10 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE : Isn’t It Now?

Best moment : “Gem & I”’s rhythmic basis in Jamaican music, a longstanding area of interest for the
band, meets modern pop music in a structure that unfolds as a series of ever-escalating hooks. Avey
Tare’s backing vocals and a massive synth bassline both stab crosswise against Panda Bear’s lead vocal
in a manner that’s so satisfying that it’s easy to overlook how unusual it is

RIYL : Panda Bear, Beach Boys, Radiohead, Tame Impala, psych pop, dub, art pop, prog

Select Gems : “Defeat” / “Gem and I”

09 PJ HARVEY : I Inside the Old Year Dying

Best moments : Polly Jean’s use of Dorset’s archaic dialect, often reading like a cryptogram that’s been
solved incorrectly. “I laugh in the leaves and merge to meesh/Just a charm in the woak with the chalky
children of evermore,” she sings on the boisterous “I Inside the Old I Dying.”

RIYL : forgotten dialect of Dorset, Neil Young, Kate Bush as a forest witch, John Parish, “Love Me
Tender”, 60’s folk, medieval folk, witchery

Select gems : “A Child’s Question, August” / “A Noiseless Noise”

08 SLOWDIVE : everything is alive

Best moment : The perfectly named “chained to a cloud” laying out a loop, layers a few elements, and
then lets a single lyric circle in the arrangement

RIYL : shoegazing n shit, synth dream pop, My Bloody Valentine, Mohave 3, Ride, Cocteau Twins,
gorgeousness, swooning

Select gems : “the slab” / “kisses”

07 LONNIE HOLLEY : Oh Me Oh My

Best moment : The most intense one comes from Lonnie exorcizing ghosts of a penal colony for children
he survived, on “Mount Meigs,” the harrowing centerpiece. As a roiling, free-jazz storm of bleating horns
and frantic drums erupts around him, he transports us 60 years earlier, summoning the fields where he
worked and the name of the belt-wielding man who beat him into submission. “They beat the curiosity outof me/They beat it out of me/They whooped it/They knocked it!”

RIYL : Bon Iver, Moor Mother, Sharon Van Etten, Michael Stipe, Gil Scott-Heron, Beverly Glenn-
Copeland, astral jazz, Alabama folk art

Select gems : “Oh Me, Oh My” feat Michael Stipe / “None of Us Have But a Little While” (feat. Sharon Van Etten)

06 KING KRULE : Space Heavy

Best moment : “From the Swamp,” a sunnier postcard from domesticity, describes a nagging temptation,
a nostalgic throb, that he finally resists. “If it’s from the swamp,” he murmurs, flirting with the anthemic,
“Then back it goes.”

RIYL : Radiohead playing jazz underwater, Tirzah, Arthur Russell, Andy Stott, J Dilla, cloud
rap, flickering street lights, grey skies, sensual synth pop, stoned loner London jazz
Select gems : “Flimsier” / “Seaforth”

05 BAR ITALIA : Tracey Denim

Best moment : On “Nurse!,” Nina Cristante encounters an awful man at a party and tries to steady herself with a kind of mantra: “You will make it to the other side/You know it’s just another night.” Then the groove lightens, the chords brighten, and Sam Fenton paints a picture of freedom: “A mask covered your eyes/And you move like crazy to your favorite song/You said ‘I’m coming alive’/Haven’t felt this way since you were 21.” 

RIYL : The Cure, Slowdive, the Stone Roses, Pavement, 80’s indie rock, post-punk, slacker rock,
Select gems : “Nurse!” / “Punkt”

04 ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONS : My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross

Best moment : The outward rage of “Scapegoat” explicitly, specifically attacks transphobia, Anohni
exaggerates her vibrato and steps into the role of her oppressors. Her narrator flips surface-level
sentiments of support—“It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from”—into the very reasons
why someone is “so killable,” softening the blow with a few ironic refrains of “it’s not personal.” The
triumphant guitar at the end just rubs it in.

RIYL : Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”, Perfume Genius, Lou Reed, Tindersticks, William Basinski,
chamber pop soul, slowcore, art rock, blue-eyed soul

Select gems : “Rest” / “Scapegoat”

03 SUFJAN STEVENS : Javelin

Best moment : “So You Are Tired” including some of Sufjan’s most heartbreaking set of lyrics
since Carrie & Lowell, climaxing with a lapping wordless refrain from the choir. As his words zoom in
closer to a separation (“So you are tired… of even my kiss”), the soothing, major-key resolution suggests
an elemental sense of peace – it feels new

RIYL : indie folk, chamber-pop, Elliott Smith, Fleet Foxes, Sigur Ros, Paul Simon, Joanna Newsom,
singer-songwriter

Best Songs : “Shit Talk” / “My Red Little Fox”

02 YVES TUMOR : Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot
Between Worlds)

Best moment : “Ebony Eye,” the final track and the realization of all of Tumor’s ecstatic visions. The
guitars advance like a battalion and Tumor’s voice replicates itself until they are a chorus of supplicants,
palms turned skyward and begging for deliverance. Damn

RIYL : David Bowie, Prince, Nine Inch Nails, Massive Attack, Deerhunter, glam rock,
neo-psych, post industrial, trip-hop, art pop

Select gems : “Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood” / “Ebony Eye”