The2010s is music journalism at its deepest and most thoughtful. In an era of instant reactions, hot takes and public relations disguised as criticism, we’ve tried to craft a site that moves at its own deliberate pace. We’ve interviewed Grammy winners, collected and dissected the best music of the last decade and garnered tens of thousands of listens on our podcast. Now, we’re asking for your support. Before you check out our favorite albums of 2022, please go to our Patreon page and consider chipping in a few bucks. We’ve got perks from custom made playlists to behind the scenes content and are honored to have your support.
Aethiopes - billy woods
Years ago, I described billy woods and fellow MC mystic Elucid as twin Virgils, guiding us through a spiraling descent to hell. On woods’ second triumph this year, Church, he evolved into Dante, allowing séance with his anxious mind, his troubled heart. But Aethiopes is the razor's edge balance between the two, vulnerable yet omnipotent. Through woods’ enthralling delivery and screenplay lyrics he is the panopticon and the prisoner. On the first two tracks, he muses about his childhood in Zimbabwe, wondering if his new neighbor is an exiled dictator, only for Preservation’s dust strewn samples to burst into the horns of Gabriel as woods shouts about black astronauts and the Challenger explosion, wrapping it all up with a towel under the hotel door, smoke in his lungs and his date standing him up. It’s a dizzying rush of images, yet the tendons and connective tissue are as strong as steel, entirely thanks to woods’ precision.
And, for one of the first times, woods invites a crew into his world of murk. Boldy James slurs threats through “Sauvage” “Dug down in my soul and did some soul searchin'/ All I found was a police report for a missin' person,” he mutters with a thousand yard stare. New York firebreathers Breeze Brewin and El-P trade bars at warp speed on “Heavy Water” while woods comes back to NYC with Medusa’s head in his bag and the crack epidemic in his back pocket. Hazy memories, historical events and his own life seamlessly fuse with mythology and nightmares. I listen again and again to try to unspool the threads. I know I’ll never get to the center, but just hearing woods’ storytelling is worth the work. - Nathan Stevens
Bummer Year - Good Looks
I’m the perfect target for Bummer Year. Written by a bunch of dudes who worship Pixies as much as they do Townes Van Zandt, Good Looks come from all corners of backwoods Texan crannies, including lead songwriter Tyler Jordan, who grew up just 45 minutes down the road from me in South Texas. Over gloriously warm recordings filled with Jake Ames’ dizzying and empathetic guitar work, Good Looks took me on a tour of the whole Lone Star State, a backdrop and background character to an intense wrangling with depression. When I interviewed Jordan, he revealed that many of the songs had been written years before and, despite outward lyrical themes, from heartbreak to nostalgia, the actual creature lurking at the center of them was depression. But he wrestles with that challenge mightily, finding a crowd of shoulders to cry on and just as many ready to riot with him. On the sunny “21” Tyler sneaks in “I would watch you drown,” against his bosses as they “strip the value right out of my bones.” And early single “Vision Boards” gives the finger to his parents, god, the devil before shouting “I am deserving of your love,” the implied “who” in that sentence wonderfully ambiguous. This is country rock with the heart of Willy Nelson, the wit of Blaze Foley and the pop hooks of Spoon. They done Texas proud.
Flaming Swords - Fievel Is Glauque
The title and the action-movie samples scattered through the new Fievel is Glauque album suggest Zach Phillips and Ma Clément are aligning their prog-bossa with the brainy wave of post-GZA rap coming out of New York State right now. Phillips would probably point to Uruguayan music as ground zero for the thick stew the trans-Atlantic duo serves up in sub-two-minute servings, but Fievel is the rock group that works the most like the higher artistic echelons of East Coast rap: sharply honed, fat-free music made with intent, rigor, wit, principle, a competitive edge (as any band that practices as hard as Fievel has to) and, in spite of it all, a sense of humility most vividly expressed in their agnosticism about recording fidelity and in Phillips and Clément’s Homer-and-Marge stage presence. Also like a rap group, they’ve decided to call this their debut album despite having put out a surprise hit last year with the equally stacked God’s Trashmen Sent To Right The Mess. You can see what they mean. At 20 tracks of roughly equal length, Trashmen feels like a bunch of (great) songs piled on top of each other and makes sense retrospectively as a “compilation” rather than a front-to-back statement. Flaming Swords flows like the real thing, each track tumbling into the next, lubricated by a steel guitar that provides the perfect if counterintuitive touch. - Daniel Bromfield
God’s Country - Chat Pile
The grossest metal albums don’t let you just feel fear, but smell it. Chat Pile, from their superfund referencing name to their constant lyrical usage of burning skin and spilled grease, make you smell as much as you hear the horrors they detail. The Oklahoma quartet’s sludge-rock sledge hammer came down with an almighty clang with God’s Country, an unflinching look at late capitalist disgust, with an unnerving sense of humor. Raygun Busch’s unhinged performance takes cues from the grotesquely compelling, or compellingly grotesque, mania of Pere Ubu, ranting like a post-apocalyptic prophet one moment, crying like he’s on a bad acid trip the next. And it’s the remarkable empathy that courses through even the steeliest songs that make God’s Country so wrenchingly captivating; the surprisingly emotional retelling of Friday the 13th on “Pamela,” to the hilarious, then terrifying, 9-minute bonecrusher “grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg”
However, the moments that’ll haunt you the most aren’t lifted from a slasher flick, but real life. “Why?” and “Anywhere” look at homelessness and random violence in the states, finding no answers, only brutality. “Have you ever had ringworm? SCABIES?!” howls Busch on “Why?” aghast at the deeply wounding realities we allow. “Anywhere” is the split second after a shooting, the narrator realizing that the rest of his life will be reverberating with the trauma from that moment. “It's the sound of a fucking gun/ It's the sound of your world collapsing.” God’s Country is the sound of the world collapsing, not with a bang, but a gurgle.
Heaven Come Crashing - Rachika Nayar
Heaven Come Crashing is a uniquely intimidating work. Rachika Nayar’s sophomore album isn’t a pummeling endurance test, nor does it require a thorough understanding of the avant-garde. What’s intimidating is the amount of emotion the guitarist forces out of her compositions. In Nayar’s hands, ambient music is blown up into heart-exploding, post-rock proportions. Touch points include the glacial beauty of Sigur Ros as well as the Earth splitting crescendos of Explosions In the Sky. This is music that’s both cinematic in scale and intimate in scope. It’s an album that’s perfect for soundtracking the feeling of yearning hands brushing against one another or the change marked by the first snowfall of the year. It’s for the little things that are actually the big things. The apex comes toward the end of the title track. The dam breaks as dance beat euphoria floods the senses and guitars beam out to the cosmos. True to its title, Heaven Come Crashing feels like a speeding, head-on collision with the divine. - Trey Fett
Icons - Two Shell
Considering how the notoriety behind the duo stem from them taking a piss at the dance-music industry, Two Shell introduce themselves as a surprisingly inviting act in their Icons EP, where the off-kilter qualities of its music provides its very draw. Their old habits remain, shown mainly through the record's AI-like narrator who cuts in the middle of multiple tracks to make sure listeners are well-pleased. More silly than uncanny, the voice adds a through line to the album rather than a hiccup, but it also gives the music a touch of personable, if familiar display of humor: as the duo's woozy, drum-centric production conjures memories of the post-dubstep scene during the dawn of the '10s -- much has been made of the similarity of the EP’s "Pod" to Joy Orbison's "Hyph Mngo" -- the helium-drunk vocals reminds me of the playfulness behind the artists of Hessle Audio and their eagerness to warp drum-machine techno into bizarre shapes. Two Shell twiddle the knobs just see what happens with every flip of the switch and the duo end up with a series of splattered, chromatic bass music that pride itself in its sheer weirdness. - Ryo Myauchi
imagine naked! - OHYUNG
Ambient music at its worst is wallpaper with no further ambition than to be expressly ignorable. But there are rare, wonderful cases, where ambient music cannot be ignored, it must be actively listened to, even as it cocoons you. imagine naked! is one of those albums. Polymath OHYUNG recorded imagine naked! Over a three day period, tapping into a deep, surprising well of vulnerability, tearing out their emotions, both joyous and desperate across the album. Added by a radiant warm reminiscent of Tomasz Bednarczyk and the clattering chaos of Tim Hecker; there are few songs as deliriously transportive as “symphonies sweeping!” and it’s just as rare to have something as heart wrenching as the tumbling death meditation of “tucked in my stomach!” Without a single word, OHYUNG professes remarkable empathy.
Let’s Promise to be Happy - Jyocho
“Folk math rock? Yeah this is Nathan-core” said fellow 2010s writer Ryo. Seen as I feel, at least I do know what I like. And yes, Japanese outfit Jyocho catered directly to my tastes. Let’s Promise to be Happy is a dexterous, virtuoso display of rhythmic and melodic talent, but that sheer brilliance never gets in the way of the emotional crux of the album. A springtime affair, Let’s Promise to be Happy shifts between pastoral comfiness and firework displays of outsized, bursting emotions. Nathan-core indeed. - NS
Marchita - Silvana Estrada
The twin suns of Mexican music in 2022 were opposites in intent. Natalia Lafourcade’s De todas las flores was a flush, maximalist masterpiece, baroque and stunning as the halls of a cathedral. Silvana Estrada’s Marchita meanwhile delved into more intimate architecture—literally. In the first few songs you can hear the settling of a house, the creek of a rocking chair, the closing of a door. Over an album long crescendo, Marchita builds from the most hushed corners of Estrada’s house and heart, her four stringed guitar, the Cuatro, reassembling her spirit as her voice gains power and sorrow. She ascends from a vaporous whisper to a Flamenco wail that clips at the boundaries of the sound, shaking the floorboards and throttling hearts. The gothic vaudeville of “Casa” serves as the tipping point, where ether-like saxophones and weary woodwinds join Estrada’s haunting of her childhood home. Considering this is Estrada’s first full length solo album, it’s tempting to place prospective comparisons upon her, hyping her potential up to the levels of Lafourcade or Joni Mitchell. But Marchita stands on its own, needing no analogues. - NS
Miracle in Transit - Naked Flames
Electronic and metal are in a constant war for the silliest genre names. Microhouse vs depressive black metal. Funeral doom vs wonky. But, occasionally, a new title comes out that actually perfectly describes the sound. So it goes for Naked Flames’ brand of “dub rave,” introduced, and perhaps perfected, on Miracle in Transit. The psychedelic and meditative aspects are all there, from the slow build of silver synths on opener “Pan Matsuri” to the triumphant, distant horns of “Miles of Corkers.” But the rave is there too, it had to be due to Naked Flames’ own giddy sense of perpetual movement. Doesn’t matter if a hook is only one note, Naked Flames flutters, uncorks, rattles and shifts these songs in unpredictable ways, leaving a dizzying sense of possibility every listen, even if you’ve got every moment memorized.
Myopia - Thou & Mizmor
There’s a considerable amount of reverence for the names Thou and Mizmor in the world of underground metal. The mighty Thou have spent over a decade shaping sludge metal in their own image while challenging what Thou can be with each release. Helmed by the mysterious A.L.N., the enigmatic Mizmor twists, bends, and crumbles black metal into unrecognizable shapes. Together, they’ve raised a fortress. Myopia is built on hissing feedback and low end riffs carved from stone at the dawn of man. The players want nothing short of submission to the full weight of their soundscapes. The album is often as heavy as metal gets, but tracks like “Subordinate” and “Drover of Men” manage to achieve liftoff before drilling back down through the bedrock. At the center of it all, A.L.N. and Bryan Funcke deliver two of the most compelling vocal performances of the year. The former brings haunting wails and dramatic roars. The latter is all rabid snarls. It’s tempting to call the music doom metal, but “doom” isn’t the goal here. Myopia is as brutal and monstrous as it is cleansing and instructive. At its heart, this is music that aches for a kinder, gentler, more creative world. - TF
Radiator - Sadurn
A troubled friend’s face silhouetted in lamplight. A lonely bedroom window right before sunrise. A messy run-in with an ex on campus. These images are typical of the simple and sad beauty in Genevieve DeGroot’s lyrics that run top to bottom on Radiator, the wonderful debut LP by Sadurn. Hailing from Philly an comprised of DeGroot, guitarist and pedal steel-er Jon Cox, bassist Tabitha Ahnert and drummer Amelia Swain, Sadurn had a banner year: a Run for Cover Records signing, a record release and a month-long tour with label-mate and fellow emo-folkster Field Medic.
It’s possible that Radiator’s best quality is a characteristic unheard in contemporary music: a sense of quiet. The songs on this LP are deliberately paced, unhurried and soft. For some, they will be too lullaby-ish, but for me, these are urgent songs that want to communicate important ideas about the ways the average twentysomething does relationships. On album standout “Icepick,” DeGroot muses on the hard-to-categorize nature of a relationship in motion (“You and I are good friends, and sometimes we’re in love / And it feels almost like nothing I’m ever gonna find again”), and then later laments the uncertainty of the whole situation (“And I get so messed up ‘cause I don’t know if it’s working / I’m standing by the window and I can’t wait to let the light in”). Elsewhere, we find DeGroot exercising their right to a soliloquy, like on “Golden Arm” (“I wish I understood a hundred times / The gnawing in my heart”) and the title track (“But I know the birds are circling my heart / Maybe I am frightened of what happens if I start / Saying what I have been thinking”). Ultimately, this is a gorgeous record, one that brings a bit of catharsis to those seeking it. - Hunter Moore
Song of Salvation - Dream Unending
Metal is at its best when it’s expansive. Whether “expansive” means crashing through genre parameters or composing entire worlds, Dream Unending checks off both boxes. The duo of drumming vocalist Justin DeTore and guitarist Derrick Vella made their debut in 2021 with Tide Turns Eternal. The inspiration for the band was the gothic death doom of My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Anathema, but Tide made it clear the band was too ambitious to settle for homage. And just one year later, they returned with something swirling, vibrant and far beyond the bounds of death doom. Every note of Song of Salvation bursts with discovery and determination. What’s immediately discernible is the record’s sheer beauty. While countless modern metal bands built their sound off a combination of pretty parts and heavy parts, Dream Unending transcends any distinction between the two. Seismic riffs and pools of shimmering, rippling chords are the nexus between power and bliss. Vella feels less like a guitarist and more like a painter guiding and smearing his expressionist brush strokes across the sky. DeTore drips with the gravitas of a seasoned stage actor or a great beast howling from the depths. Halfway through the album, a voice asks “Do you believe?” I’m not so sure I do. I could wake up any moment and be left with the faint glimmers of the sounds that must only exist in deep sleep. - TF
Spirit of Ecstasy - Imperial Triumphant
If you consume enough gods, do you become one yourself? New York has feasted on myths and legends from myriad of cultures for hundreds of years and Imperial Triumphant argue that’s only made it more gluttonous. Spirit of Ecstasy, like the flawless Alphaville before it, finds the NYC trio making their sickened version of black metal with avant-garde classical and jazz mutating the riffs and breakdowns. “Obey your narrator,” roars Zachary Ilya Ezrin as a flurry of cymbals and guitars unfurl around him. Later, the sound of car engines revving becomes inseparable from human screams, man and machine entwining in a horrific fusion. New York is a foul, Lovecraftian god overseeing its own cruel creations. And it hungers for more.
Teeth Marks - SG Goodman
“Oh honey why would you ever take that trip down South? / I let you visit for free each time I open my mouth up.” You’ll laugh, but that’s just prelude to a tear the soul right out of your chest move that SG Goodman uncorks. “How am I gonna say to my heart ‘vacations over’?”
Goodman’s got a knack for that: making you smile out the side of your mouth before dropping a song book of devastation. But it makes sense. Goodman catalogs love like the spin of a hurricane or the shake of an earthquake, a natural force so vast that we can only hope to survive and pick up the pieces, finding bits of humanity in the aftermath. Teeth Marks is country-rock bliss, reaching back far in its lineage not just for sounds, but for themes that dominate the American, working class, south. From the pro-union assshaker “Work Until I Die” to the reverent funeral hymn “Dead Soldiers” Goodman becomes the avatar for over a hundred years of country mutations.