Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend (Photo: Michael Schmelling), Billie Eilish (Photo: Kenneth Kappello), and Denzel Curry (Photo: Julian Cousins)
The National, I Am Easy To Find
There’s always been a boozy quality to The National, a whiff of whiskey floating off the mournful vocals of Matt Berninger, but I Am Easy To Find is nothing if not sober. Credit the album’s robust roster of guest vocalists, which include Gail Ann Dorsey and Sharon Van Etten, as well as a lyrical focus that embraces the existential by blurring the past and present as deftly as it does the body and soul. These meditations are evident on thrumming, soul-piercing tracks like “So Far So Fast” and the title track, but the rollicking likes of “Rylan” and “Where Is Her Head” should satiate fans looking for the rock band that won them over three, four albums back. It’s the rambling, redemptive “Not In Kansas,” however, that serves as the album’s centerpiece; that Berninger can still find new, illuminating modes of vulnerability so deep into his career is a revelation unto itself. [Randall Colburn]
Helado Negro, This Is How You Smile
Helado Negro’s This Is How You Smile is like a calm, undisturbed ocean: reflective and shimmering on the surface, but with new depths to plumb with each listen. The electro-folk artist (whose real name is Roberto Carlos Lange) was inspired by the advice offered to those in the diaspora by Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl,” but his tender, inquisitive tracks like “País Nublado” and “Running” beckon rather than admonish. Lange creates gorgeous, otherworldly soundscapes to gently guide the listener away from their own perspective to better take in the experiences of others. But he pairs this sense of unmooring with engagingly straightforward lyrics and soothing synths to keep us all in his empathetic orbit. Full of Helado Negro’s most complex sounds to date, This Is How You Smile shows this is how an artist challenges himself while comforting others. [Danette Chavez]
Anderson Paak, Ventura
Anderson Paak’s Ventura is the retro manifesto of an artist who has truly hit his stride. With a sepia-toned sentimentality that hearkens to Motown’s heyday, Paak has established his serious cross-generational appeal with a seamless, groovy step toward a more widely identifiable sound. Ventura is undeniably about love—whether it be of the romantic sort or his unequivocal ode to Black resistance with the dynamic “King James.” Solid injections from André 3000, Jazmine Sullivan, Brandy, the late Nate Dogg, Lalah Hathaway, and Sonyae Elise elevate this lovely turn. However, it’s Paak’s collaboration with the iconic Smokey Robinson, “Make It Better,” that is most emblematic of just what made him such a smooth standout artist in the first place. Ventura isn’t just a return to form; it’s an improvement upon it. [Shannon Miller]
Orville Peck, Pony
Orville Peck, a pseudonymous crooner cowboy, only released his first album in March of this year, but the space that Pony occupies is suspended somewhere between 1950s country-rock and dreamy shoegaze. That timelessness is rooted in classic influences like Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, lonesome Western highways, and young love. But even a throwback song like “Roses Are Falling”—which features a spoken-word bridge beginning with, “You know, darlin’ …”—is pure reinvention. “Dead Of Night” moves between chilling falsetto and sultry baritone, with Peck reclaiming the queerness in hustler and cowboy imagery as he recounts a love lost. Many of Pony’s best songs subvert cliches of tough Western masculinity, so even if his influences are worn a bit on the sleeve, Peck’s unexpected approach to country music is cool water in a Nevada desert. And that deep fringe mask runs deeper than a gimmick, but even if it were one, Peck has the voice and vision to transcend it. [Laura M. Browning]
Pile, Green And Gray
While the spacious, open-ended vibe established on 2017’s A Hairshirt Of Purpose continues to evolve throughout Green And Gray, Pile’s seventh studio album, there are also tunes like “On A Bigger Screen” and “The Soft Hands Of Stephen Miller”—knock-down, drag-out tracks so harsh and brutal they’d be just as at-home on a Stnnng record. Which is to say, this is a Pile album at its best: Expansive and exploratory, finding strong touchstones in turn-of-the-millennium Midwest post-rock while fusing elements of country, blues, and post-punk in a heady, emotionally-fraught stew. Songs pivot from the verge of collapse to cathartic elegance, while frontman Rick Maguire continues to get rawer and more revealing with each lyric. “I can count on one finger the people that can hurt me now,” he confides on “My Employer,” and that intimacy permeates even the music’s fiercest moments. [Alex McLevy]
Pronoun, I’ll Show You Stronger
I’ll Show You Stronger might be Pronoun’s debut LP, but songwriter Alyse Vellturo isn’t new at this. A Berklee grad with experience in music engineering, management, and distribution, she possesses a deep knowledge of production that’s evident in the intricate, layered tracks of the album, a muscular collection of anthemic electro-rock. Songs like “Stay,” “Sadie,” and “You Didn’t Even Make The Bed” benefit from repeat listens, their hushed harmonies, emphatic loops, and defiant lyrics yielding new textures with every spin. But Vellturo’s songs remain approachable—cutting through the swell of her atmospheric tracks are dagger-like riffs that, on songs like “Run” and “Wrong,” climax with ecstatic solos. A thrilling debut album. [Randall Colburn]
PUP, Morbid Stuff
“I was bored as fuck, sitting around thinking of all this morbid stuff.” So begins one of the most exciting albums of the year, an 11-track Molotov cocktail of fire, bile, and cackling catharsis. Nobody can make rage and self-loathing as fun as the Canadian punks of PUP, whose singer overcame a hemorrhaging throat cyst to again shred his lungs asking, “How long will self-destruction be alluring?” That winking self-awareness works hand in hand with hyperbole and humor to both indulge and skewer humanity’s penchant for self-sabotage—“Bloody Mary, Kate And Ashley,” for example, literally folds Satan into one manic episode. “Kids” and “See You At Your Funeral,” meanwhile, embrace finality and apocalypse with a childlike giddiness. Is it a sustainable ethos? Oh, hell no. But it’s damn fun way to spend 30 minutes. [Randall Colburn]
Solange, When I Get Home
If 2016’s A Seat At The Table confirmed Solange Knowles as a creative powerhouse in her own right beyond any association with her more-famous sibling, its breakthrough success (her first No. 1 album on U.S. charts) seems to have yielded a creative freedom that defines her fourth album. A languid, jazz-dappled ode to Knowles’ hometown of Houston, When I Get Home borrows from Southern musical traditions for a sound that specifically references Houston culture (from street names to the “chopped-up” remix style of DJ Screw) but also reframes those touchstones for the next generation. Where A Seat At The Table was a statement, When I Get Home is far more of a mood, playing with repetition and tempo, and woven through with spoken interludes. Even the guest features from big names like Gucci Mane, Playboi Carti, and Earl Sweatshirt never overshadow the freeform vibe of what is clearly Solange’s distinct vision of what it means to be shaped and inspired by where we call home. [Tabassum Siddiqui]
Toro Y Moi, Outer Peace
When most of popular music revolves around making grand gestures and riding intense-but-brief waves of excitement, an album like Outer Peace feels like a breath of fresh air. Even though it contains some of the most immaculately produced dance-pop and alt-R&B we’re likely to hear this year, Chaz Bear’s sixth LP as Toro Y Moi rejects any sort of big, exaggerated statements—rather, its appeal is in its consistent, low-key pleasures. Even at the album’s most energetic, when the disco funk of “Who Am I” or “Ordinary Pleasure” are bumping, Bear plays it cool, striking the perfect balance between dance-floor extroversion and ambient reflection. True to its title, Outer Peace is a respite from a hyperactive, overhyped world. [Kelsey J. Waite]
Vampire Weekend, Father Of The Bride
“Hold You Now,” the first song on Father Of The Bride, augments a brief, bittersweet Danielle Haim duet with abrupt and distorted transitions, stray mic chatter, chirping birds, and a sample of Melanesian choir music from the soundtrack to The Thin Red Line. It’s beautiful, strange, and the ideal opening to the eclectic, odds-and-sods new album from Vampire Weekend. What’s unlikelier, that these Ivy League phenoms have become maybe the biggest name in indie rock, or that they’ve done so while growing more adventurous with each new record? Over 18 offbeat tracks, nearly half of which clock in under three minutes, Father Of The Bride tugs at the infectious essence of Ezra Koenig’s songcraft, working in his widest range of genre influences yet, from slide-guitar country to Auto-Tuned electronica to flamenco jazz. It isn’t as well-rounded as 2013’s effervescent Modern Vampires Of The City. But that’s partially because this once buttoned-up band seems to have embraced imperfection as an aesthetic value, taking unexpected turns down every harmony hall. [A.A. Dowd]
Sharon Van Etten, Remind Me Tomorrow
It’s doubtful any other album released in 2019 will be able to match the gut-punch immediacy of Remind Me Tomorrow’s opening couplet—“Sitting at the bar, I told you everything / You said, ‘Holy shit. You almost died’”—but the 10 tracks that follow do anything but dwell on the past. The pulsing beats and swooning synths that drive much of the record flit restlessly from style to style, the eerie wails of “Memorial Day” giving way to the lush goth-pop of “Comeback Kid” and the flawless ’80s Top 40 groove of “Seventeen.” But each of these searching musical cross-sections retains the deeper element of Sharon Van Etten’s slightly cracked experimentation and searching confessional lyrics, pulling the whole endeavor together and making it one of the most cathartic listens of the year. By the time she’s admitting “I don’t know how it ends,” on album closer “Stay,” you don’t want it to. [Alex McLevy]
Weyes Blood, Titanic Rising
Titanic Rising is a movie-mad album, its head floating miles above singer-songwriter Natalie Mering’s fingers as they dance across the keys of her piano. The record’s forlorn lyrics long for blissful oblivion, and its opulent production delivers just that, enveloping the listener in a protective bubble of sound. Anthemic, confessional songwriting in the Carole King mode keeps Mering grounded, at least for a little while, on the rousing “Everyday” and plaintive “Something To Believe,” but soon enough those songs, too, drift upward on effervescent arpeggios like the ones that raise Mering’s voice like a bathing beauty in a Busby Berkeley musical on the ethereal 4AD throwback “Movies.” Mering’s eyes are similarly turned toward the skies on the cosmic “Andromeda,” whose woozy slide-guitar wobble exemplifies the record’s overall vibe, akin to the floating sensation and hallucinatory waves that appear behind closed eyelids after a long day at the swimming pool. [Katie Rife]
Billy Woods & Kenny Segal, Hiding Places
Can you imagine calling an album Hiding Places and making that the cover? The whole thing is full of ghosts and trapdoors: The first track is called “Spongebob” and it is at least partially about the apocalypse, and then out pops a razor-wire electric guitar and it ends with a recording of someone’s bank account balance for $10.22. They’re all like that. Later on Woods will decree he doesn’t “want to see Nas with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall” like he’s the last sane man alive, furious he has to issue us this reminder. Woods’ music has always been, shall we say, severe, but he made a quantum leap forward on last year’s Paraffin (with Elucid, as Armand Hammer) that continues here. Kenny Segal’s beats are minimal and unexpected, full of death-rattle percussion and Burial-level nocturnality. [Clayton Purdom]
Jamila Woods, Legacy! Legacy!
With her 2016 debut, Heavn, Jamila Woods established herself as an essential presence in R&B, much more than an associate of longtime friend and collaborator Chance The Rapper. Jagjaguwar follow-up Legacy! Legacy! pushes its predecessor’s explicit political messaging in a more ambitious yet logical new direction. Each song honors a famous creative person of color, through whose lives Woods finds her sharpest lens. “Somebody’s daddy always laid out on the street, and for what?” she viciously protests on the woozy, blaring “Baldwin.” “Don’t ever let ’em knock the way you talk / The language you evolve, your natural genius,” she commands on “Octavia,” a song appropriately galactic and synth-y for one named after sci-fi pioneer Octavia Butler. Across the album, Woods’ crystalline voice ties together genres as diverse as the figures she is memorializing, and with each word she sings, she affirms her own legacy. [Max Freedman]
Young Nudy & Pi’erre Bourne, Sli’merre
Young Nudy is an objectively cool rapper: a) he sounds like Gucci Mane, b) he has an entire mixtape series named SlimeBall, and c) his mascot appears to be Chucky from the Child’s Play movies. But the appeal of his work, particularly the new Sli’merre, is not Nudy but rather producer Pi’erre Bourne, one of the most exciting beatmakers working today. Bourne is the sonic architect behind many of Playboi Carti’s most enduring tracks, and Nudy takes a similarly reverent approach, letting the flutes of “Mister” link up with its spring-loaded drums, and crooning softly over the spy-movie intrigue of “Extendo.” A full-length stretch of Bourne productions can feel like a playground, a funhouse, a Keita Takahashi video game, and the maturity charted over from the SlimeBall series to here is astonishing. And that Jamie Foxx vocal drop he peppers throughout his tracks might be the most sublimely silly flourish in contemporary rap. [Clayton Purdom]
Zelooperz, Dyn-O-Mite/Wild Card
In a review of last year’s excellent and infuriatingly Twitch-only Bruiser Brigade mixtape, this very publication called Zelooperz “a poor man’s Danny Brown.” Consider this an official retraction. While the Detroit emcee shares Brown’s occasional nasal inflection, they’re united much more by the elasticity of their flows, their taste in avant-garde productions, and their heart-rending biographical candor. Across two LPs so far this year, Zelooperz flexes his range. Wild Card is a stretch of dissonant, nightmare reveries, collapsing into reality with the devastating closer “52 Pick Up.” The more recent Dyn-O-Mite favors hard-knock boom-bap, with thick pockets of dust rising from the grooves. The most head-turning moment is probably “Easter Sunday,” which features Earl Sweatshirt’s only verse released thus far this year, but it’s “The Boys” which best illustrates Zelooperz’ talent. He raps like he was born inside the beat. [Clayton Purdom]
Non-LPs
LPX, Junk Of The Heart
On the four-song Junk Of The Heart, Lizzy Plapinger (a.k.a. LPX) delivers on the promise of her earlier work, announcing herself as a pop artist of the highest order. Since her very first single, “Tightrope,” Plapinger has pushed at the edges of pop music’s glossy strictures, her voice the means by which she adds a sometimes-harsh, sometimes-cathartically explosive grain of rough intensity to the massive beats and call-and-response anthems of her music. Each of these rock-pop songs brings something different, be it the liberatory, embrace-the-mistakes vibe of “Black & White,” the eternal adolescence of “Might Not Make It Home,” the confessional angst of “Falling To Fall,” or the fist-in-the-air joy of “Give Up The Ghost.” LPX is as vital and compelling a pop artist as you’ll find, and this EP is just the latest proof. [Alex McLevy]
NCT 127, We Are Superhuman
Thanks to the cursory six-track We Are Superhuman, burgeoning South Korean pop group NCT 127 has wholly established its command of both traditional and experimental pop sounds. Though this may be the group’s fourth mini album, it’s the first to center a serious tonal shift toward the more melodic side of the genre while still managing to rest comfortably within NCT 127’s wheelhouse. “Superhuman,” a title track and killer video that is a veritable collage of electro-pop, synths, hip-hop, and jazz, is easily one of the best songs of the band’s discography. And yet, it’s the summertime groove “Fool” that intelligently leans on the talents of all the members rather than just a few. In particular, Chicago native Johnny is granted the space to flex his skills as a rapper, and his spirited flow and confidence meld flawlessly with the breezy track (which is, ironically, about having a lack of confidence when approaching a crush). We Are Superhuman is a viable reintroduction of a group that isn’t afraid to question and test its own boundaries. [Shannon Miller]
Whack History Month
Though she hasn’t dropped an official album this year, eccentric 23-year-old rapper Tierra Whack did get us to celebrate “Whack History Month.” Each week for five weeks, the Philadelphia lyricist released a new track that showcased her tremendous versatility: the smooth R&B track “Wasteland,” “Clones,” “Gloria,” “Only Child,” and the final, mercilessly boastful installment “Unemployed.” Accompanied by a deliciously dark music video featuring the massacre of potatoes, Whack’s commanding bars and sharp wit make her presence so exciting. Whack History Month demonstrated just why she is so hard to define: The only evident through-lines in all five tracks are her fearless approach and authenticity, regardless of the sound. [Shannon Miller]
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