Sound Opinions' 40 Best Albums of 2016

Hey, what's this? Well that, my friend, is the newest album from The Gotobeds, entitled BLOOD//SUGAR//SECS//TRAFFIC. It's their second full-length LP and their first for Sub Pop. Whoa, whoa, please slow down. I'm already completely lost. What you just said sounded like a stream of complete gibberish. Okay, I'll lay it out for you and if you have any questions could you yell them at me? SOUNDS GOOD. The Gotobeds formed vaguely around 2009 in Pittsburgh and play a mutant strain of rock music that is often filed under punk, indie rock, or 99-cent discount bin. WAIT, THE GOTOBEDS? I HEARD THEY WERE KNUCKLEHEADS! Only if the knuckle is the part of the human body that contains the brains. Much like their previous releases on underground stalwart labels like Mind Cure and 12XU, this new album artfully slips intelligence and experimentation into a dying art form. It's a harder feat than you'd think. And sure, their live shows have often been compared to an "all night party where I feared for my life and the lives of everybody in the five block radius," and their recorded output is akin "to the sonic manifestos of four men deprived of human love and raised on beer and Swell Maps, Mission of Burma, and old Fall records." But what you get with The Gotobeds, delivered in spades on this album, is smart, noisy rock with just the right amount of stupid. FAIR ENOUGH. SO HOW'D THIS GET MADE? It was recorded in bursts over several months of 2015 in their friend My War Matt's basement in Pittsburgh. Unlike previously, the songs were conceived and recorded in blocks, which resulted in a more experimental feel. But this is no chin stroking curate's egg. You like loud, double guitar leads? OF COURSE I DO. WHO DOESN'T? You're in luck, because this album is carpeted with em, thanks to Eli Kasan and TFP. On a song like "Bodies," it sounds as if you've walked into the biggest Guitar Center, but, you know, not terrible. Keeping it all locked down is the rhythm section of drummer, Cary Belback and bassist, Gavin Jensen. They allow the downright prettiness of a song like "Red Alphabet" to shine, and the lyrics on the anti-sexism thrash of "Crisis Time" to punch through. THIS ALL SOUNDS WONDERFUL, IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I NEED TO CARE ABOUT? Eh, probably not. Except that Tim Midyett (Silkworm, Bottomless Pit, Mint Mile) and some bum (Protomartyr) are featured as guest vocalists on "Rope" and "Why'd You," respectively. Also, I'd be remiss to not mention the fact that the band's live show is a testament to the cathartic nature of speed, skill, repetition, noise and red stage lights. If you don't believe me, ask the bands they have played with, like Total Control, Tyvek, or The Replacements. Also, they rep Pittsburgh harder than anyone possibly could and come off better for it...which is saying something. I THINK I UNDERSTAND. BLOOD//SUGAR//SECS//TRAFFIC IS THE GREATEST ALBUM SINCE THE LAST GOTOBEDS RECORD? Yes. Now please stop yelling.

The Scottish duo return harder and darker on second album, *Babes Never Die*, where new drummer Cat Myers powers singer-guitarist Stina Tweeddale through her tales of vengeance and vulnerability. There’s a menacing tone here (the predators of “Sister Wolf”) that warns troublemakers from messing with the invincible young women of “Sea Hearts”. And with weapons like the surfy “Ready for the Magic”, and the epic sludge of “Walking at Midnight”, don’t say they didn’t warn you…

The avant garde Norwegian throws open a ghostly sonic sketchbook on this complex sixth album. Taking vampirism, gore, and femininity as her stated themes, Hval uses everything from percussive panting (the compellingly sinister “In The Red”) to distant, discordant horns (“Untamed Region”) to conjure challenging, dark dreamscapes. Thankfully, she never forgets the tunes. “The Great Undressing” is a propulsive art-pop jewel, and “Secret Touch” pits Hval’s brittle falsetto against hissing, addictive trip hop.

Jenny Hval’s conceptual takes on collective and individual gender identities and sociopolitical constructs landed Apocalypse, girl on dozens of year end lists and compelled writers everywhere to grapple with the age-old, yet previously unspoken, question: What is Soft Dick Rock? After touring for a year and earning her second Nordic Prize nomination, as any perfectionist would, Hval immediately went back into the studio to continue her work with acumen noise producer Lasse Marhaug, with whom she co-produces here on Blood Bitch. Her new effort is in many respects a complete 180° from her last in subject matter, execution and production. It is her most focused, but the lens is filtered through a gaze which the viewer least expects.

A confessional autobiography and meditation on being black in America, this album finds Solange searching for answers within a set of achingly lovely funk tunes. She finds intensity behind the patient grooves of “Weary,” expresses rage through restraint in “Mad,” and draws strength from the naked vulnerability of “Where Do We Go.” The spirit of Prince hovers throughout, especially over “Junie,” a glimmer of merriment in an exquisite portrait of sadness.

Jamila Woods surrounds herself with the things she loves, things like Lucille Clifton’s poetry or letters from her grandmother or the late 80s post-punk of The Cure. “It’s just powerful to me to know the lineage and influences going into the making of the song,” Jamila says. That lineage–fragments of her life and loves–helped structure the progressive, delicate and minimalist soul of HEAVN, her debut solo album released in the summer of 2016. “It’s like a collage process,” she says. “It’s very enjoyable to me to take something I love and mold it into something new.” A frequent guest vocalist in the hip-hop, jazz and soul world, Jamila has emerged as a once-in-a-generation voice on her soul-stirring debut. Hailed by Pitchfork as, “a singular mix of clear-eyed optimism and Black girl magic,” HEAVN is the culmination of more than two decades’ worth of musical performances, creative remixing, haunted memories and her unique “collage” writing process. “I think of songs as physical spaces,” Jamila says. “Writing a song feels like decorating my space with things that make me happy or reflect who I am.” The message of HEAVN, the album, and Jamila, the musician and poet, are clear: all parts strengthen the whole. Born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, Woods grew up in a family of music lovers. She was a member of her grandmother’s church choir as well as the Chicago Children’s Choir and often sat next to her parents’ speakers, singing along to their sizeable music collection while surrounding herself with things she admired. But it took a surprise poetry class with the high school arts program Gallery 37 for Jamila to finally find her metaphorical and literal voice. “Through poetry, I realized you are the expert of your own experience,” she says. “You can tell your story the best and no one else can tell it for you. You can focus on what you lack, comparing yourself to other people, or you can focus on what you can do right now with your voice.” Her interest in poetry grew with age, taking her to Brown University, where she often participated in open mics. But music still lingered in the background even if she wasn’t necessarily confident of her skills. “I definitely always wanted to be a performer or be a singer,” Jamila said. “I always had that in my mind, but I didn’t think I had the voice of a solo artist.” She joined the acapella group Shades of Brown where she learned how to arrange music for her peers. It became a skill she later utilized when crafting her own songs. “I thought about the parts everyone would sing and that really influenced the way I started to write songs,” she offers. Music–like poetry– is personal, she says: “It became a way to stop hiding, to actually be the most honest with myself through writing. It helps me check in with myself.” And that honesty translated to HEAVN, an album she describes as a collection of, “nontraditional love songs pushing the idea of what makes a love song.” Here, you’ll find the bits and pieces of her past and present that make Jamila: family, the city of Chicago, self-care, the black women she calls friends. In 2016, Chicago-based hip-hop label Closed Sessions released HEAVN. Working with Closed Sessions gave Jamila a home to help craft a complete, singular body of work. “That’s been the coolest thing,” she says. “Just being connected with so many people in Chicago. I like that they’re local.” HEAVN features a variety of producers, including oddCouple, a fellow Closed Sessions signee who produced five of the album’s 12 tracks. “Working with oddCouple was when I really started thinking of [HEAVN] as an album,” she adds. Other producers on the album include Peter Cottontale and even Jamila’s sister. In 2017, Jamila partners with Jagjaguwar and Closed Sessions to re-release the critically-acclaimed HEAVN. On the album’s title track, which samples the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” Jamila explores how black people’s history influences their ability to love each other. “How do we love in our current situation, with the everyday violences we have to endure?” she asks. “Holy” connects to Jamila’s life growing up in church, sampling a gospel song and utilizing a psalm structure to talk about self love. “In church, there was a lot of emphasis on love–like love your neighbor, love God–but not self love,” she says. “When I wrote ‘Holy,’ I wanted to remember to take care of myself. It was an affirmation mantra for me.” Elsewhere, Jamila plays with contrast to tell a bigger story. On “VRY BLK,” she uses black girl hand clap games to talk about police brutality. “It might sound innocent, but it’s really not,” Jamila says. “BLK Girl Soldier,” a song Jamila describes as a partner to “VRY BLK,” focuses on solidarity. “It’s very prideful,” Jamila says. “I’m talking about this violence that happens, but not staying in a place of feeling victimized.” Jamila is an artist of substance. Her music, crafted with a sturdy foundation of her passions and influences, gets to the heart of things. True and pure in its construction and execution, it is also the best representation of Jamila herself: strong in her roots, confident in her ideas, and attuned to the people, places and things shaping her world.

There’s one moment critical to understanding the emotional and cultural heft of *Lemonade*—Beyoncé’s genre-obliterating blockbuster sixth album—and it arrives at the end of “Freedom,” a storming empowerment anthem that samples a civil-rights-era prison song and features Kendrick Lamar. An elderly woman’s voice cuts in: \"I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up,” she says. “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.” The speech—made by her husband JAY-Z’s grandmother Hattie White on her 90th birthday in 2015—reportedly inspired the concept behind this radical project, which arrived with an accompanying film as well as words by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. Both the album and its visual companion are deeply tied to Beyoncé’s identity and narrative (her womanhood, her blackness, her husband’s infidelity) and make for Beyoncé\'s most outwardly revealing work to date. The details, of course, are what make it so relatable, what make each song sting. Billed upon its release as a tribute to “every woman’s journey of self-knowledge and healing,” the project is furious, defiant, anguished, vulnerable, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorous, and brave—a vivid personal statement from the most powerful woman in music, released without warning in a time of public scrutiny and private suffering. It is also astonishingly tough. Through tears, even Beyoncé has to summon her inner Beyoncé, roaring, “I’ma keep running ’cause a winner don’t quit on themselves.” This panoramic strength–lyrical, vocal, instrumental, and personal–nudged her public image from mere legend to something closer to real-life superhero. Every second of *Lemonade* deserves to be studied and celebrated (the self-punishment in “Sorry,” the politics in “Formation,” the creative enhancements from collaborators like James Blake, Robert Plant, and Karen O), but the song that aims the highest musically may be “Don’t Hurt Yourself”—a Zeppelin-sampling psych-rock duet with Jack White. “This is your final warning,” she says in a moment of unnerving calm. “If you try this shit again/You gon\' lose your wife.” In support, White offers a word to the wise: “Love God herself.”

Brooklyn art-rockers Parquet Courts have sometimes obscured their warmth under a cover of discord, challenging song structures and sardonic detachment. Their fifth album simplifies and purifies their sound to thrilling effect though. Whether they’re dovetailing or duelling, Andrew Savage and Austin Brown’s punchy riffs sublimate into the band’s poppiest hooks yet. There’s emotional engagement too, with Savage opening up his heartache and isolation on the bittersweet “Human Performance” and “Berlin Got Blurry”’s collision of thrumming post-punk and surf guitar licks.

Recorded over the course of a year against a backdrop of personal instability, "Human Performance" massively expands the idea of what a Parquet Courts record can be. They've been one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the last 5 years; this is the record that backs all those words up. “Every day it starts, anxiety,” began the first song on 2014’s "Content Nausea." Those were essentially the song’s only lyrics, but "Human Performance" picks up where that thought left off, picking apart the anxieties of modern life: “The unavoidable noise of NYC that can be maddening, the kind of the impossible struggle against clutter, whether it's physical or mental or social,” says singer, guitarist and "Human Performance" producer/mixer Austin Brown. There has always been the emotional side of Parquet Courts, which has always had an important balance with the more discussed cerebral side, but Savage sees "Human Performance" as a redistribution of weight in that balance. "I began to question my humanity, and if it was always as sincere as I thought, or if it was a performance,” says Savage. “I felt like a sort of malfunctioning apparatus,” he says. “Like a machine programmed to be human showing signs of defect.” The sonic diversity, time, and existential effort that went into its creation makes "Human Performance" Parquet Courts' most ambitious record to date. It's a work of incredible creative vision born of seemingly insurmountable adversity. It is also their most accessible record yet.

Tacocat know that fun is much more effective than anger, a credo that the Seattle feminist punks stick to on their third album. Their garage rock sound has mellowed a little, but their lyrics are still spunky as ever, railing about periods, the tech bros who ruin their city, bad boyfriends and mansplainers, and singing the praises of *X Files* lead Dana Scully, horses, night swimming, and on “Leisure Bees,” six dollar wine and wearing pyjamas “\'til the end of time.” It\'s hard to argue with their stump speech.

On this, his first masterpiece, Chance evolves—from Rapper to pop visionary. Influenced by gospel music, *Coloring Book* finds the Chicago native moved by the Holy Spirit and the current state of his hometown. “I speak to God in public,” he says on “Blessings,” its radiant closer. “He think the new sh\*t jam / I think we mutual fans.”

Jayson Jenkins, better known as Mick Jenkins (his stage name), is an American hip-hop recording artist born in Huntsville, Alabama on April 16th, 1991. He was then raised on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. Jenkins is a member of Free Nation, a hip-hop group that promotes creative thought without accepting narrow views imposed by the powers that be. In the spring of 2013 Mick released a mixtape entitled “Trees and Truths” that quickly became a local favorite, buoyed by acid jazz-influenced production, biblical allegory and lacerating lyricism. The project was by far his most lyrical body of work and caught the attention of Chicago’s incipient gatekeepers. A few months after its release, a collaboration with Chance The Rapper and Vic Mensa came in the form of a single entitled “Crossroads”, which was a summer hit. On August 12, 2014, Jenkins released “The Water[s]”, a project spearheaded by the release of "Martyrs”, a record that juxtaposes harsh truths about society with thought-provoking single with various underlying messages and subtle notions. Centered around the idea of comparing water to life's truths, “The Water[s]” has garnered national attention and serves as Jenkins' breakout project while receiving critical acclaim.  The Healing Component is in reference to love being a healing component and love being able to heal all.

In the four years between Frank Ocean’s debut album, *channel ORANGE*, and his second, *Blonde*, he had revealed some of his private life—he published a Tumblr post about having been in love with a man—but still remained as mysterious and skeptical towards fame as ever, teasing new music sporadically and then disappearing like a wisp on the wind. Behind great innovation, however, is a massive amount of work, and so when *Blonde* was released one day after a 24-hour, streaming performance art piece (*Endless*) and alongside a limited-edition magazine entitled *Boys Don’t Cry*, one could forgive him for being slippery. *Endless* was a visual album that featured the mundane beauty of Ocean woodworking in a studio, soundtracked by abstract and meandering ambient music. *Blonde* built on those ideas and imbued them with a little more form, taking a left-field, often minimalist approach to his breezy harmonies and ever-present narrative lyricism. His confidence was crucial to the risk of creating a big multimedia project for a sophomore album, but it also extended to his songwriting—his voice surer of itself (“Solo”), his willingness to excavate his weird impulses more prominent (“Good Guy,” “Pretty Sweet,” among others). Though *Blonde* packs 17 tracks into one quick hour, it’s a sprawling palette of ideas, a testament to the intelligence of flying one’s own artistic freak flag and trusting that audiences will meet you where you’re at. In this case, fans were enthusiastic enough for *Blonde* to rack up No. 1s on charts around the world.

Nearly twenty years into a career that has seen Jimmy LaValle exercising his creativity across the realms of film scoring, sound collage, and electronic / rock music, via instrumental and vocal-driven compositions alike, LaValle and THE ALBUM LEAF are poised to deliver yet another sonic triumph with 2016’s 'Between Waves'. Born out of a thorough reinvention of LaValle's creative process and approach, 'Between Waves' is THE ALBUM LEAF's first proper full-length record in over six years and the first to be recorded and produced as a complete band, and was written with greater emphasis on the group dynamic. The album displays multifaceted, meticulous sound design, a keen ear for balancing disparate influences, and the strongest senses of dynamics, rhythm, and composition THE ALBUM LEAF has displayed to date. From the moody evolution of "Glimmering Lights" to the wistful trip-hop stylings of "New Soul" and beyond, 'Between Waves' is a gorgeous collection of euphoric melodies and emotionally charged, multi-instrumental driven soundscapes from the longstanding innovators. This is intelligent, beautifully composed music at its most inventive, most confident, and most impressive.

On their final album, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi rekindle a chemistry that endeared them to hip-hop fans worldwide. Filled with exploratory instrumental beds, creative samples, supple rhyming, and serious knock, it passes the headphone and car stereo test. “Kids…” is like a rap nerd’s fever dream, Andre 3000 and Q-Tip slaying bars. Phife—who passed away in March 2016—is the album’s scion, his roughneck style and biting humor shining through on “Black Spasmodic” and “Whateva Will Be.” “We the People” and “The Killing Season” (featuring Kanye West) show ATCQ’s ability to move minds as well as butts. *We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service* is not a wake or a comeback—it’s an extended visit with a long-missed friend, and a mic-dropping reminder of Tribe’s importance and influence.

How does a punk follow up a landmark album such as *Transgender Dysphoria Blues*? For *Shape Shift with Me*, Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace proves that writing a bunch of brokenhearted pop songs is always a good option. There are plenty of punk ragers here, such as “Dead Rats,” but jangly odes to heartache \"Crash\" and \"Boyfriend\" bounce and chime in ways that no other Against Me! songs ever have, while \"Rebecca\" is a fizzy New Wave ode to the anxiety spawned by new love.

More than just a protest statement, this politically charged album is at once an exorcism of rage and a constructive healing ritual. Behind a refreshingly inventive beat, “Joy and Peace” allows solemnity, anger, and patience to coexist. In “Pyramids” and “Home,” Common and producer/drummer Karriem Riggins’ fusion of gospel and classic boom-bap cuts a new path toward justice and liberation.

Michael Kiwanuka’s stunning second LP proves he’s an artist with something to say. *Love & Hate* is a timely and timeless set of slow-burning soul that recalls Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, and Curtis Mayfield. Produced by Danger Mouse, it sounds of the past and present all at once—as it does in the string-embossed swing of “Black Man in a White World.”

The Australian group finally returns with its long-rumored follow-up to *Since I Left You*, the 2000 album that earned them a ravenous following. *Wildflower* is a continuous mix of the wild and weird, another hallucinogenic collage of samples ranging from R&B to orchestral pop. From the calypso-klezmer \"Frankie Sinatra,\" featuring Danny Brown, to Biz Markie chomping over a Beatles sample on \"Noisy Eater,” it’s the tour de force soundtrack to music\'s past and present.

Every element of Kendrick Lamar’s *untitled unmastered.* tells you something about the Compton MC’s provocative, multi-layered genius. Take the contrast of the collection\'s ultra-generic title and its attention-grabbing, out-of-left-field release. Take the retro-futuristic, Funkadelic-inspired grooves that simmer under tracks like “untitled 02” and “untitled 06.” These are only the beginning of the album\'s hypnotic, nuanced nod to hip-hop’s deep roots and unstoppable political and expressive currency. Songs like “untitled 03” and “untitled 05”—with layered references, wild-eyed jazz solos, and cutting insight—continue Lamar\'s winning streak.

On *Patch the Sky*, veteran noisemaker Bob Mould once again marries light with dark, crafting catchy, seductive melodies and igniting them in a furious six-string squall. There’s driving, doomy, and dramatic alt-rock (“Hold On”); dangerous, pit-ready punk (“Losing Time”); and endless oceans of gorgeous, overdriven guitar (“Black Confetti”). \"Lucifer and God\" pulls heaven and hell together, mixing dreamy vocal parts with a blistering \'90s-inspired din. By the time you reach the massive swell of the closing “Monument”—with its pounding, slow-burn crescendo—you’ll be shaken physically and emotionally.

After the lonesome folk and skeletal roadhouse soul of her debut album, 2012’s *Half Way Home*, Angel Olsen turned up the intensity on *Burn Your Fire for No Witness*, and she does it again on *MY WOMAN*. The title’s in all caps for a reason: The St. Louis, Missouri, native’s third album is bigger in both the acrobatic feats of her always-agile voice and the widescreen, hi-fi sound that Olsen and co-producer Justin Raisen bring to the table. With the very first song, “Intern,” it’s clear that Olsen has taken us somewhere new. A slow dance in a dive bar at last call, it might be familiar turf were it not for the synthesizers that cast an eerie glow across the song’s red-velvet backdrop. “Never Be Mine” harnesses the anguish of ’60s girl groups in jangling guitar and crisp backbeats; “Shut Up Kiss Me” couches desire in terms so heated the mic practically melts beneath Olsen’s yelp. Mindful of its ancestry but never expressly retro, the album is a triumph of rock ’n’ roll pathos, an exquisite dissertation on the poetry of twang and tremolo. And even if “There is nothing new/Under the sun,” as Olsen sings on the fateful “Heart Shaped Face,” she is forever finding ways to file down everyday truths to a finer point, drawing blood with every new prick. As she sighs over watery piano and fathomless reverb on the heartbreaking closer, “Pops,” “It hurts to start dreaming/Dreaming again.” But that pain is precisely what makes *MY WOMAN* so unforgettable, and so true.

Anyone reckless enough to have typecast Angel Olsen according to 2013’s ‘Burn Your Fire For No Witness’ is in for a sizable surprise with her third album, ‘MY WOMAN’. The crunchier, blown-out production of the former is gone, but that fire is now burning wilder. Her disarming, timeless voice is even more front-and-centre than before, and the overall production is lighter. Yet the strange, raw power and slowly unspooling incantations of her previous efforts remain, so anyone who might attempt to pigeonhole Olsen as either an elliptical outsider or a pop personality is going to be wrong whichever way they choose - Olsen continues to reign over the land between the two with a haunting obliqueness and sophisticated grace. Given its title, and track names like ‘Sister’ and ‘Woman’, it would be easy to read a gender-specific message into ‘MY WOMAN’, but Olsen has never played her lyrical content straight. She explains: “I’m definitely using scenes that I’ve replayed in my head, in the same way that I might write a script and manipulate a memory to get it to fit. But I think it’s important that people can interpret things the way that they want to.” That said, Olsen concedes that if she could locate any theme, whether in the funny, synth-laden ‘Intern’ or the sadder songs which are collected on the record’s latter half, “then it’s maybe the complicated mess of being a woman and wanting to stand up for yourself, while also knowing that there are things you are expected to ignore, almost, for the sake of loving a man. I’m not trying to make a feminist statement with every single record, just because I’m a woman. But I do feel like there are some themes that relate to that, without it being the complete picture.” Over her two previous albums, she’s given us reverb-shrouded poetic swoons, shadowy folk, grunge-pop band workouts and haunting, finger-picked epics. ‘MY WOMAN’ is an exhilarating complement to her past work, and one for which Olsen recalibrated her writing/recording approach and methods to enter a new music-making phase. She wrote some songs on the piano she’d bought at the end of the previous album tour, but she later switched it out for synth and/or Mellotron on a few of them, such as the aforementioned ‘Intern’. ‘MY WOMAN’ is lovingly put together as a proper A-side and a B-side, featuring the punchier, more pop/rock-oriented songs up front, and the longer, more reflective tracks towards the end. The rollicking ‘Shut Up Kiss Me’, for example, appears early on - its nervy grunge quality belying a subtle desperation, as befits any song about the exhaustion point of an impassioned argument. Another crowning moment comes in the form of the melancholic and Velvets-esque ‘Heart-shaped Face’, while the compelling ‘Sister’ and ‘Woman’ are the only songs not sung live. They also both run well over the seven-minute mark: the first being a triumph of reverb-splashed, ’70s country rock, cast along Fleetwood Mac lines with a Neil Young caged-tiger guitar solo to cap it off. The latter is a wonderful essay in vintage electronic pop and languid, psychedelic soul. Because her new songs demanded a plurality of voices, Olsen sings in a much broader range of styles on the album, and she brought in guest guitarist Seth Kauffman to augment her regular band of bass player Emily Elhaj, drummer Joshua Jaeger and guitarist Stewart Bronaugh. As for a producer, Olsen took to Justin Raisen, who’s known for his work with Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira and Santigold, as well as opting to record live to tape at LA’s historic Vox Studios. As the record evolves, you get the sense that the “My Woman” of the title is Olsen herself - absolutely in command, but also willing to bend with the influence of collaborators and circumstances. If ever there was any pressure in the recording process, it’s totally undetectable in the result. An intuitively smart, warmly communicative and fearlessly generous record, ‘MY WOMAN’ speaks to everyone. That it might confound expectation is just another of its strengths.

Maxwell spent years searching for the perfect sound in his head. blackSUMMERS\'night shows the wait was worth it. Silky ribbons of organic R&B flutter out the speakers. Dark synths on “Hostage” and “The Fall” shows Maxwell moving with the times yet sounding positively timeless.

DJ Shadow, widely acknowledged as a crucial figure in the development of experimental, instrumental hip-hop, will return with ‘The Mountain Will Fall’ worldwide on June 24 via Mass Appeal Records [and Believe Digital in France], his first full length release since 2011. The 12-track album finds DJ Shadow exploring new realms in addition to the deep samples and kinetic soundscapes that helped to launch his career 20 years ago. On ‘The Mountain Will Fall’ he’s shifted further toward original composition, a vast experimentation of beats and textures, synthesizers and live instruments including horns and woodwinds. The album features Run The Jewels, Nils Frahm, Matthew Halsall, Ernie Fresh and more.

*You Want It Darker* joins *Old Ideas* and *Popular Problems* in a trio of gorgeous, ruminative albums that find Cohen settling his affairs, spiritual (“Leaving the Table”), romantic (“If I Didn’t Have Your Love”), and otherwise. At 35, he sounded like an old man—at 82, he sounds eternal.

Neko Case, k.d. lang, and Laura Veirs are a bewitchingly lovely folk-rock supergroup. On their debut album as case/lang/veirs, the singer/songwriter titans combine their distinctive vocals and beguiling melodies. The songs on which Case takes lead (like the gorgeous opening track “Atomic Number”) are girded with poignant melancholy, while lang’s tracks (the yearning “Blue Fires” is one such highlight) are as smooth and seductive as her legendary croon. Veirs brings a clever indie-rock sensibility to the warm, wonderful “Best Kept Secret.” With its luminous harmonies and lush arrangements, *case / lang / veirs* is a thing of beauty.

American blues has long been part of the Stones’ DNA, and *Blue & Lonesome* is a greasy, grimy tribute to their blues heroes. Deep cuts by the likes of Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf, Magic Sam, and Little Walter are delivered with soulful reverence, showing that even rock ‘n’ roll legends are still just music fans at heart.