SPIN's 22 Best Albums of 2022

Anyone encountering the gorgeous, ’70s-style orchestral pop of *And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow* might be surprised to learn that Natalie Mering started her journey as an experimental-noise musician. Listen closer, though, and you’ll hear an album whose beauty isn’t just tempered by visions of almost apocalyptic despair, but one that also turns beauty itself into a kind of weapon against the deadness and cynicism of modern life. After all, what could be more rebellious in 2022 than being as relentlessly and unapologetically beautiful as possible? Stylistically, the album draws influence from the gold-toned sounds of California artists like Harry Nilsson, Judee Sill, and even the Carpenters. Its mood evokes the strange mix of cheerfulness and violent intimations that makes late-’60s Los Angeles so captivating to the cultural imagination. And like, say, The Beach Boys circa *Pet Sounds* or *Smiley Smile*, the sophistication of Mering’s arrangements—the mix of strings, synthesizer touches, soft-focus ambience, and bone-dry intimacy—is more evocative of childhood innocence than adult mastery. Where her 2019 breakthrough, *Titanic Rising*, emphasized doom, *Hearts Aglow*—the second installment of a stated trilogy—emphasizes hope. She writes about alienation in a way that feels both compassionate and angst-free (“It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody”), and of romance so total, it could make you as sick as a faceful of roses (“Hearts Aglow,” “Grapevine”). And when the hard times come, she prays not for thicker armor, but to be made so soft that the next touch might crush her completely (“God Turn Me Into a Flower”). All told, *And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow* is the feather that knocks you over.

August 25th, 2022 Los Angeles, CA Hello Listener, Well, here we are! Still making it all happen in our very own, fully functional shit show. My heart, like a glow stick that’s been cracked, lights up my chest in a little explosion of earnestness. And when your heart's on fire, smoke gets in your eyes. Titanic Rising was the first album of three in a special trilogy. It was an observation of things to come, the feelings of impending doom. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about entering the next phase, the one in which we all find ourselves today — we are literally in the thick of it. Feeling around in the dark for meaning in a time of instability and irrevocable change. Looking for embers where fire used to be. Seeking freedom from algorithms and a destiny of repetitive loops. Information is abundant, and yet so abstract in its use and ability to provoke tangible actions. Our mediums of communication are fraught with caveats. Our pain, an ironic joke born from a gridlocked panopticon of our own making, swirling on into infinity. I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs, and hyper isolation kept coming up for me. “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” is a Buddhist anthem, ensconced in the interconnectivity of all beings, and the fraying of our social fabric. Our culture relies less and less on people. This breeds a new, unprecedented level of isolation. The promise we can buy our way out of that emptiness offers little comfort in the face of fear we all now live with – the fear of becoming obsolete. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal. Technology is harvesting our attention away from each other. We all have a “Grapevine” entwined around our past with unresolved wounds and pain. Being in love doesn’t necessarily mean being together. Why else do so many love songs yearn for a connection? Could it be narcissism? We encourage each other to aspire – to reach for the external to quell our desires, thinking goals of wellness and bliss will alleviate the baseline anxiety of living in a time like ours. We think the answer is outside ourselves, through technology, imaginary frontiers that will magically absolve us of all our problems. We look everywhere but in ourselves for a salve. In “God Turn Me into a Flower,” I relay the myth of Narcissus, whose obsession with a reflection in a pool leads him to starve and lose all perception outside his infatuation. In a state of great hubris, he doesn’t recognize that the thing he so passionately desired was ultimately just himself. God turns him into a pliable flower who sways with the universe. The pliable softness of a flower has become my mantra as we barrel on towards an uncertain fate. I see the heart as a guide, with an emanation of hope, shining through in this dark age. Somewhere along the line, we lost the plot on who we are. Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order. These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment. And maybe that’s the beginning of the nuanced journey towards understanding the natural cycles of life and death, all over again. Thoughts and Prayers, Natalie Mering (aka Weyes Blood)

New Orleans no-wave punks Special Interest announce ‘Endure’, their third album and Rough Trade Records debut, for release on Friday, November 4th, 2022. Endure was self-produced and recorded at HighTower in New Orleans with engineering by James Whitten, mixed by Collin Dupuis (Angel Olsen, Yves Tumor, Lana Del Rey). Special Interest's songs recall the art rock of Sparks and The B-52s as much as politically-minded punk, and on “Midnight Legend,” the group is more overtly pop than ever before — making something fun during a time of frequent sadness became a central priority. But that doesn’t mean anything is simple or surface-level, with a darkness often treading beneath the smooth production. For as much as the band plays with dissonance, Maria Elena’s expressive guitar work and Nathan Cassiani’s grooving bass lines effortlessly weave together, and shade out the soundscape brought into existence by Alli Logout’s commanding vocal presence.

“The Bad Plus isn’t about instruments; it’s about the music,” bassist Reid Anderson tells Apple Music. “The band is whatever we say it is, and this record is a testament to that fact.” Twenty-one years on from their explosive piano trio debut, traversing everything from free jazz to punk, the Minneapolis-formed combo keeps evolving. Following the departure of pianist Orrin Evans in 2021, founding members Anderson and drummer Dave King faced a difficult decision: find a new formation or call it quits. Thankfully, the pair called up powerhouse instrumentalists Chris Speed on tenor sax and Ben Monder on guitar to transform The Bad Plus into a quartet. Their resulting 15th studio record is both a continuation of their angular and unpredictable sound, as well as the start of a new project. From the meditative opening of “Motivations II” to the psychedelic distortions of “Not Even Close To Far Off” and the avant-garde improvisations of “Sick Fire,” The Bad Plus may be in a new era, but they still deliver on the same arresting compositions. “It’s a chance for us to give our music a new context—a rebirth of sorts,” Anderson says. Read on for his in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Motivations II”** “Pre-pandemic, each year or so, we’d plan on making a new record, and then myself and Dave would get to work writing the tunes. For this album, we had more writing time because of the lockdowns, and it ended up being a great opportunity to work out ways of writing more efficiently. ‘Motivations II’ is a great example of that more minimal and efficient style, trying to get a lot out of a small amount of music. It felt like the perfect overture and introduction for the record because it eases you into the rest of the tracks.” **“Sun Wall”** “Dave and I have two distinct styles of writing. He has more of a driving explosiveness in his compositions, and his forms are often quirky and unconventional. ‘Sun Wall’ is a great representation of how our strengths as writers lie in our contrasts. The track features Ben Monder on guitar, and he plays an extraordinary, distorted solo, which is rough around the edges. That sound encapsulates how we’re not trying to make a pristine product—we want friction and tension, as well as ambience.” **“Not Even Close To Far Off”** “We always want to embrace the rock music that we grew up with and that shaped us into wanting to be musicians. We are children of the 1980s, listening to New Wave and driving eighth-note music like Depeche Mode or The Police or Peter Gabriel. This track embraces the power of that, rather than feeling like we have to pay homage to jazz instead. It is also a great vehicle for our saxophonist, Chris Speed, who plays an amazing solo here.” **“You Won’t See Me Before I Come Back”** “This is one of my compositions, and it takes the listener on a journey through a more epic soundscape before reaching a sense of an arrival at the end. A lot of what we do in our music is to embrace different stylistic touchstones, and ‘You Won’t See Me Before I Come Back’ is unabashedly melodic, with a pop sensibility to its arc.” **“Sick Fire”** “Another important ingredient in our music is the avant-garde. ‘Sick Fire’ is free improvisation, and it is a testament to the responsibility of playing free. When you have no structure going into a song, you have a real duty to listen and shape the music to make it into a song. Pop and the avant-garde are the two poles for us, and there is no hierarchy there—they are equally important.” **“Stygian Pools”** “Titles are an important jumping-off point for the listener’s imagination, and they help make each song into its own world. There’s something dark about this track and that is where the title originated from. We usually know what the instrumentation for the band is going to be before writing a record, but this time, some of the music was conceived for the original trio and had to be adapted. ‘Stygian Pools’ is one such composition that popped into my head when I was walking around London one day. I sang it into my phone and then took it to the new band to be worked on.” **“In The Bright Future”** “I wanted to write a song for this record that was just based on a single bass ostinato being played throughout the whole composition. Specific basslines are quite unusual in jazz, but they can be a really effective tool. ‘In The Bright Future’ was a phrase that I kept saying, sometimes ironically, during the pandemic. It’s cynical, since you’re never actually ‘in’ the future, but there is a hopefulness to the music, and I think it carries a message of optimism.” **\"The Dandy”** “Dave conceived this track as the closing kiss goodbye to the record. It has a certain meditative arc to it that feels like a way of sailing off gently into the night and undulating as we fade out. I’m not sure who the character of The Dandy is though—perhaps it’s an homage to the dandy in all of us!”

Twenty-one years after making their landmark debut as a genre exploding piano-bass-drums trio, the always adventurous group have reinvented themselves as a dynamic quartet. “If after more than 20 years you can put out a record that has the energy of a debut album, to me, that’s saying something. It’s what reinventing yourself is all about.” Reid Anderson “We believe we’re making the same statement we did with the piano twenty-one years ago, just with a completely different instrumentation.” Dave King “Evolution is necessary for life and creativity. We’ve evolved, but we’re still The Bad Plus.” say Dave King and Reid Anderson, founding drummer and bassist respectively of the groundbreaking band known then and now as The Bad Plus. This new iteration of The Bad Plus makes its vital eponymous debut The Bad Plus (Edition Records) now, as always, challenging convention by pushing their inimitable approach to jazz in boundary-breaking new directions. Though the components may have changed, what remains is The Bad Plus’s unique musical language and their undeniable drive and intent. Reid Anderson says; “If after more than 20 years you can put out a record that has the energy of a debut album, to me, that’s saying something. It’s what reinventing yourself is all about.” “We believe we’re making the same statement we did with the piano twenty-one years ago,” says Dave King, “just with a completely different instrumentation.” Reid Anderson continues, “To me the music on this record feels as fresh as anything we’ve ever done.” Of course, The Bad Plus have been at this crossroads before, changing their original lineup in 2017 with pianist Orrin Evans taking the seat previously occupied by founding member Ethan Iverson. Two acclaimed albums – including 2019’s inspired Edition Records debut, Activate Infinity – followed, but in 2021 the decision was made to reinvent the ensemble once again. “We purposely walked away from getting another pianist,” King says. “Instead, we went this other way. We found a new sound and a more expansive range.” This is a defining album for The Bad Plus in many ways; in their 21 year journey, in sound and in change of personnel. But the consistent core thread remains. Reid continues, “Dave and I grew up playing in bands and loving bands. We wanted to form a band and make whatever sacrifices were necessary to be in that band. We’re here to make the best music we can collectively and not in service of anyone’s personal ego. But to talk about what The Bad Plus is, it’s the writing and the song, and the perspective of what a song can be as a personal statement. That’s what we’re fighting for; a personal identity and respect for the imagination and the Song.” Rather than simply seeking out a new pianist, Anderson and King took a hard left turn and enlisted a pair of remarkably gifted musicians in Ben Monder – a visionary guitarist known for his work both as leader and as sideman with David Bowie (Black Star), Theo Bleckmann, Guillermo Klein, and Paul Motian, to name but a few – and saxophonist Chris Speed, an award-winning leader/co-leader of myriad modern ensembles and longtime musical running buddy of both King and Anderson. “These are not some young kids we found from a music school,” says King. Notwithstanding the new members’ extraordinary pedigrees, the process of developing this new ‘Bad Plus took hard work and perseverance. A series of intense rehearsals began in the summer of 2021. The quartet pored over new and old compositions by Reid and Dave and emerged with a singular group sound. The results are a thrillingly energetic approach that retains all of the band’s vaunted adventurousness while simultaneously setting them on a new pathway of genre-agonistic musical exploration. Working with engineer Brett Bullion, the band have fully maximised the sonic and dynamic possibilities of the new lineup, showcasing the virtuosity and musicality of Speed and Monder while maintaining their trademark pursuit of relentless invention and excellence. From breakneck avant-garde explosivity (“Sun Wall”) to majestic psychedelia (“In The Bright Future”) to dreamy meditation (“The Dandy”), the new LP blazes with the very same punk attitude that has defined The Bad Plus for over two decades. Invention and evolution have always been key to The Bad Plus’s creative ethos. A jazz group that has never been a jazz band, they have propelled the genre towards a new plane that might not have been discovered without them. Having recontextualized their own chemistry, The Bad Plus not only affirms the band’s continuing relevance and longevity, it burns bright on its own terms as an extraordinarily powerful debut from an all-new creative force to be reckoned with. “We feel like we’ve pulled off a magic trick,” Dave King says, “changing the lineup from a trio to a quartet with guitar and saxophone that still sounds coherent as The Bad Plus. Having two main composers was our greatest card to play. Our language remains, and that’s the magic.”

Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have been through a lot together in their 40-plus years as collaborators. They’ve toured the world countless times in Tears for Fears, the New Wave group they founded in 1981; bounced back from a breakup in the ’90s; and released their sixth album, *Everybody Loves a Happy Ending*, as well as a smattering of singles, in the 2000s. Their 1982 breakout single “Mad World,” “Head Over Heels,” “Shout,” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” remain timeless favorites for generations of listeners, and several chart-topping artists, from The Weeknd to Kanye West and Drake, have sampled their hits to elevate their own. With *The Tipping Point*, their seventh studio album and first LP in 18 years, they’re immensely satisfied with what they’ve written together—partly because they took their time to write their way back to each other, and largely because they did so on their own terms. “We spent a lot of time doing all these writing sessions over a bunch of years with a lot of what are considered more modern songwriters, and it didn\'t really work out for us because we felt it was slightly dishonest,” Smith tells Apple Music. “We were left with a lot of things that seemed like attempts at making a modern hit single, and I don\'t think that\'s what we do. We\'re really an album band. We made *The Hurting* before \'Mad World\' was released. We made *Songs From the Big Chair* before \'Everybody\' and \'Shout\' were released. We sat down, just the two of us, with two acoustic guitars, and tried to forge a path forward. It felt more honest, and the material at the end of it was far better, probably because it was more honest.” “No Small Thing,” *The Tipping Point*\'s first track, is a folk-tinged ballad that builds into a sweeping epic, and it\'s one Smith points to as an example of what they hoped to achieve when they reconnected and started writing: “This song is definitely a journey, and albums for us should be a journey.”

Few people have ever used Yoruba and Fon to as deliciously good effect as Angelique Kidjo, and the veteran singer isn\'t stopping now. Lulled by the caressing embrace of Ibrahim Maalouf\'s trumpeting, she saunters through sometimes sorrowful but mostly masterful meandering in Yoruba on *Queen of Sheba*, their joint album. A collaboration that brings together two celebrated musicians from Africa and the Middle East, the project is as exquisite as its titular monarch, the legendary figure who straddled both regions several millennia ago. Kidjo\'s piercing vocals reverberate from the tearful \"Omije\" to \"Alikama,\" where she exalts Solomon as “Eyin L\'Oba Jerusalem” (“You are king of Jerusalem”). On “Obinrin,” the storytelling opens with Yoruba numerology, a style more likely to be genial tinkering than poetic coincidence, since the etymology of the word *Sheba* is linked to the Hebrew number seven.

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

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

“When it’s just us two, it’s really easy to make music,” JD BECK tells Apple Music. “We play around, and the tracks come pouring out.” Instrumental prodigies DOMi & JD BECK certainly have a telepathic connection when it comes to creativity. First meeting in 2018 at the NAMM trade show in Southern California, where the two teenagers were individually invited to perform as part of a larger ensemble, Texas-born drummer BECK formed an instant connection with French keyboardist and Berklee student DOMi Louna (born Domitille Degalle). The pair soon began writing fast-paced, note-packed jams to upload to their Instagram, and by 2020, they had caught the attention of multi-instrumentalist Anderson .Paak. Swiftly signing them to his APESHIT label, he challenged the duo to release an updated body of work as a debut. “He basically told us we could do better than the album’s worth of material we already had,” BECK says. “So, we put together a wish list of collaborators and got to work.” The result is *NOT TiGHT*, a 15-track jazz-fusion odyssey of head-nodding hip-hop, psychedelic vocoder experiments, and rhythmic freakouts. “We just wanted to surprise ourselves with this album,” DOMi says. “This music is an expression of ourselves at our core.” Here, DOMi & JD BECK offer their thoughts on each of the album’s tracks. **“LOUNA’S iNTRO”** DOMi Louna: “We thought the album needed book-ending to help bring the listener in and then back out of the tracks. We already had the outro, “THANK U,” so we wrote these chords and added synth patches before sending it to violin, double bass, viola, cello, and harp players all around the world. It was like a mini online orchestra opening the album for us.” **“WHATUP”** DL: “We’ve had these chords since 2018, as they were part of a track that was going to be the intro for our original album. We kept playing around with it when we were locked down together during the pandemic, and after deconstructing it a few times, we decided to make a new tune. We added a drum solo section, and so now the record has two intros before we get into ‘SMiLE.’” **“SMiLE”** JD BECK: “I sing dumb little melodies a lot, and when I was in the bathroom on my phone one day in 2018, the melody just came to me. I put it together in my head and shouted to DOMi to quickly set it to some chords.” **“BOWLiNG” (feat. Thundercat)** JDB: “We met Thundercat around the same time as meeting each other. Whenever we were in LA, we would go and stay with him and take over his house. We always write a lot with him when we’re there—we must have 50 song ideas together already. Back in 2018, we’d all go bowling a lot, as it’s his favorite thing to do, and so we wrote this song about hanging out in the bowling alley.” **“NOT TiGHT” (feat. Thundercat)** JDB: “It’s probably the closest representation of our sound—just singing random melodic lines to crazy chord combinations. In 2019, we played it for Thundercat, and he loved it so much that he wanted to be on it. He became the first instrumentalist to collaborate with us, and it was incredible to have him soloing on the track with DOMi.” **“TWO SHRiMPS” (feat. Mac DeMarco)** DL: “We wrote the instrumental for this track while we were on tour in 2019. JD had a little drum machine, which he made a loop on, and then I added the keyboard parts and put it in a 9/8 time signature. We met Mac the same day we met Anderson .Paak in 2019, and by 2020, we were spending a lot of time at Mac’s house. We played him this instrumental, and he started singing along to it, just listing random sandwich names. The track was originally called ‘Sandwiches of America.’ We ended up rerecording new lyrics with him, but thankfully it’s still food-related.” **“U DON’T HAVE TO ROB ME”** JDB: “I’ve been playing gigs by myself since I was 11, and I got used to the element of danger, being in cities late at night. When DOMi and I started going out in LA, you could feel when there was danger, like one day we were in the parking lot of the bowling alley at 1 am, and this dude asked us for a cigarette, and it really felt like he might pull a knife on us too. It made us think about how we never have cash—only cards that we can cancel easily—so why even go through that trouble of robbing us?” **“MOON” (feat. Herbie Hancock)** JDB: “Andy made us write down all our goals for the record, and among them was a list of people we’d love to work with. Herbie was at the top of those names. One of Andy’s managers had a connect with Herbie, and he called us one day to say that Herbie had watched our videos on YouTube and was down to collaborate.” DL: “We were shitting our pants, as we knew we now had to come up with the best song we’d ever written. *Sunlight* is some of our favorite stuff that Herbie has done with the vocoder, and so we wrote ‘MOON’ to that same vibe. Luckily, we got him on piano, too, and when we recorded it together in 2021, we got to hang out with him, which was amazing.” **“DUKE”** JDB: “This track is a George Duke reference. We had been hanging out a lot with Earl Sweatshirt and his producer Black Noise, and they inspired us to put three of our loops together into one track and then record it as a new song. The record is full of crazy songs, and we needed something to chill after Herbie—a track that has a natural feel.” **“TAKE A CHANCE” (feat. Anderson .Paak)** DL: “We really wanted a feature from Anderson, as we’re huge fans of his, and so we had to come up with something unique and very pretty for him to sing and play on. JD wrote this hook, and when we played it to Andy, he just started rapping over the verses, and then we all sang on the chorus. The whole track was a bunch of surprises and sections put together, since Andy can fit over pretty much anything.” **“SPACE MOUNTAiN”** JDB: “When we first got to LA, I couldn’t get into any clubs, so the only thing we ended up doing, apart from making music, was going to Disneyland. We went on the ride Space Mountain a lot, and it felt like the perfect title for this crazy tune. The first section is a loop we wrote in 2019, where I recorded the drums through an intense compressor, and then the second half used to be part of the original intro to our first album.” **“PiLOT” (feat. Anderson .Paak, Busta Rhymes & Snoop Dogg)** DL: “We made this beat in 2020, before we signed with Anderson. We used to send him clips of what we were making, and the day after we sent him this, he emailed it back with him and Busta on it, which was amazing. Once we signed, we had Snoop Dogg on our dream list of collabs, and we thought he would be perfect for ‘PiLOT.’ He was down for it, so we went to Snoop’s studio for six hours one day and recorded it all super smooth. It was very cool to see him and Andy interact and write to our loop.” **“WHOA” (feat. Kurt Rosenwinkel)** JDB: “DOMi wrote the first part of this tune when she was 12. It was on a random Sibelius session that she played by accident, and I loved it. I knew we had to do a song with it, and Kurt felt like the perfect fit. We met him through the drummer Louis Cole when we were in New York in 2019. A week after he had the track, he sent it back with him soloing from beginning to end. It was perfect.” **“SNiFF”** DL: “The original title for this was ‘You Can Sniff My Butt.’ JD wrote it in 2018, all in one go in front of me—and it’s one of my favorite things he’s ever made. We played it at every show as a closer and people loved its pace, so it felt like a good idea to close the record with it too. It was one of the earliest songs we came up with together.” **“THANK U”** JDB: “This used to be a crazy loop in a 13 time signature, which was called ‘Dermatologist’ because DOMi had just learned what that word was. We wrote it in an Airbnb somewhere in 2018 and then, when we came back to it a few years later for this record, we realized it was perfect to send to the mini-orchestra who played on the intro. It rounds out the album really well.”

**100 Best Albums** In 2017, *Ctrl*—a 14-track project rife with songs about love, sex, self-doubt, and heartbreak—became one of the most influential albums in R&B. *Ctrl* was the soundtrack for many people in their twenties, highlighting the growing pains of young adulthood. SZA’s vulnerability and raw honesty, coupled with ultra-relatable lyrics full of diary-like ruminations and conversations from friend group chats, are what made her debut so impactful. Where *Ctrl* reflected SZA’s journey towards finding self-love and acceptance, her long-awaited sophomore LP *SOS* finds the St. Louis-born singer-songwriter dealing with some of the same topics of love and relationships from a more self-assured place. She ditches the uncertainties of her romantic entanglements to save herself—most of the time. On the soulful and gritty album opener “SOS,” SZA reintroduces herself and says precisely what’s on her mind after a night of crying over a lost relationship: “I talk bullshit a lot/No more fuck shit, I’m done,” she swaggers. This isn’t the only song that shows her weariness towards relationships that no longer serve her; see also “Smoking on My Ex Pack” and “Far.” She finds the confidence to know that she doesn’t need to depend on a man to find happiness on “Conceited” and “Forgiveless.” However, not every song on the project is about moving on and leaving her past relationships behind her; SZA still has a penchant for making wrong decisions that may not end well for her (“Too Late,” “F2F”) and questions her worth in some instances (“Special”). The album sketches the ebbs and flows of emotions, with strength in one moment but deep regret and sadness the next. There’s growth between her debut and sophomore album, not just lyrically but sonically as well, blending a mix of her beloved lo-fi beats and sharing space with grunge- and punk-inspired songs without any of it sounding out of place. On the Phoebe Bridgers collaboration “Ghost in the Machine,” the duo take a deeper look at the realities of stardom, looking for a bit of humanity within their day-to-day interactions. The track is not only progressive in its use of strings and acoustic guitars but haunting in its vocal performance. Throughout the journey of *SOS*, there are moments of clarity and tenderness where SZA goes through the discomfort of healing while trying to find the deeper meaning within the trials and tribulations she endures. She embraces this new level of confidence in her life, where she isn’t looking for anyone to save her from the depth of her emotions but instead is at peace with where she’s at in life.

Mobile, Alabama-hailing MC Flo Milli was here for any and all of the smoke upon release of her 2020 debut mixtape *Ho, why is you here ?*. If the title of that project\'s follow-up—*You Still Here, Ho?*—tells us anything about the MC today, it’s that the two years that passed between those efforts did little to soften her resolve. Milli spends the large majority of *You Still Here, Ho?* reminding other MCs that they cannot compete where they don\'t compare. The whole thing is a collection of anthems of affirmation, songs with titles like “Hottie,” “Conceited,” and “Big Steppa” that allude to the kind of confidence Milli wishes for fans. For her competitors, though, she’s got little more than secondhand embarrassment, a feeling that stems from Milli’s own ability to write hip-pop songs in the vein of admitted influence Nicki Minaj (“Pretty Girls,” “Pay Day”) and then purer rap anthems like “F.N.G.M.,” which contains an interpolation of Junior M.A.F.I.A.\'s golden-era classic “Get Money.”

While crafting Anxious’ new album, Little Green House, the Connecticut five-piece were afforded a luxury so few bands are when making their debut album: time. With extensive touring plans halted and regular life on pause, the band—vocalist Grady Allen, guitarists Dante Melucci and Ryan Savitski, bassist Sam Allen, and drummer Jonny Camner—headed into Allen’s mom’s basement and reflected on each part of the material that would turn into their first record over and over again. The result is an artistic leap that, had the band’s plans to spend much of 2020 on the road actually been feasible, maybe wouldn’t have happened. Formed in 2016 while members were still in high school, Anxious’ early releases were indebted to the urgent freneticism and heart-on-sleeve lyrics of post-hardcore acts like Texas Is The Reason, Samiam, and Turning Point, allowing Anxious to immediately grab the attention of the hardcore scene. The band’s DIY roots and dedication to craft were equally as essential to their rising profile—early releases were accompanied with band-dubbed cassettes, made-to-order zines, and even self-dyed shirts—each part of Anxious was laid out in meticulous detail from day one. Having almost immediately surpassed Allen’s modest ambitions of “playing a couple of shows,” Anxious quickly found a home on Triple B Records, gaining the attention and adulation of both the hardcore and emo scenes on the back of two seven-inch EPs and a pair of demos, getting them coveted spots on tours with genre-bending acts like Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, before landing on Run For Cover. Named after the space in which the material was written, Little Green House sees Allen and Melucci exploring what it feels like to enter adulthood in unflinching detail. The pair unpack their struggles, joys, and hard-earned realizations in a way that makes them each feel wise beyond their years. “I think a lot of the record is a coming-to-terms, interpretive record about relationships with people and thinking introspectively,” says Allen. “I’m sure it’ll be a cliché very soon to say, ‘With all the time spent away, I was able to really think about things,’ but having that time ot sit and be introspective really does give you perspective on yourself, the relationships you have with other people, and that recognition that while you might all be interconnected—whether it’s your parents, your friends from high school, people you know through music—it’s bound to happen that you all have deeply individual and separate paths, and that’s okay.” Recorded and produced by Chris Teti at Silver Bullet Studios, the diversity of perspectives on Little Green House is matched by the album’s ability to jump between sounds without ever feeling disjointed. The band’s commitment to their creative vision and exacting attention to detail is apparent, with Anxious going so far as to completely re-record the vocals until Little Green House was exactly the statement they wanted to make. That devotion is clear from the very first notes of opener, “Your One Way Street.” Anxious sounds more deliberate than ever, with each riff pounding like a powerful declaration as Allen works through the emotions of watching one of his oldest friendships breaking apart, “I beg you, one last time as a friend / How did we get here and why does this have to end?” On “More Than A Letter” the band explores what it was like to watch a potential romantic relationship fall away because of outside pressures, and the energetic “Let Me” is a show of support from a child to a parent while watching them go through a painful divorce and features guest vocals from Pat Flynn of Fiddlehead. “I guess the idea behind the record is that coming to terms with who you are and accepting that,” says Allen. “Struggle, sadness, and pain aren’t necessarily negative things, but they are necessary things. There’s no shame or sadness put onto these feelings that you’re already experiencing. But there are positive, triumphant elements running through the album, too,” a feeling that’s best exemplified by the triumphant, and aptly titled, “Growing Up Song.” While fans are used to Anxious’ infectious energy spilling into every song, the closing track “You When You’re Gone” shows a totally new side of the band. Where the raucous parts of the album recall Lifetime and Sense Field, this one’s pure dream pop bliss. Joined by vocalist Stella Branstool on the track, it gives Little Green House an expanded scope, one that showcases a band taking big swings and landing every single one of them. “The goal wasn’t to create something that perfectly replicates a sound or an era,” says Allen. “It was just about us wholeheartedly trying to create something that felt distinctly like us and not worry for a second if it feels unfamiliar—we just wanted to create something that was unabashedly us.” On Little Green House, that’s exactly what Anxious did. They’ve made a record that captures the bittersweet feeling of returning to a place you grew up and realizing how the passing of time has changed you - a musical snapshot of who they were in an exact moment, and who they want to become now that they’re ready to move on.

Dig deep enough inside yourself -- start treating your body as your sanctuary rather than your enemy -- and eventually you'll find yourself blooming right back out into the sun. That's the transformation Guerilla Toss trace on their newest album Famously Alive, their effervescent Sub Pop debut. After a decade sprinkling glitter into grit, building a reputation as one of the most ferociously creative art-rock groups working, the upstate New York band have eased fully into their light. This is Guerilla Toss at their most luminescent -- awake, alive, and extending an open invitation to anyone who wants to soak it all up beside them. Singer and lyricist Kassie Carlson, multi-instrumentalist Peter Negroponte and guitarist Arian Shafiee wrote Famously Alive at home in the Catskills during the pervading quiet of the pandemic year. The uncertainty of COVID-19 lockdowns and the total disruption of routine forced Carlson to negotiate with herself in new and challenging ways. "You have to be with yourself all the time during the pandemic," she says. "I had to figure out a way to manage my anxiety. The pandemic was hard, but it helped me get comfortable inside my own body. My peace of mind came out of being thrust into the deepest shit. This album is all about being happy, being alive, and strength. It’s meant to inspire people." The album's title derives from a poem written by a close friend of the band, Jonny Tatelman, who supported Carlson through the early stages of her recovery from opiate addiction. The poem comprises the entirety of the lyrics to the title track, an exuberant ode to loving your own survival and charting a course into unconditional self-acceptance. "The song 'Famously Alive' is about living with purpose and excitement whether you’re famous or not, accepting your strangeness and thriving even if your successes look different than other people’s," notes Carlson. "To me, 'Famously Alive' means flipping the notion of dying famously to living famously," Negroponte adds. "I also like to think of it as a way to describe living through something traumatic and coming out of it a stronger, wiser person." Songs like the expansive, gleaming "Live Exponential" similarly invite the listener to lean into the light. "It’s about loving yourself and finding a way to be comfortable in your own body -- to live life to the fullest and beyond," says Carlson. Throughout the record, Guerilla Toss meet themselves with curiosity, generosity, and acceptance even for the harder parts of being alive. Opener "Cannibal Capital," a song about the exhaustion and dread of social anxiety, came together in a flurry toward the end of the album's sessions. A taut bass groove erupts into competing squalls of guitar and synth that support one of the most immediate and arresting vocal hooks of Guerilla Toss's catalog to date. Together with guitarist Arian Shafiee, Carlson and Negroponte cultivated a sound that spliced together psychedelic texturing and Krautrock syncopation with the gloss and glow of contemporary pop music. "I like to combine as many musical influences as possible," says Negroponte. "We thought the sleekness of current radio pop would make our dense wall-of-sound aesthetic both more bizarre and more accessible and fun at the same time." Carlson was similarly inspired by a wide range of artists from around the world after diving deep into obscure 7-inches for her weekly show on Radio Catskill, Rare Pear Radio. While writing the album, Carlson took voice lessons online for the first time. Though she has been singing since she was four years old, at first with a vocal harmony group in her family's church, she hadn't formally trained her voice since joining Guerilla Toss. The lessons allowed her to deepen and broaden her range, helping her feel more embodied and connected to her voice. Underneath ripples of Auto-Tune, playful, searching vocal melodies suspend lyrics about reaching for yourself and holding fast in your own love. Famously Alive finds Guerilla Toss coming into the fullness of their power, celebrating their prismatic idiosyncrasies from a place of optimism and abundance. "It felt like I didn’t need to force myself into this dark place to create anymore," Carlson says. "For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m finally comfortable inside my body."

The caveat with mentioning the 30 years of history John McEntire and Sam Prekop shared before making *Sons Of* is that the album doesn’t exactly sound like anything they’ve done before. McEntire is the drummer of the adventurous, anything-but-rock band Tortoise and the Prekop-fronted Sea and Cake; Prekop is a singer-songwriter who rebutted the harshness of ’90s indie rock with music influenced by lounge jazz and bossa nova. *Sons Of*, by contrast, is made up of four lengthy synth improvisations combining early house, indie pop, and the spacey, ruminative side of IDM. The connective tissue is in the approach, which is somehow adventurous but gentle, experimental but restrained. And while everything here has narrative momentum, their shared language is thick enough that they sound better the longer they go (the sunglasses-indoors sci-fi of “Ascending by Night” and the 24-minute “A Yellow Robe”).

The seven members of CLIFFDIVER wanted to make a record that really represented who they were. Released by SideOneDummy Records, Exercise Your Demons is the first full length LP they’ve written, and features what they now consider to be their final line-up. Produced by Seth Henderson and mastered by Will Yip, the new record truly portrays the musical and lyrical potential of the band. The nine songs that comprise Exercise Your Demons fling the door wide open musically for the band while also making important statements about mental health. It is a deep exploration of grief inspired by a recurring dream that lead vocalist, Joey Duffy had about a late ex-fiancée. Both Duffy and co-lead vocalist Briana Wright have survived suicide attempts in the past, and they want this record to offer hope and strength to anyone who hears it. It is, by its very existence, a testament to what happens if you don’t let your demons win.

Under the Reefs Orchestra is a volcanic power trio that navigates between hypnotic post rock and stormy jazz. Grasping for the infinite and always threatening total combustion, their music finds its cruising speed in the storm of permanent upheaval. Based in Brussels and led by guitarist Clément Nourry, the group also includes saxophonist Marti Melia and drummer Jakob Warmenbol, both of them members of the punk jazz band Don Kapot. These three musicians have worked extensively throughout the kinetic Brussels music scene, and bring their unique individual voices together in an improvised and free form style. Under the Reefs Orchestra is following up their eponymous 2020 debut album with Sakurajima, an album which evokes images and textures that are both apocalyptic and divine and echoes the contemporary chaos that surrounds us all. But neither is their music ‘commentary’, and its instrumental quality functions equally as an escape. Sakurajima is led by the guitar work of Clément Nourry while also allowing generous space for the dynamic saxophone work of Marti Melia, and is as much 19th century chamber music as it is Jim O’Rourke, Soundgarden, King Crimson, or Morphine. The immediacy of Under the Reefs Orchestra's music allows the listener to freely seize a profusion of moods and states of being. 

This Machine Still Kills Fascists is the eleventh studio album and was released on September 30, 2022. It marks the band's first studio album since their 1998 debut album Do or Die to not feature vocalist Al Barr who was on hiatus from the band to take care of his ailing mother. It is the band's first acoustic album and is composed of unused lyrics and words by Woody Guthrie.