It’s frustrating how long it takes me to get these best-of lists out. My best of 2021 was published in March of last year. I wanted this one up a lot earlier but my epic piece about Andor ended up taking a lot of time and energy at the start of the year (and no regrets; I’m proud of that one). Given a choice between cutting my losses and moving on, or publishing a best-of list months later than everyone else, I’ll always choose the latter because I’m that obsessive, and I don’t want to miss documenting an amazing year of music.
I won’t spend time much time explaining my oddball tastes or my methodology, because I already did that last year. I will say I try my best to make sure my lists (and my listening in general) are as eclectic and diverse as possible. If I feel I’m not listening to enough jazz or pop I will go out of my way to seek them out, and I find that’s a really rewarding approach instead of being stuck in the same indie/electronic grind. A few years ago I decided I had to hear what all the hype was about with Charli XCX, and it wasn’t long before she was one of my favorite artists and a big influence on my taste.
And if I look at my draft list and it skews a bit too white or male I’ll make some adjustments. That’s much more fun than pretending I have no unconscious biases that need sorting out. (Though the latter was not an issue this year because for whatever reason I organically ended up listening to mostly women artists; I didn’t even realize that was happening until I saw it expressed as data on my Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year).
But that only goes so far, and generally speaking the more mainstream and hegemonic an artist is the less I feel the need to go out of my way. I won’t make room for certain brand-name superstars, as much as I might respect what they’re doing, out of some obligation to be objective. I’m not the editorial board of Pitchfork, you know? This is a subjective list and I like how weird and all over the place it is — balanced in some good ways, and unhinged in other delightful ways.
A final note: the ranking of these albums is somewhat arbitrary. I did try to put it in some order that indicates their importance to me, but other than my strong conviction that Wet Leg ruled 2022, most of the rest of the titles here are equally worthy at the end of the day.
I’ve embedded a playlist of selections from this list at the bottom of this article (but here’s the link if you want to listen now without scrolling).
1. Wet Leg — Wet Leg
I’ve already published a whole essay in praise of this audacious masterpiece of a debut, this candy-coated blast of melody and euphoria and girl power, so I don’t need to say more. I knew it was going to be album of the year on my first listen, before the fourth track was done playing. The question now is whether anyone will top it this decade, and I’m doubtful — unless Wet Leg top it themselves. They make most other bands sound so tepid and boring by comparison.
2. Charli XCX — Crash
The narrative around Charli XCX’s fifth album is that it’s a “sellout,” explicitly aimed at entrenching her place in the mainstream after years on the fringe as the queen of avant-pop. Charli herself has been blunt about “selling out”; but she’s also indicated the album was meant as arch-ironic commentary on mainstream pop. Either way, it worked: Crash is her most commercially successful album ever. But it’s seen by some longtime fans and critics as an artistic compromise, lacking in the experimentalism and exhilarating creativity of her best work (Pop 2, or my personal fave, How I’m Feeling Now, the amazing lockdown album she wrote and recorded at home in six weeks). I agree it’s not her best work, but as was the case with Madonna in her imperial era, Charli’s “sellout” album is still better and more interesting than just about anything else going on in music. One of many reasons I compare her to Madonna is that she remains highly influenced by and in dialogue with underground music (look at the impact the late, great Sophie had on Charli’s career). The production of her records is always superb. Crash may be geared towards the mainstream and it may feature production by a plethora of hired guns, but it’s no exception. It sounds amazing — cinematic, kaleidoscopic, packed with fun detail and dope beats. If anything it’s much more cohesive than 2019’s Charli (which I would label her “sellout” album if I had to pick one). Sonically, a lot of Crash is a tribute to late-80s dance pop (one of my favorite things in life). The title track, “New Shapes,” and “Lightning” sound so much like circa-1987 Latin freestyle-influenced jams by Exposé or Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam you’d be forgiven for mistaking them for the real thing. There are lots of 90s references too: “Used to Know Me” blatantly interpolates Robin S.’s house anthem “Show Me Love” (and that’s a good thing). Despite the more commercial orientation there’s still plenty of weirdness, like the “I’ma fuck you up, I’ma fuck you up” refrain in “Baby”; the almost psychedelic chopped-up and Autotuned vocals on “Lightning”; or the salacious line about making out in a bathroom in “Beg for You.” The latter is hands down the single of the year and one of the best things Charli’s ever done, a simply transcendent two minutes and forty-eight seconds of dance-pop perfection. Though it heavily interpolates September’s 2005 hit “Cry for You,” it’s superior in every way. The production, by Digital Farm Animals, detonates with the euphoria of an early-90s rave anthem; while Charli unleashes one of her strongest vocals yet (no knock against guest vocalist Rina Sawayama, who is also ace). (Check out Charli’s brilliant performance of “Beg for You” at the WorldPride opening concert here in Sydney last week for an even better idea of her vocal power.) To be clear that ravey tendency in her music is why she appeals to me so much. It’s the best pop expression of the ecstatic liberation found in dance and electronic music.
3. Dry Cleaning — Stumpwork
When Stumpwork was first announced, early in the year, I should have been overjoyed. After their magical 2021 debut, New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning very quickly joined the pantheon of my all-time favorite bands. Instead I was bewildered and even mildly angry. This was solely because of the album cover (by Rottingdean Bazaar and Annie Collinge): a deliberately gross joke about pubic hair that makes it look like a pop-punk album cover circa 2003, or a Garbage Pail Kids card. (It’s worth noting that the inner sleeve is gorgeous and would have made a perfect cover.) So when the album dropped in October, though I was incredibly keen to hear it, I boycotted it for a couple of weeks out of admittedly childish resentment (though not as childish as that cover!). When I finally got around to playing it — grateful that it was on Spotify so I didn’t have to look at it — of course I was instantly captivated! Of course it’s brilliant and essential! All was forgiven. What I love most about Stumpwork is that it could have been New Long Leg II, and Dry Cleaning fans including me would have eaten it up, especially coming only a year and a half later. Instead they evolved their sound. In place of the skewed postpunk of New Long Leg, there’s a lush, intricate, jazzy, almost cruisy quality to Stumpwork that unexpectedly and delightfully reminds me of the Sea and Cake — a band I love to death but probably the last I’d expect to compare to Dry Cleaning. I’ve always been in awe of Dry Cleaning’s instrumental chops: Tom Dowse, Nick Buxton and Lewis Maynard all played in metal or psych bands before going postpunk, giving their sound extra depth, complexity, and crunch, and making such a fascinating scaffold for Florence Shaw’s genius spoken word. With those chops, it makes perfect sense that they would move in a funkier, jazzier, more melodic direction, and somehow that makes the surreal, spooky, silly worlds that Shaw manifests— like the ode to a lost pet turtle on “Gary Ashby” — more poignant and precious. Even better are the moments when Shaw mixes up the stream-of-consciousness with barbed reminders of our dystopian reality, like on “Hot Penny Day” when she intones, “I see male violence everywhere,” shortly before asking, “Is it okay if I still call you my disco pickle?”
4. Warpaint — Radiate Like This
Warpaint’s fourth album started out as mood music for me. It was released in May, in the late southern autumn, and I often found myself putting it on in the mornings when writing or doing housework, as I do with ambient music, so its serene warmth could counteract the winter chill. I found the lushness of its funky, spacey dream pop so soothing — self-care as it were. At first that mattered more than individual tracks or themes. But after months of this, I realized that the songs on Radiate Like This had wormed their way into my consciousness and it had quietly become one of my favorite new albums. At this point I started turning up the volume when I listened, revealing a truly stunning work that conceals complexity and drama and power beneath its shimmering surface. There aren’t many other songs that have gotten stuck in my head lately as much as “Hard to Tell You,” with its gorgeously lilting, melancholy vocal, haunting synths, and gently insistent funk rhythm. For me, Warpaint occupy a really interesting space between the synthy indie pop of contemporary bands like Beach House (see no. 9 on this list) and some of my 90s trip-hop and folktronica faves like Alpha and Beth Orton. On Radiate Like This there’s even a tendency towards soul and R&B, which perfectly suits the playful sexuality of songs like “Stevie” and “Send Nudes.” The four band members tinkered on these tracks in isolation at home for years at the start of the pandemic, and it paid off: they weave in and out of these different modes with great finesse and skill. That combination of tranquility, intricacy and emotional depth makes for enormously satisfying listening.
5. Domi & JD Beck — NOT TiGHT
What a joy this album is. Domi & JD Beck are a pair of young jazz wizards with almost supernatural talent. Both were child prodigies; Texan drummer Beck is still only 19, while French keyboardist Domi (real name Domitille Degalle) is the grownup of the duo at 22. Somehow they look even younger! Both had their skills sharpened in prestigious company, playing with the likes of Erykah Badu, Thundercat and Anderson .Paak while still kids, before fatefully meeting in 2018. They made a name for themselves with viral videos of their unearthly interpretations of hip-hop classics (I fell in love after coming across their tribute to Madvillainy), before being signed to .Paak’s label and releasing this, their debut LP. What I love most about NOT TiGHT is how it makes jazz feel so fresh and alive and contemporary and fun. With titles like “WHOAH,” “WHATUP” and “TWO SHRiMPS,” each track gives the delightful, delirious impression of kids blowing bubbles in a cool breeze on a summer evening. Domi’s keyboards swirl and glitter with intricate cascading melodies; while Beck’s complicated drum patterns, muted and distorted by his electronic pads until they sound programmed, are both thrilling and strangely soothing. Melding influences from Herbie Hancock (who appears here on the fabulous “MOON”) to A Tribe Called Quest, J. Dilla and Flying Lotus, and with guest appearances from Thundercat, Busta Rhymes, Snoop Dogg and .Paak himself, NOT TiGHT offers proof that jazz can’t be separated from funk, hip hop, electronica, or good times — and that it will always find a way to connect with new generations.
6. Flyying Colours — Flyying Colours
I’m cheating with this one because it’s not a proper album as such, and it’s not new music. This release from these Melbourne avatars of “newgaze” is a reissue that combines a pair of EPs from 2013 and 2015. But I couldn’t leave it off my best of 2022 because in many ways shoegaze and dream pop are defining the current era for me. And I’m not the only one — I wrote about the renewed popularity and relevance of the genre, especially among young people, in my review of Ride’s amazing set here in Sydney in December. Outside of the heavy hitters at the top of this list there’s hardly a new band I find myself craving as much as Flyying Colours. I spent the year falling in love with their brilliant 2016 album Mindfullness and its 2021 follow-up Fantasy Country. Released late in the year, this collection shows they had their formula aced early on. It’s almost eerie how good they are at recapturing the euphoric rush of Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine and other shoegaze pioneers from the late 80s and early 90s. “I Don’t Want to Let You Down” is an expert callback to early MBV with its pitch-shifted guitars that make feel like you’re on a carnival ride. But if Flyying Colours were a mere rehash they would be boring; importantly, beneath all the shimmering guitar noise and distortion they have a knack for the great songwriting and adventurousness that make those classics so timeless. Far from being limited to a particular set of shoegaze tropes, their sound enfolds decades’ worth of moody, trippy rock of many styles. “Feathers” is a lovely piece of psychedelic jangle-pop that would be worthy of the Church. The breathtaking “Not Today” hits like Heaven Up Here-era Echo & the Bunnymen.
7. Khruangbin & Leon Bridges — Texas Moon
8. Vieux Farka Touré & Khruangbin — Ali
A big reason why Khruangbin are so beloved by “people everywhere” is the way they mix so many different styles into their multicultural stew. In Khruangbin’s groovy world, their Texas roots (blues, soul, country and psych-rock) and their world influences (Thai, Latin, Ethiopian jazz and Jamaican dub, just for starters) meld together seamlessly on the dancefloor. In a year without a Khruangbin album proper, these two brilliant collaborations showed off their range and genius. The first is a sequel to their wonderful Texas Sun EP with neo-soul star and fellow Texan Leon Bridges. Khruangbin are the perfect backing for Bridges’ meditations on soul, country and gospel, adding just the right amount of psychedelia and smooth funk swing. Midtempo stomper “B-Side” sounds roughly like if Sam Cooke fronted Chic; it was the other single of the year, while I nominate closing ballad “Mariella” as the year’s most gorgeous tune. The only fault I can find with this release is that it’s not LP-length. Later in the year, the band joined Vieux Farka Touré, son of the legendary Malian singer Ali Farka Touré, for a gem of a release that was recorded live in the studio in one week. Here the younger Farka Touré beautifully covers songs by his late father while Khruangbin play a heady brew of African blues, dub and funk with a subtle electronic feel. It’s both mellow and mindbending and, like so much of Khruangbin’s music, impossible to categorize — the kind of miraculous collaboration that leaves you feeling glad you’re inhabiting the planet with these artists.
9. Beach House — Once Twice Melody
I’m relatively new to the Beach House party, so you don’t have to listen to me, but I believe this, their eighth album and the first they’ve produced themselves, happens to be their best. It’s still very much in the realm of the lush, soulful, atmospheric dream pop they’ve mastered over the past decade-plus, but upon first listen it quickly overtakes you with a surprising intensity. Even at an extravagant 84 minutes it’s more cohesive than its predecessors, with stronger songwriting, and more passion and grandeur blossoming out of the languid detachment of Victoria Legrand’s vocals — like she’s waking up from a dream to a memory of something unsettling. It’s also expansive in terms of its sonic palette, with electropop beats that are about as close as Beach House will ever come to rocking out (check “Superstar,” or the stunning, Depeche Mode-like “Masquerade”), and lovely instrumental flourishes like the slide guitar on “The Bells.”
10. Cate Le Bon — Pompeii
Welsh artist Cate Le Bon has been at it for years but she’s new to me; I discovered her this year when Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream posted about how great she is live. Le Bon makes a kind of off-kilter postpunk that’s spare in terms of arrangement but rich and ornate in melody and adventure. Pompeii very quickly became a go-to soundtrack for a certain chilled but restless mood that defined much of year three of the pandemic for me. There are a lot of comparisons to make, from Cocteau Twins to Talking Heads to the more stripped-down output of the Cure. But the one I keep coming back to is the Durutti Column — for the way Le Bon’s terrific guitar playing leaves plenty of airy space for the sublime bass and synths (also played by Le Bon), and for the wonderfully uncool sax and clarinet (Stephen Black) that add so much texture. Also worth noting that Stella Mogzawa from Warpaint is the drummer, which explains the underlying groove that offsets Le Bon’s almost stubborn quirkiness — with her uniquely tremulous vocals and indelible lyrical images like dirt on the bed, French boys with faces like lakes, and sipping wine through a telescope.
11. Kokoroko — Could We Be More
Released on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings label, the debut LP from this London octet is a marvellous, multifarious fusion of many styles of Afro-pop, jazz, funk, and R&B, united by a mood of diasporic transcendence and celebration. For me, it combines the rhythmic pleasures of Afrobeat with the smooth sophisticated 70s jazz-funk that was such an influence on house music, with generous hints of reggae, samba and many more flavors too. Led by trumpeter and vocalist Sheila Maurice-Gray, Kokoroko’s music is rich and complex but inviting and infectious too. Tracks like “Age of Ascent” and “Tojo” both soothe and enliven — it’s wonderful music to get your head in the right place after a hard day, or to kick off a Saturday evening in the summer. The soulful “Something’s Going On” is an overt callback to Marvin Gaye’s protest anthem/lament, and, along with the fierce “War Dance,” grounds the album in the social realities of a world in crisis.
12. Levon Vincent — Silent Cities
Berlin-based New Yorker Levon Vincent is one of my favorite house and techno producers, and one of the few whose full-length LPs I listen to at home. Despite being intended for a dancefloor there is a bold experimental quality to Vincent’s productions that rewards long-format listening in the same way that Aphex Twin or Autechre does. As is the case with both of those artists there is plenty of melody and grace to be found amidst the clamor and commotion. The thing about Silent Cities is that it takes away the dancefloor focus, leaving even more room for the experimentalism and the melody, and that’s win-win. There are no 4/4 beats on the album; instead it’s a collection of skeletal, at times almost primal electro and broken beats, staying in a steady midtempo groove, forming a scaffold for eerie, skittering sound effects and warped synth refrains. True to form, Vincent tests the listener with long stretches of minimalism or clashy noise, before unleashing moments of staggering beauty and drama. Check the unforgettable “WOLVES,” which sounds like the ghosts of the Kraftwork robots haunting an empty skyscraper; or “MOTHER EARTH,” whose soaring synth strings reach improbable heights of emotional intensity and then keep building. The project is clearly meant as a commentary on the abandonment of urban spaces during COVID lockdown, and it powerfully captures the feeling of loneliness and alienation in apocalyptic times, but also the exhilaration of new possibilities.
13. Mark Peters — Red Sunset Dreams
English muso Mark Peters is new to me, and I wouldn’t have heard of this underrated gem of an album if my buddy and Classic Album Sundays partner J.P. hadn’t flagged it for me. Combining shoegazey post-rock, ambient electronica, and more earthy and bluesy elements like acoustic and slide guitars, it comes across like a soundtrack for a postapocalyptic sci-fi film directed by Wim Wenders. Or like if Brian Eno’s and Daniel Lanois’s pretty ambient bits on The Joshua Tree just kept going without U2. The album title and cover are perfect, because it really does give you the impression of watching a desert sunset — vast but also lovely and tranquil, cosmic and profound but also grounding.
14. Earl Sweatshirt — Sick!
I’m just going to be upfront about why this album is on this list. As the end of the year approached, I was unhappy to see that as of yet there was no hip hop on my draft list. There was a lot of other Black music, including jazz, African music and rock, but hip hop was falling through the cracks. At the start of the year I’d vowed to pay more attention to new hip hop, but clearly I’d failed at that, no doubt because I’m old and out of touch. So in December I scanned other best-of lists for some hip-hop titles in a bid to correct this shortcoming. Earl Sweatshirt jumped out because I’d been casually familiar with his work for years, and his off-kilter style always appealed to me, but I’d never given him enough of a chance. At first I wondered if I was just forcing things, but I was instantly captivated with the abstract, trippy production and with Earl’s opaque flow, which reminds me of a more modern, mumbly version of some of my favorite MCs including Del the Funkee Homosapien and MF DOOM. I love all the details, like the roots-reggae loop on “Lye” and the way Earl’s political awareness becomes more apparent amidst the freewheeling surrealism the more you listen (“Strong spirit where the body couldn’t get asylum / The cost of living high, don’t cross the picket line and get the virus”). Sick! put a big smile on my face, I found myself wishing it went on for longer than 25 minutes, and in the next few weeks I listened to it over and over. And that right there is really the criteria for this list. It’s all about the music that obsesses me. Even better, its hazy, drifting psychedelia slots in perfectly with so much of what I’m listening to lately. So there you go, I made myself listen when it wasn’t happening organically, and now I’m hooked.
15. Yard Act — The Overload
The UK music scene really has an embarrassment of riches right now in this new wave of postpunk bands who mix angular, abrasive sounds with cutting commentary on the dystopian Brexit era. Sleaford Mods; Squid; Black Country, New Road; Idles; Dry Cleaning, just to name a few — there are countless more bands in this movement I have yet to check out. Yard Act, from Leeds, are among the most compelling and compulsively listenable. They don’t stint on the abrasion, as exemplified by “Rich,” one of the best tracks of the year, a snarling screed from the point of view of a monstrously self-pitying petty-bourgeois creep. “Man, two more poor dead kids in a ditch / I fucking love being rich (you can’t pin that on me).” But this is balanced by their instincts for writing unforgettably hooky songs with real mass appeal. “Pour Another,” a melodic stomper with melancholy lyrics about finding fleeting friendship in bleak times, is so impassioned and infectious and so successful in translating the social crisis of Britain into a cathartic party anthem that it’s worthy of the Specials or dare I say the Clash.
16. The Veldt — Entropy Is the Mainline to God
The Veldt, led by North Carolina siblings Daniel and Danny Chavis, are one of the more underrated shoegaze bands from the late 80s and 90s, as well as longtime stalwarts of Black rock. After pursuing other musical projects early in the millennium, they returned to recording under their old moniker in 2011. It’s great to have them around as a guiding light in an era when shoegaze is exploding in popularity among young people. They make Black shoegaze or “blackgaze” in every sense: a take on noisy alternative music that incorporates Black forms like soul & R&B, along with Black themes and politics — from the Afro-pick on the cover to titles like “Slave Ship Serenade.” But at a deeper level it’s a powerful reminder that rock and roll is Black music, and so it’s more of a reclamation than an interpretation. Like all the best shoegaze, it’s not limited to a narrow range of shimmery tropes; the songwriting is ace and there are echoes of diverse artists from Soundgarden to Turnstile to Blood Orange.
17. Burial — Antidawn
Effectively the first Burial album since 2007’s epochal Untrue (despite being billed as an EP), Antidawn is 44 minutes of beatless ambient music. Not only is that fine with me but it’s desirable: it was always the atmosphere that I valued more than anything in Burial’s music. As you might predict from an ambient Burial project, it’s dark. This is not ambient in the sense of chillout music; it’s ambient like a dystopian sci-fi soundtrack. But it’s also gorgeous. It’s not so much something you listen to as something that happens to you. Melancholy synths and ghostly, unintelligible singing voices float in and out of the mix like figures half-glimpsed in a fog. At times all the musical elements dwindle away and we just hear unsettling noises, like creatures flickering past us in the dark. Vast echoes envelop everything. You could call this goth electronica, from the gloomy title to the powerful suggestion that it’s all emanating from inside a cathedral. It’s the sound of collapse and annihilation — and it really suited my mood on certain bleak mornings this year. As is the case with Joy Division and a lot of other music I love, it’s often true that embracing the darkness is a therapeutic or even inspiring way to deal with it.
Feature image photo credit: Charli XCX by Emily Lipson
Under the Paving Stones 