10. Jungle – Volcano (Caiola / AWAL)
British soul-dance duo Jungle have been nothing if not consistent: their album covers feature the same band logo, just with different background colors; their music videos are all one-shot choreography pieces shot by band member Josh Lloyd-Watson; and the music, without exception, is richly rewarding. The duo had hits, but there was something about the kinetic energy in the lead single “Back on 74” that simply connected, unlocking a new audience to discover Jungle’s wild sound. It doesn’t hurt that Volcano, the group’s fourth studio album proper, is one of their most eclectic, moving from the skittering hard dance of “Holding On” to the lush mid-tempo disco of “Palm Trees” to the hip-hop indebted flute funk of “Problemz” without a hint of effort or strain.
The vocals are looped and run through filters while the instruments come through clear as a bell, almost as if Jungle is signaling that one element shouldn’t outweigh the other. Even the dance troupe used in the music videos has been consistent throughout their tenure. Volcano is a bit of a party, a bit of a groove, and totally a vibe, drawing strains of dance music’s past together to craft something that sounds like they could be writing its future. Jungle have always been bubbling with great ideas, but this Volcano finally let them explode. —Evan Sawdey
9. Jorja Smith – Falling or Flying (FAMM)
Falling or Flying is a charming, likable effort, with Smith showing off an arresting talent with effortless ease and poise. Working primarily with the gifted duo DameDame (Edith Nelson and Barbara Boko), Smith has released a modern contemporary pop/R&B album boasting innovative and imaginative production. Falling or Flying works on many contradictions, the most significant being that it’s an emotionally resonant album despite its largely tech-heavy sound. Though it took several years for audiences to receive the album, it was well worth the wait.
Though Falling or Flying sounds like a quintessentially London pop record, with its flourishes of house, dance, and skittery Black pop, Smith fled the Capital to make the album. If quitting London for her native Walsall was necessary for her creative forces, the relief she experienced is palpable when listening to Falling or Flying. Her caramel-sweet vocals are dreamy and understated and reflect tranquility and confidence. Smith applies that aplomb to her soulful warbling and shares her thoughts and feelings as a songwriter, co-penning every track on the album.
Like most 21st-century R&B records, Falling or Flying is a luxurious listen, topping at 16 tracks. But instead of overstaying its welcome, it leaves its audiences satisfied, even wanting more. The power of the record lies in its understated simmer. Instead of wailing over high-octane tracks, Smith pitches her jazz-influenced croon low, her thoughtful voice caressing the lyrics, programmed beats, and atmospheric synths. The record is a quiet yet unequivocal triumph. – Peter Piatkowski
8. Jason Isbell – Weathervanes (Southeastern)
Reunions was a solid enough album, justly earning its commercial and critical acclaim in 2020, but longtime Jason Isbell fans could be forgiven for taking that album as a very good but ultimate extension of his previous record, The Nashville Sound. His band, the 400 Unit, remained a tight unit, honed by heavy touring, but lyrically, there was a vagueness that permeated most of the songs Reunions.
Weathervanes isn’t a “return to form” for Isbell, as he hasn’t fallen off in terms of quality since his breakthrough album, Southeastern, was released a decade ago. However, the lonely, angered, confused characters that populate Weathervanes find ways to latch on to you and make them harder to shake than any Isbell album since Southeastern. Be it the person who suffered a workplace accident and is now addicted to painkillers on “King of Oklahoma”, the child who got lost in the foster care system after the alluded murder/suicide by his young parents in “Volunteer”, or one of the killers that inhabit the song, “Cast Iron Skillet”, most of the songs on Weathervanes could qualify as short stories, worthy of film adaptations. Add a seven-minute stunning closer (“Miles”), and you’ve got an album that deserves to be mentioned with Isbell’s best. – Sean McCarthy
7. Wednesday – Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans)
Released in April and unmatched for the remainder of the year, Rat Saw God is yet another major leap forward for Wednesday, whose invigorating swirl of 1990s indie rock, shoegaze, and twang snaps from delicate to menacing on a dime. It’s a bold move to sequence the epic, raging live set closer, “Bull Believer” second, but it works. From there, the band settles into a song cycle filled with sketchy characters and situations that sound like a record Neil Young might make if he was signed to Matador Records.
Wednesday’s power is further elevated by the remarkable storytelling of Karly Hartzman, whose opening lines on the record, “Hot rotten grass smell / Fuck all y’all down the wishing well”, set the tone for a series of darkly humorous tales along the lines of Harmony Korine’s dirtbag opus Gummo. People die in Planet Fitness parking lots. Trucks hit overpasses. Others overdose, take Narcan, and blare Drive By Truckers songs. They hide their guns and money in the drywall. Within these details is a wry sense of humor that keeps the record from being a downer. Anticipating where they go next is already agonizing. – Brian Stout
6. Acid Arab – ٣ (Trois) (Crammed Discs)
The music of the Franco-Algerian Acid Arab, now a quintet working in collaboration with many guests, feels like music made by people who come by their geographic explorations naturally. Blending Algerian Raï and Gasba, Syrian Dabke, Turkish dance, and floor-shaking Chicago Acid moves, they make music that targets hips with surgical precision. Nothing they do feels appropriated; instead, Acid Arab weave sand-blown Korg synth filigrees in ways that would make Dabke keyboard titan Razen Said proud. On ٣ (Trois), their third album (of course), the pulses quake, inviting us all to the post-pandemic party.
It’s Acid Arab’s love of the beat that allows them to maintain club currency. Coming on with the drive of Belgian-Tunisian Ammar 808’s infectiousness or Zuli’s deep Cairo-based thump, it’s no wonder a track such as “Ya Mahla’s” foreboding clutch is so enveloping. Or that the monster-funk throb of “Halim Guelil”, complete with Cheb Halim’s Auto-Tuned vocal, demands surrender to the dance floor. – Bruce Miller
5. Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy (Ninja Tune)
Scottish trio Young Fathers are a frequently indescribable prospect. Their music (Heavy Heavy is their fourth studio album) dissolves hip-hop’s boundaries, encompassing art pop and experimental electronica as much as traditional rap music. It overflows with ecstatic vocals and percussive rhythms as if channeling the earliest 20th-century black vocal music or further back still. The record is hip-hop-adjacent, with “Drum” featuring rapid-fire rapping and “Shoot Me Down” boasting moody, bass-heavy beats. It’s a unique collection that music fans of all persuasions need to hear. – Tom Morgan
4. Caroline Polachek – Desire, I Want to Turn Into You (Sony)
Caroline Polachek’s 2019 album Pang showed just how limitless the potential was for the singer-songwriter to take art pop to stratospheric new heights, and her long-awaited follow-up does just that by smartly focusing more on the pop side. Typical of Polachek’s oeuvre, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is so hyper-ambitious that it practically itches to fly off in every direction at once, but somehow the hooks on this record, which are so consistently infectious, tie everything together and keep the entire thing grounded.
The melodies are all so huge and so immediately memorable that it’s easy to overlook that Polachek deftly jumps from stadium rock to flamenco, to trap, to new age, to trip hop in the blink of an eye. And wait, did we just hear a sly nod to Kate Bush’s The Sensual World? Her powerhouse voice pulls off astonishing tricks – her ability to mimic vocoder throughout the record is a marvel to hear – but for all the technical vocal gymnastics, for all diversity of styles, it’s all in service to the song.
It doesn’t get much better than the euphoric “Welcome to My Island”, a sensational homage to sparkling 1980s pop that includes orgasmic vocalizing, Nile Rodgers-style rhythm guitar, a rapped breakdown, and a searing guitar solo. “Forget the rules, forget your friends / Just you and your reflection / ‘Cause nothing’s gonna be the same again,” she intones at the song’s climax. Rules are made to be broken, and in pop music, that can yield transcendent results, as Polachek confidently proves. – Adrien Begrand
3. Boygenius – The Record (Interscope)
The Record, the debut full-length collaboration between Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, is a much-needed blast of softness in a hard, hard world. When Bridgers sings, “I just want to find out / Who broke your nose / So I can kick their teeth in” over a delicate “Landslide”-esque acoustic guitar line, it sounds as soft as moth wings. Instead of the usual blunt, brute force and anger, Boygenius linger in the stillness and the vulnerability, letting the full weight of moments sink in and shake you to your core.
It’s not all eiderdown, though. Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus can rock with the best of them when they feel like it. “Satanist” pairs a steely, strobing rhythm guitar with a spacious breakbeat and some wonderfully snarky lyrics.”$20″ is catchy indie pop, complete with a hooky keyboard line. “Anti-Curse” blends modern pop with a wide-open Bruce Springsteen vibe. On “Leonard Cohen,” Dacus sings, “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” On The Record, Boygenius make you as soft and porous as possible to truly let the world in and feel. – J. Simpson
2. Durand Jones – Wait Till I Get Over (Dead Oceans)
Stepping away from his band, Durand Jones & The Indications, Durand Jones has proven his star power and charisma on his solo debut album, Wait Til I Get Over. For his solo work, Jones looks to classic soul and R&B, but it steps away from dance-floor material for music is a celebration of rootsy soul, gospel, rock, and jazz.
It’s a fabulous record that recalls masterful works by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Bill Withers. Braiding stirring songwriting prowess, sparkling production, and beautiful vocals, Jones has created one of the most assured and brightest debut albums in quite some time. Though the record has hallmarks of throwback soul music, it cannot help but be concerned with topical social issues. There’s a joy to much of Wait Til I Get Over, but Jones also eulogizes Sandra Bland, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and Danny Ray Thomas, reflecting the angst of cultural disquiet.
A musical autobiography or memoir is the best way to describe Wait Til I Get Over. These are deeply personal songs that chart the different kinds of emotions he’s working through, whether it’s to do with the affairs of the heart or the turmoil of the outside world; it’s also a wildly ambitious record that takes its musical cutes from Black American popular music. The sum of all these great parts makes for a thrilling listen. – Peter Piatkowski
1. Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good! (EMI)
The transformation is finally complete. Jessie Ware, one of the brightest post-electronica torch singers of the modern era, has fully pivoted to disco dance diva, and the world is all the better for it. While it is impossible to top the pop perfection of 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure?, the joy of That! Feels Good!, her latest floor-filler, is that she’s moved her sound to the realm of camp, embracing dance music’s absurdities, allowing her to be both sexier and goofier simultaneously.
The Jessie Ware of the SBTRKT era would be shocked to hear a funk workout as bold as “Freak Me Now” while beaming with pride over a liberation celebration as joyous as “Free Yourself”. The spoken-word stories of “Shake the Bottle”, the anthemic declarations of “Begin Again”, the bongo-and-horn party that is “Beautiful People” — it all adds up to an experience that’s less an album and more of a party that you never want to leave. True to its title, this album just feels Good. —Evan Sawdey