Amaarae – Black Star
There’s no holding Amaarae back. She’s evolved her sound into rave music and kept going. Black Star has a singular, compelling sound and Amaarae is able to integrate a wide range of artists into the album seamlessly. PinkPantheress is a standout in the excellent “Kiss Me Thru The Phone pt. 2.”
At every step in the album, one clear fact stands out; there’s only one Amaarae. This is her at her most club friendly and I hope that her music takes them over. It’s too good to not hear in the streets.
Sleep Token – Even In Arcadia
There’s a lot in Even In Arcadia. “Provider”, for instance, is very interesting. It’s an emo-rap track but Vessel blurs genre well. The song itself changes pace halfway in. Sleep Token at their best make each song the combination of three or four very different ideas and their ability to stitch these ideas together is incredible.
This comes through most in the magnificent “Caramel.” Vessel’s emotional reflections on fame are a great fit for the music and startlingly honest. He wallows in the contradictions and in the self-pity and it fits really well with both the early trap and the pivot into death metal that the song makes midway through. Vessel absolutely sells the emotion of the track.
Some of the other music is less genre-bending. “Gethesemane” is essentially early 00s alt-rock. The lyrics take emo into comical, probably unintentionally and the music is fine. For four minutes , it doesn’t do anything novel. It does have some interesting percussion after that but the song stays pretty standard. It’s still a decent song, it’s just not the most interesting.
“Even In Arcadia” is also not the most interesting song but the maximalism is done very well. “Damocles” is similarly emo alt-rock but it’s willing to thrash a lot more than its forebears and keeps multiple modes running and that makes it much more compelling. The melodicism of “Past Self” is great and showcases what the band does well.
Even In Arcadia is a spectacular album. I wasn’t thinking about the modern evolution of death metal before now but Sleep Token have exceeded anything I could have imagined with this album.
Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones
The Passionate Ones is spectacular music. Nourished By Time’s first great strength is his fantastic synth work. They’re varied, textured and atmospheric but above all, they are seductive. It’s wonderfully easy to fall into them. His second great strength is how beautifully his voice complements the grooves.
“BABY BABY” would be the best song Tame Impala ever made and simultaneously drops the line “If you can bomb Palestine / You can bomb Mondawmin.” This is spectacular music.
Dijon – Baby
It’s definitely unfair, but I start with Prince when thinking about BABY. Of all the Prince inheritors, Dijon feels the closest here despite very forgivably having less funk and less fire than one of the funkiest and most fiery pop musicians. He does very well with the Prince cuts too. “Yamaha” is quite a good song.
The album is most interesting when he updates the formula to add modern sounds. “FIRE!” Is excellent for this and “(Referee)” has a strong spikiness. “my man” is maybe the most interesting cut in the album though, not for the innovation, but for the heartfelt singing that grounds the whole project.
Rosalia – LUX
A dirty secret about artists across creative fields is that a lot of them really don’t know that much about the artform. There are writers who don’t read that much, directors who don’t watch films and countless video game designers who don’t play games. Rosalia not only knows music well, she knows herself too.
She pulls expertly from a dizzyingly broad range of sounds. It’s no surprise that the opera in “Berghain” and the fado in “Memoria” are good fits but also in the details like the synth pop that ends the wonderful “Reliquia” or the sweeping strings of the excellent “Porclena” playing against industrial notes.
LUX is clever, it is full of interesting pieces and it is spectacular music. Rosalia really can do it all.
Top Five Records 