The 100 Best Albums of the 2020s So Far

We’ve reached the halfway point—time to stretch, take a coffee break, get some fresh air, and take stock of the best music released in the decade thus far. It sometimes seems like a trivial exercise, compiling a list of the best albums of half a decade, until you realize just how much great music there was. And believe us: There was a lot. This list of 100 only scratches the surface, but it offers a plentiful sampling of the best music of the past five years, from electronic to metal, pop to punk, hip-hop to folk. We present the 100 best albums of the 2020s so far.

Written by Adam Blyweiss (AB), Adam P. Newton (APN), Casey Burke (CB), Colin Dempsey (CD), Ed Brown (EB), Elliot Burr (EBu), Emily Reily (ER), Greg Hyde (GH), Gareth O’Malley (GOM), John-Paul Shiver (JPS), Jeff Terich (JT), Konstantin Rega (KR), Liam Green (LG), Langdon Hickman (LH), Michael Pementel (MP), Noah Sparkes (NS), Patrick Pilch (PP), Tyler Dunston (TD), Virginia Croft (VC) and Wil Lewellyn (WL)

Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums included are chosen by our editors and contributors.

100. Rolo Tomassi – Where Myth Becomes Memory

Sheffield, UK-formed group Rolo Tomassi have managed to outdo themselves at every turn, the digital mathcore of their early work making way for music as beautiful as it is punishing. Where Myth Becomes Memory is Rolo Tomassi writ large, with surprises around every corner. Here’s a quintet who can combine neo-classical minimalism and metallic aggression (as they do on “Labyrinthine”) with the kind of aplomb that suggests they’re truly in a different class, constantly pushing themselves and going places their contemporaries would shirk from; that adventurous streak is what makes their sixth album so captivating. – GOM

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

99. Boygenius – the record

Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, all solo indie/folk-rock musicians at the top of their game, were already friends and admirers of each other’s work before deciding to form the supergroup Boygenius. Their 2023 album the record is their only studio album (aside from two EPs), but the result is one nearly perfect in its execution. Their crystal clear, three-part vocal harmonies seem effortless, and each person’s ideas and contributions are allowed to stretch and grow, leading to a truly collaborative album. On “$20,” cathartic emotions are lain and bad memories cleansed, and with the group’s tight-knit chemistry and killer melodies on the rebellious “Satanist,” it’s obvious they’re having the time of their lives. – ER

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

98. Whatever the Weather – Whatever the Weather

Loraine James’ debut with her Whatever the Weather project is a collection of immaculate electronic ambient that evokes the play of light in ice crystals and the cold vistas of the Arctic suggested by the album’s beautiful cover art. Yet, rather than feeling remote, the results are warm and inviting, contrary to what song titles like “0°C” might imply. Whether it’s the skittering beats of “17°C,” the crystalline piano of “14°C,” the atmospheric, playful “6°C,” the elliptical vocals of “30°C,” or the heavenly synths of “36°C,” each song has its own personality without disrupting the album’s overall cohesion. – TD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

97. Uniform – American Standard

Within American Standard’s body horror-like representation of eating disorders is a plea to any higher power for help. It’s so strong that it could will a god into existence. And that severity, the desperation for any sort of remedy, defines Uniform’s fifth record. There’s much to dissect about how the group addresses bulimia nervosa but those elements are not as universal as how dire the group, and vocalist Michael Berdan in particular, are here. On an earlier album, Berdan sang “You are what you’ve done/ You are what’s been done to you.” American Standard answers that refrain by reveling in what it entails, accepting the self and the problem as one. Although, it’s not as if Uniform present that as any spiritual awakening but, rather, as a slaughterhouse musical. – CD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

96. Shabaka and the Ancestors – We Are Sent Here By History

The decade-in-progress saw Shabaka Hutchings retire his first instrument, the saxophone, while likewise delivering the final albums from each of his three groups: Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming, and Shabaka and the Ancestors. The latter’s swan song, We Are Sent Here By History, arrived first, unfortunately coinciding with worldwide pandemic lockdowns, but its scope is the farthest reaching—a spiritual jazz epic that makes the most of the UK-based bandleader’s instrumental performance as well as his South Africa-based band’s mesmerizing chemistry. It’s also a powerful and fiery work of protest and liberation, invoking the past while acknowledging that some of it needs to burn. It’s a parallel to Hutchings’ own artistic path in a sense, a beautiful funeral for what has been so that what can be may flourish. – JT

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)

95. Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings

With each album, Julie Byrne’s sound accumulates grandeur. The guitar playing on The Greater Wings is precise as ever, Byrne’s stunning lyrics are still front-and-center, but the way these songs build, over rising synth, piano and occasional strings makes them feel huge without losing any intimacy. As with previous records, these are searching songs—they document the deepening of one’s understanding of their place in the world and investigations into the nature of grief and love. Words and music sync up to create so many chill-inducing moments, as when Byrne sings on the title track, “Forever underground / Name my grief to let it sing / To carry you up on the greater wings.” – TD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

94. Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin Kynsi

Of the many great experimental metal albums to arrive in the decade thus far, Oranssi Pazuzu’s Mestarin kynsi stands out as exceptional. Comprising only six tracks, Mestarin kynsi is captivating in how the Finnish psych-metal band continue to evolve their signature and technicality. Each piece offers its own flavor of psychedelia, Oranssi Pazuzu blending and blurring the lines between black metal and the avant garde. Mestarin kynsi is a remarkable example of metal’s evolution and the extraordinarily weird places the genre is capable of traversing. – MP

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

93. Tzusing – Green Hat

“Cuck” reached a fever pitch as a cultural insult around the year thinkpieces will reference until the sun collapses: 2016. But that was only in the West. In China, the badge of cuckoldry dates back centuries, and it is a green hat. To wear one is to confess that you are a lesser man and that your wife is sleeping with others behind your back. On his 2021 record Green Hat, Tzusing, who spends his time between Shanghai and Taipei, knots the anxieties associated with being perceived as weak to hyper-masculine industrial techno. Not only does the album bang, but it shines a flashlight on the male need to size oneself up against every other man. It communicates through the language it dissects, meaning it’s not condescendingly stating that masculinity in and of itself is toxic, but empathizing with those struggling with their masculinity by portraying that form of gendered expression as an animal kingdom hierarchy. – CD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

92. Alex G – God Save the Animals

Alex G’s ninth album finds a natural meeting point between ambition and accessibility. On many of the songs, Alex Giannascoli imagines no less than animal consciousness through the prism of his voice. “I did good, I stayed out of the kitchen,” one narrator sings; “they hit you with the rolled-up magazine,” another laments. There’s a scary version of every Beatles-y ballad; for every piano pop sing-along, an electronic kneejerk. There are plenty of flourishes, none underthought. The music sounds smoother than ever but the songs feel loose—familiar and haunting, sometimes insanely catchy, sometimes no less inscrutable than what goes through your dog’s mind. And we wouldn’t want it any other way. – CB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

91. Portrayal of Guilt – We Are Always Alone

The sophomore release by Texas’ Portrayal of Guilt tapped into an unsettling darkness in the most beautiful way. Combining elements of grindcore, black metal, hardcore and powerviolence, We Are Always Alone employs the brutality of those genres as the gas in their tank, but are painting gloomy gutwrenching odes to the ugliest emotions inside them. They are not dressing things up with pentagrams and goat heads, but draping a melancholic ambiance over their tortured expressions of sonic self-harming behaviors. Heavier emotionally than it is heavy metal, it’s still highly effective with each listen. – WL

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

90. Arooj Aftab – Night Reign

It’s fitting that Arooj Aftab’s music has been described as both jazz and folk alike, two distinct forms that carry forward a long and ever-changing tradition. Aftab’s music is likewise informed by and in conversation with traditions that stretch back before most living musicians could remember. The haunting and richly detailed songs on her gorgeous 2024 album Night Reign include pieces that adapt 18th century Urdu poetry as well as a unique take on the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves.” Among them are an array of originals that find the Brooklyn-via-Lahore artist navigating nocturnal spaces via gentle plucks of harp, starkly gorgeous piano courtesy of Vijay Iyer and the pale light of a Wurlitzer organ’s warm glow. There’s nothing vintage about Night Reign other than that which it shares with the source material it occasionally nods toward—decades from now, it’ll still sound as rich and rewarding. – JT

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

89. Against All Logic – 2017-2019

Dual aliases suit Nicolás Jaar, an accomplished purveyor of dark ambience that brings spiced-up dancefloor bangers as Against All Logic. While his initially 2012-2017 collection felt like a joyous disco and house set, its successor premeditated 2020’s more unpredictable, chaotic feel. Lydia Lunch serves as a typically aggressive mouthpiece over the bassy undercurrent of “If You Can’t Do It Good, Do It Hard,” while “Faith” and “Penny” manage to be gentle and explosive, soothing yet pulsating. It may be less streamlined than before, but 2017-2019’s Pandora’s Box approach bubbles with ideas from a no-bounds producer and makes any 2019- follow-up record a delectable possibility. – EBu

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

88. Moor Mother – Jazz Codes

A rapturous album from one of the most soul-stirring artists of the decade. Not only is Jazz Codes the perfect introduction to the Moor Mother universe, but an immaculate distillation of the best outsider jazz, outré R&B, and experimental music created during the 21^st century. Backed by a diverse range of singers, producers, and spoken word savants, she delivers an 18-track album jam-packed with sociopolitical treatises about the negative state of the world. But instead of bemoaning current events with intractable nihilism, standout songs such as “Ode to Mary,” “Meditation Rag,” and “Arms Save” burst with a passionate (yet realistic) yearning for positive action that can change the future. – APN

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

87. Illuminati Hotties – Free I.H: This Is Not The One You’ve Been Waiting For

Not just one of the best albums of the 2020s so far, but also one of the greatest acts of malicious compliance in the music business, Free I.H. was written by Sarah Tudzin in order to fulfill contractual obligations with a label who had been less than dependable regarding matters of paying their artists on time. Technically, she recorded one more album with them; actually, the album is one that just oozes sneering, sarcastic, righteous indignation from every available orifice. Tudzin struts through a parade of genres—from swaggering hardcore to breezy indie-pop—and takes every opportunity for a swipe at sub-par record label management as she goes, proving that there’s almost nothing you can’t do with that winning combination of sparkling songwriting ability and spite. – EB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

86. ANOHNI and the Johnsons – My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross

Starting with Motown as a fundament for your material is always a good idea. Reconfiguring the perfected pop of that studio with its deep focus on racial experience to lay now at the intersection of transness, broad queerness as well as retaining that racialized element with the image of Marsha P. Johnston on the cover? Simply genius. The swoop and swell of the strings, the strum and growl of the guitar, those vocals which careen between a croon and Manic Street Preachers howl. My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross feels like a warm haze in the best way, a little sad, a little hopeful. – LH

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

85. High Vis – Blending

The title of High Vis’ sophomore album comes from Liverpool slang for being fashionable or stylish (“Ah, lad, you’re blending,” as vocalist Graham Sayle demonstrated for me). Blending is also what they do better than most, their uniquely hook-driven post-punk sound reflective of their hardcore backgrounds, shimmering with Manchester jangle and subtle shades of shoegaze and psychedelia. But even in the album’s rawest and roughest moments, like the driving “0151” and the rowdy punk rock of “Out Cold,” Sayle’s alternately crooning and shouting delivery arrives with a surplus of empathy and human warmth—a reminder that community and camaraderie is necessary for making it through this broken world. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

84. Bully – Lucky For You

With sharp pop melodies, achingly powerful lyricism, and a roaring guitar tone so thunderously full of life you could use it to water the plants, Lucky For You sees Alicia Bognanno bring a vibrant personal approach to a rollercoaster of expertly-executed ’90s tropes, referencing everything from Madchester to the Seattle sound as she takes us for a spin across Lucky For You’s 10 invigorating tracks. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll raise your voice, you’ll pump your fist with gay abandon. And that’s just by the end of the first chorus. – EB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

83. JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown – Scaring the Hoes

You’ve probably seen fancy music critic words like “maximalist” used to describe this tremendous album. While accurate, such words also mask the intense artistry on display by JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown, two of the most inventive wordsmiths in rap music today. Scaring the Hoes overflows with powerful street-level critiques of contemporary hustle culture, complete with cracks about Elon Musk and other capitalist charlatans. Musically, the duo provides the sort of bombastic beats, gratuitous grooves, and ridiculous rhythms you typically hear on funk and rock songs. With tunes like “Lean Beef Patty,” “Garbage Pale Kids,” and “God Loves You,” this album is perfect for both headbanging and rattling windows. – APN

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

82. Sofia Kourtesis – Madres

House music rarely feels as warm and nourishing as it does on Sofia Kourtesis’ magnificent debut. With an emphasis on vocals and an array of glowing synths, Kourtesis seems to push house’s euphoric capacity toward a wholesome sentimentality. There is no nihilistic hedonism in Kourtesis’ music, but an emphasis on communal, meaningful joy. This is compounded by the fact that Madres draws from sources beyond the usual House staples, weaving in influences from her South American upbringing. Where many in EDM are leaning into the inherent artifice of the genre, Kourtesis seems intent on illuminating the humanity. – NS

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

81. Roc Marciano & The Alchemist – Elephant Man’s Bones

You’ll struggle to find a more effortlessly menacing rapper than Roc Marciano. His gangster persona is not presented with bluster or overt aggression but with an assured calm. He is the Vito Corleone of the rap world. The Alchemist proves Marciano’s perfect accomplice, complementing his raps with sparse, minimalist, and deeply soulful beats. Lyrically, he moves with ease between hilarious one- liners, typically gruesome descriptions of the underworld, and the trademark braggadocio of the genre. But on repeat listens, a sense of tragedy reveals itself, hanging behind the project. – NS

Listen: Spotify

80. Drug Church – Hygiene

If Cheer brought Drug Church’s unbelievably fun vibe to the modern punk party, Hygiene took the band’s catchiness and tongue-in-cheek cynicism to the upper level, as if being locked into that elevator with vocalist Patrick Kindlon in real life for half an hour. Ironically titled opener “Fun’s Over” says it all: a barrage of upbeat power chord bops, harmonic interplay and reverb that never miss their opportunity to become instant earworms. The group’s ’90s alt-rock throwback sound has seen a bold resurgence, but nobody else cuts the crap lyrically and musically quite the same, making any of Hygiene’s tracks a crowd pleaser for their indelible and crowd-surfer-laden live shows. – EBu

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

79. Protomartyr – Ultimate Success Today

Released four months into the pandemic, having been written and recorded several months before it, Protomartyr’s fifth (and best) album finds Joe Casey penning songs about an unspecified illness he was suffering—which unsurprisingly felt to many listeners like they were commenting on current events. Ultimate Success Today featured Protomartyr’s most guitar-dominated songs to date, with Greg Ahee turning in virtuoso work on songs like “Processed by the Boys,” “I Am You Now,” and “June 21.” And adding Jemeel Moondoc’s alto saxophones and Izaak Mills’ clarinets to the mix was an inspired move that bolstered the album’s songs considerably. – GH

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

78. Playboi Carti – Whole Lotta Red

Cold and bright, numb and abrasive, primal and performative, Whole Lotta Red assaults with its contradictions. Like Playboi Carti’s previous studio album Die Lit, it’s pure sugar without the side effects. But it roils with a new melancholy:, in-your-face abrasion, punishing production, vampiric affectations. Jordan Carter is being himself playing a character, a villain letting us in on his pain. And he finds a way to transfigure that pain into synthesized treacle on every track, whether he’s blowing out his voice on “New Tank,” cooing over candyland production on “Teen X” or battering woes into submission with “Stop Breathing.” Hip–hop is still feeling the ripples. – CB

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

77. Skee Mask – Pool

DJ and producer Bryan Muller, aka Skee Mask, has straddled a signature but shapeshifting kind of ambient jungle for quite some time, but his massive 2021 album Pool is hard to pin down at all, conceptually or generically, because it is just so damn ambitious. It may not be as tightly focused as last year’s Resort or 2018’s Compro, but in its breadth and depth Pool gives every component piece more breathing room to fully expand. That greater degree of contrast further highlights one of the most compelling features of Skee Mask’s music, the texture—ambient warbles, skittering breakbeats, and earworm synths all slither together in a unique soundscape that always intrigues. – FJ

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

76. Cate Le Bon – Pompeii

Pompeii is full of punchy, off-kilter ethereal pop-rock, equally bursting with energy as it is yearning to decompress from the chaos of life. Opener “Dirt on the Bed” features curious sounding horns in conversation with Le Bon’s vocals, a testament to her ease within blending sounds. “Moderation” is a sweet, shimmering track about wanting more than you should, a swaying guitar accompanying Le Bon’s declaration “Moderation— I don’t want it / can’t have it.” Pompeii’s themes are all about pushing back on the status quo, both lyrically and musically, blooming into her best album to date. – VC

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

75. Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven

In 2024, Philadelphia indie-punk quartet Mannequin Pussy continued their inexorable growth in popularity with best album, I Got Heaven. Espousing a more optimistic and defiant tone than that of their previous album Patience, the band’s fourth full-length evinced their talents for crafting wistful indie rock songs that recalled ’90s alt-rock greats like The Breeders and Belly (“Loud Bark,” “I Don’t Know You,” “Sometimes,”), as well as short, fast punk songs that could inspire frenzied moshing (“OK? OK! OK? OK!,” “Of Her,” “Aching.”). I Got Heaven indicated that Mannequin Pussy can only continue growing stronger. – GH

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

74. Algiers – Shook

Algiers have always been more concerned with standing out than fitting in, and Shook is nothing short of a revelation. There’s a throughline from the Atlanta, Georgia band’s 2015 debut if you look for it, but their vision has expanded so much that they’ve dispensed with genre boundaries altogether, tipping the hat to rap, classic soul, post-punk, gospel and so much else. Shook is a watershed record for them, before we even mention the features list; jaw-dropping, like the album itself—a masterful exhibition by a band prepared to fight like hell for a better world. – GOM

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

73. Snail Mail – Valentine

Through her sophomore album, Lindsey Jordan composed a Dear Jane letter to past partners and a love letter to past musical influences. The wormhole of Valentine deposits us in the heart of the 1990s, as Snail Mail weave gnarly, knotty melodies and guitar lines supporting the energy of the riot grrrl movement’s eldest singer-songwriter daughters. From the reluctant snarl of the title to the polished artfulness of “Forever (Sailing),” this is a compact fireplug of an album. – AB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

72. Florist – Florist

“I’m always crying when I’m writing Florist songs,” Emily Sprague said in 2019. It’s justifiable: Sprague has experienced more than many beyond her years. Surviving a cataclysmic bike crash in 2014 made her painfully aware of life’s force and frailty, but connecting her self-taught musical talents with her deep love of nature was one way to cope. Florist’s self-titled album translates Sprague’s wrenching hopes and dreams into lushness and light. The album incorporates jazzy, orchestral notes alongside ambient sounds including crickets and fairy-like murmurs that swerve throughout. Haywire, lo-fi sounds sprout from distorted keyboards to complement the more traditional indie-folk elements of the album, creating a blanketed, warm atmosphere filled with Sprague’s pensive thoughts for which she can provide no solid answers. – ER

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

71. Jeff Parker – Suite for Max Brown

It’s the damnedest thing. Behind all the repetition and droning harmonies, underneath the digital cut-ups, even the funk-flow larger arrangements, Jeff Parker can still knock you over just with that guitar and its human tone. It’s what happening on the glorious John Coltrane cover “After The Rain,” which dares everybody to keep a dry eye as Parker wields out his model of astral beauty. The concepts that evolved into Suite for Max Brown, the prolific guitarist’s tribute to his mother, were engineered during his fall 2018 residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito. Now in 2025, this record, a beginning of sorts for the heavily influential wing of jazz Parker and his many compadres have been churning out since, Suite for Max Brown is not just a tribute to his mother, who looks stately on the cover, but it’s the beacon, a light shining forward, giving the idiom an even more peculiar twist in the 21 Century, even after all the young Brits rewired America’s classical music about five years ago. It’s in the final selection “Max Brown,” that 10 minutes in heaven just fly by, where the 1970s Stevie Wonder analog synth complexion, encased within a subdued Soulquarians mellow bounce with trumpet and sax solo pleasantly overlapping, hits a solemn, communal moment. It’s not a formula, but a sweet spot Parker and his caravan of players have been putting on an extended clinic with ever since. – JPS

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

70. Lucrecia Dalt – ¡Ay!

A romantically surrealistic soundtrack to a sci-fi saga sung in Colombia-born artist Lucrecia Dalt’s native Spanish, ¡Ay! earns its exclamatory expression of wonder via curiously novel arrangements of flute, electronics, upright bass and percussion that most often resemble bolero being played on the moon. Dalt’s body of work most frequently leans away from pop toward electronics-driven abstractions, atmospheric and alien, but she brings a bit more pop immediacy and palpable emotion to these Latin jazz-noir compositions. It’s an album that’s as easy to love as it is difficult to untangle, a glorious riddle worthy of endless attempts to solve it. -JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

69. HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III

Released in a stifling, bleak summer—the first one of the pandemic—HAIM’s Women in Music Pt. III will always be the album that brought me the most comfort in 2020. Alana, Danielle and Este Haim’s musicianship goes above and beyond on their third album, with gut punching lyrics on “Hallelujah” and a catharsis-fueled guitar solo on “FUBT.” Tracks like “Gasoline” find the sisters in a Laurel Canyon brushed sound, giving the album its coolest moments in Danielle’s bridge guitar solo. Women in Music Pt III is HAIM at their strongest and most daring. – VC

Listen: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)

68. Brittany Howard – What Now

An odd decade or so since the heyday of the roots rock revival and five years out from her stunning solo debut Jaime, last year’s What Now cements the narrative that the Grammy sweeping Alabama Shakes was just a warm up for Brittany Howard. Even before the stellar house beat on “Prove It To You,” an imprint of electronic music marks What Now that in turn reflects the R&B roots of electronic music—soul samples blend with even more soulful melody while technically masterful, almost mechanical, drums and guitar replicate breakbeats. The visionary result transcends any previous constraints of what rock ought to be. – FJ

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

67. PinkPantheress – To Hell With It

The Y2K vice grip of the early 2020s was led by none other than PinkPantheress. Flipping nu metal samples and garage classics alike, the UK singer and producer is a TikTok unicorn, capitalizing on goldfish attention spans via quick-twitch beats and lean songwriting. Her debut record is more a collection of singles (which were often teased on her formerly anonymous socials) than an intentional record. To Hell With It is fleeting and filled with one-chorus earworms that rarely pass the two-minute mark, as her ability to craft all-hook-no-pulp songs attract the focus-deficit attention economy like flies in a sugar trap. – PP

Listen: Spotify

66. Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

Released only months before the 30th anniversary of Portishead’s landmark debut Dummy, the solo debut from the pioneering trip-hop group’s vocalist Beth Gibbons recast their melancholy moods into something more personal and quietly affecting. Lives Outgrown is haunting and elegant, a not-so-quiet art-folk meditation on aging, motherhood, grief and the moments that inevitably slip through your fingers. It’s at turns gentle and turbulent, recapturing some of the intensity of 2008’s Third while carving out new paths through less unforgiving terrain. Though it’s in a sense a new beginning, Lives Outgrown is a work decades in the making, a work of fragile beauty that comes only from understanding what it means to experience life’s full spectrum. -JT

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

65. Dos Santos – City of Mirrors

Despite their affiliation with contemporary jazz outpost International Anthem, Dos Santos aren’t a jazz band. Not that they don’t have the chops—drummer Daniel Villarreal has, himself, released two excellent jazz records in collaboration with the likes of Jeff Parker and Anna Butterss. But Dos Santos—initially formed as Dos Santos Anti-Beat Orquesta—ultimately built on their foundation of cumbia rhythms with a more eclectic approach that found them connecting Latin folk styles with art pop and psychedelia (and sure, maybe a little jazz). City of Mirrors is their most breathtaking vision, reflective of bright and fertile dreamworlds and urban grids alike, tradition and innovation merging in a bright, transcendent collision. -JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

64. Panopticon – …And Again Into the Light

Austin Lunn had a champion’s run in the 2010s under the Panopticon mantle, evolving and devolving between anarchist, bluegrass-infused black metal and post-rock while his personal milestones bled through the page. Vulnerability and hope became crucial elements of his craft, eventually cresting with his career highlight …And Again Into the Light. Its texture, which resembles an overgrown swamp, is best thought of as Lunn clawing out of a hole he buried himself in. He keeps details surrounding this hole and how he fell down it vague, subverting the ambiguity black metal often employs into a measure of protection. Those specifics don’t matter as they are too close to the chest. Through that, …And Again Into the Light stands as one of the decade’s best documents of recovery. – CD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

63. Ambrose Akinmusire – On the tender spot of every calloused moment

Jazz can feel like an academic pursuit to those who aren’t fluent in the language, but at its best it can be a wrenchingly emotional experience. One such moment of revelatory feeling occurs just under three minutes into On the tender spot of every calloused moment, wherein on standout opener “Tide of Hyacinth,” Ambrose Akinmusire and his band seem to replicate the feeling of being caught up in a tide, treading water, possibly even drowning. Moments like these can be heard throughout the California-based trumpeter and bandleader’s fifth album, one defined less by futuristic groove or avant garde atonalities than of crafting breathtaking and devastating moments of drama and emotionality. It still occurs within the context of a jazz quartet, their versatility revealed less through the size of their arrangements than the shape of them. There is life in these pieces, vibrant, intense and unpredictable. -JT

Listen: Spotify

62. Weyes Blood – And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow

Weyes Blood’s entrancing vocals take on a new shimmering depth on And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow. There is a melancholic sense of urgency underlying many of the tracks, like opener “It’s Not Just Me It’s Everybody,” a sort of call to find connectedness. Natalie Mering leans into a darker, more ethereal sound on this album, especially on tracks like “Twin Flame” with echoing synths and enveloping vocals. On “Grapevine,” she takes her sound to a new tonal landscape, taking on an otherworldly tone as she sings of an “emotional cowboy.” Mering solidifies herself as one of our most profound songwriters on this album, its songs reading like pure poetry. – VC

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

61. Mabe Fratti – Sentir que no sabes

On paper, Mabe Fratti’s last five years seem like a whirlwind—eight records as a solo artist, collaborator, or with her Titanic or Amor Muere projects. In practice, Fratti seems to make time stand still. Her 2024 record Sentir que no sabes is adorned with crystalline formations of cello, synth and percussion—and often less—her lilting vocal delivery providing a tether from her constructed dreamworld back down to the earth. She finds melodic accessibility within atypical, sometimes sparse arrangements, and even occasionally finds a subtle groove, as in the breathtaking art-pop of “Enfrente” or the avant-funk of “Kravitz,” which is indeed named for Lenny. It’s only a matter of time before her next remarkable creation materializes, but this radiant fortress remains permanently embedded in its own time and space. -JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

60. Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn – Pigments

Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn are an unlikely pair—she an electro-R&B pop professional, he a neoclassical instrumentalist. But Pigments, their first collaborative LP, is a perfect synthesis. Mostly instrumental, pillowy ambient, the album is loaded with emotional stakes even though it doesn’t “go” anywhere. Elevated on a bed of tenor sax, clarinet, violin, cello and synth, Richard’s voice injects passion into Zahn’s calm arrangements (she described her voice best as “the moss surrounding the roots of Spencer’s compositions”). Listening to Pigments feels like burrowing into a warm den, feeling the rush of childhood. It’s a forest of sound that’s easy to hide out in, and worth it for a different reason every time. – CB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

59. Gospel – The Loser

A former breakup and subsequent failed reunion would cause trepidation for any band’s returning record. Not to mention an act that struck a delicate balance between screamo and ’70s prog. When Gospel reappeared like a rare Pokémon in 2022 with The Loser, none of the confident vigor that made 2005’s The Moon Is A Dead World a classic was lost despite trip hazards along the way. The synths ebb and flow so epically over crunchy post-hardcore abrasion that you forget the mashup ever felt weird in the first place, while vocalist Adam Dooling frantically yells through tales of aging (“S.R.O.”) and conspiracy theorists (“Metallic Olives”), cementing their status as a much-missed and truly original gem. – EBu

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

58. Nilüfer Yanya – My Method Actor

My Method Actor isn’t exactly what you’d call “stripped down.” Throughout the album, Nilüfer Yanya introduces big swells of distortion, string arrangements, gauzy sheets of ambiance and deep bass grooves. But juxtaposed against the more frantic pace of its predecessor, the UK singer/songwriter’s third album breathes easier and invites more space in between its myriad triumphs and climaxes. Its title a reference to the necessary role that performers play, My Method Actor feels like Yanya’s warmest and most unguarded album, yet one rife with so much scenery to take in. That she allows us just a little more space to take it all in makes the details shine so much brighter. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

57. Theo Parrish – DJ-Kicks

In 2008, while entering Mighty, a dance music venue in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to compliment and chat with DJ, producer, and ethnomusicologist Theo Parrish before he performed a DJ set later that evening. He told me that when he gets the chance he likes to show up a bit early before a gig to see what the crowd is like. Duke Ellington, similarly, did this during his performing career. By merely glancing at the ladies ‘ shoes, it would give him an idea of what type of crowd to expect. On this San Francisco eve, Parrish remarked that many of the ladies were wearing sneakers or “trainers” indicating that people came to dance and be present. Not stand.

Throughout his career, Parrish has always been one to deliver answers, “truths” rather. The question was always for those asking, were they ready for it? Psst. It’s in his sets. Before Parrish takes off in his rocket ship of vinyl: Techno, freestyle, electro, or whatever he happened to pack for a five-to-eight-hour set on NTS or some spot in London (probably Fabric), New York, or Berlin, chances are the first couple of hours, Theo is home cooking, what some call deep house. 

In 2022, when the DJ Kicks series from !K7 Records was put in his hands, Parrish took his edition to uncharted realms by inviting his Detroit peers to produce a collection of brand new material, in turn creating the first-ever, all-exclusive entry to the esteemed series. So those previously uninformed got a taste of the dancefloor-jazz-meets-house-groove of Ian Fink’s “Moonlite (Duality/Detroit Live Version),” which is half on the dancefloor and half in a smoky jazz club somewhere. This project is a total celebration, which includes contributions from artists Whodat, Specter, and De’Sean Jones, and numerous other contributions of electronic music, rooted in that Detroit grit and soul, happening in a Midwestern, predominantly Black city, in this 21st century. – JPS

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

56. Beach House – Once Twice Melody

I resisted Beach House for a long time, until Bloom, which saw their promising sonic textural approach appended to shockingly brilliant and pearlescent pop songwriting. The years between that one and Once Twice Melody read like a survey of extended focused experiments, the group acquiring new tools in slow deliberate motion until this release, a radical expansion of the successes of Bloom and 7, repeating their structure of four album cycles of experimentation and resolution. Alongside Become, an EP of the fifth side of this record, it is two hours of the best material they’ve ever put to tape. God I love eating crow. – LH

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

55. Paysage d’Hiver – Im Wald

Im Wald at first appears like the final boss of black metal. Its creator, Wintherr, had over two decades’ worth of music as Paysage d’Hiver on tape when it was released, and it’s overloaded with genre conventions, namely winter and isolation. To weather it is to endure two hours of dueling fetid black metal and ambient across tracks that run for more than 10 (and sometimes 20) minutes, which is to say that it assumes the form of black metal’s credo—repetition, roughness, and rebellion against trends. And it is within that that Im Wald becomes a transcendent work. It places you inside the eye of the storm and to think, to place whatever stock you have into that storm, and observe it from a neutral position. Few albums put as much faith in you as Im Wald does. Though not intentionally, Paysage d’Hiver trusts you to paint your own forest and trees and find whatever solace there is amongst the jagged branches, just as the protagonist of Im Wald does. – CD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

54. Mitski – The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We

Family is a blessing and a curse. That’s one of many sobering messages Mitski conveys on her seventh album, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, which combines country music influences with angelic choirs and hard-hitting indie rock. Here, she navigates life through the lenses of religion, family, addiction, and other thorny subjects, and in doing so, she exposes and reconciles with her own battles with alcoholism. “Bug Like an Angel” expounds on the dangers of having a family, a force which can either break your soul or raise you up. The minimalist “My Love Mine All Mine” helped her crack the Top 40, but chart stardom isn’t what she’s after: It’s about helping others understand the human condition through music. On The Land is Inhospitable, Mitski does so with startling clarity. – ER

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

53. 454 – Fast Trax 3

“Transparent, I’m really not good at speaking,” Florida hip-hop artist 454 tells us on Fast Trax 3’s first song. Maybe this is Wille Wilson explaining his decision to jack his voice up to a cartoonish pitch on every track to follow. But less than a minute into this sensitive, profoundly comforting mixtape, he’s already proven himself wrong. Lyrically Wilson strings music, cars, skating and his childhood Orlando suburbs together with gleeful spontaneity, always keeping his head above water in homespun seas of crystal synth and chipmunk soul. The seams show: crowded production, amorphous transitions, at least a few airhorns. But like 454’s more polished debut 4REAL, Fast Trax 3 stands out for its stories, the way Wilson traces big topics with an open heart: losing family, growing up, looking back. Here’s hoping 454 takes over the second half of the decade, too. – CB

Listen: Spotify

52. Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

Big Thief have a distinctly organic quality, with unpredictable live setlists trialling unreleased songs before they’re reformed into much-debated studio versions. So, Dragon’s setup as a double album recorded across multiple studios could have felt slightly contrived. The result was far from it, instead something remarkably rustic. “Red Moon”’s one-take video recording was the final version, “Little Things” sounds like various tracks played at the same time, and the misleading simplicity of “Change” evokes Adrienne Lenker picking up a guitar and making it up then and there. From the cuddly animal campfire cover to the songs within, it’s a warm mug of music straying into all sorts of bluegrass, folk and indie-rock directions, but never losing the listener from the fascinating, whimsical world it creates. – EBu

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

51. ML Buch – Suntub

There are records you come to know and ones you’ve always known. This might be an individualistic sensation, or perhaps one reached through specific cultural experience, but Suntub accesses a part of the subconscious in ways most albums cannot. ML Buch’s second record sounds like the way some light hits or a glance you haven’t forgotten. There’s a glaring familiarity within the composer’s uncanny soft-rock motifs, melodic glints that are as gorgeous as they are unsettling. For a record so unnervingly recognizable, Suntub is remarkably dense and excavatable, a record that keeps its cards close and its doors wide open. – PP

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

50. Boris – NO

Some of us baked bread and played games over Zoom in spring of 2020, and some of us listened to a lot of ambient music to soothe our nerves about an apocalyptic event. But Boris made a thrashy hardcore album in record time, released it immediately, and despite the rapid turnaround or perhaps because of it, it’s one of their best in years. Surging with manic energy, NO is a raw and resonant primal scream in the face of hopelessness and helplessness—a necessary interruption to the inevitable feelings of stagnation and panic. That these songs aren’t fussed over is one of their greatest assets, the veteran Tokyo trio instead offering unfiltered expressions of rage and frustration via some of the greatest riffs in their arsenal. -JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

49. Yasmin Williams – Urban Driftwood

Yasmin Williams’ Urban Driftwood became instant canon upon its release in 2021. Blending elements of folk, pop, new age and country, Driftwood is not only testament to the guitarist’s inventive craft, but to her skills as a composer. It’s a showcase of Williams’ ability to form a cohesive album narrative while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of her instrument. With the guitar in her lap, Williams allows a natural rhythm to exist in her highly melodic instrumental arrangements, pieces so approachable and expressive you may forget their wordlessness. Between the wide-eyed opener “Sunshowers,” motif reintroductions on “Adrift” and “Jarabi,” and the venturous, djembe-featuring title track, Urban Driftwood is an rich entry in 21st century guitar music. – PP

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

48. Cloud Rat – Threshold

Among the metal (and metal adjacent) bands on this list, Cloud Rat’s kineticism is unmatched. The trio has a kind of headlong, barely containable energy that evokes both desperate frustration and furious menace. Their 2022 album Threshold demonstrates a culminating pinnacle of that energy with an efficiently maximalist brutality. Even as their riffs bulk up to a lumbering chug or brief twinkles of melody shine through, they ever sacrifice their ferocious forward momentum. Threshold is a kind of apotheosis, both for Cloud Rat’s powerful discography and grindcore itself. – FJ

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

47. Angel Olsen – Big Time

It would’ve been difficult, perhaps impossible, for Angel Olsen to repeat the magisterial sound of 2019’s chamber-pop masterpiece All Mirrors. So she didn’t try, ultimately landing on the bright, expansive country-influenced sound of Big Time. It fits these emotionally complex songs like a glove. Even exploring immense grief, as on “Ghost On” and “Go Home,” Olsen never wallows (she acknowledges intense pain but understands the necessity of moving forward), and the arrangements reflect this, enlisting steel guitar, organ, slip-note piano and a whole lot more to augment Olsen’s clarion-call voice and unshowy but ever-impactful guitar. Meanwhile, love songs like the title track and “Through the Fires” sweep you along on winds of elation toward their sky-high peaks. – LG

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

46. Boldy James and Sterling Toles – Manger on McNichols

The elaborate sound of a complex and layered jazz-rap noir record like Manger on McNichols doesn’t come together overnight. The debut full-length collaboration from Sterling Toles and Boldy James took a full 13 years to complete—and it’s rich and immersive enough to make that baker’s dozen well worth the effort. Toles’ stunning production brings James’ bleak narratives to life through intricately layered samples, from sputtering scat vocals and hypnotic vibraphones to deep bass grooves, while Boldy’s deceptively stoic cool provides a deceptive facade to narratives steeped in desperation and regret. Though words like “cinematic” tend to be thrown around lightly, this is a hip-hop masterpiece worthy of the silver screen. -JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

45. Sprain – The Lamb As Effigy

A primordial record, much like Nick Cave’s Ghosteen, The Lamb As Effigy swirls between contemporary classical, noise rock, post-rock and prog, with none save perhaps noise rock played straight. It is an album driven by intent over traditional songcraft, allowing sections to expand and shift and recur in patchwork mosaic fashion as the group chases the dragon of their ecstasies. As a result it feels like a mad reverie, boiling and boiling. If you have to go out on top, do it like this. – LH

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

44. Wet Leg – Wet Leg

Don’t be mad at Netflix for inserting Wet Leg music into every fourth new release they stream. When your self-titled debut strikes a sonic nerve as hard as Wet Leg’s did, why wouldn’t you have it soundtrack your latest physical comedy scene, or romantic montage, or tense criminal procedure, or anachronistic Western horseback chase? It’s more than just “Chaise Longue” that position the duo as attitudinally French as two British ladies can get. Wet Leg is full of not-so-subtle sexual suggestions, roasts of you and your family, and pained recollections of love lost. They’re essential theme songs for spending nights curled up with the social contract, tearing it up page by page. – AB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

43. Big|Brave – nature morte

Big|Brave are four years deep into their most prolific stretch to date, having released four albums in that time, each of them excellent: a crushing set of minimalist drone metal, a collaboration with The Body on public domain folk song interpretations, and two sonically adventurous companion albums that explore the vast and fertile space in between. Of those latter two, nature morte is the more immense, a heavier counterpart to its dreamier companion piece A chaos of flowers, but amid its thunderous slabs of guitar is a more delicate and intricate sensibility. A Big|Brave album through and through, it’s a deeply physical presentation of distortion and sound, but given the freedom to explore more structural dynamism, folk-song intricacy and even a few honest-to-god riffs. It’s the highest peak of a creatively fertile period—one whose horizon only continues to unfold. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

42. Beth Orton – Weather Alive

Beth Orton might navigate different genres, but the constant presence of her voice is what makes her music so alluring. Weather Alive features eight tracks that explore and experiment with various styles without losing a core essence tying it together. With backing from jazz artists like drummer Tom Skinner, saxophonist Alabaster dePlume and bassist Tom Herbert, a raw but beautiful tone sets this release apart from Orton’s previous work. Orton sings her perspective of a world that isn’t always perfect, but she also renews said world’s wonders in eerie and atmospheric electronic-meets-folk-meets-jazz melodies. – KR

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

41. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud

Katie Crutchfield has been known to close out performances with covers of songs by Lucinda Williams or Songs: Ohia, and with 2020’s Saint Cloud, she offered a country rock album of her own, worthy of standing alongside those two songwriting greats. Having long shed the lo-fi scruff of her earlier recordings, Crutchfield’s fifth album arrived as a set of songs both triumphant and familiar. They’re lush yet simple, stunningly arranged but breathe easy, crafted with the kind of ease that rarely comes easily. Standouts such as “Fire” and “Lilacs” reveal an earned confidence and maturity, reflecting a newfound sobriety and a perspective that the mercuriality of youth simply can’t provide. It’s the rare album that suggests artistic breakthroughs and comfort don’t have to contradict each other. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

40. Jlin – Akoma

We’re well past the point of being surprised whenever electronic music reaches the kind of escape velocity where the pull of mere danceability gets left behind in order to explore the vast expanse of pure art. What I think is so mesmerizing about Jlin is just how long and consistently productive her captain’s log has been. Footwork appeared on the bleeding edge of club music at the turn of the century, and since her first LP in the genre in 2015 she’s elevated and expanded the form far beyond its juke-dancing intent. Akoma once again resets her bar of rhythmic intellectualism. With this meditation on the heart, conflating electrically-impulsed muscles with digital patterns, she’s clearly Aphex’s twin now. – AB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

39. Run the Jewels – RTJ4

On their 2020 album—their fourth in a string of excellent releases—Killer Mike and El-P created an album reminiscent of the best of hip-hop’s late ’80s and early ’90s golden age. Killer Mike and El-P aren’t simply actors trying to convince you how hard they are, they let the music do that and get real. Nor do they rely on the guest spots—the likes of which range from Josh Homme to 2 Chainz—to carry the songs. Rather, Mike and El stick to the basics while creating something that is still sonically interesting and builds on what they’ve done before. Few rap albums released in recent years manage to hold as much weight while going this hard and simply being as fun as this one. – WL

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

38. Cassandra Jenkins – An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

An Overview on Phenomenal Nature showcases Cassandra Jenkins’ range as a songwriter—from the distorted guitar on opening track “Michelangelo” to the moving tribute to David Berman “Ambiguous Norway” to the atmospheric field recordings of closer “The Ramble,” every moment feels considered. “Hard Drive,” in particular, is such a hard song to pull off, the way it builds, the way Jenkins sets each scene with a light touch, the snippets of dialogue, and it is one of the highlights of the album, as Jenkins speaks and sings, relaying conversations and reflections about art, politics, spirituality, and healing. – TD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

37. HEALTH – RAT WARS

It’s easy to feel some cognitive dissonance from HEALTH’s at times incongruous balance of dark songwriting and risible social media image, but it should also feel somewhat familiar to anyone who’s enjoyed a similar kind of gallows humor in such surreal times. But what might be a jarring juxtaposition out of context also helps to explain how they translate an electronic pop sensibility so well to crushing industrial metal. Nearly entirely exorcised of the noise rock freakouts from which they emerged, RAT WARS is stylized dystopia that’s at once menacing and sexy, whether living up to their DISCO brand on “HATEFUL,” borrowing some Godflesh loops on “SICKO” or going full-KMFDM thrash-disco overload on “DSM-V.” Sometimes when it gets dark, all you can do is laugh, but RAT WARS suggests dancing is an equally healthy option. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

36. Mount Eerie – Night Palace

Over the course of two and a half decades, Phil Elverum’s catalog of music as both The Microphones and Mount Eerie has paralleled the growth and tragedy in his own life, from the creativity and curiosity of his earliest records, the darker and more introspective records to follow, documents of grief and healing and eventually a kind of spiritual peace. Night Palace is his most all-encompassing record, referencing his earliest triumphs and more devastating recent material, spanning everything from hypnotic drones to playful indie pop and heavier psych-rock. It’s as much a career summary as a life summary, a tour-de-force as life-affirming as it is thought provoking. -JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

35. Wednesday – Rat Saw God

The late 2010s and early 2020s have seen several artists take elements of classic country music (predominantly its defiant spirit and rich storytelling) to unexpected corners. Wednesday is in the top tier of this category, with 2023’s punk- and shoegaze-accented Rat Saw God being their finest work so far. Frontwoman Karly Hartzman spins tragic narratives of the contemporary South (overdoses, bad marriages, poverty, traffic accidents) with an uncomfortable but undeniably empathetic clarity (“Formula One,” “Bath County,” “Quarry”) and knows when to ditch her go-to lackadaisical alto (not dissimilar to earlier Waxahatchee) to a bloodcurdling scream (the climax of “Bull Believer”). On God, Wednesday also fucking rocks harder than most of today’s “rock” artists: The guitar interplay between Hartzman, MJ Lenderman (yep, that one) and lap steel player Xandy Chelmis is immaculate—“Chosen to Deserve” is a particular highlight—while bassist Margo Schultz and especially drummer Alan Miller always know just when to go hard and when to pull back. – LG

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

34. Yves Tumor – Heaven to a Tortured Mind

By the time “A Greater Love”—the last song on this Little Richard, Sylvester, Iggy Pop, Suicide, Parliament-Funkadelic, Bowie, Prince and Odd Future-inspired chunk of Black Goodness—unfurls its seductive little pussywillow, full of Isley Brothers guitar-driven soul, we (well at least I am) expect the next Yves Tumor release to lock down this creative’s genius, pushing their stock toward the Prince camp.

Sucker. It never happened. Sean Bowie aka Yves Tumor plays the game by his own rules, and repetition is not in their liner notes. Heaven To A Tortured Mind, with all its forward-facing lo-fi glam rock psychedelia, and MPC low-end drum patterns and bass lines that crack/knock like Q-Tip getting real nice with a Skull Snaps record, I’d never heard anything like this before. When the mantra “Gospel For A New Century,” a different type of nasal nasty opens the project, Tumorʻs loop-tastic rock amalgam kicking this ride off with fire-and-damnation Godzilla horn lines.  But the production gold is instrumental too, on both “Hasdallen Lights” and “Asteroid Blues,” signaling a beat-head genius. But they are more Bowie than they’d like to admit. Heaven To A Tortured Mind was a task, not a stopping place, and true to David Bowie’s rules, Tumor changes costumes, like a real gangster. – JPS

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

33. black midi – Cavalcade

Two years after Schlagenheim—the debut album full of taut, tense math rock songs that brought black midi to national and international attention in 2019—the London band released a second album that was both more experimental and less improvisational than its predecessor. Incorporating orchestral flourishes into the band’s sound to a far greater degree, Cavalcade also featured more intricate guitar work from frontman Geordie Greep on tracks like “Chondromalacia Patella,” “Hogwash and Balderdash,” and the propulsive “John L,” with the “MacArthur Park”-esque “Ascending Forth” bringing the album to a dramatic conclusion. – GH

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

32. Phoebe Brigers – Punisher

A mix of folk and bedroom pop that exhibits a balancing act between haunting and comforting, Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher proves its creator is serious about her material. Bridgers joins a generation of 21st century artists with hushed vocals that are anything but soft. She speaks volumes about personal troubles and strives to make them personal to others as well, connecting and establishing bonds through song. Tracks like “Kyoto” have a steady beat paired with a catchy melody, and while the album as a whole features an intimate, confessional type of sound, yet it also pushes the boundaries here and there. Bridgers collects and shows her scars via her songwriting; it is a lush ride that makes the solitary act of listening feel much less lonely. – KR

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

31. Jessie Ware – What’s Your Pleasure?

After making the most of subtle sensuality and sophisti-pop sheen on her first three albums, Jessie Ware entered the new decade opting for extra glamour, extra camp, extra physicality—just plain extra. Adopting a confidently ribald new approach as “A fucking sassy bitch, who’s apparently in desperate need to go dancing and fucking touch some people,” Ware drenches everything in glitter, disco strings, feathers, furs and carnality and throws the best party of her life—and of the just-about-hungover decade. Though it’s successor might have been more bluntly hedonistic, the album strikes a perfect balance of opulence and class, making the title question self-evident. What’s Your Pleasure? is nothing but. – JT

Listen: Spotify

30. Tyler, the Creator – Call Me If You Get Lost

How was Tyler, the Creator supposed to follow up the emotionally raw and musically complex IGOR? Apparently, with a deceptively straightforward, mixtape-structured (right down to the DJ Drama toasting on every track) rap album. Call Me If You Get Lost is about 65-70 percent victory lap, with Tyler basking in his status (“She say she like the Royce and I’m like, ‘Which one?’”) in fluid rhymes over self-produced beats that sometimes evoke the 2000s Neptunes productions he’s long adored. The remainder is more reflective, with Tyler expressing gratitude rather than braggadocio (“Blessed”), acknowledging responsibility to his community (“Manifesto”) and telling a touching miniature love story on “Wilshire.” Though it’s a positioned as a throwback album, Call Me ultimately looks forward above all. – LG

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

29. Soul Glo – Diaspora Problems

Diaspora Problems is a lot of things—incisive, ferocious, funny, exhilarating—but one of its most intriguing aspects lies in the fact that it’s a perfect case-study in how true heaviness in music is a quality that lies far beyond simply down-tuning your guitars and chug-chugging away. Sonically, this record has its roots in scrappy, energetic hardcore with smatterings of hip hop; moments of brutal, black-hole dense breakdowns are few and far between. Soul Glo don’t need them. The desperate, seething, relentless emotional energy that spews out of vocalist Pierce Jordan with volcanic intensity is more than enough to make Diaspora Problems, without qualification, one of the heaviest albums I have ever heard. Does this guy ever need to pause for breath? – EB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

28. Nala Sinephro – Space 1.8

When Space 1.8 was released, the London jazz scene from which Nala Sinephro emerged was awash with vibrant, energetic, dance-oriented music. Bands like Sons of Kemet and Ezra Collective were infusing jazz with a vitality it was supposedly in dire need of. It seems, in retrospect, that 2021’s Space 1.8— together with that same year’s spellbinding Promises—prefigured a shift in the scene. Sinephro had traded the bustling intensity that defined the city’s jazz for something meditative, spacious, and in her words, “healing”. It’s telling that the elder statesman of the London scene, Shabaka Hutchings, has since followed Sinephro’s lead. Space 1.8 is a beautiful reminder of all that jazz music can be. – NS

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

27. Mdou Moctar – Afrique Victime

Tuareg songwriter and guitar virtuoso Mdou Moctar operates in the here and now. The Niger-based musician’s work is grounded and present, its energy reflective of the band’s dynamic live performances. It’s almost ironic for a studio to attempt to capture the vitality in Moctar’s music, but Afrique Victime comes darn close. Recorded and written over the course of several weeks, Moctar and company produced his sixth record by spinning songs out of ten minute jams, most of which were first takes. Reverb reports the guitarist finds studios “static” and “oppressive,” but the band’s hyper-aware approach to recording empowers these songs, their players, and the victims of sexism, war crimes, and colonialism of which they sing.  – PP

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

26. Kelela – Raven

The way Kelela’s Raven brings together influences from electronic, dance and ambient genres with her consistently great songwriting and magnetic performances makes it, for me, her best album to date (the remix album is great as well). That’s saying something given the strength and staying power of earlier releases like 2017’s Take Me Apart and 2015’s Hallucinogen. Through songs like “Contact,” featuring a shuffling beat which could equally suit a dancefloor or a melancholy late night in, and more ambient tracks like “Holier,” the lines “I’m floating away” mirroring its feathery sound, Raven crafts an immersive world, a perfect front-to-back listening experience. – TD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

25. Kendrick Lamar – GNX

The literal ways that GNX is a bit of a switch up for Kendrick’s career are obvious, but to conclude that this surprise release is out of step or beneath him is simply shortsighted. It’s true that since To Pimp A Butterfly his albums have been increasingly cerebral, so where does that leave the much more straightforward GNX? With the experimental arrangements and conceptual sequencing stripped away we get the distilled, embodied result of that evolutionary experiment. This is the next step in the process, one among many more from the greatest rapper of a generation. Kendrick is done talking about how to save hip-hop, he’s just doing it. – FJ

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

24. Sufjan Stevens – Javelin

The hero of heartbreak returned with his most emotionally crushing collection of songs. Throughout Javelin, Sufjan Stevens reminds us why he’s captured the indie rock imagination for over two decades. Across ten gut-wrenching songs, he combines his trademark eclectic instrumentation with angelic backing vocalists and the penchant for skronky electronics shown on The Age of Adz, Silver & Gold, and Ascension. The result is a resplendent album full of rich emotions, rippling arrangements, and resonant lyrics that blur the lines between secular, sacred, and sensual like few songwriters of his generation even hope to attempt. Between “Will Anybody Every Love Me?,” “Everything That Rises,” and “So You Are Tired,” Stevens gifted his fans a profound record that transcends the nostalgia of Illinoise and the pathos of Carrie & Lowell. – APN

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

23. Fontaines D.C. – Skinty Fia

Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten confidently proclaimed “I’m gonna be big!” back in 2019 and by 2024, he and his bandmates saw that prophecy fulfilled, with a 2022 detour through some of their most abrasive and funereal material. Shedding the ecstatic rock of their debut and casting the sleeker post-punk of 2020’s A Hero’s Death in black velvet and a tangle of thorns, the Dublin group explored the complications of national identity through haunted harmonies and menacing grooves. Skinty Fia is sometimes scathing, as on the climactic condemnation of “I Love You,” and sometimes heartbreakingly tender, like when they scale everything back for the tender ballad “The Couple Across the Way.” But even as it creeps through shadows and retreats into private moments, Skinty Fia leaves an outsize impact. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

22. Little Simz – Sometimes I Might Be Introvert

The martial drums and blare of horns that open “Introvert” make it clear straightaway that Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is a big album about big things, crafted with even bigger sounds. But for all its outward facing drama, Little Simz’s epic 2021 LP is focused on the interior, exploring the divide between a performer’s public persona and who they are when the lights are off and the cameras are focused elsewhere. The answer isn’t so simple—a raw wordsmith going this big following a half-hour set of stripped-down and dirty funk makes plain that she contains multitudes—but Simz makes the 61 minutes necessary to untangle that riddle as gorgeous and thrilling as possible, rife with eclectic and soulful sounds and earnest reflections under the guise of a fantastical autobiography. Simz erases and redraws the line between persona and person several times over, discovering even more shades within that gray area. -JT

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

21. Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Fiona Apple and her band rehearsed and recorded her fifth album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, almost entirely in her Venice Beach home. The group kept it simple and intimate, capturing unhurried rhythmic wanderings in long takes on GarageBand. Bassist Sebastian Steinberg recalled “stomping on the walls, on the floor—playing her house.” In its barest moments, Fetch the Bolt Cutters sounds like only rhythm: a symphony of handclaps, thumps, stomps, taps and a dog barking in the background. But more than giving new meaning to the term “home recording,” Fetch the Bolt Cutters is a gloves-off account of personal truth and a call for empowerment. It’s sophisticated without rarefied ambition or despair. It’s a document of close friends drawing from shared exuberance. And least surprisingly for Apple, it’s a songwriting master class. – CB

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

20. The Armed – ULTRAPOP

Some of the mystique surrounding Detroit post-hardcore collective The Armed has faded a bit since they came clean with their real names and dayjobs, but the appeal of their sensory overload punk anthems hasn’t. ULTRAPOP isn’t a pop album, exactly, but it’s not a misnomer either, the group’s blistering cybercrunch arriving with sharper hooks and a bullseye to the pleasure zone on their third full-length. These are songs built for shout-along frenzies (“All Futures,” “An Iteration”), eight-armed air guitar (“Masunaga Vapors”) and otherworldly ascents (the title track). When I saw them play these songs for the first time at one of three record-release shows just on the other side of lockdown drudgery, their rotating lineup usurped itself several times over amid senses-numbing strobe displays and an unending chain of stage divers. It’s the ideal way to experience this kind of musical spectacle. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

19. Sumac – The Healer

Another primordalism. Sumac has blasted themselves apart. No longer are they recognizably post-rock or post-metal or post-hardcore, no longer doom metal or progressive metal or noise rock. Jazz and free improvisation come close, but imply a sonic approach that is not found on The Healer. This unnameable realm, where genre terms crash like waves against angled stone leaving you no rubric with which to approach the music save itself, is rare space. This is a shockingly vivid record, a document of love and its transformative might captured in howl and chaotic scattering noise, a fulfillment of the promise of what Aaron Turner made with Isis on In the Absence of Truth. – LH

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

18. Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee

Michelle Zauner, better known as Japanese Breakfast, departs from her established sound with Jubilee. Full of bubblegum-pop melodies, horns matched with strings, and an overall joyful sound, this third project expresses the thrill of living life in a turbulent world. “Be Sweet” (our 2021 Song of the Year) is a clear standout, showing an optimistic perspective with a bounce and energy that might recall pieces from the late ’70s/early ’80s. Zauner, though, doesn’t confuse jovial with naive or delusional; she is grounded in the truths we must face. Upbeat as the music is, it likewise features moments that stray into the more sentimental and even melancholy. It is this gorgeous and generous variety of singular songwriting that makes this album so extraordinary. – KR

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

17. Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou – May Our Chambers Be Full

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou come together on 2020’s May Our Chambers Be Full to offer one of the most emotionally gripping experiences metal has to offer. Throughout its poetic lyrics and dynamic instrumental arrangements, both acts compliment and elevate each other’s qualities. Thou’s brand of doomy sludge brings an added grit to Rundle’s vocal performances, and in turn, Rundle’s voice infuses that same instrumentation with more emotionally compelling melody. This combination allows for May Our Chambers Be Full to exude an enchanting dream-like quality in its atmosphere and pacing, creating a deeply immersive experience for listeners to get lost in. – MP

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

16. Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch

Jessica Pratt’s first record was a home-recorded set of intricate folk ballads comprising mostly guitar and vocals. Her fourth record is a rich and gorgeously produced affair, but still mostly comprises guitar and vocals. Yet Here in the Pitch opens in grand fashion with “Life Is,” a lush orchestral pop production reminiscent of Scott Walker’s ornate ‘60s records, signaling that this is anything but a stripped-down affair. Rather, it’s often more subtly lush, her gentle plucks and mesmerizing vocal melodies wrapped in gauzy Mellotron, saxophone or subtle percussion as she delves further into jazz and bossa nova influences. She only employs a grand gesture when necessary, never adding more than a song needs, and it’s a strategy that continues to serve her well. Even in its quietest moments, this album’s depth feels limitless. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

15. Black Country, New Road – For the first time

The debut LP by Black Country, New Road radiates with intensity, and its structural gambits and genre-bending have understandably turned many heads. “Sunglasses” sounds like Slint by way of John Zorn, with anxious-angry vocals from (now-former) frontman Isaac Wood evoking the terrors of modernity through references as varied as Kanye West, Richard Hell, Zoloft and chemtrails. Elsewhere, the band explores polyrhythmic free jazz (“Instrumental”), sort-of chamber pop (“Track X”) and post-rock (“Athens, France”). But—my comparisons of “Sunglasses” to other artists notwithstanding—the trail they blaze is distinctly their own. It remains so in the wake of Wood’s 2022 departure, but For the first time stands as an accomplishment unlikely to be matched. – LG

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

14. Tomb Mold – The Enduring Spirit

Fully embracing their progressive rock inspirations on The Enduring Spirit, Tomb Mold further cemented their reputation as one of the most technically talented bands in modern metal. Whereas their previous albums feature an array of gruesome-sounding riffs—and make no mistake, this record has plenty—The Enduring Spirit sees Tomb Mold incorporating a refreshing psychedelic jazz dynamic to their sound. Ferocious shredding and pummeling give way to segments of droning, haunting instrumentation, creating meditative passages that are haunting. The Enduring Spirit is a work brimming with visceral performances and atmosphere, and will stand as one of the best death metal records of the decade. – MP

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

13. Denzel Curry – Melt My Eyez See Your Future

Having established he couldn’t be pigeonholed by rhyming over everything from Miami rhythms and NYC boom-bap to ear splitting industrial, Denzel Curry threw another curveball for his fifth studio album. Melt My Eyez is introspective far beyond Curry’s years (he was 26 going on 27 while making the LP), and his producers (including Robert Glasper, FnZ, and Dot da Genius) often craft understated, noiry beats for the MC that evoke Massive Attack and traces of Ennio Morricone as much as the Native Tongues sound (Walkin,” “Mental,” “Angelz”). Though this is a serious album, it’s an effortless listen, and raucous detours like posse cut “Ain’t No Way” (featuring many but highlighted by a delightfully maniacal Rico Nasty verse) keep you on your toes. – LG

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

12. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere

The prog rock/death metal crossover of the decade (millennium?) was written on the wall, but I’m not sure anybody could have predicted it would be this big. The surprise collaboration on Absolute Elsewhere sets up a bold claim by comparison, but it’s absolutely true: Blood Incantation are indeed the Tangerine Dream of death metal (with implicit endorsement from the genuine article), and based on the ambitious scale of this project they clearly have their sights set even higher. Blood Incantation have taken the notion of progressive death metal to new interstellar reaches, and show no signs of letting up. – FJ

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

11. Turnstile – Glow On

In the aftermath of this album’s release, a slew of hardcore bands with mainstream aspirations threw their hats in the ring to come up with the kind of hooks Turnstille dished out with little effort. Imitation might be a sincere form of flattering, but it’s also a testament to Glow On‘s impact. The punchy grooves and melodic vocals still feel as good three years later. Even the most jaded would be hard to shrug this off as “selling out,” as its songwriting captured the lightning that struck the band at the perfect moment where experimentation met personal conviction. These sessions were approached with a fresh canvas, and time is solidifying Glow On as their masterpiece. – WL

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

10. Ratboys – The Window

Upon its release, this album ticked off every possible box I had for the past, present, and future of indie rock. And we here at Treble showered it with all the accolades imaginable. More than a year later, The Window by Ratboys still fills me with all manner of good vibes, from the wistful vocals, twanging guitar licks, and crisp drumming to the yanked-from-the-journal personal lyrics. It helps that the Chicago quartet showcases a deep love of nuance, shading, and pacing in their songcraft, allowing them to flow effortlessly from big rock moments to quiet folk introspection. Come for “Morning Zoo,” “No Way,” and the title track, but make sure you stay for the jaw-dropping “Black Earth, WI.” – APN

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

9. Low – HEY WHAT

The continuation of a bold and iconoclastic creative streak that began with 2018’s Double Negative, HEY WHAT scarcely resembles the slowcore lullabies of the group’s foundational recordings. Amid buzzing electronic effects, harsh washes of noise and heavier guitar sounds, its most recognizable element nonetheless remained the harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, whose glorious and powerful presence anchored these buzzing noise-pop dirges with their most human element. It wasn’t intended to be the band’s last album—this is the sound of a band with only further creative possibilities to pursue—but the passing of Parker only a year later brought Low’s legacy to a sad close. Yet that it ended on such a breathtaking high only reinforces their status as one of the greatest bands of this century. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

8. Beyoncé – Renaissance

“Have you ever had fun like this?” Beyoncé asks in “Cuff It,” from Renaissance, her 2022 house- and disco-steeped album. Her joy is infectious throughout its 16 tracks, the first in an ever-deepening trilogy in which Beyonce explores the roots of American music. Renaissance was made during the isolating Covid years, when the idea of sharing love and gathering with friends on a sweaty, hedonistic dance floor was taboo. Tracks like “Church Girl,” “Alien Superstar,” “Plastic Off the Sofa” and “Virgo’s Groove” emphasized happiness, free love and personal expression, inner power and self-love. Released during the sweltering, super-charged summer of 2022, this musical renaissance was sorely needed, and Beyonce was just getting warmed up. – ER

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

7. Alvvays – Blue Rev

With Blue Rev, Alvvays built on their excellent sophomore album Antisocialites by adding texture and distortion without sacrificing their melodic sensibilities. These songs balance immediacy and depth, from the Haruki Murakami-inspired “After the Earthquake,” with its energetic finale, to the blissful synths of “Velveteen” to the soaring, abiding refrain of “Always waiting” on “Bored in Bristol.” There are so many flat-out great moments on this album, and it’s no wonder, as Alvvays’ indie pop has always been distinguished by its remarkable attention to detail. With every record they build on their sound while maintaining the strengths of their previous albums. – TD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

6. Armand Hammer – Haram

Following nearly a decade of increasingly more ambitious and labyrinthine underground hip-hop classics, Haram arrived sounding like the album that Armand Hammer had been building toward. Their first full-length collaboration with prolific producer The Alchemist, it feels like stepping into a cinematic noir landscape rife with taboo and trauma, from childhood grief to sex acts that sound like cult rituals. Haram is Arabic for “forbidden,” after all, and billy woods and ELUCID don’t hesitate to explore that idea, whether exposing an unseen vulnerability or simply observing that which many of us choose not to. It’s grimy but sounds like a million bucks, with verses that rattle in your head even as their cryptic meaning sometimes proves elusive. Not the duo’s first but certainly their greatest dark masterpiece. – JT

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

5. Charli XCX – Brat

With a punchy, unapologetic lead single in “360,” Charli XCX’s Brat was bound to be inescapable, but after the single’s accompanying tracks were released, it was clear this was a boiler room nobody wanted to, nor needed to, leave. Each track feels like it’s oozing with Charli’s effortlessly cool sound, and cool in a way that isn’t trying to be anything for anyone at all—just in thrall of its own bombastic sound. Infected with producer A.G. Cook’s magical touches, the sound of Brat is elevated by Charli’s lyrical delivery, like on album closer “365” when she sings, “Now I wanna hear my track / are you bumpin ‘that?” as the lyrics are enveloped in a booming, hydraulic beat. Charli finds moments of reflection and worry on “Sympathy is a Knife,” “Apple” and “I Think About It All the Time,” blending her gripping brand of pop with concerns about the future, her career, and generational trauma. Brat is simply an album for a generation who just keeps going through it. – VC

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

4. The Cure – Songs of a Lost World

Despite our love of the avant-garde, The Cure is perhaps our collective favorite band here. That said, few of us believe every record the group has put to tape is an excellent one, let alone their previous most recent material, so to say critical expectations were sharp for us would be an impossibly huge understatement. To say they were fulfilled would be even more of one. Songs of a Lost World doesn’t surpass Disintegration, nor does it aim to; it enjoins it, elaborates on it, like Wish and Bloodflowers before it. And if it is the end (though Robert Smith suggests very much otherwise), “Endsong” is perhaps the best song to close their career on, the same voluminous dark as Bowie’s Blackstar. – LH

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

3. Chat Pile – Cool World

On their second album, Chat Pile smash together ’90s-influenced noise rock, Southern metal ingenuity, and the rage that can only come from a Middle America that’s been left behind while the world seeks greener pastures. In other words, they removed the images of McDonald’s mascots smoking weed to hone in on how, on a tangible level, modern living pisses down your throat. But the punk rock arm that fist pumps and cries “fuck capitalism” is too banal a force for Chat Pile. They instead line Cool World with a communal outrage. To get to that layer, Chat Pile demands that you hear their harrowing woes that, through basslines that will churn your stomach, extend to all who have been left behind. – CD

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

2. billy woods – Aethiopes

billy woods has established himself as amongst the most consistently strong rappers of the past decade. But from the first track of Aethiopes, something felt different. The opener’s haunting Ethio-jazz atmosphere elevated woods’ vivid, prosaic storytelling, coalescing into something utterly transfixing. It was a hint of what was to come, a loosely conceptual album digging its way under your skin. It’s not far fetched to say Aethiopes recalls the kind of rare alchemy that featured on other underground classics like Madvillainy. Preservation—who handles all of the production on the record—and woods combined at the height of their powers, luring listeners back into the record’s dense, strange world. – NS

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

1. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & the London Symphony Orchestra – Promises

When we first encountered this LP, it was a significant instance of something looking good on paper that turned out to be at least as good in reality. A beloved jazz legend, a respected electronic producer, a go-to classical ensemble—no cap, what really could’ve been bad about Promises? Still, this was niche on top of niche on top of niche instead of pop or even populist; if we’re going strictly by the numbers, maybe all of the number 5 albums (like this one from 2021) get aggregated somewhere in the upper 20s. But music fans’ and critics’ tastes and perceptions are wont to get up and move around, changing and evolving as tides might shift shores. And so the calculus of voting and the march of the calendar demand that here stands Promises, newly ascendant editorially and yet in a position that seems somehow never in doubt.

Musical overstatement through understated arrangements have clearly imbued Promises with a sense of timelessness over these interceding years. In their 2019 sessions, Sam Shepherd’s decision to run subtle and ambient, counter to the Floating Points norm, allowed Sanders’ spiritual jazz to haunt the foreground, bleating and wailing like an actual spirit. The LSO players then cautiously met during 2020’s COVID pandemic to assemble motifs and peaks and valleys to be traded with the duo. Released the following March, the collective suite brought levels of aural comfort and warmth that few albums matched as the world began emerging into post-lockdown realities. An unexpected, wholly necessary collaboration, Promises sets a standard for cautious exuberance and subdued catharsis, full of the sense that the light at the end of the tunnel is a spotlight on performers beckoning you toward experience and feeling. – AB

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

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