Archive | May, 2026

Top Five Genre Bending Albums of 2026

6 May

underscores – U

Some albums should warn you about catchy they are. “Wish You Well” will get stuck in your head. “Do It” does Timberlake better than he has in a long time. “Hollywood Forever” is propulsive.

Despite a lot of great singles though, the album is variable in both experimentation and quality. “Lovefield” has an excellent knock on wood but doesn’t do much otherwise and “Tell Me (U Want It)” is too formulaic despite a decent beat switch.

Mostly though, the album is songs like “Innuendo” that have a great groove and clever ways to punch through it.

Gorillaz – The Mountain

My favorite track here, “Manifesto,” starts with a Bollywood backing and then brings in Trueno to drop reggaeton vocals only to hard switch to jazzy rap with Proof bookended by Albarn’s crooning to tie the whole thing together. I’m sold. Albarn’s omnivorousness results in the most unexpected combinations and yet his own voice is so consistent here that the album always works.

He’s also restrained. There’s a minor sitar in The Empty Dream Machine that lifts the song just before Black Thought’s excellent verse that goes back into Damon’s wistful singing and all of the pieces are proportioned expertly.

He does fall back into unexciting britpop for good chunks of the album though and while his stuffed rolodex leads to some great tracks like Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bey in “Damascus”, it also means that the album could have done with some curation. Honestly though, this album sins much less than many in that regard and the music is consistently solid, often excellent and frequently fascinating.

FEMCELS – I Have To Get Hotter

I Have To Get Hotter is genuinely a very funny album. Zine-style random humor can easily be fatiguing instead of funny but this maintains an internal and hilarious logic and that lets them get away with a full stanza on the wonders of JavaScript.

I could have used more interesting music but their indie rock is impressively consistent. “Monster In You” breaks from the rest to mine retro emo-rock into something quite clever but besides that stand-out, it’s a collection of quite competent music elevated by outstanding humor.

Kim Gordon – Play Me

Play Me has truly excellent production. Justin Raisen has lots of space to play in this album and he uses it very well. It feels more like a rapper / producer collab album than anything else given his energy here and Kim Gordon’s spoken-word vocalizing. She is a star and she has the power of the star here, but she uses it with restraint. Her lyrics attempt to be poetic and evocative but are mostly trite, but that’s perfectly fine in so sonic an album and when you listen to “DIRTY TECH”, it’s impossible to have any complaints.

Slayyter – WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA

I really like the punk rock evolution of “CANNIBALISM!” Hyperpop, alongside other genres of the moment, seems intent on doing something with the raw material of my childhood. Slayyter is too omnivorous to stay there though. “BEAT UP CHANEL$” takes from everything and that makes for some interesting transitions even as it doesn’t stick every landing. This genre bending really wakes you up when something like “I’M ACTUALLY KINDA FAMOUS” slips in, and while this is a very good album, it does sometimes really need that kind of jolt.

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RAYE – This Music May Contain Hope

4 May

Singer-songwriter RAYE has had a long journey to releasing her second album, This Music May Contain Hope. From a young age, her eyes were set on the famous BRIT School, a few miles away from her home in South London. At 14, she finally joined the school, immediately began creating music, and soon after that, was signed to Polydor Records. A few EPs followed, but she was jerked around by the label for years without letting her release her debut album. At that point, then in her early 20s, RAYE quit the label in 2021 to become an independent artist; her debut album My 21st Century Blues, happily enough, turned out to be a big hit. For the new album, RAYE continues to be an unsigned, independent artist, once again working solely with the distribution company Human Re Sources to get her music out to the world. 

Just a cursory glimpse through her independent-era music makes it clear that RAYE was always meant to be an independent artist. This Music May Contain Hope brims ambitiously with ideas, genres, topics galore – often to the point of warranting a savvy editor to trim things back – but you cannot deny her originality.

RAYE’s skill lies in setting catchy music to the angst of being a young woman in an increasingly transactional, digitally-native world. The album kicks off with a spoken word intro, where a woman in her late 20s (presumably herself) is drunk, alone and belittled by men; and just when things are looking irretrievably bleak, receives a rescuing call from her grandmother. Similarly, on “The WhatsApp Shakespeare”, a 90s-era R&B track, she’s in the grips of a modern-day smooth-talking playboy until her family helps her get out. On “Nightingale Lane”, she belts her heart out, like a modern-day Mariah, about the greatest heartbreak of her life (so far). And of course, there’s the break-out “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND”: a maximalist, big-band track where RAYE is unapologetically needy about a man who may not even know she exists. 

If you’re noticing a pattern here: RAYE has a lot to say, and does so by whipping between genres and topics like a Spotify playlist set to random shuffle. Although every track on the album is well-produced – owing to her hard-earned skills as a truly independent artist – the album, taken as a whole, comes across as overstuffed. You just don’t know where to look. Should you pay attention to the orchestral “Click Clack Symphony”, arranged by Hans Zimmer? Should you take in the showtunes vibe of “JOY” that features her sisters? Or the gentle guitar strums of “Fields”, a paean for her grandfather Michael?

RAYE deserves all the commendation in the world: for managing to be a successful independent artist at a time when pretty much anyone has access to unlimited music; for unabashedly wearing her heart on her sleeve on every single track; for basically being her true self at all times. She has all the hardest parts of her job down pat, whether it’s writing, singing, producing, or promotion. One just hopes that, before her next album, she partners with a good editor to help the listener understand just what to take out of the boggling kaleidoscope of her mind.

Rating: 6.5/10

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