The 50 Best Albums of 2016 So Far

Go ahead and tear down the 1975 for preening themselves onstage or general pomposity; dissect and denounce their familiar-sounding tunes as bloodless facsimile. But faulting lead singer Matty Healy and his cohorts for having too many impulses in different directions misses the point of i like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it entirely, turning what makes it so exceptional into a pejorative. These 17 songs have strong, familiar features, but they build off of one another; every one of them is full of hyperactive, bats**t detail that makes it immediately attributable to this band alone. Sit through the whole of this Homeric effort — for which the qualification “messy” seems too stern and reductive — and try not to come crawling back. These days there aren’t many Dudes With Guitars in the vicinity of the pop charts making records as uncompromising as this one. When was the last time that rock music with such a commanding voice had this much fashion sense? — WINSTON COOK-WILSON

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, The 1975 Care Because You Do.

Much of Too Many Voices sounds like it’s slowly decomposing, even as it’s more spacious and aerated than Andy Stott’s previous releases — filled with air the way a corpse bloats, perhaps. “Over” hisses with escaping gas as pixelated notes tumble down the scales in the background. Likewise, the kick on “New Romantic” scrapes and rattles as if pushing its way out of a phlegmy throat. The album closer and title track, though, is more alive than anything the Mancunian producer has ever done: He re-creates David Sylvain and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s stutter-stop synth odyssey “Bamboo Houses,” but with humans. And with such an unexpected flip of the switch (or rather, twiddle of the knob), Stott gives new life to the ghost in his machines. — HARLEY BROWN 

• Read SPIN’s full review here.

HOPELESSNESS is ANOHNI’s first new studio album in almost six years and it bears little resemblance to the chamber-pop ebullience of her previous work. Featuring music and production courtesy of Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, HOPELESSNESS is a wholly electronic album that puts ANOHNI in the role of beleaguered revolutionary. The album’s 11 tracks cast a wide net, taking on topics such as drone warfare, climate change, criminal execution, the failures of representational government, and — more pointedly — the failure of the Obama administration. It’s both a thrilling record and an occasionally confounding one; a statement that often invokes tightly controlled rage as a means of slapping the listener out of what one imagines has become our collective stupor. In short, it’s a protest record. — T. COLE RACHEL 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

As a body of songs, Lemonade presents Bey at her most skilled and fully matriculated as a pop studio maven and conductor of the present’s preferred orchestral mode: creative file-sharing. The alignment of composing and arranging chops comes conjoined to a rock-solid thematic staple: the furies of a woman scorned becomes this doleful Electra. One whose muses are by stark lyrical turns also sardonic, sarcastic, baleful, mournful, murderous, adulterous, kittenish, self-eviscerating, self-devotional, self-resurrecting. The emotional roleplay and array of musical settings harkens back to the Aretha Franklin of Spirit in the Dark, the Nina Simone of It Is Finished, and the Roberta Flack of Chapter Two. Whether you experience that depth of soul or not is an existential question — a who-feels-it-knows-it quandary — but this O.G. critic’s ears hear Bey clearly swinging for those astronomical rafters on Lemonade and banging it out the park on track after track. — GREG TATE 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

No One Deserves Happiness absolutely has the feel of a Body album, but it in no way sounds like anything we’ve heard from the band before. The once-constant roar of Chip King’s guitar now sputters out halfway through the riff of “Shelter is Illusory” which, when mixed with bizarro-pop 808s, endearingly evolves into the worst attempt at a pop song this side of Ciccone Youth. Even more strikingly, the rhythm on “Two Snakes” sees drummer Lee Buford adapting a bouncy syncopation whose unpredictability might be the biggest aesthetic departure on the album. So it’s not the straightforward sludge we’ve come to anticipate, instead taking increased advantage of dead space, false starts, and even what sound like some key changes. But we still get the sense that as the urgency of “Hallow/Hollow” works up to a fever pitch, this album, like everything the band has done, is designed to break us now only for us to thank them later. — J.J. LANG 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

A six-string prodigy, Bombino supplemented lessons learned at the feet of mentor (and fellow renowned guitarist) Haja Bebe with close studies of old Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana footage. Some of those rock moves have made their way into his arsenal, but the 36-year-old isn’t a shredder in the clichéd guitar-hero mode — his fluid technique and improvisational gifts are marked by restraint. Those who fret over the dangers of genre and stylistic cross-pollination won’t be soothed by Bombino’s fifth album, Azel, which should delight the rest of us non-purists. Producer and Dirty Projector Dave Longstreth leaves extraneous instrumentation mostly to the side while favoring a particularly bright mix highlighting Bombino’s double-tracked guitar and a punchy drum kit. But the addition of female vocalist Mama “Mahassa” Walet Amoumine and periodic excursions into skanky Caribbean rhythms stamp Azel as yet another remarkable transition for the guitarist. — JASON GUBBELS 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Brothers Osborne don’t take a sledgehammer to mainstream country on their full-length debut, Pawn Shop — they just do it better. The lyrical thoughtfulness, the character of the production, and the sheer quality of the playing are all exemplary, setting the bar for the genre in 2016. Take opener “Dirt Rich,” a stomping ode to the modesty of down-home living that borrows some of the chorus melody from Zac Brown Band’s “Homegrown,” and could’ve very easily come off like a lesser riff on that 2015 smash. But the rustic imagery is impressively evocative — a screen door “with a hole big enough to let the neighborhood bugs inside,” a mailbox “lookin’ like it’s been drinking, leaning to 11:00″ — and the chorus is unsentimentally persuasive (“If you’re broke, don’t fix it / Learn to live with it”), while John Osborne’s slide guitar zips gleefully over the clomping beat. The song is a total blast on its own terms, and there’s another half-dozen like it in the ten tracks that follow. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

The most impressive thing about Moth is the way it manages to wrap a more compact frame around Chairlift’s spiraling colors without dulling the final product. Frontwoman Caroline Polachek’s voice is as expressive and unrestrained as ever — particularly on breakup-for-now track “Unfinished Business,” where she stretches the title phrase into about a dozen syllables of gut-wrenched wailing — and the album’s emotional highs and lows are as wild in their oscillation as on Chairlift’s first two albums. But the duo’s flame, burning as brightly and violently as ever, no longer threatens to spread from the hearth and engulf the whole house. “Cool as a fire,” now more than ever. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Coloring Book challenges its listeners to engage with something downright lovelier than usual; consider the brightness of “Angels” compared to nearly anything else on the radio. But Chance hasn’t abandoned a thing to get here: As with past efforts, this threequel features a who’s who of Chicago performers, as far-ranging as poet Jamila Woods, bandleader Donnie Trumpet, and fellow Save Money member Towkio. The most common thread here is a push toward the intersection of gospel (and, more specifically, the gospel of the black church) with rap. The lyrics, meanwhile, don’t signal a real turn from the Chance of the past; he’s always been something of a wholesome rapper, even when he rapped about drugs, accessible to both ends of the casual and hardcore rap-fan spectrum alike. But you can feel Chance entering a different phase of his life here, one in which his connection to a higher power holds more influence in his day to day. He’s displaying the most joyful part of his universe and inviting listeners across the globe to share in the festivities. — BRITT JULIOUS 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

The curse of making it look easy is that you get taken for granted. You might notice more dynamic shifts in the Coathangers’ fifth album, Nosebleed Weekend, if there were any seams showing. But that would mean it would be a weaker record. This is why the idea of art being interesting and art being good don’t always intersect — the Coathangers haven’t managed to accrue much of a myth over their nine-year existence. But their anachronistic place in the 2016 cosmos only makes them less generic than they seem. Sure, “Copycat” is the only break from rave-up mode and “Squeeki Tiki” is the only callback to the riotous humor and screaming unpredictability of their immature years. But there isn’t an exposed wire or uncontrolled dissonance in earshot, and it doesn’t need them; Screws Get Tight would be more fitting nomenclature. Who knew that, even in punk, practice could make perfect? — DAN WEISS 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Cobalt are still informed by black metal, though they are no longer a black-metal band. They are an American Metal band, and while that may seem broad, it’s about as specific as you can get with a vision as wide as theirs. Slow Forever sees principal instrumentalist and songwriter Erik Wunder’s Tool obsession bloom, never resorting to blast beats, but harnessing Danny Carey’s inability to sit still, thus never letting down on the intensity. On 2009’s Gin he hinted at those influences; Slow Forever is rife with radio-strained twangs, broken prog riffing, and oddly hummable refrains. Cobalt aren’t cashing in — they’re mining the potential of these signals to the mainstream and blasting them to new heights. — ANDY O’CONNOR

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Colleen Green calls her current sound “Ramones-core,” and indeed, you’ll do a mental double-take when the first words of bouncy “Cold Shoulder” aren’t “Hey, ho / Let’s go.” Her new EP’s love of doubled lead guitars only contributes to the nostalgia, and Green’s shtick is even more hyper-self-aware than usual as she closes a verse with the line, “Realization nothing changes ever.” But that’s the crux of her pop appeal: ultra-recognizable elements, composed with the perfect ratio of personality and restraint. The sincerest moment of all is “Green My Eyes,” a rare self-love song about overcoming jealousy. The singer-songwriter has a monster within her, and the green-eyed strength to tame it: “Green my eyes so I can see / A picture that is complete / Colorful view I choose to perceive.” Emotional freedom, toasty-warm guitars, a light frosting of reverb; nihilism is over, spring is sprung, the world is dank and new. Moments like “Green My Eyes” are what make Colleen Green 420x more precious than the next Dandy Warhol with a deadpan persona and shades. She gets us. — ANNA GACA 

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Finally, David Bowie’s recorded an album that comports with my idea of a David Bowie album in 2016: art-damaged ballads on which several excellent musicians flesh out tricky time signatures and unexpected chord progressions. Bowie croons a lot, mostly about bluebirds and evergreens and where the f**k did Monday go. Averaging 40 minutes, including a couple tunes that have gotten generous airings in the last 18 months, ? (pronounced “Blackstar”) is what he should’ve released in 2013 instead of the staid, fusty The Next Day. ? finds Bowie and longtime producer Tony Visconti as hungry as they ever were, and with no modern context into which the artist can insert himself (including rock) he’s free to do what he likes. — ALFRED SOTO

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s list of the 100 Greatest David Bowie Moments.

At this point, we know what a Death Grips album will sound like: Bottomless Pit is a digital-hardcore barf bag. “Hot Head” pops off IDM breakcore chaos, rendering the tattooed and bearded Stefan Burnett’s energetic chants about “style attack” even less comprehensible. (Lest you really misinterpret though, his lyrics are posted on the Death Grips website.) “Giving Bad People Good Ideas” roars like a thrash tune, with Zach Hill using his drumsticks to tap out a standard 1-2-3-4 before launching a sound war first waged by Ministry circa The Land of Rape and Honey. Despite their sonic allusions to earlier malcontents, Death Grips’ electronic immolations are completely unique unto themselves. “80808” is just that, a rhythmic bed of 808 drum machine beats over which silent anchor Andy “Flatlander” Morin lays a spooky keyboard line. And so forth; musical pleasure is never a casualty of their incinerating rage. Bottomless Pit is a rowdy and hypnotic 40-minute suite of alienation and controlled anger. It’s Death Grips. F**k with them. — MOSI REEVES

Read SPIN’s full review here.

DIIV’s frontman Zachary Cole Smith describes his band’s second album Is the Is Are in terms usually reserved for divinity. In recent interviews he’s referred to the LP as “a light at the end of a tunnel” and “a chance at redemption,” and said that he was “blessed” even to live to its recording. He could be right: From the depths of his chemical dependencies — largely opioid — his band’s debut sounded how he felt; a dizzy, doubled-over, dopesick daydream. But after an arrest that threatened his partner Sky Ferreira’s well-being (as well as his own), and a self-imposed stint in rehab, he’s back with another record and a blind faith that’ll sound familiar to those who’ve spent time around those in recovery. It’s not a higher power that’s saved him, but a sophomore full-length. At its marathon length (17 tracks, 63-minutes), Is the Is Are can feel like a chore, but it probably should. This beautiful slog has its brighter spots, though, and it’s no wonder the process felt redemptive for Smith; to exorcise years of mounting bleakness is no doubt a relief, but the resulting record is one that’s compelling for the exact opposite reasons. It’s not a light at the end of a tunnel, but luminescence creeping through the crack of a doorway — illuminating just enough to let you realize just how dark everything still is. — COLIN JOYCE 

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, DIIV: To the Darklands and Back.

Eric Prydz has grown his reputation over a dozen years’ worth of singles and collections, many released under Pryda, Cirez D, and other aliases. But remarkably, it’s taken until 2016 for him to release a proper album under his own name — the double-disc, two-hour, appropriately titled Opus. It was worth the wait: Not only does Opus serve as a defining document in Prydz’s unexpectedly rich and varied career, but it stands as a totemic release of post-crossover, 21st-century progressive house, the elephantine statement fans would’ve hoped Swedish House Mafia eventually capable of if they hadn’t gotten into victory formation so soon after assembling. Even haters will have to acknowledge Opus as being undeniable for what it is, an iconic collection of 21st-century house music that’s so expansive and far-reaching it outgrows its very genre, unable to be contained within any four-walled enclosure. And by the time Prydz is ready to release his sophomore album sometime around 2026, new fans with no memory of this massive moment in progressive house’s history will be grateful to have a text this authoritative to refer back to. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Eric Prydz Does Whatever the F**k He Wants to Do.

Unlike Courtney Barnett, this BNM recipient actually won Best New Artist. And her fifth album Emily’s D+Evolution is indeed one of the most alt-friendly jazz cycles you’ve ever heard, pivoting constantly on tight, proggy arrangements that evoke St. Vincent, tUnE-yArDs, and Incubus in their odd-angled crunch more than anything on Blue Note. Whereas To Pimp a Butterfly and Surf played jazz for elegance, Spalding muddies up on rock to shake off the olds, though the speed-rapped intro to “Ebony and Ivy” is her “For Free?” The circular hooks of “Rest in Pleasure” throw down for Dirty Projectors just as “Unconditional Love” nods toward Erykah. Then she nicks the closer from Veruca Salt, and I don’t mean the band. Pretty good for a Grammy winner. — DAN WEISS 

Read SPIN’s full Overlooked Albums Report here.

The Field’s muscular micro-loops are meant for small spaces — high-quality headphones, or crowded 250-capacity venues. As such, the man born Axel Willner shared The Follower’s first tracks as live tapings from his home base. Released earlier in March, “Monte Verità” — a cultural and geographical Swiss landmark, the name of which also incidentally translates to “hill of truth” — is, appropriately, the pinnacle of the six tracks on Willner’s fifth album. The club-recorded version doesn’t sound that much different from its studio-recorded counterpart but the fact that it was released first gives new heft to the human whispers circulating beneath the Field’s whirring machinery. If “Monte Verità” is the murmuring A.I. heart of The Follower, next track “Soft Streams” is its inverse: a susurrus of whispers from six feet below, chopped up like bitter winds spinning through a cemetery. This unnerved energy is at last resolved by the closer, “Reflecting Lights,” a watery expanse of undulating synth pads. It’s a more emotionally mature distillation of Willner’s appreciation of the Venn diagram of motorik, trance, and drone — a diagram he’s been one of the leaders in drawing. At times it’s hard to tell where exactly he’s going, but that’s okay when it’s all too easy to get lost in the Field’s subtly nimble percolations. — HARLEY BROWN

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Twenty-two year-old Greta Kline writes affecting, unassuming songs about subjects like Korean food and how much she misses her dead dog, Joe Joe. Her delivery is that of a best friend who invites you over, pulls out their guitar, and says, “I just wrote a new one, would you like to hear it?” A Rookie of the Year from the Rookie Yearbook, Kline recalls the legible confessionals of Colleen Green or Kimya Dawson and the bright-eyed melancholy of Beat Happening or Cub, all while building from her greatest strength: being immediately and deliberately herself. If her second proper album, Next Thing, sounds like lightning in a bottle now, remember that eventually we’ll have to read it as the end of a beginning. “I’m 20 / Washed up already,” Kline jokes on “I’m 20,” an opening line straight out of the Mac DeMarco self-help book. She can be washed up if she wants, but having accomplished this album (and plenty of memorable music before it), she could probably do anything else she wants, too. — ANNA GACA 

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Frankie Cosmos Is Ready to Be Herself.

This is a slow-burning record; there’s no standout track like last year’s “March Madness” or “Where Ya At,” and the closest the album comes to having one is from the only cut with a guest feature, the Weeknd-assisted “Low Life,” which drowns in its own sleaze. EVOL is a curious beast; it doesn’t feel like the kind of record that a rap star at his creative and career peak would be making. It doesn’t provide that instant hit that Future’s world-class 2015 was so full of. Instead, EVOL crawls into your brain and makes itself at home; you’ll find yourself going back to it over and over without even realizing. Mainstream-rap radio features plenty of copycats disguised as Future following his blueprint for disposable party music, but Future continues to churn out soul-punching sagas disguised as a party. — ISRAEL DARAMOLA

Read SPIN’s full review here.

“I want people to think about me,” is the very first refrain Louis Forster sings on the Goon Sax’s incredible debut album, as if to explain why he started a band. But it’s also why people do a lot of things, and pretty disarming that a 17-year-old would be so succinct about it. Toward the end of Up to Anything, he surveys the listener: “Does it mean anything to you? / Am I doing what anyone else could do?” In short, he speaks for the teens — not just of Brisbane — when he wants to know how he could matter more in the world. But his wry monologues, James Harrison’s indelibly circular guitar patterns, and Riley Jones’ month-of-lessons drumming (check those “Heroin”-esque speed-ups on “Telephone”) would ensure their place in history even if Forster’s dad wasn’t a Go-Between. Sweetly alienated knockouts like “Ice Cream (On My Own)” and “Sometimes Accidentally” lend a gravitas to twee as shruggily out of place in 2016 as Tallulah was in 1987 — and every bit as necessary. — DAN WEISS 

Homeboy Sandman’s akin to a more personable KRS-One who joined the Native Tongues; not only is he wrong often but he charms you because of it. You invest in his worldview because it sounds sane; on 2012’s “Not Really” he summed up niche fame in the all-time stealthbrag “I’m still Black Thought’s biggest fan / Just now I can call and tell him so.” And he’s a phenomenal wordsmith, who raps like a dictionary in a blender — try the many squiggles of his new album’s high-speed “Real New York,” where you can make out “You should just pack it in / You are just saccharine” if you don’t blink. On “Eyes” he reiterates his desire to “keep it low-key like a baritone,” and over the jagged backbeat of posse cut “Earth, Wind, Fire, Water,” Sand kicks off an astounding sequence that rhymes “speed dial,” “meanwhile,” and “Green Mile,” eventually whipping by (what else?) “freestyle.” But the best thing about Kindness for Weakness is it signals the kind of immortal talent that makes for one of those lengthy, boringly consistent careers. It’s in no hurry to rope off any part of a 13-release canon that sounds as if Homeboy Sandman can do this forever. — DAN WEISS

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Gimme Some Truth: Life Studies With Homeboy Sandman.

Despite it technically being the Hotelier’s third LP (their 2011 debut, It Never Goes Out, was credited to the Hotel Year, and was recorded when its members were in their mid-to-late teens), Goodness feels like that very rare sophomore achievement where a fresh, already pretty great band becomes somehow cosmically greater. It’s not that this is at all a different band that made 2014’s Home, Like NoPlace Is There, but one that has gracefully acquiesced to the inevitability of musical and emotional growth, taking the inward focus of adolescent angst and turning it outwards. Goodness is a spiritually rich listen, but none of it would matter much if it weren’t such a goddamn great rock album. For something that, on paper, reads as terribly intimate, its anthemic appeal transforms Goodness into a surprisingly liberating event. Especially on the spring rush of single “Piano Player” and the openhearted ache of “Two Deliverances,” these private experiences become electrifyingly communal. Yet wedged in-between are moments of cautious reverie in the form of campfire songs and ruminative ballads, affording more credit to how well-balanced — and life-affirming — a record this ambitious can be. — ZACH KELLY 

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, The Hotelier Find Love in a Hopeless Place.

The press material for Standards points out that while the album shirks on the geographical references that dotted most of Into It. Over It.’s previous releases, the album is “so thoroughly Chicago” — where singer-songwriter Evan Weiss moved in ’08 before setting up IIOI operations — that it “exposes a breach in genre classification.” Uh, okay, but really, Standards sheds the “E-word” tag not by calling up Illinois but rather Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, with which this LP shares an open-air curiosity, a shivering sonic majesty, and a sense of displacement and post-youth vulnerability that just about anyone can share some part of. The songs on this album may well become standards for fans at a certain place in life, but they definitely raise the standards for Into It. Over It. — as well as for anyone who actually still thinks emo needs help being revived. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Jessy Lanza’s balance between the daring and the universally appealing is what makes her newest album, Oh No, such a pleasure. “Never Enough” immerses itself in New Order circa 1985, while “I Talk BB” is a stunning, smoldering ballad that dares to approach the twitchy, postmodern sensuality of FKA twigs while channeling the vintage soul of Evelyn “Champagne” King. “Going Somewhere,” on the other hand, is a sparkling marriage of airy dubstep and new wave, its pristine tone contrasted by small shards of unsettling atonality. That unease carries over later into the album with the standout “Vivica,” which achieves just the right balance of synthetic, alien soundscapes, and classic soul composition. It’s a testament to the extraordinary breadth of Oh No, as Lanza metamorphosizes from an intriguing curiosity to a formidable contender in contemporary electronic music. — ADRIEN BEGRAND

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Will is largely “beatless,” relying on mood to convey the record’s isolated, at-times eerie impressions. But much like that old jazz adage about “the notes you don’t play,” Julianna Barwick is able to shift shapes and and conjure a sort of elemental propulsion because of the beats she doesn’t drop. “Big Hollow” feels almost paralyzed (albeit prettily) until a few spare piano notes and warm bass tones come in and orient everything, revealing the song’s true direction. “Someway” operates similarly, its rising and falling action creating a sedative approximation of a tidal phase. Only closer “See, Know” features an actual drum kit, and it’s almost jarring in how totally unnecessary it feels. The life of a touring musician is an uncommon and emotionally turbulent one, and with Will, it’s not hard to see Barwick’s recent experiences on the road as solitary and lived under cover of night. Despite its nearly weightless presence, this ultimately is a record about going places, even if it takes its sweet time. Uninterested in either Point A or Point B, Will is happy to just drift about in the in-between. — ZACH KELLY

Read SPIN’s full review here.

A core theme threading Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s slowly mushrooming discography is the glory of genesis, of becoming, of flustered incoherence straining towards coherence. Working from a sonic palette that includes saxophones, flutes, clarinets, and the Buchla Music Easel synthesizer, Smith embraces the thermally cerebral in EARS. Initially, “First Flight” could double as intro music for an ’80s-era science program for children; tones scurry and flurry, clarifying into melody by degrees, until her impressionistic vocal emerges. “When I Try, I’m Full” erupts in burbling glossolalia, with crystalline shards of synths, woodwind, and voice gushing upstream. “Envelop” evokes a stoned stroll through an enchanted forest thick with will o’ the wisps and sentient, Casio SK-1-armed trees. The rather Enya-esque “Anthropoda” generates a singular ecosystem of competing scales, while “Stratus” suggests that a mashup of Boards of Canada and Morphine isn’t necessarily cause for distress. At the finish, percolating synthesizers, metronomes, and lowing saxophones play nice on the labyrinthine “Existence in the Unfurling,” with Smith’s oddly enunciated refrain — “sounds like fun” — serving as an inadvertent encapsulation of this record’s overall experience. — RAYMOND CUMMINGS

Read SPIN’s full review here.

The Life of Pablo will likely one day be remembered as the album where Kanye proved steady beats and affability are irrelevant if you’ve got a gifted enough asshole at the mixing console. It doesn’t drive or build or go for baroque as maniacally as Yeezus or as melodiously as My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. By contrast, Pablo languorously drifts from whimsical episode to episode in bumpy, jumpy, and even lumpy fits and starts. Damn cleverly from time to time too, and with more than a little help from his many super friends: Rihanna singing Nina Simone lyrics as the warm-up for Nina herself on “Famous” doesn’t hurt your cause — well, at least until the most caddish troll in ‘Ye’s attention-craving brain obscenely invokes two-time Album of the Year recipient Taylor Swift for publicity-stunt value alone. More virtuously, Mr. West doesn’t stiff on reminding us, as he always does, that adroit sampling should never stop being a cornerstone of hip-hop composition, given what analog warmth contributes to the boom-bap — even if the degree to which he indulges has grown more expensive and prohibitive than a mutha. Moral of story: Don’t be Kanye’s ne’er do-well cousin and come begging your boy Pablo for a dime.  — GREG TATE

Read SPIN’s full review here.

This record makes the most sense if you read it as an extended interlude from To Pimp a Butterfly — imagine if that album was 115 minutes long as opposed to 79, and this is a particularly potent stretch of that run time, united in atmosphere and mood. Starting with a disorienting dirty-talk intro, Kendrick Lamar speaks with God, letting us know the headspace this record occupies: “I made To Pimp a Butterfly for you / Told me to use my vocals to save mankind for you… I tithed for you, I pushed the club to the side for you / Who love you like I love you?” But for all its weighty talk on race, religion, and the politics of rap music, untitled unmastered. doesn’t threaten to go off the rails nearly as much as the equally weighty Butterfly. It’s punctuated with Lamar’s wit and personality, who assists a repeated motif/melody in “They say the government mislead the youth, youth, youth” like a particularly woke youth minister before giving way to another repeated motif/mantra in “Head is the answer.” This is the dualistic dynamic that opens the record up to listeners and motivates the Hot Take that it’s an even better album than Butterfly. The strong threads that bound Section.80, good kid, m.A.A.d city, and Butterfly are still present here, but only implied. Unmastered. feels more like a prayer circle or hip-hop cypher than an album weighted down by a capital-C concept. — MATTHEW RAMIREZ

Read SPIN’s full review here.

In what would be an audacious move for most rappers, Islah is a major-label debut that stretches past 15 songs and features exactly zero guests. In other words, Atlantic gets what about Kevin Gates appeals to his fanbase: Kevin Gates. And while it’s refreshing that a major label, in 2016, has enough faith in a regional star to let him do what brought him to the dance in the first place, Islah also happens to be the most-balanced Kevin Gates project to date, discovering an equilibrium between his pummelers and his caressers we didn’t previously know was possible. Street anthems that could pass for love songs and love songs that could pass for street anthems: This is what Gates does best. Islah finds the rapper pushing his formula even further, whether it’s opener “Not the Only One,” one of the most virtuosic displays of pure rapping you’re likely to hear this year, or the twinkling “Ain’t Too Hard,” which features perhaps his most vulnerable confession yet: “My mother left when I was young / I’m commitment-shy so when my feelings get involved, I tend to run.” After a year in which his extramusical actions overshadowed his music and threatened to turn him into a caricature, Islah proves that Kevin Gates is still a living, breathing person — and a fascinating one at that. — RENATO PAGNANI

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Kevin Gates: The Day They Make Me a Boss.

Lucy Dacus’ excellent opening salvo “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” recalls that of a very, very different artist: Katy Perry’s “One of the Boys,” in which the tomboy who’d become one of our biggest (and most femme-presenting) pop stars initially expressed her wish to “smell like roses, not a baseball team.” The first song on Dacus’ debut album, No Burden, explores more than just the theme of attractiveness though; not only does the Virginia songwriter surmise that she could be “the cute one” because she owns a too-short skirt, but she’d rather be the gossip than the target of her friends “saying things they don’t mean,” and she’d rather be in the band than its biggest fan. So any Sharon Van Etten or Angel Olsen RIYLs stemming from Dacus’ dry, triple-distilled delivery do more harm than good when she out-crunches and yes, out-funnies them anyway. No Burden was recorded in one day, and it’s fun to imagine that every song was tracked in order, so she got to feel the same Ramones-esque rush from the knockdown opening four-song run — one of the year’s finest thus far — that we do hearing it.  — DAN WEISS

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Strangers is defined by change, the gradual kind that you don’t notice until a photograph or memory pulls you in to look back at the person you were years ago. This steady shift mirrors Marissa Nadler’s career, built upon subtle variations that mask how far she’s truly progressed in the 12 years since the traditional folk stylings of her early material. Her releases have been consistently stellar, each with more poise and maturity than the one previous. More than a decade in, she has complete command of her craft on her most sonically expansive and emotionally wrenching outing yet. This deep into a career, many artists would either settle into a rut, coast on past success, or grasp for drastic reinvention. The way Nadler avoids these trappings signifies her confidence. Her style isn’t flashy, often causing the singer to wind up on the “overlooked” portion of year-end lists, yet it’s astounding how she has yet to peak. In all respects, Strangers is about coming to terms with one’s situation, and what it lacks in blind hope it makes up for with thoughtful consideration. — DAVID SACKLLAH

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s cover story, Marissa Nadler’s Apocalypse Dreams.

Michete’s Cool Tricks 2 is, without a doubt, the year’s best rap album to discuss traveling back in time to suck FDR’s dick. Such tales of sexual dalliances that cross lines of gender, generation, and basic scientific logic are about par for the course for Spokane, Washington’s finest. As confrontational as the transfeminine rapper can be with his rhymes, he (or she, Michete cares not for gender pronouns) never lets lyrical boldness codify into self-seriousness: He’ll drop an inflammatory line like “Goddamn I hate these faggots / I’m homophobic” (from the album-opening “I Want Ur Blood”) and sit back to cackle while the Internet trips over themselves to formulate hot takes in response. It’s like an Eminem album, taken from the queer perspective that Marshall has forever dismissed. It’s important, but just as importantly, it’s funny as s**t. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Michete: The Thick-Boy-Loving Rapper Who Wants Ur Blood.

Berlin-based label !K7’s long-running DJ-Kicks series is a chance for producers to really stretch their legs and create a journey not necessarily beholden to the whims of their audience. Its latest edition, helmed by Detroit luminary Moodymann, is one of the esteemed franchise’s best, and one of the most noteworthy monuments of his own lengthy career. Known for sets traversing the long, rich history of predominantly African-American music — Chicago house, Motown soul, coastal hip-hop, Parliament-era funk, and his hometown’s science-futuristic techno — Kenny Dixon Jr. selects 30 tracks from the past 15 to 20 years (except for Anne Clark’s future-femme 1984 treatise, “Our Darkness”). Blissom & Merkin’s 2001 space-jazzy “Tag Team Triangle” shares the set list with Jai Paul’s 2011 post-dubstep dark horse “BTSTU” and Lady Alma’s 1996 classic, “It’s House Music.” It’s a seamless, flawless mix that in Moodymann’s hands becomes a timeless capsule spinning across the galaxy to rally any generation that finds it. — HARLEY BROWN

Read SPIN’s full Electronic Report here.

If the laws of the physical universe as we currently understand them (and well, Alien’s oft-quoted tagline) are right — that in space no one can hear you scream — then how do you account for the existence of the kosmische-metal mutilations of Oranssi Pazuzu? Since their 2007 inception, the Finnish quintet has existed as a bitter riposte to the vacuum-like qualities of the outer atmosphere. Each subsequent release functions as another life-affirming burst of contorted interstellar overdrive. To date they’ve built three solid records on an inversion of that genre that’s just as ascendant as the other post-metal composers who’ve made transcendence their stated goal. But with their fourth album, Värähtelijä, they’ve finally made a record that fully follows through on the promise of their component parts. Like Liturgy’s stunning 2015 collection of mutations, The Ark Work, the Scandinavian aesthetes blast into instrumental realms unknown on tracks like “Havuluu,” evoking time-stretching metaphysical paradoxes. But unlike Liturgy and a crop of similarly minded acts who strive to sift gold and grandeur out of Scandinavian grit, they don’t let the horror and anxiety (the blood in the veins of all great black metal) get swallowed up in the foggy void. — COLIN JOYCE

Read SPIN’s full review here.

These Austin-Brooklyn transplants are always trying to shake off any kind of narrative precedent, whether they’re releasing two of their absolute best records wearing the Groucho glasses they call Parkay Quarts or an EP designed to short-circuit critics too young to remember Neil Young’s Arc. How to make the most daring dad-rock record you’ll hear in 2016? Answer: congas, which buttress the six-and-a-half-minute “One Man, One City” — a nice, dorky drone that breaks even and may be a grower. There’s a beating heart and unobstructed brain here for the current consciousness that proves once and for all they’re more Minutemen than Pavement. “Two Dead Cops” is the second Parquet Courts song to engage with law enforcement after 2013’s out-and-out rap song “He’s Seeing Paths,” where Andrew Savage portrayed a weed courier who gets busted. Unlike many of the frontmen to whom he’s compared, Savage actually sounds like a guy who’s been in cuffs, even if it was just for channeling his “want something they didn’t tell you to want” mode at a campus protest. What makes Human Performance a narrowly great record is that it bucks narrative. It’s not their most sensitive record or politically astute or least dissonant but all of these things — their most convincing performance as humans to date. — DAN WEISS

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Ask Yourself the Same Question: An Interview With Parquet Courts.

When people talk about the emo revival, they’re not really talking about a specific region or sound, but rather the return of indie-rock songwriters with a certain kind of emotional sensitivity, who are able to sublimate these intimately specific ideas into pithy phrases that feel universal but not pandering. It’s nearly impossible to do in a way that doesn’t feel disgustingly saccharine. Somehow frontman Evan Stephens Hall does. That’s due in part to his utter disregard for presenting these thoughts in a package that relies in any way on indie rock’s current signifiers of cool. There’s no disaffection, abstract noise bursts, or commentaries on social media and the Internet age. Cardinal’s eight simple guitar-pop songs all run between two-and-a-half minutes and double that, occasionally augmented by a gang of backing vocals or muted banjo lines. There’s one tune, “Aphasia,” that transmutes its tale of slowly regaining your voice and confidence into a meta-song/coda that begins, “To help remind myself, I wrote this little song,” before a beat change and a new chord progression: “One day I won’t need your love.” It’s not special on paper, but recorded it feels revelatory. — COLIN JOYCE

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Pinegrove: Getting By With a Little Help From Their Friends.

Looking back at Radiohead’s previous eight albums, there was a tendency for key songs and phrases to leap out, in a sloganeering fashion, to demand our attention: “You have not been paying attention” from the bullet train of “2+2=5” before Hail to the Thief scatters; the anthemic snarl that separates “Creep” from the rest of Pablo Honey’s self-loathing; even the surprising sexiness of “Lotus Flower,” amidst The King of Limbs’ percussion-pockmarked subterranean funk. Despite slight variations in texture and tempo, A Moon Shaped Pool is a different animal, one where every song assumes an equal weight, where Thom Yorke’s voice often seems like one instrument among many and not necessarily the main selling point, even when the album becomes minimalist. Radiohead — a quintet made up of the same five musicians through a long, accomplished career — truly feel like equals here, during what history may validate as one of the band’s finest hours; it’s an especially level playing field. Somehow, Pool transmutes fatigue and anxiety into a hallucinatory magick that’s far more cathartic than a jacuzzi soak or a glass of wine. It’s Radiohead doing Radiohead on a molecular level, via controlled burns. Their weary indifference to us becomes our transcendence. — RAYMOND CUMMINGS

Read SPIN’s full review here.

“Right now, I don’t have a backup plan for if I don’t make it.” That stark confession opens the Range’s “Regular,” from the YouTube spelunker’s intricate sophomore album, Potential. The 27-year-old Brooklyn producer, otherwise known as James Hinton, has expressed appreciation for those he samples in his deftly textured exegeses on the human condition. He finds his subjects while tumbling down virtual rabbit holes so deep he discovered ’90s rave music through art-pop plastic surgeons PC Music. Building on his luminescent 2013 debut, Nonfiction, Hinton introduces a new kind of solidarity with the aspiring video stars he discovers on the streaming medium; he probably doesn’t have a Plan B if this whole making beats thing doesn’t work out, either. What’s most remarkable about Potential is Hinton’s innate ability to transmit a range (ahem) of emotions through a very consistent palette. And therein lies the power of the Range’s low-bitrate manipulations: elevating the stories of others while translating his own affinity for them into beautiful music.  — HARLEY BROWN

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Jukebox Jury: The Range Picks His YouTube Hall of Fame.

ANTI is Rihanna’s first aesthetically personal album, and throughout its disorderly roaming, it remains revelatory in a strict sense; it’s a musical step sideways but an artistic step up. For once, Rihanna is drawing on whims rather than characters, uncertainties rather than pronouncements, her own desires rather than the desires of her audience. Her image and her instincts seem to be expanding and moving towards each other, to an unfinished but unexpectedly gratifying result. The icy-hot kiss-off queen is still alive on this album, particularly on the album’s Travis Scott-heavy, what-the-hell-did-the-Weeknd-do-here nadir “Woo,” as well as on the DJ Mustard joint “Needed Me.” But this time around, there’s a depth and a malleability to Rihanna’s sexual steeliness; it’s contained and undiminished in her voice and delivery, and it extends into the parts of the album where she’s affectionate, despondent, or faded to blank. And, under Kuk Harrell’s production, Rihanna’s voice is, for the first time ever, extraordinary. The playful, rough, kittenish growl she used to great effect in “FourFiveSeconds” grows into a bluesy, ragged, winsome roar on “Higher,” a No I.D. production that, in two minutes, builds a saloon and floods it with wildly romantic desperation. Of all the tracks, this is the one that envisions a new future for Rihanna — one where she’s both a vengeful deity and a human woman incarnate, where she can deliver her audience the annihilation we’re craving, and f**k herself up too. —  JIA TOLENTINO

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Whether they’re being crushed by capitalist demands, patriarchal assignations of how to exist in the world, or our ever-more terrifying (and in many cases petrifyingly racist) political state, Sheer Mag always provide a sober accounting and a solution. This is our wrecked and rotting world, they opine; you should still rock through it. Their third EP, simply titled III, furthers the power-structure-upending exercises of the previous ones in two crucial ways. III’s messages are more direct, and they’re couched in broken Jailbreak hooks and caffeine-addled guitarmonies more teeth-chattering and addictive than anything they’ve released to date. As they say, a spoonful of uppers helps the agitprop go down. — COLIN JOYCE

Read SPIN’s full review here.

There are plenty of familiar signposts throughout this album, such as the fixation on God and heaven of early Modest Mouse or Pixies, the vulnerability of Elliott Smith, and the emotive home-recordings of the Microphones. Similar to peers like Alex G or Mitski, Teen Suicide exist in a framework clearly indebted to indie rock of the past, but avoid falling into a trap of being overly faithful to canon. And for a lo-fi project, It’s the Big Joyous Celebration, Let’s Stir the Honeypot is a particularly imaginative, lengthy work full of vivid character portraits, using additional instrumentation and computer-generated distortion to expand far beyond the boundaries of more straightforward guitar-driven indie acts. Along with fellow upstarts like Sheer Mag at a different end of the stylistic spectrum, Teen Suicide show how cheap recording doesn’t have to limit the scope of a band’s goals or vision; this grand statement proves that it’s possible to have it both ways. Between falling out of love with the world and wondering if “heaven is as boring as we’ve always thought,” Teen Suicide savant Sam Ray doesn’t seem to belong anywhere. He strives to build a space for everyone else who feels the same. — DAVID SACKLLAH

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Teen Suicide: Quarter-Life Riot.

Back in 2003, Tweet briefly shined as part of the Missy Elliott and Timbaland universe with delights such as the shameless auto-erotica of “Oops (Oh My),” and the Bhangra-sampling seduction of “Call Me.” Her, ahem, hummingbird-light voice drew frequent comparisons to Aaliyah, whose tragic 2001 death in a plane crash was still fresh in our devastated minds. Like so many R&B performers from that era, she seemed to disappear as quickly as she emerged, and her 2005 album It’s Me Again was followed by a near-decade of silence as she recovered from personal addictions and recommitted herself to God. (In 2013, she put out an EP, Simply Tweet.)

One of the pleasures of Charlene is how we can now enjoy Tweet — years removed from the burden of carrying Aaliyah’s legacy — as a startlingly unique voice in her own right, a fact that we sometimes forgot during her brief reign on Top 40. The way she weaves her fluttering vocals around songs like “Magic” and “Addicted” is rapturous. The acoustic guitar arrangements and fluttering yet smooth soul are simple and sturdy enough to focus attention on her spiritual-minded delivery, and how she can turn a nearly wordless “Dadada…Struggle” into a thing of beauty. Another highlight: Tweet and Missy Elliott reunite over the throwback vibes of “Somebody Else Will,” as these newly revitalized queens emerge older, wiser, and as engaging as ever. — MOSI REEVES 

Read SPIN’s full R&B Report here.

It’s always a surprise which version of Ty Segall is going to show up on a given album, and what kind of narrative he’s going to push forth. The guitarist’s previous proper solo LP, Manipulator, was a relatively straightforward amalgamation of frayed grime-glam and psych-garage, while last year brought his band Fuzz’s stoneriffic sophomore LP, II, and the T. Rex covers album Ty-Rex. Sonically, Emotional Mugger lands somewhere between all of these records, maintaining the cohesion and (relatively) streamlined arrangements of Manipulator but nodding to the scuzzy ’70s hard rock of the latter two and Segall’s trademark haywire, lo-fi garage. All of these songs speak to the album’s overarching concept of “emotional mugging,” which addresses the consequences of digital communication overload — personal disconnection, misplaced sexual desire, emotional distance, and irreparable damage to humanity. This somewhat-disjointed philosophy adds just the right amount of friction and intrigue to Emotional Mugger, informing the music but not overwhelming it. That’s yet another testament to Segall’s continued evolution as an artist: He’s no less willing to go out on a limb, but he is learning to rein in his more abstract impulses. — ANNIE ZALESKI

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s list of Every Ty Segall Release, Ranked.

Despite a few good-natured jaunts down memory lane and a spectacular Dubnobasswithmyheadman anniversary live show last year, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith appeared to have no interest in revisiting the past on their ninth studio LP. “This record feels like it wiped the slate clean for a while and if you had no history what record would you make,” Hyde told Billboard. Indeed, on Barbara Barbara, we face a shining future — the title being a phrase Smith’s father said to his mother shortly before his passing, about as literal a reference to death and rebirth you can get — they’re so determined to leave the past behind it’s almost ouroborotic. On “If Rah,” the notoriously arch Hyde’s heavily reverbed tongue-lashings (“Manhattan swoons!”) are unavoidably reminiscent of James Murphy, whose searing intonation in turn owes a good deal to the Underworld sing-speak-shouter’s. At other points, they sound positively radiant, as on “Low Burn,” a New Age-y tribal dance of symphonic strings and rounds of hypnotic didgeridoo notes beneath Hyde’s dazed non-sequiturs (“First time!” “Beautiful!” “Free!”). Underworld’s forward momentum may lead to an immediate follow-up, or it may be another six years until they put out an unworthy successor. That “shining future” might be their golden years, but at least Hyde and Smith prove they still have the Midas touch. — HARLEY BROWN

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, The SPIN Interview: Underworld.

To the casual rap fan in Newark or Riverside, Who the F**k is Chris Spencer?? might read as an earnest question. In Chicago, it’s a mission statement: The ’90s-esque stylings of Chris Crack and Vic Spencer are a vicious argument against the generation gap. The duo treats the hip-hop like a genre flick, highly stylized and virtuosic. Check “What’s Saturday?,” where a heist unspools into soft porn and smug satisfaction. On “Cue Ball,” Spencer is your flyest uncle-turned-stylist: “Saucy with the creamiest leather / Plushed out, tough route, I should have enough out / Kicks greener than a Brussels sprout.” You might not know the bio, but you can’t deny the product. — PAUL THOMPSON 

Read SPIN’s full Rap Report here.

Well, it only took ‘em 20 years. The half-decade hiatus that Weezer started in 1996 after their epochal first two albums — and the sonically streamlined, emotionally neutralized third album they eventually returned with in 2001 — gave fans a case of Blue balls for which the band has never truly provided relief. But what The White Album presents us with is a sort of alternate-universe theory about Weezer LP3 — or a “That’s how it could have happened” Clue ending, if you’d prefer. It’s the follow-up to Pinkerton in a world where that album was received rapturously in its own time, and Rivers Cuomo was allowed to fold his rock stardom in with his personality without all of the associated crises of faith and conscience that came along with it. It’s a logical development without being a complete left turn, and it shows both the increased confidence in songwriting and performance that’s supposed to come with success and maturity. It’s not so visceral that it makes you question what the last 20 years of unpredictably fired musical neurons were for, and the instrumental expansiveness and lyrical Rorschach blots of The Red Album may ultimately prove more rewarding, but it’s a beautiful dream of the band as an entity that was allowed to evolve naturally and non-reactively. The world has turned and left Weezer back here, and as it turns out, it was well worth the wait.— ANDREW UNTERBERGER

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, Blue Albums and Pink Triangles: What Color Means to Weezer.

“Expansive” is the wrong word to describe a viciously focused, 29-minute album, but White Lung’s fourth full-length Paradise is an evolution in every direction. The breakneck Vancouver quartet’s latest effort packs knotty instrumentation and glinting, steel-edged melodies, pierced by hints of ’00s radio rock and singer Mish Barber-Way’s dry sneer. If White Lung intend to seize their commercial potential — they’re certainly capable — they’ll have to keep sticking the tricky balance between raw energy and hooks that don’t alienate their noise-loving early adopters. Ultimately, their newest record lands closer to technical brilliance than emotional resonance, but you can feel the band reaching. On the titular closer, they nearly capture it. At its heart a traditional punk ripper, “Paradise” conveys in a few phrases an animalistic and trusting love: “We’ll go so very far / They’ll never hear our copulating.” Consequently, the song with the fewest pyrotechnics here is worthy of as many repeat listens as the barnburners. Throughout Paradise, the cure for pain is bitter medicine — and its title track is a reminder that things aren’t always so bleak as they first sound. — ANNA GACA

Read SPIN’s full review here, and check out SPIN’s feature, The Many Voices of Mish Barber-Way.

As one of American indie’s premier songwriting projects, Cincinnati-based five-piece Wussy have set high standards of consistency over their decade-and-change career, patiently amassing a hefty songbook courtesy of head writers/guitar wranglers Lisa Walker and Chuck Cleaver, even while slowly widening their national profile through extensive road shows. The distinct pleasures of Forever Sounds remain those of all five preceding Wussy albums — a crack songwriting duo detailing adult life’s ambiguities with vivid language amid a terrific rhythm section’s unapologetic alt-slop. They’ve retained their love of six-string grandeur even while continuing to plumb the depths of victories that aren’t so much hollow as qualified. Like throwing your own parade and hoping someone just might roll with you. Or quietly insisting against all available evidence that “these are the better days,” then immediately allowing, “…or not.” — JASON GUBBELS

Read SPIN’s full review here.

Although Young Thug has been proving he’s a legitimate talent for at least three years, traditionalists have implied that giving in to his verbal pyrotechnics is a Faustian exchange, taking dazzle for substance. But his mercurial presence ain’t confetti; some of the best moments on Slime Season 2 were wrought with vulnerability. A central conflict of creating a sum from his different modes is how to distill an artist as multitudinous as Thugger into a single project. Still, we have two prime examples: last year’s atmospheric Barter 6 and now Slime Season 3, the shortest of the series at a lean eight songs. SS3 finds Young Thug moving away from exploring emotional pain, but it’s still very much informed by introspection. “Worth It,” the tape’s emotional crux, is a song of devotion, but it’s transformed from a simple sentiment through its mastery of writing and delivery. A line like “I broke her heart, now my heart hurt” doesn’t work if Young Thug doesn’t strain his voice to contrast the song’s airiness. It’s moments like these where “indecipherable” sounds condescending. Here, he comes across clear. — BRIAN JOSEPHS

Read SPIN’s full review here.