The Skinny's Albums of 2024

It’s no surprise that “PARTYGIRL” is the name Charli xcx adopted for the DJ nights she put on in support of *BRAT*. It’s kind of her brand anyway, but on her sixth studio album, the British pop star is reveling in the trashy, sugary glitz of the club. *BRAT* is a record that brings to life the pleasure of colorful, sticky dance floors and too-sweet alcopops lingering in the back of your mouth, fizzing with volatility, possibility, and strutting vanity (“I’ll always be the one,” she sneers deliciously on the A. G. Cook- and Cirkut-produced opening track “360”). Of course, Charli xcx—real name Charlotte Aitchison—has frequently taken pleasure in delivering both self-adoring bangers and poignant self-reflection. Take her 2022 pop-girl yet often personal concept album *CRASH*, which was preceded by the diaristic approach of her excellent lockdown album *how i’m feeling now*. But here, there’s something especially tantalizing in her directness over the intoxicating fumes of hedonism. Yes, she’s having a raucous time with her cool internet It-girl friends, but a night out also means the introspection that might come to you in the midst of a party, or the insurmountable dread of the morning after. On “So I,” for example, she misses her friend and fellow musician, the brilliant SOPHIE, and lyrically nods to the late artist’s 2017 track “It’s Okay to Cry.” Charli xcx has always been shaped and inspired by SOPHIE, and you can hear the influence of her pioneering sounds in many of the vocals and textures throughout *BRAT*. Elsewhere, she’s trying to figure out if she’s connecting with a new female friend through love or jealousy on the sharp, almost Uffie-esque “Girl, so confusing,” on which Aitchison boldly skewers the inanity of “girl’s girl” feminism. She worries she’s embarrassed herself at a party on “I might say something stupid,” wishes she wasn’t so concerned about image and fame on “Rewind,” and even wonders quite candidly about whether she wants kids on the sweet sparseness of “I think about it all the time.” In short, this is big, swaggering party music, but always with an undercurrent of honesty and heart. For too long, Charli xcx has been framed as some kind of fringe underground artist, in spite of being signed to a major label and delivering a consistent run of albums and singles in the years leading up to this record. In her *BRAT* era, whether she’s exuberant and self-obsessed or sad and introspective, Charli xcx reminds us that she’s in her own lane, thriving. Or, as she puts it on “Von dutch,” “Cult classic, but I still pop.”

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.”

“We weren’t really expecting it at such a rate,” The Last Dinner Party’s guitarist and vocalist Lizzie Mayland tells Apple Music of the band’s rise, the story of which is well known by now. After forming in London in 2021, the five-piece’s effervescent live shows garnered an if-you-know-you-know kind of buzz, which went into overdrive when they released their stomping, euphoric debut single “Nothing Matters” in April 2023. All of which might have put a remarkable amount of pressure on them while making their debut record (not least given the band ended 2024 by winning the BRITs Rising Star Award then topped the BBC’s new-talent poll, Sound of 2024, in January). But The Last Dinner Party had written, recorded and finished *Prelude to Ecstasy* three months before anyone had even heard “Nothing Matters.” It meant, says lead singer Abigail Morris, that they “just had a really nice time” making it. “It is a painful record in some ways and it explores dark themes,” she adds, “but making it was just really fun, rewarding, and wholesome.” Produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Florence + the Machine, Jessie Ware), who Morris calls “the dream producer,” *Prelude to Ecstasy* is rooted in those hype-inducing live shows, its tracklist a reflection of the band’s frequent set list and its songs shaped and grown by playing them on stage. “We wanted to capture the live feels in the songs,” notes Morris. “That’s the whole point.” Featuring towering vocals, thrilling guitar solos, orchestral instrumentation, and a daring, do-it-all spirit, the album sounds like five band members having an intense amount of fun as they explore an intense set of emotions and experiences with unbridled expression and feeling. These songs—which expand and then shrink and then soar—navigate sexuality (“Sinner,” “My Lady of Mercy”), what it must be like to move through the world as a man (“Caesar on a TV Screen,” the standout, celestial “Beautiful Boy”), and craving the gaze of an audience (“Mirror”), as well as loss channeled into art, withering love, and the mother-daughter relationship. And every single one of them feels like a release. “It’s a cathartic, communal kind of freedom,” says Morris. “‘Cathartic’ is definitely the main word that we throw about when we talk about playing live and playing an album.” Read on as Morris and Mayland walk us through their band’s exquisite debut, one song at a time. **“Prelude to Ecstacy”** Abigail Morris: “I was thinking about it like an overture in a musical. Aurora \[Nishevci, keys player and vocalist\] composed it—she’s a fantastic composer, and it has themes from all the songs on the record. I don’t believe in shuffle except for playlists and I always liked the idea of \[an album\] having a start, middle, and end, and there is in this record. It sets the scene.” **“Burn Alive”** AM: “This was the first song that existed in the band—we’ve been opening the set with it the entire time. Lyrically, it always felt like a mission statement. I wrote it just after my father passed away, and it was the idea of, ‘Let me make my grief a commodity’—this kind of slightly sarcastic ‘I’m going to put my heart on the line and all my pain and everything for a buck.’ The idea of being ecstatic by being burned alive—by your pain and by your art and by your inspiration—in a kind of holy-fire way. What we’re here to do is be fully alive and committed to exorcising any demons, pain or joy.” **“Caesar on a TV Screen”** AM: “I wrote the beginning of this song over lockdown. I’d stayed over with my boyfriend at the time and then, to go back home, he lent me a suit. When I met him, I didn’t just find him attractive, I wanted to *be* him—he was also a singer in another band and he had this amazing confidence and charisma in a specifically masculine way. Getting to have his suit, I was like, ‘Now I am a man in a band.’ It’s this very specific sensuality and power you feel when you’re dressing as a man. I sat at the piano and had this character in my head—a Mick Jagger or a Caligula. I thought it would be fun to write a song from the perspective of feeling like a king, but you are only like that because you’re so vulnerable and so desperate to be loved and quite weak and afraid and childlike.” Lizzie Mayland: “There was an ending on the original version that faded away into this lone guitar, which was really beautiful, but we got used to playing it live with it coming back up again. So we put that back in. The song is very live, the way we recorded it.” **“The Feminine Urge”** AM: “The beginning of this song was based on an unreleased Lana Del Rey song called ‘Driving in Cars With Boys’—it slaps. I wanted to write about my mother and the mother wound. It’s about the relationship between mothers and daughters and how those go back over generations, and the shared traumas that come down. I think you get to a certain age as a woman where your mother suddenly becomes another woman, rather than being your mum. You turn 23 and you’re having lunch and it’s like, ‘Oh shit, we’re just two women who are living life together,’ and it’s very beautiful and very sweet and also very confronting. It’s the sudden realization of the mortality and fallibility of your mother that you don’t get when you’re a child. It’s also wondering, ‘If I have a daughter, what kind of mother would I be? Is it ethical to bring a child into a world like this? And what wound would I maybe pass on to her or not?’” **“On Your Side”** LM: “We put this and ‘Beautiful Boy’—the two slow ones—together. Again, that comes from playing live. Taking a slow moment in the set—people are already primed to pay attention rather than dancing.” AM: “The song is about a relationship breaking down and it’s nice to have that represented musically. It’s a very traditional structure, song-verse-chorus, and it’s not challenging or weird. It’s nice that the ending feels like this very beautiful decay. It’s sort of rotting, but it sounds very beautiful, but it is this death and gasping. I really like how that illustrates what the song’s about.” **“Beautiful Boy”** AM: “I come back to this as one that I’m most proud of. I wanted to say something really specific with the lyrics. It’s about a friend of mine, who’s very pretty. He’s a very beautiful boy. He went hitchhiking through Spain on his own and lost his phone and was just relying on the kindness of strangers, going on this beautiful Hemingway-esque trip. I remember being so jealous of him because I was like, ‘Well, I could never do that—as a woman I’d probably get murdered or something horrible.’ He made me think about the very specific doors that open when you are a beautiful man. You have certain privileges that women don’t get. And if you’re a beautiful woman, you have certain privileges that other people don’t get. I don’t resent him—he’s a very dear friend. Also, I think it’s important and interesting to write, as a woman, about your male relationships that aren’t romantic or sexual.” LM: “The flute was a turning point in this track. It’s such a lonely instrument, so vulnerable and so expressive. To me, this song is kind of a daydream. Like, ‘I wish life was like that, but it’s not.’ It feels like there’s a deeper sense of acceptance. It’s sweetly sad.” **“Gjuha”** AM: “We wanted to do an aria as an interlude. At first, we just started writing this thing on piano and guitar and Aurora had a saxophone. At some point, Aurora said it reminded her of an Albanian folk song. We’d been talking about her singing a song in Albanian for the album. She went away and came back with this beautiful, heart-wrenching piece. It’s about her feeling this pain and guilt of coming from a country, and a family who speak Albanian and are from Kosovo, but being raised in London and not speaking that language. She speaks about it so well.” **“Sinner”** LM: “It’s such a fun live moment because it’s kind of a turning point in the set: ‘OK, it’s party time.’ I was quite freaked out about the idea of being like, ‘This is a song about being queer.’ And I thought, ‘Are people going to get that?’ Because it’s not the most metaphorical or difficult lyrics, but it’s also not just like, ‘I like all gendered people.’ But people get it, which has been quite reassuring. It’s about belonging and about finding a safe space in yourself and your own sense of self. And marrying an older version of yourself with a current version of yourself. Playing it live and people singing it back is such a comforting feeling. I know Emily \[Roberts, lead guitarist, who also plays mandolin and flute\] was very inspired by St. Vincent and also LCD Soundsystem.” **“My Lady of Mercy”** AM: “For me, it’s the most overtly sexy song—the most obviously-about-sex song and about sexuality. I feel like it’s a nice companion to ‘Sinner’ because I think they’re about similar things—about queerness in tension with religion and with family and with guilt. I went to Catholic school, which is very informative for a young woman. I’m not a practicing Catholic now, but the imagery is always so pertinent and meaningful to me. I just thought it was really interesting to use religious imagery to talk about liking women and feeling free in your sexuality and reclaiming the guilt. I feel like Nine Inch Nails was a really big inspiration musically. This is testament to how much we trust James \[Ford\] and feel comfortable with him. We did loads of takes of me just moaning into the mic through a distortion. I could sit there and make fake orgasm sounds next to him.” LM: “I remember you saying you wanted to write a song for people to mosh to. Especially the breakdown that was always meant to be played live to a load of people throwing themselves around. It definitely had to be that big.” **“Portrait of a Dead Girl”** AM: “This song took a long time—it went through a lot of different phases. It was one we really evolved with as a band. The ending was inspired by Florence + the Machine’s ‘Dream Girl Evil.’ And Bowie’s a really big influence in general on us, but I think especially on this one. It feels very ’70s and like the Ziggy Stardust album. The portrait was actually a picture I found on Pinterest, as many songs start. It was an older portrait of a woman in a red dress sitting on a bed and then next to her is a massive wolf. At first, I thought that was the original painting, but then I looked at it again and the wolf has been put in. But I really loved that idea of comparing \[it to\] a relationship, a toxic one—feeling like you have this big wolf who’s dangerous but it’s going to protect you, and feeling safe. But you can’t be friends with a wolf. It’s going to turn around and bite you the second it gets a chance.” **”Nothing Matters”** AM: “This wasn’t going to be the first single—we always said it would be ‘Burn Alive.’ We had no idea that it was going to do what it did. We were like, ‘OK, let’s introduce ourselves,’ and then where it went is kind of beyond comprehension.” LM: “I was really freaked out—I spent the first couple of days just in my bed—but also so grateful for all the joy it’s been received with. When we played our first show after it came out, I literally had the phrase, ‘This is the best feeling in the world.’ I’ll never forget that.” AM: “It was originally just a piano-and-voice song that I wrote in my room, and then it evolved as everyone else added their parts. Songs evolve by us playing them on stage and working things out. That’s definitely what happened with this song—especially Emily’s guitar solo. It’s a very honest love song that we wanted to tell cinematically and unbridled, that expression of love without embarrassment or shame or fear, told through a lens of a very visual language—which is the most honest way that I could have written.” **“Mirror”** AM: “Alongside ‘Beautiful Boy,’ this is one of the most precious ones to me. When I first moved to London before the band, I was just playing on my own, dragging my piano around to shitty venues and begging people to listen. I wrote it when I was 17 or 18, and it’s the only one I’ve kept from that time. It’s changed meanings so many times. At first, one of them was an imagined relationship, I hadn’t really been in relationships until then and it was the idea of codependency and the feeling of not existing without this relationship. And losing your identity and having it defined by relationship in a sort of unhealthy way. Then—and I’ve never talked about this—but the ‘she’ in the verses I’m referring to is actually an old friend of mine. After my father died, she became obsessed with me and with him, and she’d do very strange, scary things like go to his grave and call me. Very frightening and stalker-y. I wrote the song being like, ‘I’m dealing with the dissolution of this friendship and this kind of horrible psychosis that she seems to be going through.’ Now this song has become similar to ‘Burn Alive.’ It’s my relationship with an audience and the feeling of always being a performer and needing someone looking at you, needing a crowd, needing someone to hear you. I will never forget the day that Emily first did that guitar solo. Then Aurora’s orchestral bit was so important to have on that record. We wanted it to have light motifs from the album. That ending always makes me really emotional. I think it’s a really touching bit of music and it feels so right for the end of this album. It feels cathartic.”

Listening to Adrianne Lenker’s music can feel like finding an old love letter in a library book: somehow both painfully direct and totally mysterious at the same time, filled with gaps in logic and narrative that only confirm how intimate the connection between writer and reader is. Made with a small group in what one imagines is a warm and secluded room, *Bright Future* captures the same folksy wonder and open-hearted intensity of Big Thief but with a slightly quieter approach, conjuring visions of creeks and twilights, dead dogs (“Real House”) and doomed relationships (“Vampire Empire”) so vivid you can feel the humidity pouring in through the screen door. She’s vulnerable enough to let her voice warble and crack and confident enough to linger there for as long as it takes to get her often devastating emotional point across. “Just when I thought I couldn’t feel more/I feel a little more,” she sings on “Free Treasure.” Believe her.

As someone who invited fame and courted infamy, first with inflammatory albums like *Wolf* and later with his flamboyant fashion sense via GOLF WANG, Tyler Okonma is less knowable than most stars in the music world. While most celebrities of his caliber and notoriety either curate their public lives to near-plasticized extremes or become defined by tabloid exploits, the erstwhile Odd Futurian chiefly shares what he cares to via his art and the occasional yet ever-quotable interview. As his Tyler, The Creator albums pivoted away from persona-building and toward personal narrative, as on the acclaimed *IGOR* and *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, his mystique grew grandiose, with the undesirable side effect of greater speculation. The impact of fan fixation plays no small part on *CHROMAKOPIA*, his seventh studio album and first in more than three years. Reacting to the weirdness, opening track “St. Chroma” finds Tyler literally whispering the details of his upbringing, while lead single “Noid” more directly rages against outsiders who overstep both online and offline. As on his prior efforts, character work plays its part, particularly on “I Killed You” and the two-hander “Hey Jane.” Yet the veil between truth and fiction feels thinner than ever on family-oriented cuts like “Like Him” and “Tomorrow.” Lest things get too damn serious, Tyler provocatively leans into sexual proclivities on “Judge Judy” and “Rah Tah Tah,” both of which should satisfy those who’ve been around since the *Goblin* days. When monologue no longer suits, he calls upon others in the greater hip-hop pantheon. GloRilla, Lil Wayne, and Sexyy Red all bring their star power to “Sticky,” a bombastic number that evolves into a Young Buck interpolation. A kindred spirit, it seems, Doechii does the most on “Balloon,” amplifying Tyler’s energy with her boisterous and profane bars. Its title essentially distillable to “an abundance of color,” *CHROMAKOPIA* showcases several variants of Tyler’s artistry. Generally disinclined to cede the producer’s chair to anyone else, he and longtime studio cohort Vic Wainstein execute a musical vision that encompasses sounds as wide-ranging as jazz fusion and Zamrock. His influences worn on stylishly cuffed sleeves, Neptunes echoes ring loudly on the introspective “Darling, I” while retro R&B vibes swaddle the soapbox on “Take Your Mask Off.”

The LA-by-way-of-Miami duo of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin pick up where they left things on their debut, 2021’s *Mercurial World*, and make everything just a bit bigger. Opener “She Looked Like Me!” begins innocently enough, with hushed vocals from Tenenbaum backed by twinkling keys and a buzzing bass synth. Before long, though, massive drum hits give the song an unrelenting pulse, blending the energy of a hyperpop anthem with the rise-and-fall restraint of a classic-rock song. “Image” is a disco-inspired cut that dances around synths that speed up and slow down according to their own whimsy, as Tenenbaum’s voice floats effortlessly above the fray. “What\'s the best you’ve got?/I forgot all my common sense/I need all the common sense/Time to start the clock from the top,” she sings, letting the feel-good vibes of the club-ready instrumental imbue her abstract lyrics with visceral meaning. Even when the duo concoct songs that fear the future or suggest wariness at where the world is headed, the jams suggest that the AI apocalypse will still feature plenty of dancing.

At just 25 years old, with four solo studio albums and three as guitarist for North Carolina band Wednesday under his belt, MJ Lenderman already seems like an all-timer. The vivid, arch songwriting, the swaying between reverence and irreverence for his forebears, steeped in modern culture while still sounding timeless—he evokes the easy comfort of a well-worn favorite and the butterflies of a new relationship with someone who is going to have a massive, rich, and argued-about discography for decades. The songs go down easy but are dark around the edges, with down-home strings and lap steel adorning tales of jerking off into showers and the existential loneliness of a smartwatch. But in a fun way. And just as 2021’s “Knockin” both referenced erstwhile golfer John Daly’s cover of Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and lifted its chorus for good measure, “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In” honors The Band’s classic while rendering it redundant. But album closer “Bark at the Moon” represents Lenderman’s blending of sad-sack character sketches and meta classic-rock references in its final form: “I’ve never seen the Mona Lisa/I’ve never really left my room/I’ve been up too late with Guitar Hero/Playing ‘Bark at the Moon.’” Then he punctuates the line with an “Awoo/Bark at the moon,” not to the tune of the Ozzy song, but to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” Packing that many jokes into half a verse is impressive enough—more so that the impact is even more heartbreaking than it is funny.

When artists experience the kind of career-defining breakthrough that Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield enjoyed with 2020’s *Saint Cloud*, they’re typically faced with a difficult choice: lean further into the sound that landed you there, or risk disappointing your newfound audience by setting off into new territory. On *Tigers Blood*, the Kansas City-based singer-songwriter chooses the former, with a set of country-indebted indie rock that reaches the same, often dizzying heights as its predecessor. But that doesn’t mean its songs came from the same emotional source. “When I made *Saint Cloud*, I\'d just gotten sober and I was just this raw nerve—I was burgeoning with anxiety,” she tells Apple Music. “And on this record, it sounds so boring, but I really feel like I was searching for normal. I think I\'ve really settled into my thirties.” Working again with longtime producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Snail Mail, Hurray for the Riff Raff), Crutchfield enlisted the help of rising guitar hero MJ Lenderman, with whom she duets on the quietly romantic lead single (and future classic) “Right Back to It.” Originally written for Wynonna Judd—a recent collaborator—“365” finds Crutchfield falling into a song of forgiveness, her voice suspended in air, arching over the soft, heart-like thump of an acoustic guitar. Just as simple but no less moving: the Southern rock of “Ice Cold,” in which Crutchfield seeks equilibrium and Lenderman transcendence, via solo. In the absence of inner tumult, Crutchfield says she had to learn that the songs will still come. “I really do feel like I\'ve reached this point where I have a comfort knowing that they will show up,” she says. “When it\'s time, they\'ll show up and they\'ll show up fast. And if they\'re not showing up, then it\'s just not time yet.”

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.