Uncut's 75 Best Albums of 2022

Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to *RENAISSANCE*. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. *RENAISSANCE* is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are. From the classic four-on-the-floor house moods of the Robin S.- and Big Freedia-sampling lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” to the Afro-tech of the Grace Jones- and Tems-assisted “MOVE” and the funky, rollerskating disco feeling of “CUFF IT,” this is a massive yet elegantly composed buffet of sound, richly packed with anthemic morsels that pull you in. There are soft moments here, too: “I know you can’t help but to be yourself around me,” she coos on “PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA,” the kind of warm, whispers-in-the-ear love song you’d expect to hear at a summer cookout—complete with an intricate interplay between vocals and guitar that gives Beyoncé a chance to showcase some incredible vocal dexterity. “CHURCH GIRL” fuses R&B, gospel, and hip-hop to tell a survivor’s story: “I\'m finally on the other side/I finally found the extra smiles/Swimming through the oceans of tears we cried.” An explicit celebration of Blackness, “COZY” is the mantra of a woman who has nothing to prove to anyone—“Comfortable in my skin/Cozy with who I am,” ” Beyoncé muses on the chorus. And on “PURE/HONEY,” Beyoncé immerses herself in ballroom culture, incorporating drag performance chants and a Kevin Aviance sample on the first half that give way to the disco-drenched second half, cementing the song as an immediate dance-floor favorite. It’s the perfect lead-in to the album closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE,” which propels the dreamy escapist disco of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” even further into the future.

Grammy and Americana-award-winning singer-songwriter and violinist Amanda Shires has pushed the reset button with 'Take It Like A Man', releasing a record that is so unlike anything she has ever recorded that you would be tempted to think it’s her debut album instead of her seventh. Shires, who also plays in The Highwomen, worked with producer Lawrence Rothman (Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon) to make a fearless confessional, showing the world what turning 40 looks like in 10 emotionally raw tracks.

Josh Tillman, aka Father John Misty, has released five albums in the last decade—and each one is an expansion of and challenge to his indie-folk instrumental palette. From the stark rock/folk contrasts of *Fear Fun*’s ballads and anthems to the mariachi strains of *I Love You, Honeybear*’s love notes to the wry commentary and grand orchestrations of *Pure Comedy* and *God’s Favorite Customer*, Tillman has a penchant for pairing his articulate inner monologue with arrangements that have only grown more eclectic and elaborate. *Chloë and the Next 20th Century* builds on all of the above—the micro-symphonies, the inventive percussion, the swift shift from dusty country-western nostalgia to timeless dirges plunked out on a dive-bar piano. A swooning sax solo in a somber jazz number (“Buddy’s Rendezvous”) is immediately followed by the trill of a psychedelic harpsichord (“Q4”); “Goodbye Mr. Blue” recalls the acoustic inclinations of his early work, and warm strings wash over the record, from its first single, the romantic “Funny Girl,” through “The Next 20th Century,” the album’s sardonic closer, which resurfaces the ever-simmering existential dread of *Pure Comedy*. “If this century’s here to stay,” he sings on the track, “I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the love songs/And the great distance that they came.”

Father John Misty returns with Chloë and The Next 20th Century, his fifth album and first new material since the release of God’s Favorite Customer in 2018. Chloë and the Next 20th Century was written and recorded August through December 2020 and features arrangements by Drew Erickson. The album sees Tillman and producer/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson resume their longtime collaboration, as well as Dave Cerminara, returning as engineer and mixer. Basic tracks were recorded at Wilson’s Five Star Studios with strings, brass, and woodwinds recorded at United Recordings in a session featuring Dan Higgins and Wayne Bergeron, among others. Chloë and The Next 20th Century features the singles “Funny Girl,” “Q4,” “Goodbye Mr. Blue,” and “Kiss Me (I Loved You),” and will be available April 8th, 2022 worldwide from Sub Pop and in Europe from Bella Union.

‘Let’s Emerge!’ is Pye Corner Audio’s first studio outing for Sonic Cathedral following the acclaimed live recording ‘Social Dissonance’, and it features Ride guitarist Andy Bell playing on five of its ten tracks. From the first glimpse of the artwork to the first note of the music it’s a marked deviation from Pye Corner Audio’s more traditional shadowy sounds. Whereas his last outing for Ghost Box (2021’s ‘Entangled Routes’) was inspired by the underground fungal pathways through which plants communicate, this one is very much above ground, bathed in sunlight and acid-bright psychedelia. “This is a departure to sunnier climes, but a departure nonetheless,” says Pye Corner Audio, aka Martin Jenkins. “It’s something that I’d been thinking about for a while. I try to tailor my work slightly differently for the various labels that I work with, and this seems to fit nicely with Sonic Cathedral’s ethos.” Designer Marc Jones’ ultra vivid artwork consciously references the likes of LFO, Spacemen 3 and the early output of Stereolab. “I think it mixes together many of my earliest influences,” explains Martin. “I’ve been a long-time fan of Spacemen 3 and Stereolab. Their moments of repetition and drone have always seeped into what I’ve tried to create. “I was living in a small apartment and I’d stripped down my studio set-up when I was recording this album. This enabled me to focus on a few key pieces of equipment and explore them fully.” The recordings were fleshed out by Andy Bell, who Martin first met at the Sonic Cathedral 15th birthday party at The Social in London back in 2019 – the same show that became the live album Social Dissonance. “New alliances were formed and friendships made in that basement in Little Portland Street,” recalls Martin. “When I met Andy, we agreed that we needed to work together in some way. After I’d remixed a few tracks from his album The View From Halfway Down, he kindly repaid the favour.” The end results, mastered in New York by Heba Kadry, are incredible, from the first stirrings of opener ‘De-Hibernate’, via the glorious ‘Haze Loops’ and ‘Saturation Point’, the album slowly but surely awakens, blinking and feeling its way into the light. It all culminates in the epic closing track ‘Warmth Of The Sun’ which, with its vocal harmonies and acid breakdown, is seven and a half minutes of pure release. “That one’s about life’s simple pleasures,” concludes Martin. “The Beach Boys, tremolo guitars, infinite drones, Spacemen 3. Let’s emerge from this darkened era and feel the ‘Warmth Of The Sun’. “The last few years have seen huge changes, both personally and in a wider perspective. The album title is a reaction to this, a collective (tentative) sigh of relief. Here’s to new beginnings and a sense of hope.”

The notion of The Black Keys as some kind of neo-primitive blues machine risen from the swamp to bring you what rock was supposed to be has always been a little overstated: Like The White Stripes, they’ve always been highly style-conscious, not to mention more occupied with simplicity in concept than in practice—they work at it. *Dropout Boogie* feels of a piece with 2019’s *“Let’s Rock”*: catchy, concise, stripped down but polished, with references to glam (“Wild Child”), psychedelia (“How Long”), and post-Stones blues (the Billy Gibbons co-write “Good Love”). With 20 years as a band behind them, they have their story and they’re sticking to it. And the more sophisticated they get, the easier they make it sound.

Releases September 2022 All compositions by Sarah Davachi 'Alas, Departing' based on 'Alas Departynge is Ground of Woo' (Anon., ca 1450) Recorded between January and November 2021 carillon on 'Hall of Mirrors' performed and recorded by Tiffany Ng mezzo-soprano on 'Alas, Departing' performed and recorded by Jessika Kenney contralto on 'Alas, Departing' performed and recorded by Dorothy Berry violin on 'Icon Studies I' performed and recorded by Johnny Chang viola on 'Icon Studies I' performed and recorded by Andrew McIntosh cello on 'Icon Studies I' performed and recorded by Judith Hamann quartertone bass flute and alto Renaissance recorder on 'Icon Studies I' performed by Rebecca Lane, recorded by Sam Dunscombe violins on 'Icon Studies II' performed by Mira Benjamin and Gordon MacKay, recorded by Simon Limbrick viola on 'Icon Studies II' performed by Bridget Carey, recorded by Simon Limbrick cello on 'Icon Studies II' performed by Anton Lukoszevieze, recorded by Simon Limbrick trombone on 'En Bas Tu Vois' performed by Mattie Barbier, recorded by Sarah Davachi quartertone bass flute on 'O World and the Clear Song' performed by Rebecca Lane, recorded by Sam Dunscombe electric organ (on 'Hall of Mirrors), reed organ (on 'Icon Studies I'), pipe organs (on 'Vanity of Ages', 'Harmonies in Bronze', 'Harmonies in Green', and 'O World and the Clear Song'), synthesizer (on 'Icon Studies I'), and bell plates (on 'O World and the Clear Song') performed and recorded by Sarah Davachi Mixed by Sarah Davachi at Alms Vert in Los Angeles, CA, USA Mastered by Sean McCann

As frontman James Smith and bassist Ryan Needham were holed up in Leeds, writing the songs that make up Yard Act’s debut album, the pair weren’t thinking about a record until they almost had one in front of them. Instead, they were caught up in the sort of heady, creative whirl you get from a new group flexing their songwriting chops. “We knew we were writing a lot, but there was no form or structure to it; it was just loads of ideas,” Smith tells Apple Music. “It was when we started to realize how much material we had that we said, ‘All right, now is probably the time to go in and have a go at the album.’” That spirit of artistic delirium runs right through *The Overload*, where wiry post-punk grooves and buoyant indie anthems-in-waiting frame Smith’s wry, cutting observations on life in modern Britain. “We realized there was a theme running through the songs,” recalls Smith, “an anti-capitalist slant to the whole thing. We came up with this idea of an arc about this person’s journey trying to become a success and how that pans out.” *The Overload* is a thrilling snapshot of pre- and post-pandemic life, less a black mirror to the early 2020s and more a vivid, full-color one. Here, Smith and Needham guide us through it, track by track. **“The Overload”** James Smith: “The song was originally a really pounding house track that Ryan had sent, but I heard the beat differently and put this sped-up drum-and-bass loop over the top of Ryan’s bassline. As soon as I put that on it, the energy made more sense. There’s a chopped sample break running underneath the whole thing that really completed it and gave it that manic feel.” **“Dead Horse”** JS: “I was always pretty keen on this being early on in the album. It feels like the culmination of all the early singles, finally figuring out how to write in our own style.” Ryan Needham: “I think, lyrically, James had a little bit of extreme anger around the time of the Dominic Cummings \[a former Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister caught breaking public health restrictions during the first UK lockdown\] stuff.” JS: “Yeah, it did come from that little month of anger. The bass was on groove; it was really good. And the lyrics played well—there were some good lines in there. It represented where we had got to up until that point.” **“Payday”** JS: “This was written to fit in on the album to coax the narrative along. Originally, it was a really lo-fi demo and then we lost it. When we redid it, we built in all these 909 electronic drums and then Sam \[Shjipstone\] put this really mad funk guitar on it that was exactly what it needed. It is just one of the more straight-up songs, a vehicle to get onto some of the more creative stuff. I tried to be more abstract with the lyrics—didn’t want to do the overly talky thing, so I left a lot more space in the verses so that chorus can come through a bit.” **“Rich”** JS: “It’s a really simple bassline that I was hypnotized by. It was written when Yard Act had just started doing OK. As some of these crazier offers were coming in, I could see it maybe reaching a level where we became part of the culture and made a living off it. I pondered on this idea that music is one of those things where, if it *goes*, you don’t really have control over how much money you suddenly earn out of nowhere. For so long, you are on the bottom rung and money is tight, and then, all of a sudden, the floodgates open and you can make loads of money really easy. That was it, but applied to the narrative of anyone that has an idea that becomes popular.” **“The Incident”** RN: “This was loads of fun. It’s a bit of an outlier on the record—it’s what sounds most like us live. I had been listening to loads of stuff like Omni and stuff like Elastica—this wave of what everyone was calling post-punk bands at the time. I wrote guitars for this one, everything, I got carried away.” JS: “I think you came up with some really interesting, busy basslines for this one.” **“Witness (Can I Get A?)”** JS: “This predates this lineup and lockdown in terms of the lyrics and the bassline. It was sounding quite generic, a post-punk sort of tune from the really early days where we had a couple of jams in late 2019.” RN: “Then, we tried it like the Beastie Boys.” JS: “We wanted to do a hardcore song, but that wasn’t really working either. Then, we did that sort of Suicide drum thing with it. As soon as it went like that, it always reminded me of the start of ‘Doorman’ by slowthai \[and Mura Masa\]. We just wanted a really fun song to close the first side. There’s something about one-minute songs—they are underrated.” **“Land of the Blind”** JS: “Ryan sent this drum-and-bass groove, and I was instantly really smitten with it, and I wrote the lyrics really fast. It’s one which has most of the demo vocals on it. We were in lockdown and Ryan got his girlfriend—who clearly can sing, but she doesn’t consider herself a singer and doesn’t perform or anything—to do all the backing vocals. They just come out so human. If a proper singer had done them, it wouldn’t have sounded right. It really shaped the song.” **“Quarantine the Sticks”** JS: “This was one of the last songs written for the record, another one that joins the narrative. The basslines are really good on this—they dance between different keys, which makes it really unnerving, and it’s got Billy Nomates \[post-punk singer-songwriter Tor Maries\] doing backing vocals on it as well. It’s quite melodic and quite a strange melody, and my voice wasn’t really holding it on \[its\] own. But there was a hint of something there, so we asked Tor to sing on it.” **“Tall Poppies”** RN: “It started with that simple bassline and then it just went on—I looped that bassline. I would send James a loop and then, about an hour later, I would get back something fucking epic, like ‘Tall Poppies.’ There was no craftsmanship on my part; it was basically like handing James a trowel and some bricks and he comes back with a finished wall.” JS: “There was something about the motor of the bassline. The first thing I got from it was that it felt quite reflective and suspensive. Off the back of that, I had that spark for telling the story of this person’s whole life, from cradle to grave.” **“Pour Another”** JS: “This was one of the harder ones. Ali \[Chant, producer\] didn’t really like this one. He kept pushing it away, but we were adamant it was good and there was something in it. ” RN: “I wanted to have a bit of a Happy Mondays sort of thing. The lyrics are funny, and the humor carried it in that way.” **“100% Endurance”** JS: “We thought the album was probably going to end on ‘Tall Poppies,’ and then, at the last-minute, Ryan sent this new demo over and it became ‘100% Endurance.’ I wrote all the lyrics to a WhatsApp video loop of it playing on Ryan’s speaker in the studio. That is the audio we used on the recording. The first take I recorded on my computer that I sent to Ryan. It felt like we had finally figured out the album, which was interesting because when we went in that first week, we thought we might come away with four or five tracks and then see where we were at later in the year. We didn’t expect to finish the album in a week.”

This product is a PRE-ORDER. Ships on or before October 21, 2022. Recorded in locations around the world over the pandemic era, SHUFFLEMANIA! offers up 10 gloriously ingenious new Robyn Hitchcock songs in just under 40 minutes - a “proper pop album” as nature intended. Songs like “Midnight Tram To Nowhere” and the optimistic, album-closing “One Day (It’s Being Scheduled)” are state-of-the-art Hitchcock, manifesting his signature wit, miraculous gift for melodic craftsmanship, and striking humanity in a world gone mad. A note from Robyn: Hello dear listener, I am thrilled to be unleashing my new record album SHUFFLEMANIA! on the world. What is SHUFFLEMANIA!? It’s surfing fate, trusting your intuition, and bullfighting with destiny. It’s embracing the random and dancing with it, even when it needs to clean its teeth. It’s probably the most consistent album I’ve made. It’s a party record, with a few solemn moments, as parties are wont to supply. Groove on, groovers! Love on ye, RH x Nashville, July 2022 TRACK LIST Side A: 1. The Shuffle Man 2. The Inner Life of Scorpio 3. The Feathery Serpent God 4. Midnight Tram to Nowhere 5. Socrates in Thin Air Side B 6. Noirer than Noir 7. The Man Who Loves the Rain 8. The Sir Tommy Shovel 9. The Raging Muse 10. One Day (It's Being Scheduled)

Like AC/DC before them, Beach House’s gift lies in managing to make what feels like the same album a hundred different ways. Even the new inflections on *Once Twice Melody*—the string section of “ESP,” the rhythmic nods to hip-hop (“Pink Funeral”) and Italo-disco (“Runaway”)—fit immediately into their plush, neon-lit world. And while specific moments conjure specific eras (“Superstar” the triumph of an ’80s John Hughes movie, “Once Twice Melody” a swirl of ’60s surrealism), the cumulative effect is something like a fairytale rendered in sound: majestic, inviting, but dark enough around the edges to keep you off-balance. And just like that (snap), they do it again.

Once Twice Melody is the 8th studio album by Beach House. It is a double album, featuring 18 songs presented in 4 chapters. Across these songs, many types of style and song structures can be heard. Songs without drums, songs centered around acoustic guitar, mostly electronic songs with no guitar, wandering and repetitive melodies, songs built around the string sections. In addition to new sounds, many of the drum machines, organs, keyboards and tones that listeners may associate with previous Beach House records remain present throughout many of the compositions. Beach House is Victoria Legrand, lead singer and multi-instrumentalist, and Alex Scally, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. They write all of their songs together. Once Twice Melody is the first album produced entirely by the band. The live drums are by James Barone (same as their 2018 album, 7), and were recorded at Pachyderm studio in Minnesota and United Studio in Los Angeles. For the first time, a live string ensemble was used. Strings were arranged by David Campbell. The writing and recording of Once Twice Melody began in 2018 and was completed in July of 2021. Most of the songs were created during this time, though a few date back over the previous 10 years. Most of the recording was done at Apple Orchard Studio in Baltimore. Once Twice Melody was mixed largely by Alan Moulder but a few tracks were also mixed by Caesar Edmunds, Trevor Spencer, and Dave Fridmann.

'The New Faith' will be released on September 23rd, 2022 on CD/digital and early 2023 on LP. 'The New Faith' tells an Afrofuturist story set in a far-future world devastated by climate change. Jake Blount and his collaborators embody a group of Black climate refugees as they perform a religious service, invoking spirituals that are age-old even now, familiar in their content but extraordinary in their presentation. These songs, which have seen Black Americans through countless struggles, bind this future community together and their shared past; beauty and power held in song through centuries of devastation, heartbreak, and loss. Learn more: folkways.si.edu/jake-blount/the-new-faith

“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.

I Ran Down Every Dream is the first album in over four decades by swamp pop legend Tommy McLain. Produced by his musical protege C.C. Adcock, the album features thirteen tracks, including eleven new original songs written or co-written by McLain. I Ran Down Every Dream was recorded in Louisiana, Texas, California, and England, with a similarly disparate group of friends and fans, including Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe (both of whom contribute co-writes), plus Jon Cleary, Denny Freeman, Ed Harcourt, Roy Lowe, Augie Meyers, Ivan Neville, Van Dyke Parks, Mickey Raphael, Steve Riley, Speedy Sparks, Warren Storm and more. As an album, I Ran Down Every Dream is both a celebration and a requiem. It bookends a career that has seen Tommy scale the upper reaches of the Billboard charts, share the stage with the likes of Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, The Yardbirds and ZZ Top, and become a global ambassador for the swamp pop sound - that singularly affecting combination of rhythm and blues, country and western, gospel, and traditional French Louisiana styles. The album also looks back, with more than a little heartache, in tribute to some of the fellow musical travelers that McLain has lost. Two tracks on the album were written by McLain’s dear friend and Louisiana music royalty Bobby Charles, and it also marks the final sessions for two legendary musicians who died in 2021; Texas guitar slinger Denny Freeman, and Tommy’s close collaborator Warren Storm. For McLain himself, the years-long road to I Ran Down Every Dream was beset by a heart attack, two hurricanes and a house fire. With every obstacle he overcame, McLain's resolve to complete I Ran Down Every Dream grew stronger.

It’s been a minute since we’ve thought much about ‘evolution.’ Most folks these days seem focused more on change, which perhaps is as it should be—change involves things we can more readily control, or so we think. Surrounded by more global catastrophe and local collapse than we can measure, the idea of ‘evolution’ feels almost quaint, like something we literally might not have time for. But Chris Forsyth’s Evolution Here We Come suggests that we do. It reminds us that we can fight for the future all we want to—in fact, we’d better—but the result is likely to be different, and a whole lot weirder, than anything we can anticipate. To wit, if you think you know already what you’ll be getting into here—heady, Television-esque multi-guitar jams played with motorik precision and a fiercely American intensity: you know, a Forsyth record—well, go ahead and think that. I won’t stop you. Only . . . maybe the pulsing bass, curiously lurching drumbeat, and lunar synth squiggling of Sun Ra Arkestra maestro Marshall Allen that opens “Experimental & Professional” will set you back on your heels. But just for a moment, before Ryan Jewell’s drums and Tortoise alum Douglas McCombs’s bass twine into perfect alignment and then guitars—played by Forsyth and Tom Malach (of Garcia Peoples)—start chipping and hammering, twittering and sparring, the whole thing managing to evoke Remain in Light without sounding remotely like it. (And certainly without sounding like the ZZ Top homage the song’s title, lifted from “Beer Drinkers and Hellraisers,” might lead you to expect.) After a euphoric instrumental called “Heaven For A Few” (‘euphoric’ until its ringing tones turn . . . unnerving as it peaks), the band plunges into a rendition of Richard Thompson’s “You’re Going To Need Somebody,” abetted by the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn and the Baseball Project/Filthy Friends drummer Linda Pitmon on backing vocals. Forsyth and his collaborators—elsewhere, there’s Bill Nace (½ of Body/Head) playing an electrified Japanese harp, Nick Millevoi bringing some lap steel, and Stuart Bogie (Antibalas) on flutes—are synthesizing some weird spirits, but all these crosscurrents and contributors don’t just whip up an influence stew: I reckon this is both the most cohesive and the most fluid record Forsyth has ever made. Where earlier albums like All Time Present or Intensity Ghost felt sprawling, disjunctive in ways that were thrilling, Evolution Here We Come is both musically expansive and conceptually taut: there’s an openness to the whole thing that feels almost like a dub record, the songs themselves are twisty enough to get lost in, and yet, with the exception of the monster closer (fourteen glowing, simmering, ecstatic minutes of “Robot Energy Machine”), they’re all fairly short, most of them hovering around the five minute mark. Key contributions throughout come from Darkside’s Dave Harrington, who is all over this record, playing everything from congas to Wurlitzer to pedal steel to flute in addition to mixing and co-producing. (This is the first time Forsyth’s shared production duties, but that trust was earned over the last few years, when together they made and released the First Flight and First Flight REDUX albums on Forsyth’s own Algorithm Free label.) It would be a mistake to read any of this as signaling any kind of radical departure for Forsyth; what it is, rather, is a sort of radical continuation . . . Which reverts to my point. Evolution Here We Come is a record about the unpredictability of the future (a fact made explicit in the title track’s lyrics about skeleton keys and “secrets hidden in the clear light of day”), but also about the plasticity of the past. Because as the record pays additional homage, both musical and verbal, to various other ghosts that haunt its corners—I count Sonic Youth, Creedence, R.E.M., and others—it becomes clear that while that future remains uncertain and the end may actually be near this time around (unless it’s not: such uncertainty is very much to the point), Evolution Here We Come sits where Forsyth always seems to summon us: deep inside the all-time present, which happens to be the only thing we’ve got. It’s not the world we were promised, but it might not be the one we most dread exactly either. A record like this might make us feel lucky to be alive in it, poised for whatever happens next. Matthew Specktor, March 2022

The third and most seasoned Drugdealer album, Hiding in Plain Sight, almost didn't happen at all. Frustrated and insecure with his own singing voice prior to the pandemic, Drugdealer founder and primary songwriter Michael Collins was nearly ready to throw in the towel. With hits like "Suddenly" and "The Real World" (from the band's 2016 debut, The End Of Comedy) and "Honey" (from their first album for Mexican Summer, 2019’s Raw Honey), Collins had plenty to be happy about. But due to a frequent impulse to hand over the microphone to friends and collaborators like Weyes Blood, Jackson MacIntosh, and his trusty musical companion Sasha Winn, Collins became increasingly unsure of himself as a singer. Then, amidst the windswept art colony of Marfa, Texas, a chance encounter with the visionary artist and composer Annette Peacock changed his outlook. While attending Mexican Summer's annual Marfa Myths festival, Collins ran into Peacock backstage. "I was so inspired by [Annette]. But similarly to all these other vocalists I'd worked with, I didn't feel like I had it in me." he recalls. "I told her my plight, then I played her a song, and she told me I wasn't singing high enough for my speaking voice. When I returned to LA, I started coming up with new progressions, which I'd modulate up three half steps. It forced me to find a new way to sing." In the valley of the shadow of doubt, during a period when Collins was considering giving up on music and embarking on his lifelong dream of filmmaking, a furtive conversation with a legend allowed him to find his own distinctive voice. But, as the title implies, the lockdown era during which Collins wrote the bulk of the record was a time spent searching for answers – searching for love. "Madison," the opening track on Hiding in Plain Sight, is the first song Collins wrote singing in this suggested range. His newfound confidence as a yarn-spinning vocalist in the gruff tenor tradition of Nick Lowe, or even Van Morrison, is readily apparent, with Conor "Catfish" Gallaher's pedal steel adding a dusting of cosmic country to Collins' down-hard love song. When Collins wrote the would-be AM Gold hit, he was summoning an imaginary vision of a love that had eluded him in reality. The song focuses on an unknown figure he could idealize. "All the art I've made is related to this searching archetype," Collins says. "I feel there's no one way that people find love in their life. When I started to make this album, I noticed that all the lyrics dealt with this subject. On 'Madison,' the chorus goes 'Hoping you'll find a love/You're one design of love.' Then the next song I wrote went 'Find someone to love...' At that point, I pretty much knew where it was going. Sasha (my main musical partner) and I are both incredibly romantic. We've worked on multiple projects that are all based around this search for love." But this quest spanned beyond the traditional conception of love. It takes a village to put together Drugdealer records. The Greek term for love of friends, philia, translating to "the highest form of love," is evident in a deep cast of characters including Drugdealer band members Mikey Long, MacIntosh and Josh Da Costa (CMON), as well as Southland virtuosos like John Carroll Kirby (Frank Ocean, Stones Throw) and Daryl Johns (Mac DeMarco, The Lemon Twigs). Tim Presley sings on the second song, "Baby," and Collins had a clear role in mind for the California avant-rock mainstay. "I love White Fence so much, but I also wanted to hear Presley sing a song that sounded like an early '60s sock hop band who had never tried drugs in their life." Meanwhile, Kate Bollinger floats an effervescent lead vocal over the Rhodes-driven groove in “Pictures of You.” As usual, Collins wrangled a who's who of background singers and instrumentalists to carry out Hiding in Plain Sight's vision. Mainly, however, the record acts as a welcome showcase for Collins as an emboldened lead singer, a wayward bandleader who has found a way to love himself as a singer, songwriter and storyteller. Taking inspiration from a canon of gruff but soulful rock vocalists like Phil Lynott, Collins looks back on his nocturnal meanderings through LA's warrens of bars and clubs ("New Fascination"). He’s right up front in the mix, detailing a search for love in all the wrong places. All the while, his band turns on a dime, with Long and Sergio Tabanico trading respective electric sitar and electric sax solos. On "Hard Dreaming Man," he looks back at a restless decade on the road through the rearview mirror. "Hard dreaming man/lemme tell you anything I know... I gotta go any place I can go," he sings over a chorus of honky-tonk guitars you might hear wafting out of saloon doors. "The thing I actually do at a high level isn't playing piano," Collins says, "it's telling stories. Our group of musicians, we all just really like to hang out and tell stories together." Collins once again hands the mic over to his talented friends on the final, celebratory track, "Posse Cut." The latest, greatest entry in a Los Angeles funk tradition spanning from Leon Sylvers to Warren G, the six-minute jam finds a groove and rides it, with Bambina, Winn, Sean Nicholas Savage, Video Age, and Kirby showing out. In what could be a summation of the record's themes, Winn sings, "I don't wanna stop the flow/But there's something you should know/I've been known to move around/I get lost before I get found." Ultimately, Hiding in Plain Sight is an odyssey from philautia—the ability to love oneself —to philia, a greater ability to love and embrace the contributions of those around you. Only then does a path clear for an encompassing and passionate romantic love, eros. Ultimately, Collins finds love all around and, finally, feels in possession of the voice to sing about it, resulting in the most joyful and fully-realized Drugdealer album to date.