KCRW's 22 Best Albums of 2022

A couple of years before she became known as one half of Wet Leg, Rhian Teasdale left her home on the Isle of Wight, where a long-term relationship had been faltering, to live with friends in London. Every Tuesday, their evening would be interrupted by the sound of people screaming in the property below. “We were so worried the first time we heard it,” Teasdale tells Apple Music. Eventually, their investigations revealed that scream therapy sessions were being held downstairs. “There’s this big scream in the song ‘Ur Mum,’” says Teasdale. “I thought it’d be funny to put this frustration and the failure of this relationship into my own personal scream therapy session.” That mix of humor and emotional candor is typical of *Wet Leg*. Crafting tightly sprung post-punk and melodic psych-pop and indie rock, Teasdale and bandmate Hester Chambers explore the existential anxieties thrown up by breakups, partying, dating apps, and doomscrolling—while also celebrating the fun to be had in supermarkets. “It’s my own experience as a twentysomething girl from the Isle of Wight moving to London,” says Teasdale. The strains of disenchantment and frustration are leavened by droll, acerbic wit (“You’re like a piece of shit, you either sink or float/So you take her for a ride on your daddy’s boat,” she chides an ex on “Piece of shit”), and humor has helped counter the dizzying speed of Wet Leg’s ascent. On the strength of debut single “Chaise Longue,” Teasdale and Chambers were instantly cast by many—including Elton John, Iggy Pop, and Florence Welch—as one of Britain’s most exciting new bands. But the pair have remained committed to why they formed Wet Leg in the first place. “It’s such a shame when you see bands but they’re habitually in their band—they’re not enjoying it,” says Teasdale. “I don’t want us to ever lose sight of having fun. Having silly songs obviously helps.” Here, she takes us through each of the songs—silly or otherwise—on *Wet Leg*. **“Being in Love”** “People always say, ‘Oh, romantic love is everything. It’s what every person should have in this life.’ But actually, it’s not really conducive to getting on with what you want to do in life. I read somewhere that the kind of chemical storm that is produced in your brain, if you look at a scan, it’s similar to someone with OCD. I just wanted to kind of make that comparison.” **“Chaise Longue”** “It came out of a silly impromptu late-night jam. I was staying over at Hester’s house when we wrote it, and when I stay over, she always makes up the chaise longue for me. It was a song that never really was supposed to see the light of day. So it’s really funny to me that so many people are into it and have connected with it. It’s cool. I was as an assistant stylist \[on Ed Sheeran’s ‘Bad Habits’ video\]. Online, a newspaper \[*The New York Times*\] was doing the top 10 videos out this week, and it was funny to see ‘Chaise Longue’ next to this video I’d been working on. Being on set, you have an idea of the budget that goes into getting all these people together to make this big pop-star video. And then you scroll down and it’s our little video that we spent about £50 on. Hester had a camera and she set up all the shots. Then I edited it using a free trial version of Final Cut.” **“Angelica”** “The song is set at a party that you no longer want to be at. Other people are feeling the same, but you are all just fervently, aggressively trying to force yourself to have a good time. And actually, it’s not always possible to have good times all the time. Angelica is the name of my oldest friend, so we’ve been to a lot of rubbish parties together. We’ve also been to a lot of good parties together, but I thought it would be fun to put her name in the song and have her running around as the main character.” **“I Don’t Wanna Go Out”** “It’s kind of similar to ‘Angelica’—it’s that disenchantment of getting fucked up at parties, and you’re gradually edging into your late twenties, early thirties, and you’re still working your shitty waitressing job. I was trying to convince myself that I was working these shitty jobs so that I could do music on the side. But actually, you’re kind of kidding yourself and you’re seeing all of your friends starting to get real jobs and they’re able to buy themselves nice shampoo. You’re trying to distract yourself from not achieving the things that you want to achieve in life by going to these parties. But you can’t keep kidding yourself, and I think it’s that realization that I’ve tried to inject into the lyrics of this song.” **“Wet Dream”** “The chorus is ‘Beam me up.’ There’s this Instagram account called beam\_me\_up\_softboi. It’s posts of screenshots of people’s texts and DMs and dating-app goings-on with this term ‘softboi,’ which to put it quite simply is someone in the dating scene who’s presenting themselves as super, super in touch with their feelings and really into art and culture. And they use that as currency to try and pick up girls. It’s not just men that are softbois; women can totally be softbois, too. The character in the song is that, basically. It’s got a little bit of my own personal breakup injected into it. This particular person would message me since we’d broken up being like, ‘Oh, I had a dream about you. I dreamt that we were married,’ even though it was definitely over. So I guess that’s why I decided to set it within a dream: It was kind of making fun of this particular message that would keep coming through to me.” **“Convincing”** “I was really pleased when we came to recording this one, because for the bulk of the album, it is mainly me taking lead vocals, which is fine, but Hester has just the most beautiful voice. I hope she won’t mind me saying, but she kind of struggles to see that herself. So it felt like a big win when she was like, ‘OK, I’m going to do it. I’m going to sing. I’m going to do this song.’ It’s such a cool song and she sounds so great on it.” **“Loving You”** “I met this guy when I was 20, so I was pretty young. We were together for six or seven years or something, and he was a bit older, and I just fell so hard. I fell so, so hard in love with him. And then it got pretty toxic towards the end, and I guess I was a bit angry at how things had gone. So it’s just a pretty angry song, without dobbing him in too much. I feel better now, though. Don’t worry. It’s all good.” **“Ur Mum”** “It’s about giving up on a relationship that isn’t serving you anymore, either of you, and being able to put that down and walk away from it. I was living with this guy on the Isle of Wight, living the small-town life. I was trying to move to London or Bristol or Brighton and then I’d move back to be with this person. Eventually, we managed to put the relationship down and I moved in with some friends in London. Every Tuesday, it’d get to 7 pm and you’d hear that massive group scream. We learned that downstairs was home to the Psychedelic Society and eventually realized that it was scream therapy. I thought it’d be funny to put this frustration and the failure of this relationship into my own personal scream therapy session.” **“Oh No”** “The amount of time and energy that I lose by doomscrolling is not OK. It’s not big and it’s not clever. This song is acknowledging that and also acknowledging this other world that you live in when you’re lost in your phone. When we first wrote this, it was just to fill enough time to play a festival that we’d been booked for when we didn’t have a full half-hour set. It used to be even more repetitive, and the lyrics used to be all the same the whole way through. When it came to recording it, we’re like, ‘We should probably write a few more lyrics,’ because when you’re playing stuff live, I think you can definitely get away with not having actual lyrics.” **“Piece of shit”** “When I’m writing the lyrics for all the songs with Wet Leg, I am quite careful to lean towards using quite straightforward, unfussy language and I avoid, at all costs, using similes. But this song is the one song on the album that uses simile—‘like a piece of shit.’ Pretty poetic. I think writing this song kind of helped me move on from that \[breakup\]. It sounds like I’m pretty wound up. But actually, it’s OK now, I feel a lot better.” **“Supermarket”** “It was written just as we were coming out of lockdown and there was that time where the highlight of your week would be going to the supermarket to do the weekly shop, because that was literally all you could do. I remember queuing for Aldi and feeling like I was queuing for a nightclub.” **“Too Late Now”** “It’s about arriving in adulthood and things maybe not being how you thought they would be. Getting to a certain age, when it’s time to get a real job, and you’re a bit lost, trying to navigate through this world of dating apps and social media. So much is out of our control in this life, and ‘Too late now, lost track somehow,’ it’s just being like, ‘Everything’s turned to shit right now, but that’s OK because it’s unavoidable.’ It sounds very depressing, but you know sometimes how you can just take comfort in the fact that no matter what you do, you’re going to die anyway, so don’t worry about it too much, because you can’t control everything? I guess there’s a little bit of that in ‘Too Late Now.’”

Before becoming a progenitor in the microgenre chillwave—defined by a 2000s indie rock culture obsessed with 1980s electro-synth sounds and nostalgic, dreamy bedroom pop—Toro y Moi (Chazwick Bradley “Chaz Bear” Bundick) was known for his experimental production, leading to a long run of widely lauded albums. *MAHAL* is his seventh, its title taken from the Tagalog word for “expensive.” It\'s also a good time in 13 songs, from the Parliament funk of “Postman” and the psychedelic percussion of “Clarity” to the garage-psych of “The Medium” featuring New Zealand band Unknown Mortal Orchestra and the smoky “Mississippi.” If chillwave was a flash-in-the-pan moment, Toro Y Moi has long since survived it.

The 13-track project marks the seventh studio album from Bear under the Toro y Moi moniker. To celebrate the announcement, Toro y Moi shares two singles from the forthcoming record "Postman" b/w "Magazine." Each of the new singles arrives with accompanying visuals. "Postman," directed by Kid. Studio, sees Toro and friends riding around the colorful San Francisco landscape in his Filipino jeepney, seen on the cover of MAHAL. "Magazine," directed by Arlington Lowell, sees Toro and Salami Rose Joe Louis, who supplies vocals on the track, dressed vibrantly in a photo studio spliced with various colorful graphics and playful edits. MAHAL's announcement and singles arrive on the heels of Toro's highly celebrated 2019 album Outer Peace, which Pitchfork described as "one of his best albums in years" along with his Grammy-nominated 2020 collaboration with Flume, "The Difference," which was also featured in a global campaign for Apple's Airpods. Today's releases mark the first from Toro y Moi since signing to Secretly Group label Dead Oceans. Dead Oceans is an independent record label established in 2007 featuring luminaries like Japanese Breakfast, Khruangbin, Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes, Mitski, Slowdive and more. Toro y Moi is the 12+ year project of South Carolina-reared, Bay Area-based Chaz Bear. In the wake 2008’s global economic collapse, Toro y Moi emerged as a figurehead of the beloved sub-genre widely known as chillwave, the sparkling fumes of which still heavily influence musicians all over today. Over the subsequent decade, his music and graphic design has far, far surpassed that particular designation. Across 9 albums (6 studio as Toro y Moi along with a live album, compilation and mixtape) with the great Carpark label, he has explored psych-rock, deep house, UK hip-hop; R&B and well-beyond without losing that rather iconic, bright and shimmering Toro y Moi fingerprint. As a graphic designer, Bear has collaborated with brands like Nike, Dublab and Van’s. And as a songwriter and producer, he’s collaborated with other artists like Tyler, The Creator, Flume, Travis Scott, HAIM, and Caroline Polachek.

It’s not easy to dance with one’s tongue buried deeply in cheek. But Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul effortlessly combine lean, punchy electro-pop with an unapologetically sarcastic sense of humor. On the Belgian duo’s debut album, *Topical Dancer*, the two musicians draw on their multicultural backgrounds to take sly potshots at racism, sexism, and self-doubt. On “Esperanto,” Adigéry riffs on microaggressions over plunging electric bass, and on “Blenda,” she marries a crisp, funky groove with a surprisingly vulnerable chorus: “Go back to your country where you belong/Siri, can you tell me where I belong?” Co-produced by their longtime collaborators Soulwax, the album slices neatly across the overlap between punky disco, indie dance, and underground house; ’80s avant-pop influences (Art of Noise, Talking Heads) brush up against the sing-speaking wit of contemporaries like Marie Davidson and Dry Cleaning. Some of the album’s most powerful moments transcend language entirely: On “Haha,” Adigéry’s laughter is chopped up and dribbled over an EBM-inspired beat, making for a slow-motion floor-filler that’s as surreal as it is captivating.

LA trio Automatic conceived of *Excess* as a map of the moment when the ’70s underground met the ’80s mainstream: of post-punk being rebranded as New Wave, of the counterculture being absorbed into another capitalist exercise. From a political standpoint, it’s a reach, but from a stylistic one, it gets to what makes *Excess* appealing: a clash of slickness and grit (“Skyscraper”), punk appeal and pop instincts (“Venus Hour,” “NRG”), human error and machine perfection (“New Beginning”). The appeal to listeners interested in early-’80s music is obvious, but anyone into Le Tigre or 2000s K Records or the sparse post-disco of the Italians Do It Better label will appreciate it, too. As for the title, you assume it’s a joke.

“I had a responsibility to give people what they were asking for, especially during the pandemic,” Robert Glasper tells Apple Music. “They wanted another *Black Radio*, so I had to deliver.” The pianist, composer, songwriter, and producer has spent the past decade pushing the boundaries of what constitutes jazz music, combining its acoustic instrumentation with hip-hop swagger, R&B melodies, and an ear attuned to improvisation. Ten years after the first *Black Radio* album, he returns to the genre-hopping, collaborative format, producing 13 tracks that seamlessly transition from the power of Amir Sulaiman’s poetry on opener “In Tune” to an elegantly downbeat version of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” to the funk of “Why We Speak” with Q-Tip and Esperanza Spalding. Here, Glasper talks through all the collaborations, track by track. **“In Tune” (feat. Amir Sulaiman)** “I was scoring a Dave Chappelle documentary, and in the film, Amir performs a poem that floored me. I’ve never had a poem reach me that way. I was in tears. I immediately asked Dave to connect us, and we had a short conversation about what I was looking for. Two days later, he came back with this incredible poem that opens the record. A lot has happened in the 10 years since the first *Black Radio*, and a whole lot has happened for Black people in America in the last two years. I felt like I had to address the elephant in the room with this track and with ‘Black Superhero.’” **“Black Superhero” (feat. Killer Mike, BJ The Chicago Kid & Big K.R.I.T.)** “BJ is my bro, but this is the first time we’ve done something together on wax. He came to the studio, and I was just playing around and testing the keyboard and he said, ‘That sounds like some superhero shit,’ so I kept playing and the concept started from there. After that, I wanted to pick rappers that teach us. I wanted them to say something that spoke to this moment. I knew K.R.I.T. and Killer Mike would do it justice.” **“Shine” (feat. Robert Glasper, D Smoke & Tiffany Gouche)** “‘Shine’ came out of a jam session. I was playing drums and my drummer was playing keys and we came up with this riff that I then looped. I refined it on keys and added bass and then sent it to D Smoke to see what he thought. He sent me back a draft the next day. The song is all about self-love and knowing that you’re enough. That’s something I feel like a lot of hip-hop songs don’t talk about, and especially during the pandemic, people needed to hear that.” **“Why We Speak” (feat. Q-Tip & Esperanza Spalding)** “A lot of my music starts off with jam sessions. I have my guys come over and we throw down some vibes and see what sticks. We came up with this joint and, immediately, I thought of Esperanza. I sent it to her and a few days later, she sent it back, and I thought something was wrong with the mic. She never told me she was writing it in French! I thought it was so dope, though, and I realized it sounded like something that would fit Q-Tip too. I used to play in his band, but I’ve never had him rock on an album, so it was perfect.” **“Over” (feat. Yebba)** “Yebba was part of the *Fuck Yo Feelings* sessions. She’s become like a little sister to me since, and I knew I had to have her on the record. While we were at Electric Lady Studios, listening to her latest album, we jammed and came up with this pattern and the skeleton of the song. That was in early 2021, and a few months later, we got back to LA and finished up here at my studio. Her voice is so beautiful, and I’m so happy we got to make this one together.” **“Better Than I Imagined” (feat. H.E.R. + Meshell Ndegeocello)** “I scored a film called *The Photograph*, which came out in February 2020. H.E.R. sang the ending song for the movie, and at the premiere, she told me she was so inspired by my score that she wanted to write something together. We literally went from the movie theater to the studio and wrote ‘Better Than I Imagined.’ It wasn’t planned for any project, but it did so well when I put it out, it planted the seed for the rest of *Black Radio III*.” **“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (feat. Lalah Hathaway & Common)** “I have this thing with Lalah. On the first *Black Radio*, she did a cover of ‘Cherish the Day’ and killed it. The next time, I was like, ‘Let’s do Stevie Wonder’s “Jesus Children of America.”’ She recorded it in one take, and it won a Grammy. So why not keep it going? I’ve always loved ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’—I don’t think I would trust a person who doesn’t like that song—but I don’t know anyone who has made a version of it. I redid it in my own vibe, and Common loved it so much, he invited himself on it too!” **“Everybody Love” (feat. Musiq Soulchild & Posdnous)** “My DJ, Jahi Sundance, and I wanted to make a house EP together, and this was the first song we wrote for it. I sent it to Musiq Soulchild, who I have known for a long time, and he came up with his joint in three days. I’ve never done a house song and neither has he, so it was new for both of us. It has a party vibe, and when it comes to party rappers, I always think of De La Soul and Posdnuos. I knew he would kill it, and he delivered.” **“It Don’t Matter” (feat. Gregory Porter & Ledisi)** “I have wanted to produce an R&B album with Gregory for a while now, and when his tour with Ledisi got canceled, I called them both up. I was luckily able to get them in the studio because the COVID restrictions had eased at that point, and they wrote it to fit their voices. They’re both so powerful and definitely have their own sound, so this felt like a match made in heaven.” **“Heaven’s Here” (feat. Ant Clemons)** “I went to Snoop Dogg’s birthday party and on my way out, Ant Clemons stopped me and introduced himself. Terrace Martin told me that he’s high-level and that we should work together. Fast-forward to the next week and we started writing songs. We wrote four or five tracks since he was working with Justin Timberlake on his new album and Usher too. This was one we were going to give to Usher, but it didn’t work out with the timing. I love it so much, I had to put it on *Black Radio*.” **“Out of My Hands” (feat. Jennifer Hudson)** “Jennifer came to one of my shows with my homegirl Kelly Rowland, who I know from Houston. They both sat in with me onstage, and I knew I had to get Jennifer on something. When I wrote this song, I heard her voice on it. It took us a little while to get together, but she performed it perfectly.” **“Forever” (feat. PJ Morton & India.Arie)** “PJ worked with me on *Black Radio 2* back in 2013, and he wrote the song ‘Worries,’ which Dwele sang. I love matching people up who’ve never recorded together, since it makes the song become more special. I knew PJ and India would sound perfect together, and we luckily managed to make this more of a back-and-forth process to make it feel like a duet where we were in the studio at the same time.” **“Bright Lights” (feat. Ty Dolla $ign)”** “I’ve jammed with Ty before. He is a legend who changed the game up, and I wanted to do something with a modern, pop-R&B vibe because that’s where Ty thrives. It’s different from any of the other *Black Radio* tracks that I’ve made, and so I wanted to end the album with this one because it has such a unique feel.”

Panda Bear’s music has always felt connected to the innocence and melancholy of ’60s pop, but *Reset* is the first time he’s made the connection so explicit. Built on simple loops of often familiar songs (The Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance for Me,” The Everly Brothers’ “Love of My Life”), the music here is both an homage to a bygone style and a rendering of how that style could play out in a modern context—in other words, time travel. Together with Sonic Boom—formerly of Spacemen 3 and himself an expert interpreter of ’60s pop and psychedelia—he gives you his handclaps (“Everyday”) and heartaches (“Danger”) and windswept *sha-la*s (“Edge of the Edge”). But they also summon the fatalism that made artists like The Shangri-Las so bewitching (“Go On”) and the space-age wonder that characterized producers like Joe Meek and the early electronic musician Raymond Scott (“Everything’s Been Leading to This”). And like the supposedly basic teenage sounds it came from, *Reset*’s smile conceals a yearning and complexity that runs deep.

Spoon’s tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is the band’s purest rock ’n roll record to date. Texas-made, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years –both in and out of lockdown –these songs mark a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more full-color.

Daptone Records presents the debut album from sweet soul luminaries, Thee Sacred Souls. Produced by Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth, Thee Sacred Souls is a warm and textured record, mixing the easygoing grace of sweet ’60s soul with the grit of early ’70s R&B. The performances are utterly intoxicating, with Lane’s weightless vocals anchored by the rhythm section’s deep pocket and infectious chemistry. Hints of Chicano, Philly, Chicago, Memphis, and even Panama soul turn up here, and while it’s tempting to toss around labels like “retro” with a deliberately analog collection like this, there’s also something distinctly modern about the band that defies easy categorization, a rawness and a sincerity that transcends time and place.

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.

Brittney Parks’ *Athena* was one of the more interesting albums of 2019. *Natural Brown Prom Queen* is better. Not only does Parks—aka the LA-based singer, songwriter, and violinist Sudan Archives—sound more idiosyncratic, but she’s able to wield her idiosyncrasies with more power and purpose. It’s catchy but not exactly pop (“Home Maker”), embodied but not exactly R&B (“Ciara”), weird without ever being confrontational (“It’s Already Done”), and it rides the line between live sound and electronic manipulation like it didn’t exist. She wants to practice self-care (“Selfish Soul”), but she also just wants to “have my titties out” (“NBPQ \[Topless\]”), and over the course of 55 minutes, she makes you wonder if those aren’t at least sometimes the same thing. And the album’s sheer variety isn’t so much an expression of what Parks wants to try as the multitudes she already contains.

Whatever you’re feeling, be sure to feel it deeply. This seems to be the prevailing sentiment of Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs' latest full-length offering – an ambitious, complex body of work nestled within simple, powerful storytelling. With the versatility to provide listening experiences across every environment and a central focus on songwriting over dancefloor tracks, ‘When The Lights Go’ delivers a compilation of genres where the internal world is observed, pondered, and shared outwards. The last ten years have seen TEED release an applauded trail of EPs, singles and collaborations (most notably his Grammy-nominated hit, ‘Heartbreak’, with Bonobo) – but this latest piece is a reminder not just of his capability in sculpting a successful song for the masses, but also of his distinct ability to weave together a chronicle of moments into a vivid tapestry of sensations, memories and meditations around universal topics made personal. ‘When The Lights Go’ allows the visual, symbolic and emotive titles to unravel the backdrop for the short stories and snapshots wrapped up in each song, with Orlando providing his inimitable, lilting voice as both narrator and instrument throughout. From retro, 80s-style synth cinematography via ‘Crosswalk’ and ‘Story’ to tales of introspective honesty in the form of ‘Forever’ and the cathartic ballad ‘Sleeper’, Orlando highlights the movement of time and how the uncertainty of the future can still bring hope in spite of pain. Themes ebb and flow in natural waves like the seasons; the notion of total commitment and the romanticisation of life that comes with it emerges through in the whimsical ‘Friend’ and ‘Be With You’, while a meandering winter with scarce respite is explored through ‘Blood In The Snow’ - an internal projection of a life made stark by the desire for something precious. It’s perhaps in the motifs of waiting, dreaming for a future not yet arrived, and the wisdom that only comes in reminiscing over what once was, that Orlando finds his deepest insight. ‘Treason’ and ‘Blue Is The Colour’ envelope the sensation of missing the home found within another, ‘Thugs’ discusses the pitfalls of living in a patriarchal doomed world, and ‘Never Seen You Dance’ traces relationships characterised by the encouraging of a lover to let their guard down and give in to the rhythm subconsciously shared within. As TEED’s first full-length album in 10 years, the final product was always going to be a statement of intent and what happens when someone compiles a decade of life experiences into a complete, poetic story. But the reality is far more nuanced. ‘When The Lights Go’ raises the magnifying glass to acutely personal thoughts and experiences that are often beyond description, positing that the depth of a feeling, rather than its specifics, is something that can still be appreciated for its significance in our lives. The titular track itself affirms this, investigating the anchor of a partner within a chaotic, burning, surrounding world, and the need for them in times of disarray. ‘Silence’ lacks any vocals from Orlando, but the effect of this placed towards the end of the album is clear. ‘When The Lights Go’, in all its colours and textures, suggests that beyond the high points of love and the sensations it brings, it’s often the absence of our most adored “other” that can bear the most poignant beauty.

Ever since 2013, when Sons of Kemet saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings first leaped onstage to join synth-and-drums duo Soccer96 in a spontaneous explosion of pure groove, the three musicians have been honing their gale-force attack. Dubbed The Comet Is Coming, the trio—Hutchings, drummer Max Hallett, and synth player Dan Leavers—first laid out its double-barreled jazz-dance fusion on 2016’s *Channel the Spirits*, then gave free rein to more psychedelic urges on 2019’s *Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery* and *The Afterlife*, which followed six months later. With *Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam*, The Comet Is Coming delivers its biggest, most expansive record yet. Part of that might stem from recording at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, where the three musicians tracked four days of improv sessions that Hallett and Leavers subsequently reworked into these 11 powerhouse jams. In contrast to the previous two albums’ star-gazing tendencies, *Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam* unleashes a focused blast of energy with the opening “CODE,” with Hutchings meting out stabbing arpeggios over the rhythm section’s heads-down stomp. They expand their range with every track. “TECHNICOLOUR” is a slinky detour into liquid funk, and “LUCID DREAMER” drifts on a cloud of ambient soul; album highlight “PYRAMIDS” taps the tunnel-vision intensity of early-2000s techno. “ATOMIC WAVE DANCE” is another big one, with spiky sax riffs set against jagged arpeggios and a driving 4/4 beat, while on “AFTERMATH,” they pursue krautrock down an almost ambient path. And listeners pining for the last albums’ offworld vibes will find an escape pod in the form of “ANGEL OF DARKNESS,” an unrestrained journey to their cosmic-jazz limits. The Comet Is Coming has never sounded tighter—or freer—than they do here.

From his first releases as the Meridian Brothers in the late 2000s, Colombian artist Eblis Álvarez has served as a kind of rogue anthropologist, conjuring ghosts of Latin music with a sense of color and imagination that makes the past feel like the undiscovered country it is. Conceived of as a lost album by a B-grade ’70s salsa dura band, *Meridian Brothers & El Grupo Renacimiento* is both his most idiosyncratic LP and his most straightforward. You’ll notice some sour harmonies and trails of echo and a generally rubbery air that tells you you’re not in Bogotá anymore (“Descarga profética,” “Metamorfosis”). But the rhythms are ripe and the playing is hard, and no matter how far out Álvarez gets, the music stays grounded in the feet and the guts. This isn’t nostalgia—it’s homemade party music for the day after the apocalypse (“Bomba Atómica”).

'Meridian Brothers & El Grupo Renacimiento' excavates the forgotten sounds of the fantastical 1970s salsa dura group El Grupo Renacimiento. The group identifies as “B-class” salsa whose music explores human struggles in the urban city landscape, with themes such as police brutality, social marginalization, and addiction. Meridian Brothers collaborated with El Grupo Renacimiento in Bogota's Isaac Newton studios to capture their "fantasy salsa dura” sound. Although the group came out of myth, its members have been created in spirit. Embodied by Meridian Brothers and depicted in the graphic creations of illustrators Glenda Torrado and Mateo Rivano, the members of El Grupo Renacimiento have now come to life. *** ELGRUPO RENACIMIENTO está de vuelta con más Latin-soul, y salsa clase B para la juventud. Nos complacemos en presentar al Grupo Renacimiento. Uno de los grupos más resignados de la escena salsera colombiana de los años setenta, su estilo y molde perseguidos insistentemente por los eternos buscadores de la fama internacional, toman como base las provocativas y bailables melodías de este conjunto musical que ha permanecido sepultado por las ingratitudes del olvido social y el desprecio del público. Ya en los años setenta este conjunto de estilo Latin-soul, había cautivado los corazones de la juventud bogotana inspirando más que varias expresiones de aceptación, guiños interesados y admiración por parte de su club de seguidoras. Desgraciadamente, la vida y los avatares de la juventud hicieron que todos los integrantes de este virtuoso septeto cayeran en LA DROGA y el olvido. Sin embargo, después de una larga rehabilitación el GRUPO RENACIMIENTO vuelve a grabar, de la mano de las producciones de los estudios Isaac Newton en el barrio Teusaquillo y logran poner en las listas de reproducción de la Internet sus temas "La policía" y "Poema del salsero resentido". Al amparo del nombre GRUPO RENACIMIENTO, existen historias simpáticas que se transforman en verdaderas joyas antológicas latinocéntricas que propios y extraños cantarán, y a la luz de 2022, junto al sello legendario ANSONIA, presentamos un LP completo que hace justo honor a la trayectoria y trascendencia que EL GRUPO RENACIMIENTO ha merecido largamente. Después de que el talento plasmado en este LP penetre la interfaz de percepción del público joven y con ello el tan deseado baile que las nuevas generaciones buscan incansablemente para lograr algo de diversión y relajación en sus hoy desdichadas vidas, el GRUPO RENACIMIENTO habitará nuevamente en el corazón de los jóvenes con sus locuras y acciones excéntricas. LANZAMIENTO DEL DISCO COMPLETO: 4 de Agosto de 2022 a las 3:00 AM hora colombiana

The contradiction of Bill Callahan’s 2010s output is how an artist seemingly so stoic and withdrawn could be so completely in love with everyday life. His performances get more nuanced and his metaphorical power richer every album, whether it’s the image of his infant daughter suspended angelically above the ground because everyone wants to carry her around (“First Bird”), or the way a horse inside a house reminds him of the way we have to ”bow our heads to get in and out of what we’re living in”—a mix of American surrealism and Buddhist humility he can safely call his own. And for a singer who once said that the only time he felt part of the world is when he was alone in his room (Smog’s “Ex-Con”), now he can’t wait to get out with the stroller for another trip around the neighborhood (“Natural Information”) with a horn section and backup singers in tow. Peace, love, and fun—and evidently hard-won.

From the beautiful to the jarring, intrepid explorer Callahan charts a passage through all kinds of territory, pitting dreams of dreams against dreams of reality. When he makes it back to us, his old friends 'n acquaintances, we are reminded how much of a world it can be out there - and in here as well, where we live everyday.

Cometa is Nick Hakim’s 3rd full-length album. It is a collection of romantic songs written through different lenses, guided by Hakim’s own experience of falling in love in a way that made him feel like he was floating. The dizzying, out-of-body sensation is the theme that anchors this masterful album, which features guest appearances from Helado Negro, Alex G, Arto Lindsay, and DJ Dahl. The album was recorded between studios and domestic spaces throughout Texas, North Carolina, California, and New York.

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.