Lucky Daye's duets collection Table For Two was one of my favorite EPs of 2021, and I was pretty excited when it won the Grammy for Best Progressive R&B album last week (in fact it was a good night for R&B EPs in general, since Heaux Tales won Best R&B Album). Lucky Daye's frequent producer D'Mile also got to go up and accept a Grammy with Silk Sonic, he's been on a great run the last few years, it's really great to see these guys get some well deserved recognition. And with "Over" blowing up on the radio, it really feels like this is Lucky Daye's year, this album is fantastic, I love the balance between sort of old-fashioned soul and some slick modern textures, and the way the first three tracks run together is sublime. Alex Isley, who co-wrote and co-produced a couple tracks on Candydrip, also released a very good album, Marigold with Jack Dine, in March. Here's my 2022 albums Spotify playlist that most of these albums are in. 

Jarvis Cocker had been releasing music pretty sporadically since Pulp disbanded, but he's had a nice prolific run in the last two years: Beyond The Pale from his new band Jarv Is, a collection of French pop songs he recorded for Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, and now a Jarv Is soundtrack album for a BBC series. I kind of assumed This Is Going To Be Hurt would be maybe a couple songs and a lot of instrumental stuff composed as incidental music for the show, but it's mostly full-only vocal songs. And it's really excellent, possibly my second favorite post-Pulp album he's made after Further Complications, my favorites so far are "Dare To Love" and "Just Another One Of Those Days." 

Humble Quest debuted on the charts significantly lower than Maren Morris's previous two major label albums, which is a shame, I thought she was on the verge of household name status after the success of "Bones." Like Carly Pearce, Morris made two albums with the late producer Michael Busbee and has a largely different team on her new record but didn't miss a beat, this is right up to the standard of her other stuff. "The Furthest Thing" is gorgeous and I think "Tall Guys" is the real surefire hit on here, they're nuts if they don't release that as a single. 

I've been following the Swedish singer Lotta Lindgren aka LÉON since I heard her debut single "Tired Of Talking" back in 2016, and her third album is excellent stuff, really wish she got more recognition, in America or anywhere really. She has kind of an unusual voice and a great ear for these sort of gentle contemplative pop songs, "Soaked" and "Lift You Up" are standouts on this album. 

I definitely feel too out of my depth to really say too much about what's happening in Latin pop, especially since I don't speak a lick of Spanish, but I still like to check what the biggest artists are doing and have really loved a lot of Rosalía's stuff the last few years. Her 2017 debut album Los Angeles produced by Raul Refree, who I interviewed a couple years ago, was largely acoustic and steeped in flamenco conventions, but she's very quickly moved into this cutting edge beat-driven reggaeton/pop sound. I don't know what to compare that kind of evolution to, maybe it's a little like the journey from Taylor Swift to 1989 but I dunno, a lot less dorky and MOR. Tracks like "Diablo" and "Bulerias" just sound so cool in terms of the production and the vocal arrangements. And I try to read translations of the lyrics sometimes just to get a handle on what she's saying, like, the piano ballad called "Hentai," that's some wild shit. 

I really enjoyed ranking every Sonic Youth album for Spin last month and having an excuse to revisit my favorite band's discography, but a few people did express disappointment that I only covered the 15 'proper' albums. The thing is, I love their whole sprawling catalog of more experimental releases, but I don't see them as essential in the same way and would've felt weird including them just to rank almost all of them below almost all of the proper albums. And I love that they're still dipping into the archives and putting things together like In/Out/In, 44 minutes of previously unreleased improvisations from across the band's fertile last decade together. "In & Out" has some Kim Gordon vocals and "Machine" is a bit of a rocker, but mostly it just feels like you're in the studio with them one afternoon hearing them try to work out new material. Some of the later more conceptual and/or collaborative SYR releases were cool, but I feel like this is like if they'd just continued doing things more in the vein of SYR1 and SYR2, which is great. I'm such a huge Steve Shelley fan and I love hearing him sort of conduct the band and steer the rising and falling energy on pieces like these. 

Charli XCX was a slightly left-of-center pop artist from the beginning, but after she couldn't quite sustain the chart success of "Boom Clap" and "Fancy," it felt like she took a very deliberate, critic-friendly pivot towards the insurgent 'hyperpop' movement. And I think that it was a sincere creative decision that suited her to an extent, but I've never really loved that stuff and thought Charli's records in that lane were some of the only music from that scene that I found even moderately appealing. So I was kind of glad when Charli sort of made this overt renewed bid for mainstream stardom with Crash, the last album on her Atlantic contract. Honestly, she should be a huge star and in the wake of Dua Lipa's success it feels like there's a clear blueprint for how she could be, so I'm glad she went for it. Some of the fans she picked up in the Number 1 Angel/Pop 2 era didn't seem to agree, though, and there were some tense exchanges between Charli and her snobbier fans in the run-up to Crash, it kind of reminded me of the way rock fans act when an indie band signs to a major label and makes a more polished record, which is hilarious given the context. But personally, it's my favorite Charli XCX album since Sucker, and I think the title track and "Yuck" are some of the best songs she's ever done. And even if she hasn't quite returned to Top 40 radio, it feels like the gambit has largely worked, Crash is her first top 10 album in America and her first #1 album in the UK. 

Joan Sullivan of the Baltimore band The Selkies has a new New York-based band, and I'm really enjoying their 4-song debut recorded by J. Robbins. In some ways it's got that classic '90s riot grrrl sound, but there's a surprising little theremin cameo on "Shut Off." And Niabi Aquena's voice is really striking on the midtempo stuff like "Next Week" that kind of builds in intensity off of how she varies her delivery. 

I really enjoyed interviewing Josh Klinghoffer last fall while he was in the midst of putting together the album that would eventually be This Is The Show and had just become a touring member of Pearl Jam, he's a very interesting and musically adventurous guy. Of course, Red Hot Chili Peppers just released their first post-Klinghoffer album, but in the meantime he's just totally hit the ground running and has made three Pluralone albums since parting with the band. One thing that surprised me was when I asked about his songwriting influences and he named a lot of '80s and '90s British bands (Blur, Radiohead, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Smiths), but now I totally hear it, especially on songs on this new record like "Offend" and "Any More Alone." 

Given the way the Swedish band Ghost wears these elaborate face-concealing 'ghoul' costumes and gets respectful coverage from non-metal media outlets, I kind of assumed for years that they made some super heavy shit. So I was kind of shocked when I heard a Ghost song on the radio one day and these guys sound like total weenies. It's mostly the lead singer's voice, but even the music has these really mild arty or theatrical flourishes, it all just sounds unspeakably lame. And somehow they keep getting more popular with every album. And yes, I listened to Machine Gun Kelly's Mainstream Sellout, this is worse. 

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