PopMatters' 25 Best Rock Albums of 2024

Perhaps more so than any other Irish band of their generation, Fontaines D.C.’s first three albums were intrinsically linked to their homeland. Their debut, 2019’s *Dogrel*, was a bolshy, drizzle-soaked love letter to the streets of Dublin, while Brendan Behan-name-checking follow-up *A Hero’s Death* detailed the group’s on-the-road alienation and estrangement from home. And 2022’s *Skinty Fia* viewed Ireland from the complicated perspective of no longer actually being there. On their fourth album, however, Fontaines D.C. have shifted their attention elsewhere. *Romance* finds the five-piece wandering in a futuristic dystopia inspired by Japanese manga classic *Akira*, Paolo Sorrentino’s 2013 film *La Grande Bellezza*, and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s *Pusher* films. “We didn’t set out to make a trilogy of albums but that’s sort of what happened,” drummer Tom Coll tells Apple Music of those first three records. “They were such a tight world, and this time we wanted to step outside of it and change it up. A big inspiration for this record was going to Tokyo for the first time. It’s such a visual, neon-filled, supermodern city. It was so inspiring. It brought in all these new visual references to the creative process for the first time.” Recorded with Arctic Monkeys producer James Ford (their previous three albums were all made with Dan Carey), *Romance* also brings in a whole new palette of sounds and colors to the band’s work. From the clanking apocalyptic dread of the opening title track, hip-hop-inspired first single “Starburster,” and the warped grunge and shoegaze hybrids of “Here’s the Thing” and “Sundowner,” it opens a whole new chapter for Fontaines D.C., while still finding time for classic indie rock anthems such as “Favourite”’s wistful volley of guitars or the Nirvana-like “Death Kink.” “Every album we do feels like a huge step in one direction for us, but *Romance* is probably a little bit more outside of our previous records,” says Coll. “It’s exciting to surprise people.” Read on as he dissects *Romance*, one track at a time. **“Romance”** “This is one that we wrote really late at night in the studio. It just fell out of us. It was one of those real moments of feeling, ‘Right, that’s the first track on the album.’ It’s kind of like a palate cleanser for everything that’s come before. It’s like the opening scene. I feel like every time we’ve done a record there’s been one tune that’s always stuck out like, ‘This is our opening gambit...’” **“Starburster”** “Grian \[Chatten, singer\] wrote most of this tune on his laptop, so there were lots of chopped-up strings and stuff—it was quite a hip-hop creative process. It’s probably the song that is furthest away from the old us on this album. This tune was the first single and we always try and shock people a bit. It’s fun to do that.” **“Here’s the Thing”** “This was written in the last hour of being in the studio. We had maybe 12 or 13 tracks ready to go and just started jamming, and it presented itself in an hour. \[Guitarist Conor\] Curley had this really gnarly, ’90s, piercing tone, and it just went from there.” **“Desire”** “This has been knocking around for ages. It was one of those tunes that took so many goes to get to where it was meant to sit. It started as a band setup and then we went really electronic with it. Then in the studio, we took it all back. It took a while for it to sit properly. Grian did 20 or 30 vocal layers on that, he really arranged it in an amazing way. Carlos \[O’Connell, guitarist\] and Grian were the main string arrangers on this record. This was the first record where we actually got a string quartet in—before, people would just send it over. So being able to sit in the room and watch a string quartet take center stage on a song was amazing.” **“In the Modern World”** “Grian wrote this song when he was in LA. He was really inspired by Lana Del Rey and stuff like that. Hollywood and the glitz and the glamour, but it’s actually this decrepit place. It’s that whole idea of faded glamour.” **“Bug”** “This felt like a really easy song for us to write. That kind of buzzy, all-of-us-in-the-same-room tune. I really fought for this one to be on the record. I feel like, with songs like that, trying to skew them and put a spin on them that they don’t need is overwriting. If it feels right then there’s no point in laboring over it. That song is what it is and it’s great. It’s going to be amazing live.” **“Motorcycle Boy”** “This one is inspired by The Smashing Pumpkins a bit. We actually recorded it six months before the rest of the album. This tune was the real genesis of the record and us finding a path and being like, ‘OK, we can explore down here...’ That was one that really set the wheels in motion for the album. It really informed where we were going.” **“Sundowner”** “On this album, we were probably coming from more singular points than we have before. A lot of the lads brought in tunes that were pretty much there. I was sharing a room with Curley in London, and he was working on this really shoegaze-inspired tune for ages. I think he always thought that Grian would sing it, but when he put down the guide vocals in the studio it sounded great. We were all like, ‘You are singing this now.’” **“Horseness Is the Whatness”** “Carlos sent me a demo of that tune ages and ages ago. It was just him on an acoustic, and it was such a powerful lyric. I think it’s amazing. We had to kind of deconstruct it and build it back up again in terms of making it fit for this record. Carlos had made three or four drum loops for me and it was a really fun experience to try and recreate that. I don’t know how we’re going to play it live but we’ll sort it out!” **“Death Kink”** “Again, this came from one of the jams of us setting up for a studio session. It’s another one of those band-in-a-room-jamming-out kind of tunes. On tour in America, we really honed where everything should sit in the set. This is going to be such a fun tune to play live. We’ve started playing it already and it’s been so sick.” **“Favourite”** “‘Favourite’ was another one we wrote when we were rehearsing. It happened pretty much as it is now. We were kind of nervous about touching it again for the album because that first recording was so good. That’s the song that hung around in our camp for the longest. When we write songs on tour, often we end up getting bored of them over time but ‘Favourite’ really stuck. We had a lot of conversations about the order on this album and I felt it was really important to move from ‘Romance’ to ‘Favourite.’ It feels like a journey from darkness into light, and finishing on ‘Favourite’ leaves it in a good spot.”

There was a point early in the creation of the swaggering second record by Yard Act when the Leeds quartet realized they were holding themselves back and needed to let go. “We were putting some drones and synths on the track ‘Fizzy Fish,’ which was the first one we wrote for the record, and someone raised the point that we weren’t going to be able to do it live,” vocalist James Smith tells Apple Music. “But we quickly agreed we’d worry about that later. Once we cut our losses with the idea of how we could do it, there was no real discussion on the areas the album went to.” That sense of daring is at the heart of *Where’s My Utopia?*. The four-piece has emerged with a kaleidoscopic pop record that dramatically builds upon the playful post-punk of their 2022 debut *The Overload*, its expansive sound taking in Gorillaz-meets-Ian Dury future funk, art-rock wigouts, orchestral epics, careening disco punk, and explosive indie sing-alongs. *The Overload* earned them a Mercury nomination and the chance to rerecord 2022 single “100% Endurance” with star fan Elton John, and its follow-up finds Smith searching for meaning in the wake of all his dreams coming true. “The record is about me realizing that the thing I’d wanted since being a teenager wasn’t going to magically solve all the problems that I live with,” Smith explains, “and the idea that everyone just has problems regardless of what position they’re in. I’m starting to wonder now if we just create them for ourselves because it shouldn’t be this hard.” It’s a narrative arc delivered with Smith’s trademark humor but always laced with poignancy, their anthemic hooks even sharper than those that fired their debut to success. *Where’s My Utopia?* is a bold, brilliant second album from one of the decade’s most imaginative bands. Smith guides us through it, track by track. **“An Illusion”** “This song definitely sets the score for ‘This isn’t a minimalist guitar post-punk album this time.’ The chorus lyric really sets up the whole premise of the situation I ended up in—that I’m in love with an illusion—and the idea that being in a successful band would solve my problems. Then, whilst my head was so buried in this world that I couldn’t get out of because of how much energy and time it was sucking out of me, all my other principles fell by the wayside. This song’s probably harder on myself than most are. The verses are about me being pissed, which I was for 18 months, and basically being just a bit useless, which I’ve got out of now. I stopped drinking off the back of the touring, I learned that I had to.” **“We Make Hits”** “This was one of the last songs written. We wrote it in Ryan \[Needham, bassist\]’s spare bedroom in a break from touring. I think Ryan had been going for that kind of French disco, Daft Punk, Justice vibes and everything fell out of me quite fast. I started by writing the story of me and Ryan and how we started the band. With this song, we were acknowledging that we’d always had ambition and we’d always wanted to do something bigger with music. Even though, at our core, all we wanted to do was make music, we always knew we would quite like to see what it was like on the other side and achieve something.” **“Down by the Stream”** “This was written in Turin. Everyone else had gone out for a meal and I decided to stay in the hotel room and wrote it using Jay \[Russell, drummer\]’s laptop. I’ve been looking back on my childhood a little bit more since my son was born and projecting him into scenarios I was in, even though historical truth and accuracy is a vague thing in terms of songwriting. It’s not literal, but it draws on my childhood. I was framing myself as this struggling person who was having a bit of a rough time, doing the woe-is-me thing about being in a successful band. I realized that if I was going to ask that empathy of the listener, then I should make sure that there was some corruption within me as well and highlight that I’m not some innocent person. It’s me dragging myself through the mud to let people know that I’m capable of being a dickhead just like everyone else.” **“The Undertow”** “‘Down by the Stream’ starts by the stream and then the stream leads to the sea, and that’s where the sharks start circling. We’ve ended up at sea on ‘The Undertow.’ The stream is the journey into adulthood and the sea is the murky open waters of adulthood and being out on your own in the big, bad world, then getting caught by the undertow of the industry. This is a thank-you note to my wife, really, who’s supported me through this entire caper that I’ve ended up on and been solid as a rock through it. There’s a part of me that’ll never be able to understand why I was selfish enough to do this for a living and leave my family behind to do it, so I’ll always live with that.” **“Dream Job”** “I caught myself writing the chorus in an interview when we were in Europe. Someone asked how it felt to have done a song with Elton John and have a Mercury nomination and all these things and I wasn’t really in the room and I just went, ‘Yeah, it’s ace, it’s wicked.’ I just started listing all these positive words without actually taking stock of what they were saying. It’s funny because I don’t really know how those things have affected me. I definitely wanted them and I’m glad I got them but they just happen and you move on. You get asked about them a lot, and the truth is that you don’t really think of them. I feel like the second you start wearing your achievements with pride, you’re dead in the water. I think the whole album is trying to strike that balance between being cynical and maybe a bit arsey, but also going, at the same time, ‘Things are great!’ It can be both, and it is both for us, and that’s life, even if it’s your life or my life in this band I’m in.” **“Fizzy Fish”** “The lyrics changed a lot on this one—I was literally writing about Fizzy Fish sweets for about three verses originally. With those seeds, you don’t really know where you’re going with them a lot of the time, but you let your mind chase after it and see where it goes. The Fizzy Fish, it was nostalgia, it was going back to the playground and that’s me having a conversation with another version of me from my childhood or a parallel universe. Again, it’s set in a lake, going with the water theme, because that’s a stagnant body of water that’s separate from the sea. It stands alone from the rest of the album. It’s set in my subconscious. ‘The Undertow’ through to ‘Grifter’s Grief’ is one narrative arc that follows me going into this successful Yard Act. ‘Fizzy Fish’ is me learning to cope with this newfound spotlight and who I am, whether I’ve changed from who I was, whether that’s positive or negative and the fact you have to create new masks to deal with a public-facing job because you don’t want to give too much of yourself away but, ultimately, to connect with people is the entire reason you’re making music.” **“Petroleum”** “This is based on an incident that happened at a gig at Bognor Regis at the start of 2023, the point within the story where I hit the bottom. I bottled the gig. Not anything drastic, we got through a set, but I was really disappointed in myself and my performance that night. I told the audience I was bored and I didn’t want to be there. We’d bitten off more than we could chew and I hadn’t had a break in 18 months, and I had a bad gig. This looks at the idea of what is expected of musicians when they perform live and this consumerist demand that they deliver. I realized that people don’t actually want honesty, they want the version of honesty they’ve paid to see. It’s learning to deal with these extra masks that we develop. I was trying to get to the core of ‘How can I channel a true version of how I’m feeling into an enjoyable performance that people deserve to see?’ This whole song reignited my passion for playing live and I’ve since learned how to process my emotions and funnel them into a performance that creates something that I’m proud of.” **“When the Laughter Stops” (feat. Katy J Pearson)** “It’s maybe a reaction to a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, Yard Act is the fun band, the jokers, and they don’t take it too seriously,’ and we don’t—because you can’t—but it’s that whole sad-clown complex. We’re not base level: We feel things just the same as everyone else! A lot of this album is rooted in that paranoia of not being able to maintain this—because it felt like I couldn’t do it if what it took to make a living from this job was those first 18 months over and over again. Fortunately, it’s changed, it’s fine but it has to stay at this level for it to be OK. If it drops back below, it’s hard work being in a band.” **“Grifter’s Grief”** “This is to do with the fact that my entire job now is based around sucking electricity out of giant venues and getting on aeroplanes and constantly burning up road miles and air miles and sea miles just to selfishly make a living whilst the planet burns. I spoke to my dad about it and he was kicking off about something and I was like, ‘Yeah but, Dad, I do that, I get on planes all the time.’ He went, ‘Yeah, but you need to do it to work.’ And I was like, ‘But I don’t. I could get a job that doesn’t involve that.’ It’s that everyone’s selfish inherently, I think.” **“Blackpool Illuminations”** “This is probably the most important song on the album. When we do the zany and comical stuff, we’re always trying to do it so you can pull the rug from under people with a song like this and prove what we’re capable of if we really put our minds to it. We supported Foals in Blackpool in May 2022. I had such nostalgic memories of Blackpool from going as a kid. My wife and son came and joined us for those two nights with Foals, and we had a couple of days and weekend in Blackpool because I wanted to show my baby where I had holidays as a child. Seeing him walking along the promenade, I saw myself in him and realized that he was just following the exact same footsteps that I did when I was a kid. \[The song\] follows my journey through childhood to that moment, really—these footprints of the past that we leave and then the future treads over them in a very similar way.” **“A Vineyard for the North”** “This is the note of hope that comes at the end. Climate change punctuates the album but I didn’t want to write too heavily about it. I read an article that French vineyard owners are starting to buy land in the south of England—because of the rising temperature, the south of England is now \[in\] prime condition for growing grapes for champagne. I was thinking how, as it gets hotter, it works its way up the country. It’s clutching at straws in a sense but it’s more to do with human nature and our ability to adapt and problem solve. I don’t think the answer is that everyone in the north starts buying vineyards and growing grapes. But, in essence, it is that things will change and we’ll have to adapt, and there’s hope and there are avenues we can always take.”

The musician born Josh Tillman chose the title for his sixth album in a decidedly Father John Misty kind of way: He found the Sanskrit word in a novel by Bruce Wagner, who shares with the musician a certain impish LA mysticism. Mahāśmaśāna translates to “great cremation ground,” so it’s no surprise to find the singer-songwriter in “what’s it all mean?” mode, trawling tragicomic corners of the American Southwest in search of answers about life, death, and humanity. After trying his hand at big-band jazz on 2022’s *Chloë and the Next 20th Century*, Tillman returns to the big, sweeping ’70s-style pop rock that’s earned him a place among his generation’s most intriguing songwriters. He channels Leonard Cohen’s *Death of a Ladies’ Man* on the sprawling title track, whose swooning orchestration and ambitious lyrics take stock of, well, everything. “She Cleans Up” tells a rollicking tale involving female aliens, high-dollar kimonos, and rabbits with guns, and on dystopian power ballad “Screamland,” he offers an all-American refrain: “Stay young/Get numb/Keep dreaming.”

For their 14th album, Swedish prog wizards Opeth created a concept record around the reading of a will. Partly inspired by a talk-show segment and partly by the massively popular TV show *Succession*, Opeth guitarist/vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt decided to write about an inheritance with a twist. “I stumbled upon the idea of putting the whole story as it would’ve been written in a legal document, like a proper old piece of paper with paragraphs like, ‘My daughter will get the country house,’ and things like that,” he tells Apple Music. “But it’s more like a confession of sorts, where the patriarch reveals secrets about himself, his paranoia, and his regrets. And some of these secrets will immediately affect his children in an existential kind of way.” *The Last Will and Testament* also marks Åkerfeldt’s return to the death-metal vocal style of Opeth’s early days. “I wanted to bring back the screaming vocal, but at first, I felt a bit like a fraud because I wasn’t listening to brutal music,” he explains. “I’m listening to Dexter Gordon and David Crosby. But after I finished two songs with that kind of vocal, I thought it was fucking awesome.” Add guest appearances from Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson (on flute and narration) and Europe vocalist Joey Tempest, and you’ve got another fascinating installment in Opeth’s catalog. Below, Åkerfeldt comments on each track. **“§1”** “This was the first song written for the album. It’s when I dipped my toe in the water, so to speak, to see where I was on a musical level. At the time, I didn’t really have the lyrics ready, but I wanted to try out that screaming vocal. So, this song is kind of the guinea pig for that. And usually, when I start writing for a record, I come out all guns blazing. So, it’s kind of heavy, evil, fast, and a bit insane. Lyrically, the kids are being summoned to attend the reading of their late father’s last will and testament. There’s also a couple of solicitors in place. The reading starts, and he’s explaining that there’s going to be prizes. But they might not be what you wanted.” **“§2”** “I can hear that I was quite comfortable with whatever I was doing musically here. And that kind of stands out because it has two guests on there. On ‘Paragraph One’ you have a voice-over thing by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, and he’s heavily featured in ‘Paragraph Two’ as well. And so is Joey Tempest, from Europe. For some reason, he loves Opeth, which is awesome for me because I grew up with Europe. The song itself is pretty adventurous, I think. It’s probably one of the songs that will take a long time to sink in with the listener. There’s also a calm section that I kind of nicked from Paul Simon’s ‘Still Crazy After All These Years.’” **“§3”** “This is more of a classic heavy metal song, I would say. The opening was inspired by a theme you often hear in jazz music, like Django Reinhardt, but also some classical music and fusion-rock bands. And the musical *Chess*, believe it or not, which was written by Benny and Björn from ABBA. From there, it kind of becomes a normal heavy metal song, but with more emotions than your basic Iron Maiden song. I’m not saying Iron Maiden doesn’t have emotions, but this is kind of a sad song—to me at least. Lyrically, there’s some explanation about infidelity that happened and what that led to.” **“§4”** “This is an interesting tune because it’s almost like a couple of different songs in one, which is not so uncommon for Opeth. I started off trying to write something called 12-note music, which is an experimental classical thing where you have 12 notes in an octave, and you can’t play the same note twice—meaning it’s going to be fucked up. So, the beginning of the song is hard to sing along to. It’s a bit Zappa-esque. That leads into kind of a metal-y call-and-response with death metal vocals and clean vocals, and then it stops and goes into a harp section. I actually found the harp player from an article in a Swedish newspaper, which is weird. That leads to the next section, which is Ian Anderson playing the flute. Then it builds into the most vicious, evil-sounding music on the record.” **“§5”** “This is maybe the last song I wrote for the record, or one of the last. You can tell that I’m comfortable in my songwriting here because it’s quite experimental. There’s not a lot of acoustic guitars on this record, but this song is built around an acoustic lick and clean vocals, and all of it gradually becomes heavier. In some parts, maybe the heaviest sections on the record. And really good death-metal vocals on that track, if I do say so myself. There’s also a Middle Eastern-sounding midsection, which I never dared to do before. If you just hear the song once, you probably won’t know what the fuck is happening. You need some time with it.” **“§6”** “During the recording, everybody feared this song because it’s so difficult. It doesn’t sound difficult, but for some reason, it’s really, *really* difficult. I’m not really a good guitar player or a good musician, but for some reason I have a knack for writing really complex music. And this song, it’s almost like it spirals out of control in a way, like you’re losing control of the horse and it just stampedes. I’ve never done cocaine in my life, but it sounds like what I imagine a cocaine rush is. I think that’s got something to do with me not tampering with the tempo of the song, which resulted in us almost not being able to play the fucking thing.” **“§7”** “This always felt like the ending song of a record, even if there’s one after. But it’s still the end of the testament, as it were. It’s more of a groovy song. I don’t really like that word, but sometimes it’s the only word that applies. It’s slower than the other songs, and less crazy. It’s also the first song in our history where every band member sings. There’s a multipart harmony vocal that happens a couple of times, and everyone is on it. I can tell you there were people who had never been in front of a microphone before, which was quite fun.” **“A Story Never Told”** “At this point, the testament is done. But everything that’s been said in the testament doesn’t really apply because here comes the twist to the story. The inheritance has been settled, a few years have passed, and a letter arrives, revealing a secret. The song itself is a ballad, and I’m a sucker for ballads. I wanted to write a beautiful ballad, not just because I love ballads, but because the seven songs prior to ‘A Story Never Told’ are so intense that there’s no room for breath, really. And this song feels like a good ending, with a beautiful Gilmour/Blackmore-esque solo by \[Opeth guitarist\] Fredrik \[Åkesson\] at the finish.”

The Smile, a trio featuring Radiohead prime movers Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood along with ex-Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, sounds more like a proper band than a side project on their second album. Sure, they’re a proper band that unavoidably sounds a *lot* like Radiohead, but with some notable distinctions—much leaner arrangements, bass parts by Greenwood and Yorke with a very different character from what Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood might have laid down, and a formal fixation on conveying tension in their melodies and rhythms. Their debut, *A Light for Attracting Attention*, was full of tight, wrenching grooves and guitar parts that sounded as though the strings were coiling into knots. This time around they head in the opposite direction, loosening up to the point that the music often feels extremely light and airy. The guitar in the first half of “Bending Hectic” is so delicate and minimal that it sounds like it could get blown away with a slight breeze, while the warm and lightly jazzy “Friend of a Friend” feels like it’s helplessly pushed and pulled along by strong, unpredictable winds. The loping rhythm and twitchy riffs in “Read the Room” are surrounded by so much negative space that it sounds eerily hollow, like Yorke is singing through the skeletal remains of a ’70s metal song. There are some surprises along the way, too. A few songs veer into floaty lullaby sections, and more than half include orchestral tangents that recall Greenwood’s film score work for Paul Thomas Anderson and Jane Campion. The most unexpected moment comes at the climax of “Bending Hectic,” which bursts into heavy grunge guitar, stomping percussion, and soaring vocals. Most anyone would have assumed Yorke and Greenwood had abandoned this type of catharsis sometime during the Clinton administration, but as it turns out they were just waiting for the right time to deploy it.

The Decemberists’ first album in six years feels like a homecoming. After the somber and reflective *What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World* in 2015 and the synth-laden protest songs of 2018’s *I’ll Be Your Girl*, their ninth LP, *As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again*—their first-ever double album—is a freewheeling and deeply pleasurable odyssey through the Portland folk-rockers’ estimable history. No stone in the band’s past is left unturned here: There are echoes of the wistfulness that drew so many listeners in circa 2002’s instant classic *Castaways and Cutouts*, as well as the flamboyant instrumentation and arched-eyebrow storytelling that marked 2005’s star-making *Picaresque*. Even *As It Ever Was*’ stormy and surprisingly bruising closer, the nearly 20-minute “Joan in the Garden,” instantly recalls the band’s 2009 proggy opus *The Hazards of Love* in its “Aqualung”-esque stomp, complete with meaty guitar riffs. At first glance, Colin Meloy and co. are doing a lot across the ample framework of *As It Ever Was*—but their successfully executed sense of ambition is perfectly complemented by the sweet musical simplicity of these 13 songs, some of Meloy’s most straightforwardly gorgeous music put to tape. Accompanied by The Shins’ James Mercer and R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills, the easy jangle of “Burial Ground” is practically The Decemberists’ own take on The Byrds’ classic “Turn! Turn! Turn!” while “America Made Me” leavens Meloy’s acerbic sociopolitical observations with a horn-laden bar-band boisterousness. “Don’t want stunning wordplay/All I want is you,” Meloy nakedly intones on “All I Want Is You,” perhaps a cheeky self-referential moment towards his own penchant for lyrical verbosity. But *As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again* reaffirms that The Decemberists are at their strongest when embracing their most long-held creative tendencies.

There’s a sense of optimism that comes through Vampire Weekend’s fifth album that makes it float, a sense of hope—a little worn down, a little roughed up, a little tired and in need of a shave, maybe—but hope nonetheless. “By the time you’re pushing 40, you’ve hit the end of a few roads, and you’re probably looking for something—I don’t know what to say—a little bit deeper,” Ezra Koenig tells Apple Music. “And you’re thinking about these ideas. Maybe they’re corny when you’re younger. Gratitude. Acceptance. All that stuff. And I think that’s infused in the album.” Take something like “Mary Boone,” whose worries and reflections (“We always wanted money, now the money’s not the same”) give way to an old R&B loop (Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life”). Or the way the piano runs on “Connect”—like your friend fumbling through a Gershwin tune on a busted upright in the next room—bring the song’s manic energy back to earth. Musically, they’ve never sounded more sophisticated, but they’ve also never sounded sloppier or more direct (“Prep-School Gangsters”). They’re a tuxedo with ripped Converse or a garage band with a full orchestra (“Ice Cream Piano”). And while you can trainspot the micro-references and little details of their indie-band sound (produced brilliantly by Koenig and longtime collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid), what you remember most is the big picture of their songs, which are as broad and comforting as great pop (“Classical”). “Sometimes I talk about it with the guys,” Koenig says. “We always need to have an amateur quality to really be us. There needs to be a slight awkward quality. There needs to be confidence and awkwardness at the same time.” Next to the sprawl of *Father of the Bride*, *OGWAU* (“og-wow”—try it) feels almost like a summary of the incredible 2007-2013 run that made them who they are. But they’re older now, and you can hear that, too, mostly in how playful and relaxed the album is. Listen to the jazzy bass and prime-time saxophone on “Classical” or the messy drums on “Prep-School Gangsters” (courtesy of Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes), or the way “Hope” keeps repeating itself like a school-assembly sing-along. It’s not cool music, which is of course what makes it so inimitably cool. Not that they seem to worry about that stuff anymore. “I think a huge element for that is time, which is a weird concept,” Koenig says. ”Some people call it a construct. I’ve heard it’s not real. That’s above my pay grade, but I will say, in my experience, time is great because when you’re bashing your head against the wall, trying to figure out how to use your brain to solve a problem, and when you learn how to let go a little bit, time sometimes just does its thing.” For a band that once announced themselves as the preppiest, most ambitious guys in the indie-rock room, letting go is big.

For Sam Herring, the lead singer of Baltimore’s indie mainstays Future Islands, the band’s seventh album *People Who Aren’t There Anymore* doesn’t fall neatly into the pre- or post-pandemic boxes. “The first half of the album was written within the pandemic,” he told Apple Music’s Hanuman Welch. “The second half was written after we did our first tour back. So this really elongated space with plenty of time to forget what we\'re going through, but still being in it. I think, collectively, the world is finally coming to terms with what happened between 2020 and 2022, and the sense of how much the world has changed.” Grappling with those profound changes partially made it into the band’s previous album, 2020’s *As Long As You Are*, but they come into sharper focus here. Herring mines the end of romantic relationships and the loss of friendships, and even parts ways with past iterations of himself that no longer serve a purpose, all while trying to balance the heft of grief with hard-won optimism. First single “The Tower” serves as a lynchpin between the two albums, bridging that era of what came before and what lies ahead. In true Future Islands fashion, the track fits into a familiar mythology for the band. “Within the Future Islands canon, it works perfectly, because so many songs of ours are at the sea, standing at the sea, having those thoughts,” Herring said. “I was separated from my partner, who was in Sweden, I was in the States, couldn\'t get back there, and I was just constantly fighting myself over that part of you that wants to give up. So it is a reflection of the past, and how we continue to still have those existential breakdowns, and these pivotal moments of our lives at the sea staring into the great gulf and hoping that someone\'s there.”