An interesting year in album releases but it is a year that, no doubt, sets up next year rather tantalizingly. Here are my picks:
21. Vincent Staples DARK TIMES:
Staples’ monotone voice used to dilute his more intense songs, but now he just sounds tired of having to read everything and everyone for an angle. After mapping out hip-hop toxicity over EDM and techno beats (made specifically for sync licensing) on Big Fish Theory and memorializing the California of his youth on his 2021 self-titled album and Ramona Park, who wouldn’t be? His insouciance still leads to great stories and affirmations of Black resilience, but what once registered as body blows now lands like a firm but loving grasp on the shoulder from an older relative. (PITCHFORK)
22. Cindy Lee DIAMOND JUBILEE…:
put aside, if you can, the anti-hype cycle around this extraordinary double album — the mysterious release as an unmarked YouTube link, the wild praise that followed from fans and critics hungry for anything that resembles a true underground phenomenon. What you’re left with is two hours of mind-melting low-fi gold, deftly interwoven with threads of psychedelia, funk, garage rock, torch songs, and AM melodies. Unfolding slowly with its own dream logic, Diamond Jubilee is a gem worth getting dazzled by. (ROLLING STONE)
23. Friko WHERE WE’VE BEEN…:
despite its bullish title, Where we’ve been doesn’t scan as a monolithic statement of purpose, but rather a presumptive greatest-hits compilation. It’s no slight to say that it could be just as enjoyable on shuffle; nearly every song feels designed to either begin or end a live set, whether at SXSW, Schubas, or even Bonnaroo. Only the finale, “Cardinal,” is locked into sequence as an acoustic comedown. Friko’s songs open grandly and gather intensity all the way through their equally grand closings; these aren’t just anthems in the abstract sense, they’re theme songs. (PITCHFORK)
24. Schoolboy Q BLUE LIPS:
returns to the dynamic stylings of the L.A. rapper’s 2016 highlight, Blank Face, albeit with a few important twists. For every confessional moment like “Cooties,” there are three or four teeth-baring mashers like “Pop,” where he flexes alongside an animated Rico Nasty. The way his oscillating raps contrast with the LP’s frequently dreamlike production makes Blue Lips feel like an inebriated haze. Years into his run, ScHoolboy Q’s personality remains compellingly out of focus. (TIME)
25. Lupe Fiasco SAMURAI:
the album is conspicuously breezy. Lupe’s singing voice, a staple of his style as far back as The Cool, has only grown more pliable: See the way he moves between cadences and harmonies on the hook and verses of “Palaces,” each smartly shaped and carefully rendered. Elsewhere he flits, without apparent effort, between other modes of technical wizardry, like the staccato syllable latticework that dresses up pedestrian writing on the second verse of “No. 1 Headband” or the passage on “Mumble Rap” that begins with the line, “With a style similar to riding around looking for an arrest to resist.” It feels as if there’s some great, centrifugal force pushing down on the middle of each bar. (PITCHFORK)
26. Blu & Shafiq Husayn OUT OF THE BLUE:
Blu has such a maddening work ethics that it’s hard to pinpoint where his steely direction will really have its greatest impact within any given year but here he manages to pare well and the proof is it the understated results.
27. Jean Dawson GLIMMER OF GOD:
this album is very different for Jean, and that is made clear right on the opening track, "Darlin", which is a beautiful, smooth, nocturnal combination of indie and alternative RnB. It feels like what you would get if you made a print song that would somehow work in a playlist of tracks from The National with a bit of Awaken My Love, Childish Gambino mixed in there, too, if that makes any sense. I know it doesn't, but the track still brings a stellar vocal performance from Jean, where he's singing in this very pained expressive inflection. Nothing nearly as brash or punky as what you might have heard on Chaos Now or Pixel Bath. And lyrically, the track is just a beautiful statement on love and devotion, just a well-written tune all around with a super-lush chorus. (THE NEEDLE DROP)
28. Clarence Clarity VANISHING ACT II…:
it’s hard to approach a CC record given their maximalism and lyrical abstraction. VA2 is somewhat different to the likes of its predecessors NO:NOW and THINK:PEACE as it doesn’t have the same chaptered seamless flow and idiosyncratic internal callbacks. And it’s hard to define but, despite it feeling distinctly like a Clarence record, his experimental productions in the six years since T:P have definitely cumulated into a changed artist. (HEARFEEL)
29. St. Vincent ALL BORN SCREAMING:
more primal than conceptual, and that makes it a refreshing change-up among St. Vincent albums. It’s a a dark record but not a bleak one. Even as Annie Clark’s lyrics tend to dwell in the space between connection and contempt, desire and disgust, the music never feels gloomy or defeated. Clark self-produced for the first time in her career (working with friends on drums like Dave Grohl and the art-pop artist Cate Le Bon), and you can feel a real sense of discovery as she shifts the sonic lens. (ROLLING STONE)
30. Declan McKenna WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BEACH?:
the record showcases a vulnerability that McKenna has not previously expressed in his music. Rather than singing about the mass atrocities that his government has caused, McKenna has a song completely devoted to how sometimes “Nothing Works”, singing, “What’s the point running? Not like I’m up and coming anymore.” reiterating the sentiment with lyrics like “I try to fix myself but nothing works.” “It’s an Act” showcases feelings of life being an entire performance, both as someone who does it for a living and as just another person on this Earth, “You call it a dream when it’s hell, It’s not like me to flunk the show and tell.” (THE YALE HERALD)
