The 50 Best Albums of 2022

How do you make a list of the best albums of the year when there is literally so much music to consider these days? Each year, the task gets more difficult and nuanced to digest, but the people want chaos in the form of a ranked list, and a ranked list that haphazardly pits the biggest pop stars on the planet against an esoteric DIY darling is what they get.

All that being said, +rcmndedlisten implores you to look back through the year’s full recommendations here and on its dearly departed predeccessor, because there were more than plenty of good sounds to go around. These were the standouts, though. Here are the 50 Best Albums of 2022…

50. Pinkshift – Love Me Forever [Hopeless Records]

Love Me Forever, Pinkshift’s debut full-length, fulfills all promises and expectations behind their early buzz in aligning them with the likes of greats Paramore, My Chemical Romance and Jimmy Eat World as a band who are going to take over the scene with huge anthems barreling through pop-punk, hardcore, and very emo’d out haunts and devastations, be it the universally romantic, political or the entirely personal, from the life and times experienced by frontperson Ashrita Kumar alongside guitarist Paul Vallejo and drummer Myron Houngbedji.

49. Gold Dust – The Late Great Gold Dust [Centripetal Force Records]

In his short time on this Earth thus far, Stephen Pierce has already become a cornerstone fixture within the Western Massachusetts independent music scene, having been a key driving force behind post-hardcore bastions Ampere and decibel-decimating shoegazers Kindling, but with his psychedelic folk project Gold Dust, he has expanded its view by many miles across nature (both existentially and physically) with the band’s sophomore effort, The Late Great Gold Dust. Worshipping at the doom folk and psychedelic boom folk altars in a way that bridges his heavier work with lush, dream pastures flower-powered with massive drums in bloom behind it, it’s the sound of trekking onward even when life’s surroundings feel like they are closing in on you.

48. fleshwater – We’re Not Here to Be Loved [Closed Casket Activities]

fleshwater’s debut full-length, We’re Not Here to Be Loved, bleeds a reverence for pioneering ‘90s alternative and metal ranging from heavy splatter of the Deftones and Hum, the electronic atmospheres of Björk and Portishead, and the more metallic-leanings of early Smashing Pumpkins under the embossed studio hands of Converge’s Kurt Ballou, yet the band featuring members of Vein.fm and MIRSY also look beyond the timeline of that era by channeling genuine oddity through hardcore blastbeats, rogue electricity, dynamo synths, and an eerie co-vocalist spectacle.

47. Aldous Harding – Warm Chris [4AD]

Warm Chris isn’t a flashy listen and is built around a folk implosion, but in its own idiosyncratic way, Aldous Harding has interpretive her instruments’ traditionalism into angles more unique than might be suggested. The collection of songs from the New Zealand songwriter’s latest full-length are inverted tales of emotional restlessness and descript observations of the relational variety, as Harding’s emphasis on atypical vocal deliveries and more tedious, distorted designs of piano, brass, and a soft psychedelia of guitar pop make it so that the interpretation of them is in the ear of its beholder, always reshaping itself in any lapse of time with each listen.

46. Show Me the Body – Trouble the Water [Loma Vista Recordings]

Show Me the Body’s audacity to push hardcore beyond its bounds and bleed into other scenes across their releases has been objectively novel, but Trouble the Water is where their ambitions with a no fucks attitude collects into one reservoir, with frontperson Julian Castwan Pratt stepping forth from the murky, grimed atmospheres of previous efforts as a cataclysmic punk vocalist whose barks fuel confrontation onto the hard-scraping societal callouts he rips to the forefront.

45. Pictoria Vark – The Parts I Dread [Get Better Records]

The Iowa City-based songwriter and bass extraordinaire’s full-length debut channels smaller moment against a vastness packed in with descript reflections on adulting, relationships, and moving around personal hells as those memories haunt her many sea changes every step of the way. Funneled through an emo-adjacent alternative rock craft, each track is steady rolling thunder that can either crest in her voice’s calm or crash waves of emotions, making it feel like Pictoria Vark has assigned a melancholy wistfulness to their passing.

44. Palm – Nicks and Grazes [Saddle Creek Records]

Mashing together philosophy, color and synesthesia, rock noise and electronic devices, Palm come alive on their third full-length effort in their newfound freedom of approaching their art while becoming hyper-aware of the outside obstacles that brought the four-piece to this point. It’s pop extracted from every high and lull of emotion, but unlike one meant to imitate anything beyond the moment its consumed.

43. Cold Gawd – God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here [Dais Records]

The conversation surrounding modern shoegaze is nothing new, but Cold Gawd is ensuring that the world keeps talking as the band brings the genre to an entirely different level from an outside view. Led by Matt Wainwright, Cold Gawd’s breakthrough sophomore effort, God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here, is a collision of heavy shoegaze, hardcore, and R&B affliction that sinks its head in deep, and touches bliss amid the turmoil from the perspective of a Black artist standing out in a white-washed scene who knows those depths.

42. The 1975 – Being Funny In A Foreign Language [Dirty Hit]

At just under 45 minutes, the 1975 goes less tryhard (with the exception of Matty Healy’s always-baiting lyricism…) and refrains from bloating an album with songs which capture every current content trend in the moment, and instead refine their songwriting narrative to a modern spin on contemporary indie folk and the late ‘80s / early ‘90s pastiche which they’ve absorbed excellently into their own neon light.

41. billy woods – Aethiopes [Backwoodz Studios]

These days, listeners are probably more familiar with billy woods as one half of Armand Hammer, but Aethiopes, his latest solo effort recorded alongside underground producer Preservation, deservedly reaps what he began to sew a decade ago in NYC’s alternative rap scene with an even finer skill set in beautiful rhymes and progressive beat-making that’s nearly gothic in its darkness, creaking in with minimalist structure as well as global influences, all while woods sets scenes fictional yet blurred into past and present realities.

40. Carlos Truly – Not Mine [Bayonet Records]

Ava Luna guitarist Carlos Hernandez’ talents on his own merits are fully realized on Not Mine, his first solo album as Carlos Truly. Recorded alongside his brother Tony Seltzer, the album professes an nth degree of synesthesiac sophisticate taste to it in the way Hernandez sculpts wave forms of R&B, funky guitars, and experimental pop and jazz flourishes in relation to his world view onto the emotional, personal and creative connect. With his voice barely touching ground, the listen blends sense and memory into a warm air feeling.

39. Drug Church – Hygiene [Pure Noise Records]

No matter the medium, Drug Church vocalist Patrick Kindlon is in no shortage of big, combustible thoughts to blow minds to, and on the band’s long-awaited sophomore effort. Hygiene, he alongside their solidified lineup of a fully fleshed and muscled force with guitarists Nick Cogan and Cory Galusha, bassist Pat Wynne and drummer Chris Villeneuve sound massively scaled to turn miles of cities into parking lots.

38. Dry Cleaning – Stumpwork [4AD]

Stumpwork accentuates the hyper-observational properties of Dry Cleaning’s artful post-punk while bending the sharper angles of its predecessor into a brain stew to compliment the deeper thinks , as the South London band peers even further into the self-referential, focusing on shifting relationships, grief, and – thanks to Florence Shaw’s microscopic eye on the mundane – making the everyday occurrence witnessed a tale of fascination.

37. Bartees Strange – Farm to Table [4AD]

Bartees Strange arrived on the scene with an anomaly of a debut in 2020′s Live Forever. The D.C.-based songwriter knew he had something to prove, but didn’t let any of his underdog status shake his confidence from showing the world why he was a star that showed in the way he built worlds with genre-melding dynamics as an indie rock polymath punctuated by a natural rap and R&B swagger. On his follow-up, Farm to Table, Strange reaps what he sews in a post-fame recollection in an album that seeks out bigger spaces, and fills them accordingly: festival stage-sized twilight production, a battle for authenticity, a showcase of vulnerability, and a boundless style he continues to hone as is own.

36. SPICE – Viv [Dais Records]

On their 2020 eponymous debut, SPICE proclaimed themselves as pain. The pain never subsides, but the Los Angeles group comprised of members of CEREMONY, Sabertooth Zombie, Creative Adult and an x-factor in electric violinist Victoria Skudlarek learn to not only live, but thrive with it on their sophomore follow-up Viv in an allbum fully realized in its vision of post-hardcore wrestling against shoegaze static and indie rock impressionism from production and texture to anxiety and release, reflecting the human experience.

35. björk – fossora [One Little Independent Records]

björk’s fossora was inspired by fungi and a sound she earlier described as “biological techno”. That very much checks out, and as usual, reinvents genre, as the tenth studio album from the experimental art icon is the sound of nature burgeoning its way through the soil from its most microscopic spore, reaping and sewing with the seasons of birth, decay, and death where love, partnerships, motherhood and familial bonds eventually return their energy back to the soil.

34. Earl Sweatshirt – SICK! [Tan Cressida / Columbia Records]

SICK! is another example of how when the rest of the world of rhyming goes left, Thebe Kgositsile is already swerving into the right lane. Comprised of 10 songs in just 24 minutes manifested during the lowest points of a global pandemic, going through the motions of grief and anxiety of it all are right in Sweatshirt’s wheelhouse, but the murkier, fragmented production that once tattered his prose behind a curtain on 2018′s Some Rap Songs or 2019′s EP Feet of Clay doesn’t need any outer coverage here.

33. CANDY – Heaven Is Here [Relapse Records]

The title of CANDY’s debut album Heaven Is Here alongside its gory artwork are too true, because in the version of Heaven which some disgusting strains of people here in the United States envision it looking like, it’s arrived and it’s akin to a living Hell. This is the perfect feeding frenzy for the kind of inspo which the bi-coastal heavy music band nourishes their art from with their intensity refined by producer Arthur Rizk, as they take extremities from hardcore and metal into account in their search for a so-called salvation, leading the brain through a distorted journey full of anxiety-pressed confrontations with the self encapsulated by grizzled riffs, blasts of drums, and blistering electronic noise.

32. Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry [G.O.O.D. / Def Jam]

It’s no surprise that It’s Always Dry plays out like another master class from one of rap’s most gifted rhyme articulators who isn’t afraid to put his ugly side on full display. A certain someone’s shadow behind the boards looms, but its Pharrell’s light that shines most, and it’s here where It’s Almost Dry gets most of its veneer of experimental freshness within its air in the latest chapter of rap’s favorite villain.

31. Tomberlin – i don’t know who needs to hear this… [Saddle Creek]

There’s a sense of freeness moving through Tomberlin’s lips on i don’t know who needs to hear this… despite her admissions of finding herself in purgatory with another on several instances. With her sophomore effort, the Brooklyn-by-way-of-the-Midwest artist expounds upon tiny details of introspection, but in designs all the more intricate, ensuring her wisdom in song reaches further out with its tender beacon as the album resounds through the high ceilings and alters since built by the church of Tomberlin through a host of instrumentation where At Weddings searched through spiritual vacancies.

30. dazy – OUTOFBODY [Lame-O Records]

James Goodson was raised on hardcore and as a publicist, knows the ins and out of where it’s been and where it’s going. While his one-person project dazy isn’t explicitly heavy-edged, he maintains as much a bite in big decibel and big anthemry with feedback-piled power-pop-punk that’s an absolute blast on his proper debut full-length, OUTOFBODY, pairing existential punk pessimism with sunblinded hooks that harken back to the more alien vibes of the ‘90s alternative dial bleeding into the black-clad edges of the pit.

29. Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up There [Ninja Tune]

As it turns out, we hardly knew Black Country, New Road at all upon last year’s breakthrough debut, for the first time. On the London septet’s sophomore effort Ants From Up There, the band – led by the fascinating, wild-eyed narrations of now-departed vocalist Isaac Wood – it’s their own uninhibited instrumental malleability that steeps their sound into a captivating post-rock theater which gives us something further to consider of a band who are intent on never sounding or looking the same as they did even just one year ago.

28. The Callous Daoboys – Celebrity Therapist [MNRK Heavy / Modern Static]

Celebrity Therapist prescribes to you the state of our current culture’s most toxic energy and excess in one room, but it’s for your own good. Using the Callous Daoboys as the conduit for these procedures, it’s a means of exorcising the worlds ills from your psyche through the Atlanta collective’s gloriously over-saturated approach to grinding metalcore, skull-splintering math rock, an experimental et al. of pop, noise, funk, and blues, and a healthy amount of Hot Topic emo sleaze that confronts hypocritical principals of dogma and existential bedlam.

27. Sweet Pill – Where the Heart Is [Topshelf Records]

The Philly indie-punk quintet’s first round presents something that’s much needed in the emotive rock realm, with these 10 tracks showing off both a muscularity gained from its members reps in the hardcore scene, but also a pop fluency thanks to the malleable performance of vocalist Zayna Youssef embedded around its smart, emotive punk with infinite promise. American Football, Paramore and Algernon Cadwallader equally walked their own paths so a band like Sweet Pill could come along and discover where the hidden intersects run.

26. They Are Gutting a Body of Water – lucky styles [Smoking Room]

lucky styles, the third full-length effort from They Are Gutting a Body of Water, realizes the Philly experimental band’s most wildest yet appeasing impulses in one sitting within textures of static-washed shoegaze, electronic-speckled zone-outs, and noise-pop over dreamy overtures and post-hardcore aggression rendering something much more adventurous than what we perceive in our everyday waking life.

25. MAVI – Laughing so Hard, it Hurts [Self-released]

MAVI’s way of rhyme is a very insular one, but the way the Carolina rapper and neuroscience student projects his singular experience brings his corner of the underground into a scope as big as his life is getting itself on his sophomore effort, Laughing so Hard, it Hurts, where his flow moves over a masterclass cast in beat production rich with soulful, spliced woozy textures.

24. black midi – Hellfire [Rough Trade]

Chaos, chaos, and even more chaos, even when it sounds like all the calamity and human destruction in the fantastical tale have reached cease fire. That’s black midi’ Hellfire, the latest album from the London-based experimental art rockers, who on this turn go all in on a glory of their their most unhinged sonic facets that have been steadily climbing over the course of their first two albums in the form of precisely meticulated post-punk of their 2019 debut Schlagenheim and last year’s cosmically imploded jazzist traverse Cavalcade without losing their grip.

23. Praise – All In A Dream [Revelation Records]

Praise have been amiss for a few years, with only one album in 2016′s Leave It All Behind, some EPs and singles to their name, but their return on their second full-length effort, All In A Dream, is perfectly on time. Across nine consistent modern hardcore knockouts, the listen is a document to where life has led its membership and the worn wisdom that carries into their sound – A personification of vocalist Andy Norton’s own darkness and light, anxieties and letting go, and ultimately, his anthemic reminder to keep hanging on.

22. Mindforce – New Lords [Triple B Records]

Mindforce only keep getting better at their barrage. On their sophomore follow-up to their 2018 breakthrough, Excalibur, and last year’s heavy-handed Swingin Swords, Choppin Lords EP, the Hudson Valley crew’s weaponizing of hardcore with metal motifs has been refined to its most exacting plan of attack yet, running 10 tracks through 17 minutes in a stealth speed cardio workout mode led by Jay Peta’s charged up vocal lead and the ensuing breakdowns – while still falling down like metallic axes and hammer – calling for bigger revolutionary anthems in their battle against societal waste.

21. Alex G – God Save the Animals [Domino Recording Co.]

God Save the Animals, the latest effort from the prolific Philly indie shape-shifter, further approaches straighter lines and accessibility in the Alex Giannascoli songwriting method, especially in regards to brambling Americana and backwoods folky patchwork amid the occasional experimental hip thrust or grungy distortion. Yet, the listen is no less obtuse in its surrounding scenery with words bordering the fantastical even if mining deeper into their meaning reveals a faithful reflection for the human condition.

20. oso oso – sore thumb [Triple Crown Records]

sore thumb, the follow-up to oso oso’s 2019 breakthrough, basking in the glow, was recorded across a month before guitarist Tavish Maloney‘s passing last year, and furthers his spirit in the sound by embracing their inner weirdness more outwardly here in a crucial hang that lets loose a lot of the weight of the world basking on the glow shouldered and reveals the band’s pop-centricities to get lit to in lieu of adulting’s stranger surroundings.

19. Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers [Aftermath / Interscope / pgLang / Top Dawg Entertainment]

Even at his messiest, Kendrick Lamar is still miles ahead of the rest in the rap game on Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. An introverted nightmare where he feeds into his inner villain’s origin story, his pain, shame, and everything in his life that’s trying to kill him, Lamar at his ugliest can’t stop the Compton rhymer from being even more agile in his flow with full-on art in its production as his prose teeters disjointed bouts of soul and funk that jostles the brain and always knows when to bring a moment back into a banger.

18. Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You [4AD]

What’s astounding about Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is how cohesive it is in its stylistic inconsistencies despite being recorded across a span of five months in four separate geographies with sessions recorded in upstate New York, Topanga Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, and Tucson, Arizona. In any of these environment is the national treasure of Adrianne Lenker, and how her voice and lyricism are malleable in any of them. Whether casting a long country gaze, channeling magnetic fields, or even tempting the hot glow of modern R&B in their freak folk, she and the band don’t seem to hold any doubts as to what music will look good on them.

17. Sudan Archives – Natural Brown Prom Queen [Stones Throw]

Sudan Archives’ Brittney Park is in a class all her own on Natural Brown Prom Queen, bending her violin in ways previously unheard through an uncanny composition of R&B, rap, electronic and pop futurism framing her story as an Black woman and L.A. transplant within memory and future desires. The ambition is palpable, and so is her inner energy projected out, coming into her own authentically with one of the year’s most truly singular visions.

16. Special Interest – Endure [Rough Trade]

Unlike the aggressive flashbulbs and industrial rot schisms that were right in the trenches of our turgid political landscape on their 2020 breakthrough, The Passion Of, Special Interest’s follow-up is no less a call to arms from the fringe, but is its own violent neon dance rebellion at that where commandeer and vocalist Alli Logout, guitarist Maria Elena, bassist Nathan Cassiani and electrician Ruth Mascelli build a dark disco around the bold movements of the club kids, gothic freaks, indie sleaze, and punks. It’s a space where many sounds of rage coexist and express themselves in the same, single energy to celebrate whoever it invites while rising against any and all oppressors together.

15. High Vis – Blending [Dais Records]

High Vis’ sophomore breakthrough effort, Blending, hears the London quintet continue to sonically merge three opposing lanes of musical styles between a gruff hardcore foundation, the melodicism of Brit pop, and shimmering ‘80s post-punk, all while placing themselves at the center of a collision course with their surrounding socio-political landscape and dealing with your own daily life shit amidst all of it.

14. Jana Horn – Optimism [No Quarter]

There’s a sense to Optimism, the debut album from enigmatic songwriter Jana Horn, that its mysteries will continue to unravel themselves in the years to come. The Austin-based artist’s music carries with it a spiritual weight born from poignant personal occurrences and dogmatic observations in this strange world around us, yet when woven through Horn’s own supernatural myth-making – oft whispered, and constructed humbly in strum, brass, synth, and harmony – her stories transcend astral planes sitting somewhere between dusky terrains and the celestial sphere.

13. Horsegirl – Versions of Modern Performance [Matador Records]

Horsegirl vocalist and guitarist Nora Cheng, guitarist Penelope Lowenstein alongside drummer Gigi Reece almost effortlessly surpass all buzzy expectations that come with being a group of young artists with an assured entry point of a first impression that celebrates the joys of music discovery and the darker shades of classic ‘90s indie guitar rock inspo with their own youthfully sonic persuasions. Every generation deserves their own homage to the greats while making a statement of their own, and Versions of Modern Performance is Horsegirl’s own way of doing just that.

12. Bad Bunny – Un Verano Sin Ti [RIMAS]

Like its predecessors in 2020′s one-two punch in the acclaimed YHLQMDLG and its punk-exploring counterpart EL ÚLTIMO TOUR DE MUNDO, Un Verano Sin Ti is packed at 23 tracks, but to date, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio has yet to falter at ensuring his albums are all substance and little to no filler through his futuristic lens and global genre-hopping, in this instance curated for warm weather play (and hopefully hotter play in the bedroom after grinding through those cold, lonely nights…)

11. The Mall – Time Vehicle Earth [Self-released]

With so much within the overlapping industrial, electronic, and punk realms having become blasé and a mere goth cosplay, hitting play on Time Vehicle Earth will have all your perceptions of reality rearranged and raged. The moniker of St. Louis artist Mark Plant and Spencer Bible is like the equivalent of staring deeper and deeper into the cosmic sights of James Webb Space Telescope and realizing that the further out we get, the less we know as Plant’s shouts echo through spiraling space-synth at a punk-fueled speed of light.

10. Chat Pile – God’s Country [The Flenser]

Splattered noise and unfiltered disgust color over endless blue skies in all of its putrid colors of human feces excreted from hypocrisy and the blood of the wronged, painting the picturesque American horror on Chat Pile’s unforgiving debut full-length, God’s Country. In stepping directly onto the turf of what wicked mankind creates, the Oklahoma four-piece feed off and project the devoid through a sludgy mess of guitar slop and atom-smashing drums that would probably elect to destroy all matter and usher in the extinction of us if they truly could for all our dumbass follies.

9. Alvvays – Blue Rev [Polyvinyl Records]

Blue Rev is the execution in how you make a dream pop in vivid, singular display. The third full-length album from Alvvays establishes what we’ve already known since 2014′s promising, assured guitar-pop display of a self-titled and 2017′s more refined sophomore follow-up, Antisocialites, that when the chemistry between color, texture, sound and emotion hit at just the right angle, it piques the senses inside and out in a way which makes you feel like you’ve tapped into another dimension or gravity.

8. Beyoncé – RENAISSANCE [Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia Records]

Moving past the personal and flawless execution of her acclaimed, poptimism peak one-two punch of 2013′s Beyoncé and 2016′s Lemonade, RENAISSANCE moves fully into art, quite literally at that in a celebration of Black dance music spanning across the last several decades that have permeated the culture at large, making that house (and club, and disco scene) Bey’s own dance floor with an album that flows like a mixtape meant to elicit movement, empowerment, escapism, and sex at their highest potential potency.

7. Anxious – Little Green House [Run for Cover Records]

Anxious are the kind of emo punk band that make everything familiar sound new again through a young set of eyes while adding their pages to the story of it all as well, and with their debut full-length Little Green House, they bust down the door already sounding like one of the biggest bands out there through a promising middle ground between learning well from Title Fight’s melodic intensity and the punk-pop perfectionism of major label success stories blink-182 and Jimmy Eat World.

6. Cave In – Heavy Pendulum [Relapse Records]

To say Cave In have come back swinging harder than ever would be a colossal understatement in describing the impact Heavy Pendulum weighs in with. The Boston metalcore pioneers, backed by Stephen Brodsky’s ascendant navigations over big riffs, metal spliffs, psychedelic transmissions, and throttles of fast hardcore, muscle up their axe-wielding antennas toward space, challenge the black hole void at its own game, and destroy it from the inside.

5. ROSALÍA – MOTOMAMI [Columbia Records]

ROSALÍA has tirelessly work in collaboration with culture shaping forces like the Weeknd, Bad Bunny, and Cardi B to make her metamorphosing style of global art-pop into music that translates beyond hipster cred status and into the common pop culture conscious since her sophomore breakout in 2019′s El Mal Querer, and with MOTOMAMI, the Spanish superstar gets there by rewriting every genre language as her own, tapping into what has come to define her work in atypical, oft morbid, oft horny songwriting meticulously produced with a consumer-friendly edge in its presentation that is incomparable to everything else on the landscape.

4. Knifeplay – Animal Drowning [Topshelf Records]

Knifeplay are not outright dream-pop, slocore, or shoegaze, though there are plenty of moments throughout the listen drenched in heavy distortion, an eerie peak into Americana and its murky reveries, nor are they grunge revivalists, even if they pile sludge over something ascendant. The only certain thing is that the Philly five-piece’s debut album, Animal Drowning, has bound light and darkness into their own singular prism of alternative rock in a way that breathes a new life into it, and ponders it all deeply.

3. Rachika Nayar – Heaven Come Crashing [NNA Tapes]

A new galaxy just dropped, and it’s called Rachika Nayar’s Heaven Come Crashing. The Brooklyn-based guitar virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist’s sophomore follow-up expands the celestial atmospheres discovered on last year’s Our Hands Against the Dust in one of the most sensory-entrancing examples of modern guitar art in which Nayar synthesizes her instrument with ambient colors and haloing vocal accents by songwriter Maria B.C., blurring the space between emotive rock, ambient electronic and trancelike dance music –emotion in motion at a constant centripetal force.

2. Moor Mother – Jazz Codes [ANTI- Records]

Prolific and faceted as always, be it in her own name and other projects like her free jazz ensemble Irreversible Entanglements or the avant rap-pop duo 700 Bliss, Moor Mother’s Camae Ayewa has taken less than a year to bring forth a bookend 2021 standout, Black Encyclopedia of Air, with Jazz Codes, an album which she goes even deeper into the ether with a seance of Black creativity’s most brilliant, unheralded minds lifting through her new age jazz conversations and electronic multiverses that rupture enlightenment throughout.

1. SOUL GLO – Diaspora Problems [Epitaph Records]

As their first album released as part of Epitaph Records’ legendary punk roster, the third full-length effort from Philly hardcore band SOUL GLO ups the ante in pressing audience’s brains against the wall and bleeding their ears to see beyond what’s fed to you on the surface and go deeper with the dissection of everything around you whether you can even relate to walking in Pierce Jordan’s shoes or not. That doubles their own sound, too, which across 12 livewire, air-tight tracks, is dense with stylistic swerves that furthers SOUL GLO’s message not only in intensely provoking thought and action but inspiring the art their music can barely be contained within, too.