, the way you think.\" Things get deeper and more unexpected with the devilish-yet-austere electronic punk funk of the title track and the feverish “BIZCOCHITO.” But there are even more twists and turns within, like “HENTAI,” a bilingual torch song that charms and enraptures before giving way to machine-gun percussion. Add to that “LA FAMA,” her mystifying team-up with The Weeknd that fuses tropical Latin rhythms with avant-garde minimalism, and you end up with one of the most unique artistic statements of the decade so far.

2.
by 
Album • Oct 07 / 2022
Indie Pop Shoegaze Noise Pop
Popular Highly Rated

Alvvays never intended to take five years to finish their third album, the nervy joyride that is the compulsively lovable Blue Rev. In fact, the band began writing and cutting its first bits soon after releasing 2017’s Antisocialites, that stunning sophomore record that confirmed the Toronto quintet’s status atop a new generation of winning and whip-smart indie rock. Global lockdowns notwithstanding, circumstances both ordinary and entirely unpredictable stunted those sessions. Alvvays toured more than expected, a surefire interruption for a band that doesn’t write on the road. A watchful thief then broke into singer Molly Rankin’s apartment and swiped a recorder full of demos, one day before a basement flood nearly ruined all the band’s gear. They subsequently lost a rhythm section and, due to border closures, couldn’t rehearse for months with their masterful new one, drummer Sheridan Riley and bassist Abbey Blackwell. At least the five-year wait was worthwhile: Blue Rev doesn’t simply reassert what’s always been great about Alvvays but instead reimagines it. They have, in part and sum, never been better. There are 14 songs on Blue Rev, making it not only the longest Alvvays album but also the most harmonically rich and lyrically provocative. There are newly aggressive moments here—the gleeful and snarling guitar solo at the heart of opener “Pharmacist,” or the explosive cacophony near the middle of “Many Mirrors.” And there are some purely beautiful spans, too—the church- organ fantasia of “Fourth Figure,” or the blue-skies bridge of “Belinda Says.” But the power and magic of Blue Rev stems from Alvvays’ ability to bridge ostensible binaries, to fuse elements that seem antithetical in single songs—cynicism and empathy, anger and play, clatter and melody, the soft and the steely. The luminous poser kiss-off of “Velveteen,” the lovelorn confusion of “Tile by Tile,” the panicked but somehow reassuring rush of “After the Earthquake”. The songs of Blue Rev thrive on immediacy and intricacy, so good on first listen that the subsequent spins where you hear all the details are an inevitability. This perfectly dovetailed sound stems from an unorthodox—and, for Alvvays, wholly surprising—recording process, unlike anything they’ve ever done. Alvvays are fans of fastidious demos, making maps of new tunes so complete they might as well have topographical contour lines. But in October 2021, when they arrived at a Los Angeles studio with fellow Canadian Shawn Everett, he urged them to forget the careful planning they’d done and just play the stuff, straight to tape. On the second day, they ripped through Blue Rev front-to-back twice, pausing only 15 seconds between songs and only 30 minutes between full album takes. And then, as Everett has done on recent albums by The War on Drugs and Kacey Musgraves, he spent an obsessive amount of time alongside Alvvays filling in the cracks, roughing up the surfaces, and mixing the results. This hybridized approach allowed the band to harness each song’s absolute core, then grace it with texture and depth. Notice the way, for instance, that “Tom Verlaine” bursts into a jittery jangle; then marvel at the drums and drum machines ricocheting off one another, the harmonies that crisscross, and the stacks of guitar that rise between riff and hiss, subtle but essential layers that reveal themselves in time. Every element of Alvvays leveled up in the long interim between albums: Riley is a classic dynamo of a drummer, with the power of a rock deity and the finesse of a jazz pedigree. Their roommate, in-demand bassist Blackwell, finds the center of a song and entrenches it. Keyboardist Kerri MacLellan joined Rankin and guitarist Alec O’Hanley to write more this time, reinforcing the band’s collective quest to break patterns heard on their first two albums. The results are beyond question: Blue Rev has more twists and surprises than Alvvays’ cumulative past, and the band seems to revel in these taken chances. This record is fun and often funny, from the hilarious reply-guy bash of “Very Online Guy” to the parodic grind of “Pomeranian Spinster.” Alvvays’ self-titled debut, released when much of the band was still in its early 20s, offered speculation about a distant future—marriage, professionalism, interplanetary citizenship. Antisocialites wrestled with the woes of the now, especially the anxieties of inching toward adulthood. Named for the sugary alcoholic beverage Rankin and MacLellan used to drink as teens on rural Cape Breton, Blue Rev looks both back at that country past and forward at an uncertain world, reckoning with what we lose whenever we make a choice about what we want to become. The spinster with her Pomeranians or Belinda with her babies? The kid fleeing Bristol by train or the loyalist stunned to see old friends return? “How do I gauge whether this is stasis or change?” Rankin sings during the first verse of the plangent and infectious “Easy on Your Own?” In that moment, she pulls the ties tight between past, present, and future to ask hard questions about who we’re going to become, and how. Sure, it arrives a few years later than expected, but the answer for Alvvays is actually simple: They’ve changed gradually, growing on Blue Rev into one of their generation’s most complete and riveting rock bands.

3.
by 
Album • May 06 / 2022
Pop
Popular

“I was able to make the album in peace and quiet, really,” Sigrid tells Apple Music of crafting *How to Let Go*. That was thanks, in part, to the pandemic, during which the Norwegian pop queen could “sort of disappear,” writing the majority of her second album’s songs in Copenhagen with Norwegian songwriter Caroline Ailin (Dua Lipa, Charli XCX). “We were swimming in between sessions, talking a lot, and Caroline was making amazing cinnamon buns,” remembers Sigrid (born Sigrid Raabe). It was an approach she valued, having “definitely felt the pressure” to ensure *How to Let Go* lived up to her 2019 debut, *Sucker Punch*, home to hit singles such as “Don’t Kill My Vibe,” “Strangers,” and “Don’t Feel Like Crying.” That debut showcased Sigrid’s ability to craft shimmering electro-pop songs that sound both anthemic and intimate. These elements are all present on *How to Let Go*, but this time around, it feels even more cathartic. “There are songs about breakups and breaking someone’s heart,” she says. “Songs about letting go of your childhood, and songs about letting go of fears and doubts because sometimes you just have to go for it.” Musically, the album sees Sigrid embrace a more organic sound featuring plenty of live drums, soaring strings, and vocal harmonies; she says everyone from The Beatles to The Killers influenced guitar-centric tracks destined for festival season. Read on for Sigrid’s track-by-track guide to *How to Let Go*. **“It Gets Dark”** “Whenever I’ve been unsure of my musical direction, I’ve always come back to this song. It shaped the whole sound of the album with the strings coming in and the chorus being pretty simple in terms of production: literally just bass, vocals, and drums. It’s a song about letting go and opening your mind. For about four or five years before the pandemic, I was traveling so much with work and always came back to Norway when I had time off. And then, suddenly, I started to feel more comfortable outside of Norway. I started to feel like I also had a home in London, New York, and Los Angeles. That was exciting but also scary for me because I’m such a homebody.” **“Burning Bridges”** “It’s not necessarily about a romantic breakup because, sometimes, breakups that aren’t romantic can be even harder. Musically, it’s very inspired by Muse. I listened to them a lot when I was growing up, and I love it when rock bands go electronic the way Muse did. But at the same time, ‘Burning Bridges’ is still a pop song because you have the big, soaring strings on there. The overall vibe is cinematic but at a British music festival. It’s my proper angry, stomping-across-the-stage anthem.” **“Risk of Getting Hurt”** “When I sing, ‘I’ve crashed with no warning because I’m brave when I’m falling/But so far, I always land on my feet,’ it’s really about my outlook on life. I do get really tired and burned out because work can be really overwhelming; it takes a lot out of me. I’m a person who likes just being by myself in my apartment, cooking, but in 2019 I think I had 290 travel days or something. That’s a lot for me, but the reward of going on tour and traveling is just too good to turn down. I feel like I always land on my feet and that gives me the confidence to keep going.” **“Thank Me Later”** “Musically, it’s inspired by The Killers, who were a very important band for me growing up. Lyrically, I guess it’s really a very straight-up song about breaking someone’s heart. It sucks and it’s really difficult, but sometimes it’s for the best. I had a lot of heartbreak songs on *Sucker Punch*, but they were about me getting my heart broken. So, I thought it was time to talk about the other side of heartbreak too.” **“Mirror”** “I’m always scared of saying the wrong thing, and I’m very self-critical. I’ve been doing this job since I was 16, and when I look back at old interviews, sometimes I’m like, ‘Why did I say that?’ Often, when I write songs, I feel a bit like my older sister writing songs to me. I definitely tried to channel her in these lyrics, which are basically saying, ‘It’s OK to fuck up and move on.’ I’ve loved seeing the reaction to this song from my fans because it seems like they were thinking the same thing as me.” **“Last to Know”** “Every time we tried to put more production on it, it just didn’t work. One of my favorite songs ever is ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ by Bonnie Raitt. This song doesn’t sound remotely like it, but I’m sure I was thinking a little bit of that song when I wrote these lyrics. It’s about when you’ve been through a breakup and you’ve moved on, but there’s a bittersweet element because it’s hard for your ex to see you with someone new.” **“Dancer”** “This is one of my favorites on the album. It’s a full-on lovey-dovey song about falling the hardest in love I’ve ever been. I love the instrumentation on this song with the piano and then the drums and bass coming in. We listened to The Beatles a bit in the studio, and I think you can hear their influence here. It’s just a warm hug of a song that reminds me of summer nights and road trips and getting drunk.” **“A Driver Saved My Night”** “This is a fun song. It’s about being stuck in traffic somewhere, usually in London on the M25 \[highway\], and feeling a bit tired and homesick and ‘ugh’ about things. But then, a song you really like comes on the radio and you ask the driver to turn it up, please. And even though you don’t know each other, you’re both listening and nodding along and thinking, ‘Great song!’ I just love how music can instantly lift your spirits, so this song is really an homage to those moments.” **“Mistake Like You”** “Another ballad, but you’ve got to have a few ballads in there. It’s a sad song but also a positive one. It’s about unrequited love: having really strong feelings for someone who doesn’t feel the same way but coming through that situation and knowing you learned from it. That’s what I was thinking about when I wrote the chorus: ‘I decided I think that anyone would be lucky to make just one mistake like you.’” **“Bad Life” (feat. Bring Me the Horizon)** “I’m a big Bring Me the Horizon fan. When I was at Reading Festival in 2021, \[the band’s keyboardist\] Jordan Fish came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I love your music.’ And I was freaking out—like, how do they know my music? We chatted a bit, and he said we should go into the studio some time. Then I got in my tour bus to go to Leeds Festival, and he sent me the demo of ‘Bad Life.’ I played it to my band, and we were all like, ‘This is really good.’ So, I went into the studio with Jordan and Ollie \[Sykes, the band’s singer\] a few weeks later, and we changed some bits and bobs, and I wrote some new lyrics for my verse. But the first time I realized Bring Me the Horizon was an unlikely match \[for me\] was when I walked into that studio and the technician said, ‘Whoa, you were the last person I was expecting to see in this session!’” **“Grow”** “Nick Drake was an inspiration for me when I was writing this one, especially his songs ‘Pink Moon’ and ‘Place to Be.’ There are references to my childhood in the lyrics and also to my first apartment in Oslo. It was a big achievement for me to buy my own place at 22, and I remember trying to hang pictures on the bare white walls to make it feel like a proper home. But somehow, I never really settled there; it always felt like just another hotel room. I was living my dream out on the road, but it felt bittersweet because I had lost a part of myself at the same time. I think that’s just growing up, though.” **“High Note”** “I want to look back on my life and know I’ve not taken things for granted. But I have a bad habit of letting stress get to me, and then amazing things pass me by. I remember when I won the BBC’s Sound of 2018 poll, which is one of my biggest achievements, I actually cried because I was scared of what life was going to be like after that. It was almost like my innocence was going in a way: ‘I’m a serious artist now, fuck!’ It was only months afterwards that I looked back and thought, ‘Oh, that was actually amazing.’ So, this is a song about enjoying those highs when they happen. It’s partly inspired by the Corpus Clock at Cambridge University, which was built to remind the students to live their lives to the fullest.”

4.
Album • Mar 11 / 2022
Pop Rock Soft Rock
Popular

Cameron has always been a great storyteller, finding his ways into the depths of the places where not many others are looking, and Oxy Music continues on that trajectory. It’s filled with stories of people who fall outside the system and exist in the grey areas of life. In its design - its music, lyrics and tracklist - lies the journey a person can take, if the circumstances present themselves - down the road of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. Initially inspired by Nico Walker’s Cherry, Cameron was spurred into yet another commentary on American Life, this time about the opioid crisis that has taken over the country. He says about Oxy Music: “The album is a story, a work of fiction, mostly from the perspective of a man. Starved of meaningful purpose, confused about the state of the world, and in dire need of a reason to live - a person can, and according to the latest statistics, increasingly will, turn to opioids. This is one of those people.” While Oxy Music could be dark, it’s instead brighter and more buoyant than much of Cameron’s previous work, a shift in mood first seen across 2019’s Miami Memory. It’s told from a place of optimism and through the lens of Cameron, in the way that only he can tell it. As with the previously released, “Sara Jo,” “Best Life” gives a context of drug use to distort the confronting nature of contemporary reality as Cameron sings of the feelings of insecurity brought about by life online: “I guess I’m just winning / But I get no reaction / My comments just don’t rank / Or my post tanks.” Directed by Jemima Kirke, produced by Jim Larson and starring Kirke and Cameron, the song’s video explores the idea of what it means to find one’s “best life” by accepting others’ insecurities – in this instance, a skin condition such as eczema – as loveable qualities.

5.
by 
Album • Jan 07 / 2022
Synthpop Dance-Pop
Popular Highly Rated

*“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.

6.
by 
Album • Jul 29 / 2022
Dance-Pop House Contemporary R&B
Popular Highly Rated

Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to *RENAISSANCE*. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. *RENAISSANCE* is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are. From the classic four-on-the-floor house moods of the Robin S.- and Big Freedia-sampling lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” to the Afro-tech of the Grace Jones- and Tems-assisted “MOVE” and the funky, rollerskating disco feeling of “CUFF IT,” this is a massive yet elegantly composed buffet of sound, richly packed with anthemic morsels that pull you in. There are soft moments here, too: “I know you can’t help but to be yourself around me,” she coos on “PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA,” the kind of warm, whispers-in-the-ear love song you’d expect to hear at a summer cookout—complete with an intricate interplay between vocals and guitar that gives Beyoncé a chance to showcase some incredible vocal dexterity. “CHURCH GIRL” fuses R&B, gospel, and hip-hop to tell a survivor’s story: “I\'m finally on the other side/I finally found the extra smiles/Swimming through the oceans of tears we cried.” An explicit celebration of Blackness, “COZY” is the mantra of a woman who has nothing to prove to anyone—“Comfortable in my skin/Cozy with who I am,” ” Beyoncé muses on the chorus. And on “PURE/HONEY,” Beyoncé immerses herself in ballroom culture, incorporating drag performance chants and a Kevin Aviance sample on the first half that give way to the disco-drenched second half, cementing the song as an immediate dance-floor favorite. It’s the perfect lead-in to the album closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE,” which propels the dreamy escapist disco of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” even further into the future.

7.
Album • May 13 / 2022
Conscious Hip Hop West Coast Hip Hop
Popular Highly Rated

When Kendrick Lamar popped up on two tracks from Baby Keem’s *The Melodic Blue* (“range brothers” and “family ties”), it felt like one of hip-hop’s prophets had descended a mountain to deliver scripture. His verses were stellar, to be sure, but it also just felt like way too much time had passed since we’d heard his voice. He’d helmed 2018’s *Black Panther* compilation/soundtrack, but his last proper release was 2017’s *DAMN.* That kind of scarcity in hip-hop can only serve to deify an artist as beloved as Lamar. But if the Compton MC is broadcasting anything across his fifth proper album *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers*, it’s that he’s only human. The project is split into two parts, each comprising nine songs, all of which serve to illuminate Lamar’s continually evolving worldview. Central to Lamar’s thesis is accountability. The MC has painstakingly itemized his shortcomings, assessing his relationships with money (“United in Grief”), white women (“Worldwide Steppers”), his father (“Father Time”), the limits of his loyalty (“Rich Spirit”), love in the context of heteronormative relationships (“We Cry Together,” “Purple Hearts”), motivation (“Count Me Out”), responsibility (“Crown”), gender (“Auntie Diaries”), and generational trauma (“Mother I Sober”). It’s a dense and heavy listen. But just as sure as Kendrick Lamar is human like the rest of us, he’s also a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the most thoughtful MCs alive, and someone whose honesty across *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers* could help us understand why any of us are the way we are.

8.
by 
Album • Sep 30 / 2022
Alternative R&B UK Hip Hop UK Bass
Popular Highly Rated

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.”

9.
by 
Album • Feb 11 / 2022
Indie Folk Folk Rock
Popular Highly Rated

Like its title suggests, *Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You* continues Big Thief’s shift away from their tense, early music toward something folkier and more cosmically inviting. They’ve always had an interest in Americana, but their touchpoints are warmer now: A sweetly sawing fiddle (“Spud Infinity”), a front-porch lullaby (“Dried Roses”), the wonder of a walk in the woods (“Promise Is a Pendulum”) or comfort of a kitchen where the radio’s on and food sizzles in the pan (“Red Moon”). Adrianne Lenker’s voice still conveys a natural reticence—she doesn’t want to believe it’s all as beautiful as it is—but she’s also too earnest to deny beauty when she sees it.

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is a sprawling double-LP exploring the deepest elements and possibilities of Big Thief. To truly dig into all that the music of Adrianne Lenker, Max Oleartchik, Buck Meek, and James Krivchenia desired in 2020, the band decided to write and record a rambling account of growth as individuals, musicians, and chosen family over 4 distinct recording sessions. In Upstate New York, Topanga Canyon, The Rocky Mountains, and Tucson, Arizona, Big Thief spent 5 months in creation and came out with 45 completed songs. The most resonant of this material was edited down into the 20 tracks that make up DNWMIBIY, a fluid and adventurous listen. The album was produced by drummer James Krivchenia who initially pitched the recording concept for DNWMIBIY back in late 2019 with the goal of encapsulating the many different aspects of Adrianne’s songwriting and the band onto a single record. In an attempt to ease back into life as Big Thief after a long stretch of Covid-19 related isolation, the band met up for their first session in the woods of upstate New York. They started the process at Sam Evian’s Flying Cloud Recordings, recording on an 8-track tape machine with Evian at the knobs. It took a while for the band to realign and for the first week of working in the studio, nothing felt right. After a few un-inspired takes the band decided to take an ice-cold dip in the creek behind the house before running back to record in wet swimsuits. That cool water blessing stayed with Big Thief through the rest of the summer and many more intuitive, recording rituals followed. It was here that the band procured ‘Certainty’ and ‘Sparrow’. For the next session in Topanga Canyon, California, the band intended to explore their bombastic desires and lay down some sonic revelry in the experimental soundscape-friendly hands of engineer Shawn Everett. Several of the songs from this session lyrically explore the areas of Lenker’s thought process that she describes as “unabashedly as psychedelic as I naturally think,” including ‘Little Things’, which came out of this session. The prepared acoustic guitars and huge stomp beat of today’s ‘Time Escaping’ create a matching, otherworldly backdrop for the subconscious dream of timeless, infinite mystery. When her puppy Oso ran into the vocal booth during the final take of the song, Adrianne looked down and spoke “It’s Music!” to explain in the best terms possible the reality of what was going on to the confused dog. “It’s Music Oso!” The third session, high in the Colorado Rockies, was set up to be a more traditional Big Thief recording experience, working with UFOF and Two Hands engineer Dom Monks. Monks' attentiveness to song energies and reverence for the first take has become a huge part of the magic of Thief’s recent output. One afternoon in the castle-like studio, the band was running through a brand new song ‘Change’ for the first time. Right when they thought it might be time to do a take, Monks came out of the booth to let them know that he’d captured the practice and it was perfect as it was.   The final session, in hot-as-heaven Tucson, Arizona, took place in the home studio of Scott McMicken. The several months of recording had caught up to Big Thief at this point so, in order to bring in some new energy, they invited long-time friend Mat Davidson of Twain to join. This was the first time that Big Thief had ever brought in a 5th instrumentalist for such a significant contribution. His fiddle, and vocals weave a heavy presence throughout the Tucson tracks. If the album's main through-line is its free-play, anything-is-possible energy, then this environment was the perfect spot to conclude its creation — filling the messy living room with laughter, letting the fire blaze in the backyard, and ripping spontaneous, extended jams as trains whistled outside.  All 4 of these sessions, in their varied states of fidelity, style, and mood, when viewed together as one album seem to stand for a more honest, zoomed-out picture of lived experience than would be possible on a traditional, 12 song record. This was exactly what the band hoped would be the outcome of this kind of massive experiment. When Max’s mom asked on a phone call what it feels like to be back together with the band playing music for the first time in a year, he described to the best of abilities: “Well it’s like, we’re a band, we talk, we have different dynamics, we do the breaths, and then we go on stage and suddenly it feels like we are now on a dragon. And we can’t really talk because we have to steer this dragon.”  The attempt to capture something deeper, wider, and full of mystery, points to the inherent spirit of Big Thief. Traces of this open-hearted, non-dogmatic faith can be felt through previous albums, but here on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You lives the strongest testament to its existence. 

10.
by 
Album • Mar 18 / 2022
Dance-Pop
Popular Highly Rated

“Right now, I’m still very much restless,” Charli XCX tells Apple Music. “Because I know that I would be an excellent humongous pop star. But I also unfortunately know that there’s a vision of who I am in the mainstream’s mind. It’s a constant headfuck, to be honest. While I’m a very defiant person, I’m also a human, and sometimes I do just want to be accepted, and I don’t understand why I’m not totally—even though sometimes I relish in the fact that I’m not.” Charlotte Aitchison is one of pop music’s more self-aware, self-deprecating, and self-examining artists. *CRASH* is her fifth studio album, and the final one to be released as part of a longtime record deal. It’s partly, as Charli says, an experiment. An opportunity to utilize a major label’s resources and dress up her left-leaning pop in something ultra luxe. A bold and refreshingly transparent attempt to move up a few rungs, it’s a considered move also designed to clear up some of Charli’s nagging what-ifs. “I’ve always questioned myself,” she says. “And it’s why I’ve made this entire album, really. I ask myself, am I a likable artist? Am I too opinionated? Do I look too weird? Am I too annoying? If I shut up and put out certain songs and do the right features, will I become more accepted, more liked, more commercial?” Of course, Charli’s notoriously engaged fanbase—with whom she exchanged ideas, including song lyrics, directly online for 2020’s quarantine album *how i’m feeling now*—would argue she doesn’t need any such validation. “It’s a blessing and a curse, to be extremely honest,” she says of her “Angels.” “I’m very lucky to have the fanbase that I have, who are extremely invested in literally every breath I take. They are very vocal and very smart, which draws me to them, because they’ve got great taste and amazing ideas—as I found out when doing *how i’m feeling now*. But you can’t please everyone. I’ve done so many different things that people are always going to gravitate to certain eras. Plus, I think that there’s an element where they like to root for an underdog, or an on-the-fringes personality like mine. Because we feel like we’ve been in it together for a really long time, the online discourse can be so vigorous. So I can’t lie, sometimes it’s a bit of a headfuck, because whilst I absolutely adore them, I don’t make music for them specifically when I’m sat in the studio—I’m making it for me. And I don’t think they would admire me as the artist I am if I just kept giving them what they expected.” It’s time to listen for yourself. Explore Charli’s premium pop with her own track-by-track guide. **“Crash”** “Until maybe a week before I made this song, the album was going to be called *Sorry If I Hurt You*. But one day, I was driving in my car and *CRASH* just came to me, and I called A. G. Cook. Even though he wasn\'t a *huge* part of this record, he\'s still very much my creative confidant. He agreed it made sense with the constant car references in my work—and I like the onomatopoeia, I like how it references \[2014 single\] ‘Boom Clap,’ and I like how it feels much more punchy and in-your-face than *how i’m feeling now*. I felt that the title needed a song, so A. G. and I got in the studio pretty quickly and knew we needed to make it sound extremely ’80s—if you could bottle the album into one song, this is it. We—plus the song’s co-producer George Daniel—had been sending a lot of new jack swing beats back and forth, and I knew I wanted this guitar solo, and to add these crazy Janet-esque stabs.” **“New Shapes” (feat. Caroline Polachek & Christine and the Queens)** “Caroline, Christine, and I had worked together many times in different forms, and it was time for the three of us to come together. And actually, this song was recorded a long time ago—pre-pandemic. I like how it\'s an antihero song. We’re saying to the love figure, ‘I haven\'t got what you need from me, because I am not typical. I don\'t operate in the way that you want me to. I want multiple partners. I want somebody else. I want no convention within sex and love.’ And I like that as a statement right after the sound of a car crash in the previous song. To do that song with them—two artists who I really feel have such a unique, defiant, and topsy-turvy vision of what pop music is—felt really classic and right for us. There’s a true connection between us now, in music and in our personal lives.” **“Good Ones”** “I think this song deserved to be bigger, but I will always think that of my work. But I do think it established the Cliffs Notes version of what the record is—it\'s got a darkness to it, and it\'s very pop. I like how drastic the jump was between coming out of *how i’m feeling now* into this, both sonically and in how they were made. *how i’m feeling now* was obviously my quarantine album made in my living room over five weeks by me and two trusted collaborators. This song is produced by Oscar Holter—an extremely active part of the Max Martin camp—and not really written hugely by myself but by two amazing topliners, Caroline Ailin and Noonie Bao. So it’s the absolute polar opposite.” **“Constant Repeat”** “This song features an imaginary scenario I created in my head, where I fell for somebody but imagined that they didn\'t want me—which turned out to not be the case. But it was this fear that I had, and my prediction of the situation. I think it\'s interesting that you can convince yourself of that. When you are falling for someone, unfortunately, I think human nature just crushes in on you and tells you you\'re not good enough, and fills you with doubt and dread and fear and all of those things. This song really poured out of me quite late in the album process, and it just felt so real and natural.” **“Beg for You” (feat. Rina Sawayama)** “Rina wanted to do something uptempo together, and give our fans a bit more of a moment. So when this song idea bubbled up, I called her immediately. She rewrote the second verse, and sounded incredible on it. It’s a very perfect-storm moment, because we’re two artists operating within the pop sphere, but always challenging it and doing something a little bit more left. She also has that hardcore, diehard fanbase—there’s a lot of crossover. Whilst maybe some of them were expecting something a little bit more experimental from us, I think, in a way, you can\'t deny that this actually is the perfect song for us in that we are paying a homage to a gay anthem \[‘Cry for You’ by September\]. She\'s queer, I\'m a queer ally, we\'re coming together to really just live our best lives and sing an iconic pop song.” **“Move Me”** “This song came from a writing camp that I was invited to by \[US producer and songwriter\] Ian Kirkpatrick. I hadn’t done a very classic camp for a while. Not because I\'m anti them—I actually think I thrive quite well in them and enjoy them. I ended up writing this with \[US songwriter and producer\] Amy Allen. We’re actually polar opposites in terms of our styles, which is why this song ended up being so beautiful—the aggressive parts of the song where I was basically yelling into a mic are very me, then you have the balance of Amy’s gorgeous verses. As we were doing it, everyone kept talking about how it’d be a great song for Halsey. I was like, ‘No, I love Halsey, but this is a great song for me and I’m fucking keeping it.’ People talk about writing-camp songs being fake and constructed in a test tube or whatever. But it’s very real. We write from our reality. That’s why we’re good songwriters.” **“Baby”** “This was one of the first tracks I made for this album, probably pre-pandemic, and with Justin Raisen—who was a very crucial part of my first album, *True Romance* \[2013\]. So it felt really good to be going back and working with him in the same house where we made part of the first album. This was a song that I always felt was so passionate and fiery and sexy. And I think the making of this song helped me feel powerful, and want to explore the sexier side of pop music and my artistry. It’s the song that helped me decide that I wanted to dance for this campaign, because I just couldn\'t stop wanting to move to it whilst we were making it.” **“Lightning”** “It began as one of those half demos that I took away and lived with. I then called up Ariel Rechtshaid, who was also a huge part of the first album, alongside Justin Raisen, and said, ‘OK, I have this song. I want to do *True Romance in 2022* with it.” And while I know he’s not really on that hype currently, I told him he was the king of the ’80s and if he felt it needed to go down that road, I trusted him because he has the most impeccable taste. So he sent it back to me, and there was a question mark over the Spanish guitar moment, which goes into a chorus. I sent it to A. G. to ask his opinion. He was like, ‘It\'s insane. I laughed out loud.’ And I was like, ‘OK, great. We\'re keeping it.’” **“Every Rule”** “It\'s the true story of me meeting my previous partner, and both of us being in relationships but knowing that we were meant to be together. I think that that\'s a story that a lot of my friends have also experienced—and obviously there\'s a lot of controversy that comes with that circumstance. People are afraid to talk about it. People feel shame. But it\'s also, it\'s really real. I think you have to be really brave to admit to yourself that you\'re not in love with maybe the person that you\'re with, and that you are in love with someone else. It\'s cruel on both sides, and I think you can really hear that. It was a song that I really only felt comfortable enough to make with A. G. He would never judge me for saying these things. It’s another pre-pandemic song, and A. G. was living in a place with a studio in his garage. There was a tree outside that was always covered in crickets. You can hear the crickets in the recording, which I think is really sweet and charming. Once we’d lived with the song for about a year, A. G. had the idea of asking Oneohtrix Point Never to add some things to the song, which I loved.” **“Yuck”** “I like the drastic gear change here. I like that it makes you laugh. I like those jarring moments on albums and in live shows where you\'re going from the most intimate, quiet song to the most hilarious or poptastic. That was the reasoning behind putting ‘Every Rule’ and ‘Yuck’ back to back. I really struggle with that feeling of being smothered. It\'s probably an only-child thing, or something. When you\'re like, ‘Get away from me, give me some fucking space’—that is seriously how I feel 50% of the time. It also reminds me of that gang vocal element of ‘Boom Clap’ and ‘Boys.’ Not sonically, but more in terms of the way that I\'m singing. I\'m definitely not the most technical singer ever—if you put me next to Ariana Grande and made us both sing the same song, I would sound absolutely insane, and she would sound absolutely gorgeous—but when it comes to singing like this, I feel pretty confident. That’s really nice for me, just in a technical way. It\'s really fun to be like, ‘Yeah. You know what? I can sing this song.’ Which I know sounds stupid because I am a professional ‘singer.’” **“Used to Know Me”** “I was trying to emulate myself on ‘Fancy’—or get back into that headspace. I really remember searching for the chorus melody to ‘Fancy’ in a way that I hadn\'t really searched for a melody before. Normally I\'m very instinctual and spontaneous when it comes to melodies, but with ‘Fancy,’ I had to really maneuver my brain around different corners to figure it out—to understand the formation of the notes. I wrote this on my own at Stargate’s studios, which probably made me feel like I had to write a really big pop song, and then when I was listening to it on repeat in my car, I just started singing the synth line to ‘Show Me Love’ by Robin S. So I called a few people and was like, ‘Is this possible?’ And everyone said, ‘Yes, but do you care about publishing?’ And I was like, ‘I guess not.’ It feels to me like a big song—it’s about reshaping who you are after a breakup.” **“Twice”** “I had reservations about making this the last song because it\'s such an obvious choice with the key change and outro. And generally speaking, I\'m anti the obvious choice. But then George Daniel, who is very good with tracklisting, simply said, ‘You\'re an idiot if you don\'t put this song last.’ It’s actually interesting lyrically, because it\'s about the end of the world and that you shouldn\'t think twice about intimate moments, or these off-the-cuff moments. Essentially, YOLO, and enjoy delving into these once-in-a-lifetime situations that everybody ends up in. I was picturing the scene from \[Lars von Trier’s 2011 film\] *Melancholia* where Kirsten Dunst’s character is sat on a hill waiting for the end of the world. It’s a perfect closer, and I also think it’s a very beautiful song.”

11.
Album • Feb 18 / 2022
Dream Pop Neo-Psychedelia
Popular Highly Rated

Like AC/DC before them, Beach House’s gift lies in managing to make what feels like the same album a hundred different ways. Even the new inflections on *Once Twice Melody*—the string section of “ESP,” the rhythmic nods to hip-hop (“Pink Funeral”) and Italo-disco (“Runaway”)—fit immediately into their plush, neon-lit world. And while specific moments conjure specific eras (“Superstar” the triumph of an ’80s John Hughes movie, “Once Twice Melody” a swirl of ’60s surrealism), the cumulative effect is something like a fairytale rendered in sound: majestic, inviting, but dark enough around the edges to keep you off-balance. And just like that (snap), they do it again.

Once Twice Melody is the 8th studio album by Beach House. It is a double album, featuring 18 songs presented in 4 chapters. Across these songs, many types of style and song structures can be heard. Songs without drums, songs centered around acoustic guitar, mostly electronic songs with no guitar, wandering and repetitive melodies, songs built around the string sections. In addition to new sounds, many of the drum machines, organs, keyboards and tones that listeners may associate with previous Beach House records remain present throughout many of the compositions. Beach House is Victoria Legrand, lead singer and multi-instrumentalist, and Alex Scally, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. They write all of their songs together. Once Twice Melody is the first album produced entirely by the band. The live drums are by James Barone (same as their 2018 album, 7), and were recorded at Pachyderm studio in Minnesota and United Studio in Los Angeles. For the first time, a live string ensemble was used. Strings were arranged by David Campbell. The writing and recording of Once Twice Melody began in 2018 and was completed in July of 2021. Most of the songs were created during this time, though a few date back over the previous 10 years. Most of the recording was done at Apple Orchard Studio in Baltimore. Once Twice Melody was mixed largely by Alan Moulder but a few tracks were also mixed by Caesar Edmunds, Trevor Spencer, and Dave Fridmann.

12.
by 
Suede
Album • Sep 16 / 2022
Alternative Rock
Popular Highly Rated
13.
by 
Album • Mar 25 / 2022
Alternative Rock
Popular Highly Rated

Even as they become elder statesmen of alt-rock, there remains a youthful ebullience to Placebo’s songs. Perhaps that’s because singer and guitarist Brian Molko and bassist Stefan Olsdal make music rooted in the heady rush of the here and now, where the emotions are raw, the spirit unfiltered. That’s how it goes on this gripping eighth album, which tackles themes of climate change, mortality, and technology while journeying through a broad soundscape that takes in expansive goth rock, orchestral pop, and synth-tinged grooves. Their defiant anthems seem melancholic and hopeful at the same time, the sound of a band savoring life in the present.

14.
Album • Mar 24 / 2022
Reggaetón
Noteable

Daddy Yankee wrote this exclusive message to mark what he says will be his last album: *I’m celebrating my 32-year career with my final musical footprint. All of the styles that defined me in one piece. LEGENDADDY is struggle, celebration, war and romance. Thank you to my amazing global family for inspiring me so much in my life. I love you* ❤️ *…….Daddy Yankee* 🐐

15.
Album • Feb 11 / 2022
Avant-Garde Metal Alternative Metal
Popular

In blending black metal with African American spirituals on Zeal & Ardor’s 2016 debut *Devil Is Fine*, Swiss American artist Manuel Gagneux broke new musical ground. On his third album, he takes an industrial detour with lead single “Run,” which channels Ministry and early Nine Inch Nails, and “Götterdämmerung,” which he sings in German. Elsewhere, “Bow” plunges gospel chants into an electronic dirge, while “Golden Liar” sets soulful melodies and spoken word to a dark country twang. “It’s fun messing around with sounds and seeing what sticks to the wall,” he tells Apple Music. “That’s how I approach music—I’m just playing with different elements for the gits and shiggles of it. And then sometimes it turns out sounding good.” Below, he discusses each track on his self-titled album. **“Zeal & Ardor”** “We decided early on that our sound is basically just our atmosphere, and within that realm we can do whatever we want genre-wise. So it was pretty important to set the tone, to establish that atmosphere thoroughly. I think this summarizes the intent. It starts with a broody synthesizer and then one element after the other comes in. By the end, you should be in the Zeal & Ardor world.” **“Run”** “We wanted the have the first proper song on the record be kind of relentless. That’s also why we put it out as the first single. This is a nonstop aggressive song, and we’ve never really done anything in this manner. It felt like a good way to be off to the races.” **“Death to the Holy”** “I really like this track because it kind of summarizes what we’re all about in just three minutes. You have the bluesy stuff, some piano in there, and then that groove goes directly into this almost metalcore-type breakdown part with evil synthesizers. It’s the most Zeal & Ardor song on the record. It has the elements people kind of expect from us, so we wanted to get that out of the way early on so the record can get weird later.” **“Emersion”** “This starts off with a really relaxed kind of hip-hop beat. We always play with contrast, so to have the heavy part sound heavy, you have to precede it with a really mellow soft part. And I think this is the most extreme in that regard, because it starts super low-key and kind of dreamy—and then out of nowhere, this wall of black metal comes in. We also put some flavors of post-rock in there, some hopeful melodies, just to offset the abrasive contrast.” **“Golden Liar”** “I was looking into ways to make the atmosphere a bit thicker, and of course a master of atmosphere is Ennio Morricone. So I liberated some elements of his music—I stole them. I did it to have this kind of slow-burn song, and I think it’s one of the longer ones. I really like this track because it conveys heaviness without being really heavy in the instrument department.” **“Erase”** “This is one of the more proggy ones. I only noticed this after the fact, but all of the songs are rather simple when it comes to how many parts they have. But this one is an outlier in that regard, and there’s also a lot of modal changes. I think we started in D, and it goes to a different key in a way that you don’t really notice. But if you skip from the beginning to the end of the song, we have the same guitar lick in a different key. It’s like a teleportation for the listener without them noticing, like a little magic trick.” **“Bow”** “My influences are really showing here, because I listen to a lot of industrial and electronic stuff like Woodkid. I just wanted to explore different kinds of heaviness, which is not just double-bass drums and guitars but sounds that are awe-inspiring. So there’s a distorted horn section in there which I came up with, and not Woodkid or Hans Zimmer. That was totally me by myself. I just wanted the most grandiose sound.” **“Feed the Machine”** “Funny story about this one. I do demos on my computer, and I program the drums for those. When I showed it to our drummer Marco, he was like, ‘That’s too fast, man. I can’t play that.’ So this song would’ve been even faster were it not for that. But the whole gag of this song is that there’s a really harsh, Ministry-esque part which sounds like a machine pumping away—which is where the title came from, I’m afraid.” **“I Caught You”** “We’re kind of the outliers in this whole black metal thing, because people think we’re phonies or whatever because we do different stuff. And the biggest sin you could commit in black metal is to have nu-metal influences. So that’s what we did with this song. We even slowed down the speed of the song just for those sequences so they would sound as Deftones-y as possible. So that’s a fun one. I can’t wait to play it live.” **“Church Burns”** “The intent with this was to have the most potentially controversial lyrics of the album be in the most poppy or pop-adjacent song we have. And seeing how this was on the front page of Apple Music recently, I think we kinda made that happen. I’m actually in disbelief that it worked that way, because in itself it’s just a pop verse, and then the breakdown, if you wanna call it that, is kinda ZZ Top-ish honky-tonk. I was kind of worried about that, because it’s so un-metal, so I was relieved that people ended up liking it.” **“Götterdämmerung”** “This is the title of a movement in a Wagner opera, and Wagner was heavily used by not-so-great people in the ’30s and ’40s in Germany. So I wanted to reappropriate and reclaim Wagner, even though he himself was a huge dick, too—but dude wrote brilliant music. And here’s how idiotic I am: I was really worried about the German lyrics, like can people even emote to this? I was totally blanking on the fact that Rammstein is a huge thing at this point. So, duh. But German just sounds metal, and it’s a fun language to scream in.” **“Hold Your Head Low”** “This is an older song that wasn’t written for this album specifically, but it kind of fit in. I think this is us at our bluesiest, and it’s also kind of a slow burner. Here’s where my Opeth influences show in guitar writing. When we were on tour with them last December, I elected not to play it because I was afraid Mikael \[Åkerfeldt\] would say, ‘You fucking ripoff!’ But we put it on the album because it feels like a little breather after all that harsh abrasiveness.” **“J-M-B”** “I tried to put some jazz chords to metal, which I thought was kind of an idiotic endeavor at first, but when I presented the songs in the studio, we felt we should put it on the record. It almost became like a secret hidden track, which is impossible to do these days. But since I write all these demos alone, I give them all these little project names. This one was ‘Jazz Metal Blues,’ but you can’t put that on the record sleeve, so: ‘J-M-B.’” **“A-H-I-L”** “This is more somber. The title stands for ‘All Hope Is Lost.’ In black metal, the atmosphere is basically everything, and it’s like that hopeless, drab rainy day in Norway, like ‘my father just got killed by a pack of wolves’ kind of vibe. I just wanted to try and emulate that with synthesizers, as far removed from actual black metal as possible. It felt like an appropriate outro after ‘J-M-B.’ This is back to serious business and it’s time to go to bed.”

16.
Album • Oct 21 / 2022
Alt-Pop
Popular Highly Rated

Let‘s start with that speech. In September 2022, as Taylor Swift accepted Songwriter-Artist of the Decade honors at the Nashville Songwriter Awards, the headline was that Swift had unveiled an admittedly “dorky” system she’d developed for organizing her own songs. Quill Pen, Fountain Pen, Glitter Gel Pen: three categories of lyrics, three imagined tools with which she wrote them, one pretty ingenious way to invite obsessive fans to lovingly obsess all the more. And yet, perhaps the real takeaway was the manner in which she spoke about her craft that night, some 20 years after writing her first song at the age of 12. “I love doing this thing we are fortunate enough to call a job,” she said to a room of her peers. “Writing songs is my life’s work and my hobby and my never-ending thrill. A song can defy logic or time. A good song transports you to your truest feelings and translates those feelings for you. A good song stays with you even when people or feelings don’t.” On *Midnights*, her tenth LP and fourth in as many years—*if* you don’t count the two she’s just rerecorded and buttressed with dozens of additional tracks—Swift sounds like she’s really enjoying her work, playing with language like kids do with gum, thrilling to the texture of every turn of phrase, the charge in every melody and satisfying rhyme. Alongside longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, she’s set out here to tell “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout \[her\] life,” as she phrased it in a message to Apple Music subscribers. It’s a concept that naturally calls for a nocturnal palette: slower tempos, hushed atmosphere, negative space like night sky. The sound is fully modern (synths you’d want to eat or sleep in, low end that sits comfortably on your chest), while the aesthetic (soft focus, wood paneling, tracklist on the cover) is decidedly mid-century, much like the *Mad Men*-inspired title of its brooding opener, “Lavender Haze”—a song about finding refuge in the glow of intimacy. “Talk your talk and go viral,” she sings, in reference to the maelstrom of outside interest in her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. “I just want this love spiral.” (A big shout to Antonoff for those spongy backup vocals, btw.) In large part, *Midnights* is a record of interiors, Swift letting us glimpse the chaos inside her head (“Anti-Hero,” wall-to-wall zingers) and the stillness of her relationship (“Sweet Nothing,” co-written by Alwyn under his William Bowery pseudonym). For “Snow on the Beach,” she teams up with Lana Del Rey—an artist whose instinct for mood and theatrical framing seems to have influenced Swift’s recent catalog—recalling the magic of an impossible night over a backdrop of pizzicato violin, sleigh bells, and dreamy Mellotron, like the earliest hours of Christmas morning. “I’ve never seen someone lit from within,” Swift sings. “Blurring out my periphery.” But then there’s “Bejeweled,” a late, *1989*-like highlight on which she announces to an unappreciative partner, a few seconds in: “And by the way, I’m going out tonight.” And then out Swift goes, striding through the center of the song like she would the room: “I can still make the whole place shimmer,” she sings, relishing that last word. “And when I meet the band, they ask, ‘Do you have a man?’/I could still say, ‘I don’t remember.’” There are traces of melancholy layered in (see: “sapphire tears on my face”), but the song feels like a triumph, the sort of unabashed, extroverted fun that would have probably seemed out of place in the lockdown indie of 2020’s *folklore* and *evermore*. But here, side by side with songs and scenes of such writerly indulgence, it’s right at home—more proof that the terms “singer-songwriter” and “universal pop star” aren’t mutually exclusive ideas. “What’s a girl gonna do?” Swift asks at its climax. “A diamond’s gotta shine.”

Midnights is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 21, 2022, via Republic Records. Announced at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, the album marks Swift's first body of new work since her 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore.

17.
by 
Album • Feb 04 / 2022
Synthpop Art Pop New Wave
Popular Highly Rated

Mitski wasn’t sure she’d ever make it to her sixth album. After the release of 2018’s standout and star-making record *Be the Cowboy*, she simply had nothing left to give. “I think I was just tired, and I felt like I needed a break and I couldn\'t do it anymore,” she tells Apple Music. “I just told everyone on my team that I just needed to stop it for a while. I think everyone could tell I was already at max capacity.” And so, in 2019, she withdrew. But if creating became painful, not doing it at all—eventually—felt even worse. “I was feeling a deep surge of regret because I was like, ‘Oh my god, what did I do?’” she says. “I let go of this career that I had worked so hard to get and I finally got, and I just left it all behind. I might have made the greatest mistake of my life.” Released two years after that self-imposed hiatus, *Laurel Hell* may mark Mitski’s official return, but she isn’t exactly all in. Darkness descends as she moves back into her own musical world (“Let’s step carefully into the dark/Once we’re in I’ll remember my way around” are this album’s first words), and it feels like she almost always has one eye on her escape route. Such melancholic tendencies shouldn’t come as a surprise: Mitski Miyawaki is an artist who has always delved deep into her experiences as she attempts to understand them—and help us understand our own. More unexpected, though, is the glittering, ’80s-inspired synth-pop she often embraces, from “The Only Heartbreaker”—whose opening drums throw back to a-ha’s “Take On Me,” and against which Mitski explores being the “bad guy” in a relationship—to the bouncy, cinematic “Should’ve Been Me” and the intense “Love Me More,” on which she cries out for affection, from a lover and from her audience, against racing synths. “I think at first, the songs were more straightforwardly rock or just more straightforwardly sad,” she recalls. “But as the pandemic progressed, \[frequent collaborator\] Patrick \[Hyland\] and I just stopped being able to stay in that sort of sad feeling. We really needed something that would make us dance, that would make us feel hopeful. We just couldn’t stand the idea of making another sad, dreary album.” This being a Mitski record, there are of course still moments of insular intensity, from “Everyone” to “Heat Lightning,” a brooding meditation on insomnia. And underneath all that protective pop, this is an album about darkness and endings—of relationships, possibly of her career. And by its finish, Mitski still isn’t promising to stick around. “I guess this is the end, I’ll have to learn to be somebody else,” she says on “I Guess,” before simply fading away on final track “That’s Our Lamp.”

We don’t typically look to pop albums to answer our cultural moment, let alone to meet the soul hunger left in the wake of global catastrophe. But occasionally, an artist proves the form more malleable and capacious than we knew. With Laurel Hell, Mitski cements her reputation as an artist in possession of such power - capable of using her talent to perform the alchemy that turns our most savage and alienated experiences into the very elixir that cures them. Her critically beloved last album, Be the Cowboy, built on the breakout acclaim of 2016’s Puberty 2 and launched her from cult favorite to indie star. She ascended amid a fever of national division, and the grind of touring and pitfalls of increased visibility influenced her music as much as her spirit. Like the mountain laurels for this new album is named, public perception, like the intoxicating prism of the internet, can offer an alluring façade that obscures a deadly trap—one that tightens the more you struggle. Exhausted by this warped mirror, and our addiction to false binaries, she began writing songs that stripped away the masks and revealed the complex and often contradictory realities behind them. She wrote many of these songs during or before 2018, while the album finished mixing in May 2021. It is the longest span of time Mitski has ever spent on a record, and a process that concluded amid a radically changed world. She recorded Laurel Hell with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland throughout the isolation of a global pandemic, during which some of the songs “slowly took on new forms and meanings, like seed to flower.” Sometimes it’s hard to see the change when you’re the agent of it, but for the lucky rest of us, Mitski has written a soundtrack for transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgment, and ultimately, love.

18.
Album • May 06 / 2022
Progressive Rock Alternative Rock
Noteable Highly Rated
19.
by 
Album • Jul 22 / 2022
Folk Rock Singer-Songwriter
Popular

“When I work on music, I always feel like I’m trying to do something new,” Jack White tells Apple Music. “But I know quite often I’m taking things that worked in the past that I think are less well-known, or they’re interesting or idiosyncratic or whatever it is, and juxtaposing it with something I’ve never done before.” In the case of *Entering Heaven Alive*—his second album of 2022, after *Fear of the Dawn*—that might mean gothic folk with a reggae coda (“All Along the Way”) or a mellow, Neil Young-style jam overlaid with nursery-rhyme rapping (“A Madman From Manhattan”). But where *Fear of the Dawn* felt almost confrontationally eccentric, *Heaven* is rustic and restrained: the marital oath of “Help Me Along,” the Celtic waltz of “Please God, Don’t Tell Anyone.” Then there’s something like “A Tree on Fire From Within,” whose lyrics are as obscure and enigmatic as its music is robust—a mix that not only characterizes White’s best songs, but the early blues he often calls back to. But this is the dynamic with White, who, like Paul McCartney, is as equally capable of writing “Honey Pie” as he is “Let It Be,” and whose most interesting stuff tends to fall somewhere in between. He isn’t breaking tradition, nor is he perpetuating it—he’s building on it. Or, as he puts it, “jump\[ing\] in the river that’s already moving.”

Entering Heaven Alive is the fifth studio album from Jack White, founding member of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather. True to his DIY roots, this record was recorded at White's Third Man Studio throughout 2021, mastered by Third Man Mastering, and released by Third Man Records. Coming summer 2022.

20.
Album • Mar 25 / 2022
Conscious Hip Hop Southern Hip Hop
Popular Highly Rated

From his formative days associating with Raider Klan through his revealing solo projects *TA13OO* and *ZUU*, Denzel Curry has never been shy about speaking his mind. For *Melt My Eyez See Your Future*, the Florida native tackles some of the toughest topics of his MC career, sharing his existential notes on being Black and male in these volatile times. The album opens on a bold note with “Melt Session #1,” a vulnerable and emotional cut given further weight by jazz giant Robert Glasper’s plaintive piano. That hefty tone leads into a series of deeply personal and mindfully radical songs that explore modern crises and mental health with both thematic gravity and lyrical dexterity, including “Worst Comes to Worst” and the trap subversion “X-Wing.” Systemic violence leaves him reeling and righteous on “John Wayne,” while “The Smell of Death” skillfully mixes metaphors over a phenomenally fat funk groove. He draws overt and subtle parallels to jazz’s sociopolitical history, imagining himself in Freddie Hubbard’s hard-bop era on “Mental” and tapping into boom bap’s affinity for the genre on “The Ills.” Guests like T-Pain, Rico Nasty, and 6LACK help to fill out his vision, yielding some of the album’s highest highs.

Melt My Eyez See Your Future arrives as Denzel Curry’s most mature and ambitious album to date. Recorded over the course of the pandemic, Denzel shows his growth as both an artist and person. Born from a wealth of influences, the tracks highlight his versatility and broad tastes, taking in everything from drum’n’bass to trap. To support this vision and show the breadth of his artistry, Denzel has enlisted a wide range of collaborators and firmly plants his flag in the ground as one of the most groundbreaking rappers in the game.

21.
Album • Oct 21 / 2022
UK Hip Hop Conscious Hip Hop
Popular Highly Rated

Loyle Carner has always made music out of the things he’s been through in life. Sometimes, the South London rapper and songwriter wishes he could weave some fictional tales so he could save something for himself, but that’s not how it works for him. “It’s the only thing that inspires me to write,” he tells Apple Music. He was feeling uninspired after the release of his second album, *Not Waving, But Drowning*, in 2019, but the news that his girlfriend was pregnant opened the creative floodgates. What has emerged is *hugo*, a remarkable record that not only sees Carner reflect on life as a new father but also prompted him to iron out the troubled relationship he has with his own dad. “It was really useful to have the space to be able to write about it and reflect on it in real time to help me make sense of my thoughts,” he says. “But other times it was quite exhausting. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was tough.” It makes for a cathartic listen. Let him guide you through it, track by track. **“Hate”** “We made it really quickly, a stream of consciousness. It’s not a big, smash-hit single, but it was the one that summed up where I was at the beginning of the process and it couldn’t go anywhere else. It had to be the first thing that people heard from the album. When you pick up the album, I want you to come on a journey with me, because I started in a bad place and I ended in a good place. I want people to go on that with me.” **“Nobody Knows (Ladas Road)”** “This was probably the first song I wrote for the album. It was before lockdown, even before I found out my girlfriend was pregnant. I had already been thinking about a lot of the subjects on the album, and this was one of the first times where I tapped into something and was like, ‘OK, this is the start of a new project. I can see that I have an idea here.’ I tried to put the songs that I made at the beginning of the process at the beginning of the album. It’s quite autobiographical and you need it to run in a linear fashion, it needs to be chapters of a story.” **“Georgetown” (feat. John Agard)** “This was produced by Madlib. I was saving it for a project with him. I’ve got loads of music that we’ve made together, and we wanted to do a MadLoyle tape, which is a dream come true for me. But I played this to my friend Mike, who was working as an A&R and a collaborator on this project, and he was like, ‘You have to put this on the album. It’s too good to be held back just in case you drop it later.’ I think it really tapped into the same story as the rest of the album. It was really close to ‘Nobody Knows’ but one of them is self-depreciative and the other one is self-fulfilling, really lifted and full of self-belief. They work nicely together.” **“Speed of Plight”** “I was in the studio with Rebel Kleff, who’s a longtime collaborator of mine, and Jordan Rakei and Nick Mills, who’s my engineer and good friend. It came together quite quickly, as did a lot of the stuff for this album. It was such a relief to be really letting fly, not being afraid to be a bit more aggressive, a bit more frustrated, to have a place to vent. That’s what this song really was.” **“Homerton”** “Homerton \[in East London\] was where my son was born. All these songs are little pieces of a journey between me and my father and where I was at. I used to see my father as flawed, and in the first few tracks on the album, he’s very flawed to me. ‘Homerton’ is really that middle point where I start to look at my son and then I’m able to finally, as a father, see myself as flawed as well. Then I’m able to begin the journey of understanding where my father was at and how difficult it is to be a parent and how nobody is a bad person. People make bad decisions and some people have no tools to deal with some of the things that get thrown at them.” **“Blood on My Nikes”** “After ‘Homerton,’ my mind then went to, ‘OK, but what happens when my son grows up in the area that we live in?’ A young boy’s life was taken over a pair of shoes near where my girlfriend teaches around the time that I was writing this song, and I was so moved by it. I was really quite surprised at how numb I had become to hearing these stories and seeing this loss in the communities that I had grown up in. It was important to reflect on this story that’s told by many artists, but through my lens and through my words. I enlisted \[activist and writer\] Athian Akec to help me be able to speak to a younger generation with his voice, to reflect on what it is to see how many young people’s lives we’re losing and how the music is not the problem.” **“Plastic”** “At the end of ‘Blood on My Nikes,’ Athian is eloquently disrespecting the government and saying that where we’re at politically, socially is not good enough, that we’re putting emphasis on the wrong things. ‘Plastic’ is my version of his speech where I also attack these big companies that are making mistakes and hold them accountable, but also hold society accountable, hold myself accountable for putting emphasis on the wrong thing, wanting nice flashy trainers and a new iPhone instead of other bits. But I love my iPhone, so I can’t say anything about it. It’s just trying to find the balance between soul and commerce. Yes, everyone has to make money and live, but we also need to just take a step back, walk into nature and relax, and not put so much pressure on material things.” **“A Lasting Place”** “I was reading a book by Philippa Perry recently called *The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (And Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did)*. There’s a large part about rupture and repair and this idea that you’re having a bad day and you shout at your kid. That’s going to happen, because people get angry. But the repair is the important part, going to your son or daughter and being, ‘Hey, Dad’s having a rubbish day and I took it out on you and that’s not right. It must have made you feel like X, Y, and Z, and I apologize.’ That’s what this song is about, making mistakes and being like, ‘It’s OK.’” **“Polyfilla”** “Towards the end of ‘A Lasting Place,’ it starts to feel like, ‘OK, I’ve got it made, I’m a dad, I’m brilliant, I’m repairing my ruptures. Yeah, I’ve got this in the bag.’ And I think ‘Polyfilla’ is that crashing back down to earth with another mistake or losing my temper or getting frustrated or being late to pick up my son or whatever it is. Battling with that thing of, ‘Man, maybe I’m not cut out for this.’ That worry of impostor syndrome: ‘Maybe I’m not a good parent. Maybe I’m not a good person.’” **“HGU”** “This is about forgiving my dad, and forgiveness in general. It’s not even forgiving for him, it’s about forgiveness for myself: ‘If I hold on to this, carry around this albatross my whole life, it’s weighing me down.’ I’ve taken so much from hip-hop and I wanted to give something back. Within rap, everyone else is like, ‘If your dad left and he’s rubbish, you don’t need to forgive him, just let that anger be your motivation.’ I think that’s cool to an extent, but it can cripple you if you let it go further than an initial youthful rebellion. It’s a nice little reveal at the end that we’re in the car. The album is called *hugo* because my dad’s car was called Hugo and he taught me to drive over lockdown. It’s a small story, but with some big topics.”

22.
by 
Album • Jul 15 / 2022
Avant-Prog Brutal Prog
Popular Highly Rated

The most jarring part about listening to the London band black midi isn’t how much musical ground they cover—post-punk, progressive rock, breakneck jazz, cabaret—but the fact that they cover it all at once. A quasi-concept album that seems to have something to do with war (“Welcome to Hell,” “27 Questions”), or at least the violence men do more generally (“Sugar/Tzu,” “Dangerous Liaisons”), *Hellfire* isn’t an easy listen. But it’s funny (main character: Tristan Bongo), beautiful, at least in a garish, misanthropic way (the Neil Diamond bombast of “The Defence”), and so obviously playful in its intelligence that you just want to let it run over you. The first listen feels like being yelled at in a language you don’t understand. By the third, you’ll be yelling with them.

black midi’s new album Hellfire will be released on 15th July. Hellfire builds on the melodic and harmonic elements of Cavalcade, while expanding the brutality and intensity of their debut, Schlagenheim. It is their most thematically cohesive and intentional album yet.

23.
by 
Album • Sep 16 / 2022
Black Metal
Popular Highly Rated

Behemoth leader Adam “Nergal” Darski borrowed a fitting term from Carl Jung for the title of his extreme-metal band’s 12th album. “Jung had his own agenda attached to it, but for me, it’s a work of art against the nature of things, the order of things,” the Polish guitarist and vocalist tells Apple Music. “It defines my approach to music.” As a vehemently anti-Christian artist who’s been repeatedly hauled into court on charges of blasphemy and “offending religious feelings” in his institutionally pious homeland, Nergal is especially attuned to censorship in all its forms. “There’s a set of standards that’s being imposed upon people, and especially artists, where you cannot talk freely,” he says. “To me, art has no limits. As we speak, I have three lawsuits happening simultaneously, for blasphemy and mocking this or that. There are people who watch my shows or read my lyrics and think, ‘This guy is a villain. We should put him behind bars.’ *Opvs Contra Natvram* is yet another middle finger I’m throwing against those cunts’ faces.” Below, he comments on each song. **“Post-God Nirvana”** “It’s an intro that’s also a song. There are just two proper verses, so it makes it a very weird, different song. Some of what I write is wishful thinking, like I’m projecting some kind of dystopian or post-apocalyptic or whatever future where things are going to be my way, or they’re not going to be my way. In this case, I imagine a world, let’s say 50 years down the road, where the world is free of God, free of religion. There’s no abortion laws. There are no chains anymore. People are basically free.” **“Malaria Vvlgata”** “After ‘Post-God Nirvana,’ I wanted to come out with something absolutely blistering, something polarizing. ‘Malaria Vvlgata’ was deliberately done as a hit between the eyes with an iron first. It’s almost punky—a burst of anti-Christian, anti-religious feeling. There’s no nuances. It’s a hate anthem, just completely uncompromising. It’s one of the most brutal songs I’ve ever written and definitely the shortest one I’ve ever written.” **“The Deathless Sun”** “This song reminds me of how I felt about ‘Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer’ when we did *The Satanist*. When we wrote that song, I thought, ‘OK, it’s strong, it’s a banger, but it’s probably not the strongest song on the record.’ But then, holy shit—it really took crowds by storm. People went totally nuts when we played it live. When we started playing this album for people, a lot of them were saying ‘The Deathless Sun’ is the strongest on the record. It took me a while to realize that, but now I’m thinking it’s one of my absolute favorites.” **“Ov My Herculean Exile”** “It’s probably the most mellow track on the record, and it was also the first one we made a video for. Every other band, when they release their first single, it’s always a banger. They’re just fucking flexing the muscles, like, ‘We are the heaviest, we are the fastest.’ But I wanted to do it the other way around. I wanted to serve an aperitif first, rather than the main course. I’d say this is our storytelling song. It’s rather epic and midtempo. A lot of people were complaining, ‘Where’s the speed?’ But I’m dying to read the comments when they hear how fucking intense the full record is.” **“Neo-Spartacvs”** “I love this one. It’s very catchy and brutal. The message behind the song is quite crucial because everyone knows who Spartacus is; he’s probably the most-known rebel in history. I’m telling people there are many things that you can rebel against that are objectively wrong. I think the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is wrong, and I don’t give a fuck if you agree with me or not. I think the righteous thing is to be a Spartacus about that. Please support Ukraine. Make people aware of what is happening. There is an obvious invader and an obvious victim. There is no gray spot.” **“Disinheritance”** “Again, this is one of the most brutal songs I’ve ever written. I really hope that people will find it as the hidden treasure of the record. It’s a really strong, powerful song that this record needed. I’m particularly proud of the midsection—it’s one of the craziest parts I’ve ever come up with. It’s like a complete fucking tornado, almost going out of tune. It gets to the point where it sounds cacophonic. It’s the sickest, most bizarre part I’ve ever written for this band.” **“Off To War!”** “It\'s a banger of a song with punky vibes. I started exploring those vibes on the previous record, and I think I kind of perfected it on this album. When Ihsahn from Emperor heard this, he said it has that ’90s black-metal feel to it. Maybe it does—I don’t know, but I really like the song. It’s super powerful to play live. The lyrics are very existential. There’s a lot of questions I’m throwing into the ether, but I’m not answering them. There’s no fun in giving answers. I’m not clever enough to answer those questions.” **“Once Upon A Pale Horse”** “I’ve never done anything similar to this before. It has a groove that I believe can really do a lot of damage live. It sounds almost rock-ish, but we turn it into our black metal, and it’s fucking sharp and dangerous. There’s a conquering riff with almost a power-metal vibe. I’m not afraid to say that I was a big fan of Manowar, and if there is a power-metal moment on this record, it’s in the chorus of this song, which is some of my words mixed with Aleister Crowley’s most famous quote ‘do what thou wilt,’ which I’ve had tattooed on me for 20 years.” **“Thy Becoming Eternal”** “When it comes to fast songs, this is my favorite. The first section is fucking relentless. It never stops. I did the choirs, and my friend Zofia from the Polish band Obscure Sphinx added those really weird-sounding female vocals on top of it. \[Bassist\] Orion also backed me up with the vocals. It doesn’t leave any room for breath, and then it just opens up. When you watch the video that accompanies the song, it’s the moment where the world opens up and they’re ready to receive the knowledge from the fire seeker. He’s carrying the Torch of Heraclitus, and he’s just giving it to the world.” **“Versvs Christvs”** “I wanted this to be a stand-alone monument, something that does everything—like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is everything. Of course, I’m not competing with fucking timeless Led Zeppelin classics, but some bands release songs that are just fucking bigger than everything, you know? Like \[Iron Maiden’s\] ‘Powerslave’ or \[Slayer’s\] ‘Seasons in the Abyss’ or \[Metallica’s\] ‘Master of Puppets.’ I wanted to make something so bombastic, you couldn’t label it. It’s a song that takes different curves. It’s anthemic. It has choirs. It’s goth. I’m singing over a piano, and then it speeds up with a punky vibe, and then it goes into a blasting riff. It’s very adventurous and all over the place. Again, I’m not comparing this to classics. What I’m saying is that I’m aspiring.”

24.
Album • Jul 08 / 2022
Noise Rock Jazz-Rock Art Punk
Noteable

Party Dozen are a duo from Sydney made up of Kirsty Tickle (saxophone) and Jonathan Boulet (percussion and sampler). Since forming in 2017, they have become renowned in Australia for their incendiary live shows, touring and playing with acts such as LIARS, Tropical Fuck Storm and Viagra Boys. Exactly what Party Dozen are is completely up to the listener. Doom. Jazz. Hardcore. Psychedelic. No-wave. Industrial. Although largely instrumental, their sets are punctuated by Kirsty’s unique “singing” style, screaming into the bell of her saxophone which itself goes through a bevy of effects pedals. Intensely independent in everything they do, the duo write, perform and record everything themselves. 2022 will see the return of Party Dozen, first in April with the 7” release, Fat Hans Gone Mad, for the Sub Pop Singles Club, and then in July with their third album, The Real Work, with a new label partner in New York’s Temporary Residence Ltd. The Real Work succeeds in exploring new directions but also features some familiar Party Dozen touches. Perhaps most notable is the first-ever appearance of a guest other than Kirsty or Jonathan on a Party Dozen track, with Nick Cave ad-libbing a very memorable contribution to the album’s second track, “Macca The Mutt.”

25.
EP • Sep 16 / 2022
Art Pop Folktronica
Noteable

Daniela Lalita‘s debut EP Trececerotres, due out September 16th on Young. A direct reference to the apartment - 1303 - in Peru where Lalita grew up with her mother and grandmother, Trececerotres is rooted in magic, ritual, healing and the matrilineal relationship. Every song on Trececerotres feels like a different mode of ancestral channeling. The Peruvian creative - whose practice spans music, costume design, film, performance and fine art - stretches her voice into raw guttural depths, reaching brutally emotional heights throughout the record to startling effect. A testament to a childhood talent of learning to do different voices for TV commercials as her first job, Lalita’s vocal distortions mesh together with drums, gnashing electronica and esoteric glossolalia to craft a sound both modern and mystical. Working with the buchla synth Lalita found a world without limitations of traditional scales, the instrument provided boundless experimentation for the artist whose practice of recording and layering vocals were implemented in the production of Trececerotres to craft a multiplicity of sonic worlds.

26.
Album • May 20 / 2022
Pop Rock
Popular Highly Rated

Harry Styles’ third solo album, *Harry’s House*, is the product of a chain reaction. Had the pandemic not thrown his world into a tailspin in early 2020, he would’ve continued to tour behind *Fine Line*, his critically adored sophomore album, and played its songs hundreds of times for sold-out crowds around the world. A return to the studio was planned, of course, but when COVID-19 canceled those plans too, Styles faced an empty calendar for the first time in a decade. The singer opted to use this free time carefully, taking a solo road trip through Italy and visiting with family and friends for rare long, drawn-out stretches. It was an important moment of reevaluation. “You miss so many birthdays,” he told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And eventually it\'s just assumed you\'re unable to be at stuff. Finally I was like, ‘I want to balance my life out a bit. Working isn’t who I am, it\'s something I do. I want to be able to put that down.’” His upbeat, lightly electronic third LP riffs on the concept of home, viewing it less as a geographical location and more as a state of mind—his mind. “Imagine it’s a day in my house, a day in my mind,” he said. “What do I go through? I’m playing fun music. I’m playing sad music. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff.” Because of the pandemic, Styles recorded the songs with a small handful of longtime friends and close collaborators who gathered in a single room to drink wine, write, and play. That intimacy is reflected in the songs, which are conversational and casually confessional, as if he’s thinking out loud. Blending vintage folk rock with flickers of disco and a generally more relaxed sensibility, they illustrate a turning point in Styles’ career as he transitions even further towards career singer-songwriter. “For a while it was, how do I play that game of remaining exciting?” he says. “But I finally had a moment where I felt like, ‘Okay, I’m not the young thing, so I would like to really think about who I want to be as a musician.’” Read on for the inside story behind a handful of standout selections from *Harry’s House*. **“Music for a Sushi Restaurant”** “After *Fine Line*, I had an idea of how I thought the next album would open. But there\'s something about ‘Sushi’ that felt like, ‘Nah, *that\'s* how I want to start.’ It becomes really obvious what the first song should be based on what you play for people when they’re like, ‘Oh, can I hear a bit of the music?’ It\'s like, how do you want to set the tone?” **“Daylight”** “We were like, ‘We have to find a way to stay awake and finish this, because if we all go to bed, then this won’t turn out the way it would if we finished tonight.’ So we powered through, finished it, and went down to the beach as the sun was coming up and it was like, ‘Okay. Yeah.’ It felt correct that we\'d finished it in that place. Life, and songs in particular, are so much about moments. In surfing, for example, sometimes you don\'t get the wave and sometimes the wave comes and you haven\'t practiced. But every now and again, the wave comes and you’re ready, you\'ve practiced enough that you can ride it. Sometimes when the songs write themselves like that, it feels like, ‘Okay, there\'s a reason why sometimes I sit out there, falling off the board a bunch. It\'s for this moment.” **“As It Was”** “‘As It Was,’ to me, is bittersweet. It’s devastating. It\'s a death march. It’s about metamorphosis and a perspective change, which are not necessarily things you have time with. People aren’t like, ‘Oh, we\'ll give you a couple more days with this moment and let you say goodbye to your former self,’ or whatever. No. Everyone is changing, and by the time you realize what’s happened, \[the moment\] is already gone. During the pandemic, I think we all at some point realized that it would never be the same as it was before. It was so obvious that it wouldn’t. You can\'t go backwards—we can’t as a society and I can’t in my personal life. But you learn so much in those moments because you’re forced to face things head-on, whether they’re your least favorite things about the world or your least favorite things about yourself, or all of it.” **“Matilda”** “I had an experience with someone where, in getting to know them better, they revealed some stuff to me that was very much like, ‘Oh, that\'s not normal, like I think you should maybe get some help or something.’ This song was inspired by that experience and person, who I kind of disguised as Matilda from the Roald Dahl book. I played it to a couple of friends and all of them cried. So I was like, ‘Okay, I think this is something to pay attention to.’ It\'s a weird one, because with something like this, it\'s like, ‘I want to give you something, I want to support you in some way, but it\'s not necessarily my place to make it about me because it\'s not my experience.’ Sometimes it\'s just about listening. I hope that\'s what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, ‘I was listening to you.’” **“Boyfriends”** “‘Boyfriends’ was written right at the end of *Fine Line*. I\'d finished the album and there was an extra week where I wrote ‘Adore You,’ ‘Lights Up,’ and ‘Treat People With Kindness.’ At the end of the session for ‘Lights Up,’ we started writing ‘Boyfriends,’ and it felt like, ‘Okay, there\'s a version of this story where we get this song ready for this album.’ But something about it just felt like, no, it’ll have its time, let\'s not rush it. We did so many versions of it. Vocal. Acoustic. Electric guitar. Harmonies on everything, and then we took them out for chunks and put them back in for chunks. You try not to get ahead of yourself when you write a song, but there was something about this one where I felt like, ‘Okay, when I\'m 50, if I\'m playing a show, maybe there\'s someone who heard me for the first time when they were 15 and this is probably the song they came to see.’ Because I\'m learning so much by singing it. It’s my way of saying, ‘I’m hearing you.’ It’s both acknowledging my own behavior and looking at behavior I\'ve witnessed. I grew up with a sister, so I watched her date people, and I watched friends date people, and people don\'t treat each other very nicely sometimes.” **“Cinema”** “I think I just wanted to make something that felt really fun, honestly. I was on a treadmill going, ‘Do-do-do-do-do-do.’ I tend to do so much writing in the studio, but with this one, I did a little bit here and then I went home and added a little bit there, and then kind of left it, and then went into the studio to put it all together. That was a theme across the whole album, actually: We used to book a studio and be like, ‘Okay, we\'ve got it for two months, grind it out.’ But some days you just don\'t want to be there, and eventually you\'ve been in the studio so long, the only thing you can write about is nothing because you haven\'t done anything. So with this album, we’d work for a couple of weeks and then everyone would go off and live their lives.” **“Love of My Life”** “‘Love of My Life’ was the most terrifying song because it\'s so bare. It\'s so sparse. It’s also very much in the spirit of what *Harry\'s House* is about: I wanted to make an acoustic EP, all in my house, and make it really intimate. It’s named after \[the Japanese pop pioneer Haruomi\] Hosono, who had an album in the \'70s called *Hosono House*. I immediately started thinking about what *Harry’s House* might look like. It took time for me to realize that the house wasn\'t a geographical location, it was an internal thing. When I applied that concept to the songs we were making here, everything took on new meaning. Imagine it\'s a day in my house or a day in my mind. What do I go through? I\'m playing fun music. I\'m playing sad music. I\'m playing this, I\'m playing that. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff. And it’s all mine. This is my favorite album at the moment. I love it so much. And because of the circumstances, it was made very intimately; everything was played by a small number of people and made in a room. To me, it\'s everything. It\'s everything I\'ve wanted to make.”

27.
by 
Album • Sep 09 / 2022
Melodic Hardcore
28.
by 
Album • Apr 22 / 2022
Gangsta Rap Southern Hip Hop
Popular Highly Rated

“You can’t come get this work until it’s dry. I made this album while the streets were closed during the pandemic. Made entirely with the greatest producers of all time—Pharrell and Ye. ONLY I can get the best out of these guys. ENJOY!!” —Pusha T, in an exclusive message provided to Apple Music

29.
Album • Feb 04 / 2022
Melodic Death Metal Deathcore
Popular Highly Rated
30.
Album • Apr 08 / 2022
Contemporary Country
Popular Highly Rated

After releasing his 2019 Sub Pop debut, *Pony*, the mysterious masked troubadour Orville Peck made the unprecedented leap from DIY-country darling to Sony-supported Shania Twain duet partner in just over a year. But even as his star was on a seemingly unstoppable ascent—in the midst of a pandemic, no less—Peck admits that his signature fringed veil was often concealing sunken eyes and a frown. “When COVID happened, it made me look at my life for the first time and realize that my personal life was kind of a mess,” Peck tells Apple Music. “I had been escaping all my personal problems by just relying on the fact that I had this insanely busy schedule. I fell into a period for about three months where I was deeply, deeply depressed. It was actually the most unhappy I’ve ever been in my life. I kind of considered not ever making any more music.” But in his darkest hour, Peck found the will to write and sing his way through the pain—and, before long, the songs started pouring out like a ruptured water main. The result is *Bronco*, a grandiose, 15-song tour de force recorded with Peck’s *Pony*-era touring band but given a big-screen production boost by Nashville studio ace Jay Joyce and an added ’60s-pop shimmer courtesy of former indie phenom-turned-Adele song doctor Tobias Jesso Jr., who co-wrote a couple of tracks. Yet for all its added glitz, *Bronco* does nothing to obscure Peck’s signature qualities: his commanding matinee-idol croon; his uncanny balance of heartache, humor, and homoeroticism; and his innate gift for twangy, tear-in-yer-beer serenades. Here, Peck gives us the stories behind some of the album’s instant country classics. **“Daytona Sand”** “This is about a cowboy I know who was born in Mississippi and grew up in Daytona, so I wanted to write this kind ode to Florida. And I was listening to a lot of Beach Boys, so I wanted to do my version of a country-surf song. But I wanted people to feel smacked in the face by the lyrics and the newfound confidence in the way that I present them. A lot of the songs on this album are upbeat and playful, but there’s sardonic humor in there because I’m talking about really dark and vulnerable stuff, and I wanted to show the different ways in which I could share that.” **“The Curse of the Blackened Eye”** “This is about that idea where, no matter what’s going on in your life, how much success you’re having, and how many people are around you at a party saying they love you, there’s always something in the corner kind of watching you or following you around that’s weighing on your mind—whether that’s depression or addiction or abuse. But I wanted to present that in a tongue-in-cheek way. I have a line in there about ‘wishing so many times that I would die,’ but I do it to a soundtrack of tiki-exotica country because I’ve been listening to a lot of ’60s exotica music.” **“C’mon Baby, Cry”** “Tobias and I wanted this to sound like glossy casino music meets a Bob Fosse musical, wrapped up in country. This song is me giving advice that I received at some point, because I used to find it hard to cry. And now I can’t stop, so I have to make other people join me.” **“Kalahari Down”** “Everyone thinks I’m Canadian because I lived in Canada for a long time, but I’m not. I was born in South Africa—I grew up in Johannesburg until I was 15. I never talked about where I was from only because I wanted to wait—obviously, I’m a man of mystery and I like to not give everyone everything all at once. I had actually written ‘Kalahari Down’ for *Pony*, and I decided to hold off on it because it wasn’t sounding the way I wanted it to—I envisioned it really grand, with strings. But I’m finally really excited to share a song about missing my home. There’s a sense of guilt and regret in the song about leaving somewhere that you don’t really want to leave because you have to go make your way in the world. I’m so proud to be South African. I go back there all the time.” **“Bronco”** “Obviously, I keep within the equestrian species for my album titles, and I only name them after the album is done. So, after I’d finished the first one, I decided to call it *Pony* because that album was about loneliness and I felt nervous putting myself out there, tentatively. That, to me, felt like a pony—kind of scared and shaking in the corner. And then the EP after that was *Show Pony* because I finally had this budget and this confidence, but I still felt scared. I was still the same pony, but I had ribbons in my hair, and I was on display. And then, with this album, I felt like I was able to be my true self, just untamed and unbothered, and so *Bronco* was a natural title. I already had this song written, but it wasn’t called ‘Bronco’ and the hook wasn’t there yet. So, after I decided on the album title, I pivoted this song to make it the title track.” **“Blush”** “This is about my time living in London. It’s my little homage to London as one of my many homes. There’s a little bit of that Beatles country era in there—like a *Help!*/‘I’ve Just Seen a Face’ vibe. I wanted to make my homage to that style—like, what would be England’s version of country music.” **“Let Me Drown”** “Each of these songs feels like getting something off my chest in a way, and I knew I had a song in me that would be about that big culmination of my depression during the pandemic and where I was at in my personal life. This might sound really dramatic and almost ridiculous, but I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t sleep, and I had this melody in my head. And I was so frightened that I was going to forget it by morning that I walked into my studio and turned on my computer and just sang the melody in the microphone, and then went back to bed. And that’s what eventually became ‘Let Me Drown.’ It’s funny: I’m a trained singer, I’ve been singing my whole life, and I’ve sometimes held back on that because I’ve been worried about how it would come off, and felt insecure about it. But with this song, I just didn’t care anymore. I wanted to sing *big*.” **“Any Turn”** “I wanted to bring back the tradition of the patter song, like \[Johnny Cash’s\] ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’ or \[R.E.M.’s\] ‘It’s the End of the World As We Know It’ or \[Billy Joel’s\] ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ or \[Bob Dylan’s\] ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues.’ I love wordplay and witty lyrics, and there hasn’t been a patter song like those for a long time. So, I was like, ‘What could be the subject matter that’s frantic and manic and chaotic?’ And tour life was the obvious one. Every single word that I say in this song is a reference to an inside joke or a story or a crazy mishap that’s happened to us on tour.” **“All I Can Say”** “There’s definitely some Mazzy Star vibes on this one. I really wanted to get \[bandmate\] Bria \[Salmena\] on an official duet because we sing so much together in the live show. She’s such an incredible singer, and she’s got so much depth as a songwriter. So, I approached her and \[guitarist\] Duncan \[Hay Jennings\] about helping me write a duet. Bria and I were going through something similar in our personal lives, but separately. So, we decided on this concept of two people who are singing with each other about the same thing, but not *to* each other. It’s like we don’t even know that we’re singing with each other—that’s how we wrote it.”