one Asian under a groove

Terakaft: Tenere (Alone)

Tuaregs respond to national trauma by toughening their sound while still allowing hypnotic moments like “Wahouche Natareh.” Rock album of the year.

Tribulation: The Children of the Night

That rare death metal album that grooves, albeit in a Phil Collins kind of way. Instead of harder-faster-better, they pick their spots to reassure Guitar Center employees they have chops. More often they let the melody lines shine, as is the Swedish tradition, while Growly Dude sandpapers away like he's distressing a pair of Levi's. He sounds unprepossessing by genre standards, but I miss him on the instrumentals.

Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment: Surf

I played "Sunday Candy" all summer but initially dismissed the album as too slight. After relistening: it's still slight, but I'm no longer sure if that matters much. Excellent Chance verses, a guest list that includes Janelle Monae and King Louie and still manages to make sense, good vibes all round. As for the Trumpet-led experiment, remarking on their lack of edge seems as churlish as complaining about the house party iTunes operator playing Radiohead when everyone's enjoying the music. (For the record, I have made both complaints, but only while I wasn't singing along.)

Frank Turner: Positive Songs for Negative People

Despite its subjects (a suicide, the Challenger disaster) it lives up to its title. Thinkpiece I'd actually like to see: What does it mean that the post-crisis album most optimistic about change is by some kind of libertarian? Probably has something to do with how embarrassment is central to fashionable left praxis, while Turner has so little shame that he'll write an inspirational song around a tennis metaphor that ends with him screaming “BREAK POINT!”

Kamasi Washington: The Epic

I played and enjoyed his 14-minute "single" "Re Run Home" many times before biting the bullet and playing this triple album all the way through. Neither as good nor as bad as it could have been (well, except when there's singing) -- it keeps moving and the band manages to stay in the groove for the most part, but there isn't anything truly outstanding about the playing, and it fails to add up to anything more than the sum of its parts, which one really starts hoping for around Hour Three. Fourteen minutes is the right dose of this for me.

Waxahatchee: Ivy Tripp

I’ve always found Katie Crutchfield’s solo-in-all-but-name work uneven with moments of startling beauty. The moment in question on this album is “Air,” which actually builds toward a chorus as if she were a New Zealander or something.

The Weeknd: Beauty Behind the Madness

Four years ago when we were reading thinkpieces pondering Lana (who shows up on track 13 here,) we had an inkling she might shift units in markets sympathetic to bullshit. Who knew this guy would be the breakout star of 50 Shades of Grey? And yet he has earned it -- learning to hit the notes is a better use of those four years than I made. As for the bullshit, well, 50 Shades fans are perfectly aware that Christian Grey is fictional too.

Workshop 21 EP

Four tracks from four artists, with one clear hit (Willow’s “Feel Me” sounds like the iMac you programmed to make a house record is occasionally grunting under the strain,) two minutes of Fjucking Indie, plus imaginary-videogame musics for an ominous ’90s beat-em-up and a cooler-than-you Japanese driving game.

Yankie: Andre

Second album from dexterous rapper features every other dexterous rapper in Korea (you know, Rap Monster, Loco, the usual suspects,) but the best track is the solo “Spell My Name Right.” Google still autocorrects “Yankie Kpop” to “Yankee Kpop” and returns results for Daddy Yankee, who apparently someone somewhere still cares about, so there remains work to do regarding this matter.

Years & Years: Communion

Some of us classicists were heartened by “King” knocking Ellie Goulding off UK #1, only to be replaced in turn by Sam Smith. While Olly Alexander compares favorably to Smith in terms of understanding the human condition, he lacks the inclination to either overpower or to submit to the slow songs, instead wrestling them to a draw.

Young Thug: The Barter 6/Slime Season

Barter 6 was a successful attempt to make an album as generic as his pseudonym. I much prefer Slime Season, his most heterosexual mixtape to date. On "Power" he goes melodic, crooning "she sucked like eight dicks, I call her octagon" with more tenderness than I find in Future's readings of similar lines. "Calling Your Name" employs Ellie Goulding as a dandier sound effect than Diplo managed and ends up as affectionate as "Trap Queen." And it's nice that he's changed his mind about "I won't eat your pudding," even if he's more excited about smoking weed afterward.

Waclaw Zimpel To Tu Orchestra: Nature Moves

The 16-minute closer starts in full ambient mode, then gradually crescendos into a more traditional avant-jazz woodwind freakout. In the more classical pieces that precede it, the band piles tones over piano and hurdy-gurdy drones; “Under Surface” is particularly beautiful. The 29-minute opener goes through both sets of tricks.

Rainbow: Innocent

Wanting to project a grown-up image, they go all in on “Black Swan.” I guess we should be glad they didn’t choose Requiem for a Dream. Regardless, this has nicely shaded harmonies that are a nice relief from the tooth-loosening beats of orthodox K-pop. “Mr. Lee” in particular is a psychological acute decision-to-leave that should make all three million Mr. Lees in South Korea think twice.

Red Velvet: Ice Cream Cake mini/The Red

K-pop artists of the year are market leaders SM Entertainment's best attempt to reconstruct what was great about Girls' Aloud, who in 2015 released a fun-packed mini-album and a filler-with-peaks full length. The recipe on the mini’s upbeat highlights, the title track and “Stupid Cupid,” is straight outta Xenomania: modulations to surprising choruses that shift smoothly back to verses hooked with enough attitude that they're not a letdown. Those ones have 21st century bleeps, while the slow ones have retro synths and harmonies -- cream to contrast with candy on a dessert tasting menu. The full album is a bit too Lukean (dumb-dumb wears you out more quickly than dumb-smart or smart-dumb) but the lead track and “Don't U Wait No More” have more life in them than most everything on the currently torpid landscape of US pop radio.

Mike Reed People Places & Things: A New Kind of Dance

Belated follow-up to 2012's Clean on the Corner, which I loved. At least Reed's dayjob running the Pitchfork and Chicago Jazz Festivals gives him a bevy of LinkedIn contacts to select guest stars from. This time Marquis Hill barely beats out a subdued Matthew Shipp in that role, thanks to “Kwela for Taylor” (no pennywhistles, phew) ensuring the dancing is not entirely in their heads. If these guys aren't my favourite jazz small group right, they're pretty close.

Tomeka Reid Quartet

Classically-trained jazz cellist, and if that rings alarm bells she calls one "Billy Bang's Bounce" to let you know where she's coming from. Still, the star performer is Mary Halvorson, whom I'm hot and cold on as a leader but who this time, while deploying around half her bag of tonal tricks, is also willing to follow where the rhythm directs.

RP Boo: Fingers, Bank Pads & Shoe Prints

If you like your dance music to (i) sound like a malfunctioning GPS and (ii) be really difficult to dance to, here's the Chicago footwork inventor for you. Not for those sensitive to neutral-to-heinous shit being repeated ad nauseum, but I like the ones with big obvious samples (on “Kemosabe” that is Also Sprach Zarathustra, isn't it?) just slightly defamiliarized.

Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee

Despite loving Chapter Two, I dodged this for months because the press made it sound less like jazz than drony bullshit. Well, this must be my year of drony shit, as I’ve been playing this again and again. With Malcolm X and snippets of song that cross Charles Ives with Romare Bearden floating in industrial-strength noise, it’s not surprising she’s the Whitney’s go-to saxophonist, but the work is more open and liberating than that might suggest.

Satan: Life Sentence (2013)

Middle-aged Brits responsible for taking NWOBHM and changing a few consonants. This comeback is like the preceding twenty-six years never happened -- dig those high falsetto climaxes! Speed is still of the essence, but they’re canny enough to know there are different ways to speed, and some of the best moments here cruise along in fifth gear with little effort.

Boz Scaggs: A Fool to Care

Having never heard any of his albums before, I kept asking when he was going to rock out, not realizing he was working in a different tradition (and anyway, he rocks by any reasonable standard on the Huey “Piano” Smith cover.) But he’s an excellent singer-songfinder -- his version of a buddy’s tango through the two blocks of the Mission left ungentrified would remain worthwhile even if Leonard Cohen covered it, which I hope he does. Special guest Bonnie Raitt sells the political implications of “Hell to Pay,” while reminding Scaggs to sell his guitar. As for other special guest Lucinda Williams: gee, wasn’t Sweet Old World a great album!

Jill Scott: Woman

The album’s too chaste -- the most fun she has musically is when she kicks out an ex after an ill-advised night. Still, I’ll happily listen to her sing about getting recipes off the Internet if she’s gonna pronounce “Internet” like that. Not going to convert anyone at this point; for fence-sitters, the other fast ones are “Run Run Run” and “Coming to You.”

Irene Schweizer & Han Bennink: Welcome Back

Our second?-greatest living jazz pianist reunites with her favorite percussionist; results are typically precise. They play like drunken Go masters: A surprising chord or crash sets off a long run with an ending too far away to consider every possibility, yet which progresses logically. This is possible because they've studied all rhythmic traditions -- South African jazz? 190x pop waltz? They're there, and played with a smile. Respect dominates only when they play something Monk-related, though often comedians are funniest when they play it straight.

Shape Worship: A City Remembrancer

I love city symphonies across all media, so I’m happy that the less glitzy side of contemporary London has got the semi-ambient soundscape it deserves. You don’t quite get the full cross-section of life that a singer-songwriter might give you, but there’s plenty of history and urban planning criticism to absorb. The juxtaposition of various sub-sub-genres from the city’s club history is effective if on the mild side, but the trump is the interpolation of statements from former south London estate residents “regenerated” out to the edge of town or beyond.

Sleaford Mods: Key Markets

Middle-aged ranty East Midlander Jason Williamson swears a lot over basic bass and canned beats. Not much music even by the standards of ranty East Midlanders who swear a lot, but he hates Nick Clegg for the right reasons.

Chris Stapleton: Traveller

Oooh, double ell, fancy. After the initial self-mythologizing, however, he’s just another dude rasping over disproportionately loud snares substituting for forward movement, as if Imagine Dragons fans were ripe for country rock’s hooking with the right grade school figure of speech -- “I’ll be your parachute?” Well how about “As smooth as Tennessee whiskey”? If you took a shot every time he mentioned the brown stuff, you couldn’t afford to drink anything better than Jack Daniels. After a dead daddy song (the album’s highlight), it’s time to switch to overplaying references to the devil and to getting stoned. Stapleton blames “The Devil Named Music” when the relevant name of Lucifer is substance abuse, and there are way too many songs excusing alcoholism to bother with ones that aren’t fun.

Vince Staples: Shyne Coldchain II (2004)/Hell Can Wait EP (2014)/Summertime ’06

My favorite Staples line is still “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you” from “Humble.” Since he got that Def Jam money, he's seemed almost too eager to be dispassionate. Which has worked out okay thanks to his descriptive gifts -- he dramatizes life in the shadows cast by ghetto capitalism as well as anyone has. But those of us who prefer The Savage Detectives to 2666 might wish that if he’s not going to pick spots to emote, that he would at least be willing to implicate himself on a much deeper level, to be wrong, to pursue dumb ideas in hopes of eventually being alright.

Susanne Sundfor: Ten Love Songs

Big-in-Norway pop intellectual goes balls-to-the-wall with electrobosh and strings and a fjucking harpsichord orchestrating big big loves. She doesn’t forget to rock out, even if that mostly means turning the drum machine up. The dealbreakers might be the instrumental breaks -- strings and synth strings and a fjucking harpsichord -- lasting up to five minutes. I think they're beautiful -- could stand to be more earthy, but really for an M83 collaborator she does pretty well on that score. What was more off-putting to me initially was the inflation of her fairly normcore emotions to the stuff of myth, which you really have to be (don’t say Kate Bush don’t say Kate Bush) Kate Bush (dammit) to get away with. Still, somebody else who’s used “never go out of style” as a lyric reminds us this is something we can live with.

Swearin’: Surfing Strange (2013)

Three singers: one Crutchfield, one sweet-voiced dude, one less sweet-voiced dude. It might just be my imagination that the last of these seems to sing the most. Promising, but P.S. Eliot were better than promising.

Earl Sweatshirt: I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside

Maggotron: Bug Eyed Monsters

“It Came from Planet Rock,” the first track states accurately. The Miami bass godfather serves his 808s with extra pulp; the result is highly danceable and probably good for you as well.

Victor Manuelle: Que Suenen los Tambores

The album features three more Hot Tropical Songs number ones to bring his total to 26, once again sneaking him ahead of Marc Anthony (25), whom I had, you know, heard of before this cycle. Manuelle’s singing, always in service to the rhythm, is unlikely to ever get him Buena Vista’d, but he’ll have to settle for the satisfaction of work well done and having the run of Puerto Rico.

The Mavericks: Mono

The misnamed Latin-country band’s reunion rolls on with more easy-going dances and shuffles. This isn’t up to In Time, but there’s no reason to hit skip -- the obligatory tearjerker and goopy one (“Let It Rain (On Me)” and “Fascinate Me,” guess which is which) for Raul Malo to show he still has his high end result in no loss of momentum. They can still turn a key change, too.

James McMurtry: Complicated Game

These days showing sympathy toward past and current red state denizens is plenty political -- it’s as if they’re people too! Only complaint is that if there “ain’t much between the pole and South Dakota,” why was it a hundred degrees when we were driving through the Badlands in June?

Meek Mill: Dreams Worth More Than Money

Meek Mill is as good as anyone when he's recording one-offs and throwing them on the Internet, but he can't make a consistent album. Which Evanescence fan thought it was a good idea to open with the fjucking Lacrimosa? Next time install Nicki as sole executive producer and Meek might make an album commensurate with his talent.

Mdou Moctar: Akounak Tedalak Taha Tazoughai soundtrack

Moctar first came to prominence through injudicious use of Auto-Tune that sounded as good on Sahelian cellphones as on Portlandian ones. Now that he’s the first Tuareg movie star, he’s striving to be a more traditional kind of guitar hero, with Lobi Traore-sized leads over basic desert rock grooves. Good career move!

Ashley Monroe: The Blade

Less like a rose than a nice sensible carnation. Opener “On to Something Good” shows she’s the most congenial Annie, though I doubt that’ll get her far in the lettuce fields. Then she settles into simmering high-melody tradness that feels lived-in (J'accuse, Kacey) with barbs (unlike her fellow Annies, she wishes she could look away from “Dixie”) and weird chord tricks (the chorus of “From Time to Time”) to ensure you’re paying attention. "If the Devil Don't Want Me" does more with whiskey and devil references than co-writer Chris Stapleton manages on his own album. When it comes to the extended metaphor of the title track, she’s happy to outsource the writing to focus on getting the blood into her voice.

Tami Neilson: The Kitchen Table Sessions Vol. II (2011 sez Bandcamp)/Dynamite! (2014)/Don’t Be Afraid

Don't know how much home team bias I have, but I'm starting to wonder New Zealand's biggest country star since Patsy Riggir isn't one of the genre's best singer-songwriters under seventy. At the very least, she has the chops to make a great fourth Annie, if not the ressentiment. Going back to her acoustic family reunion Kitchen Table Sessions albums between loving the pastiche pop on Dynamite! and respecting the tribute to the lost Don’t Be Afraid, I found a leap between the first, where the highlights are covers of NZ co-national anthems "Slice of Heaven" and "Not Many," and the second, where the illusion that she has songs to go on forever is spoiled only by an incongruous "I've Just Seen a Face." Somehow she reminds me of Amy Winehouse (though not in life expectancy), to whose fans I recommend "Great Day" and its possibility of domestic bliss even more than "The Bottle and Me."

Willie Nelson & Sister Bobbie: December Day (2014)/Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard: Django and Jimmie

“Might not have been a Merle or Willie if not for a Django and Jimmie,” humblebrags the opener on the most respectful of outlaw albums, and thankfully they have the discographies to back up that up. (Now if they had mentioned Armstrong, as they should have…) In comparison, they give the avuncular John R. Cash the Wayne & Garth we're-not-worthy treatment. All this obeisance is more 2015 Willie's bag than 2015 Merle's, though the latter, on top of leading a gruffly useful cover of King Robert Zimmerman of the North Country's “Don't Think Twice” (more evidence that Cash rules everything around them), came across better on a live double-bill thanks to his band-fulla-kin’s professional precision, which even made the pot joke funnier. Willie gets more use out of his family on December Day, where he and Sis play conkers with “Alexander’s Motherfucking Ragtime Band” and turn in a beautiful tribute to photosynthesis on “Laws of Nature.” Though come to think of it, that one’s probably about pot as well.

Ne-Yo: Non-Fiction

He'll never match Year of the Gentleman, a borderline great album fluked through a combination of confidence, opportunity, and not yet being friends with Pitbull. But if he’s destined to plateau with solid trend-chasing albums featuring a few excellent songs, I hope the peaks continue to be as high as “Who’s Taking You Home.”

Oceaan: The Grip EP (2014)

Most gripping when he’s all about the treble. When the vocals are downpitched, they lack the musculature to stand up to his washes and squiggles; when they're chopped and elevated somewhere near Mariah’s upper register, they’re fetching -- the result is almost worthy of FKA Tw[okay I’ll stop]

Oddissee: The Good Fight

Half-Sudanese Brooklynite who raps over soul samples like a “track star,” more a miler than a sprinter, while remaining comprehensible enough for NPR favoritism. He’s prone to hackneyed subject matter -- I know the record industry sucks but can we have one 2015 rap album that doesn’t complain about it? But like early Blackalicious, he’s full of empathy without losing touch with material reality. “When you let me borrow money that you didn’t really have ’cause you knew what I was worth? That's love.”

Oneohtrix Point Never: Garden of Delete

Finally, a Oneohtrix album that samples-'n'-songs populists like myself and analog synth tragics like yours truly can agree on, especially since at least at first Lopatin plays nice, with long and strong melody lines on "Ezra" and "Sticky Drama" to entertain us while we figure out whether the album is about music criticism or bodily fluids, until on the latter track tune is drawn into a battle with noise and the resulting unstable synthesis holds for a few tracks (ah, so it is about music criticism.) And then it gets weird: after "Animal," allegedly a pop song but the drugs have not yet been invented to make it one, the next couple sound like he gave Bach a synth and subjected him to Chinese water torture, not necessarily in that order. His best.

The Paranoid Style: Rock and Roll Just Can’t Recall

More songs about institutional memory and lack thereof when economics dictates that few in your corner of indie will be lifers. Sometimes their attempts to escape dirge just bog them down more, but when they have a catchphrase worth passing off as a chorus they’ll find a chord to hook it irresistibly.

Paris: Pistol Politics

To someone who spent some of my twenties blocking Telegraph Ave (though not as much time as I spent in Ethiopian and Korean restaurants there), is currently enjoying having actual disposable income to dispose of, and in ten years will probably be complaining about kids and their saggy pants,retired stockbroker Paris’ agitfunk hits home. Cut the third quarter from each disc and it’s a won’t-stop (no “can’t” about it) single album, but the symbolic value of having fellow investment guru E-40 on “Search Warrant” is probably worth the bloat. Also: T-K.A.S.H. is still around! Go T-K.A.S.H.!

Protoje: Ancient Future

Carly Rae Jepsen: Emotion

To no one’s surprise, she can’t sustain the rush of the first three tracks for the subsequent nine (let alone the the bonuses), as her producers retreat into retro synth formalism that’s as dead-end as any neo-soul. But what a rush to start -- Shellback’s synth blaring like he can improve on “Midnight City” in his sleep taking us somewhere you can repeat intensifying adverbs as many times as you want without fear of judgment.

Dexter Johnson & Le Super Star de Dakar: Live a l’Etoile

A major find, revealing what this hitherto missing Star-Etoile link sounded like in a Dakar club in 1969, in as fine audio quality and as in tune as vintage Afropop gets. Nigerian-born Johnson plays lyric tenor lines, some languid, some lively, while his band churns out Afro-Cuban standards -- he’s particularly adept at accompanying his rotating cadre of singers. There's even a Wilson Pickett rip here (for those of us who didn't get enough of that on the African Disco bonus disc.)

K. Michelle: Anybody Wanna Buy a Heart?

Solid album with one incredible song: “Build a Man,” in which Kimberly dreams of constructing a manbot Build-a-Bear style. Sure, shit might go all A.I. on her, but he’s still got to be better than Drake.

Ata Kak: Obaa Sima (1994/2015)

Expat unaware of hiplife invents Ghanian rap independently, cramming excited syllables over vamps of two or so chords. As far as Casiotone for the painfully outgoing goes, his beats Shamir’s.

Karantamba: Ndigal (1984/2012)

Live record from a time when Dakar’s finest had had enough time to absorb the innovations of N’Dour and Faye to start putting their own spin on things. Bandleader Bai Janha adds Gambian guitar virtuosity, but the MVPs are a percussion section that drums the shit out of “Na Dinding Fatty.”

Kelela, Hallucinogen EP

When she has the songs, which she does three times out of six, she delivers them straight and effectively over chill beats.  Elsewhere, like on the title track, she relies on detuning and strangeness, but it comes across as playful rather than willful. FKA Twigs for people who aren't sociopaths or music critics.

The Kentucky Headhunters with Johnnie Johnson: Meet Me in Bluesland

Yes, Chuck Berry’s Johnnie Johnson, d. 2005, which is probably the last time the Headhunters (formed 1968) redesigned their website. Bloozy and boozy, with no affectation except on a lecherous “Little Queenie,” where it’s quite appropriate. The highs aren’t as high as Low Cut Connie’s, but this is consistently sharp stuff you could play every day if you didn’t have a thousand other records to get to.

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba: Ba Power

Birthdays in the Kouyate extended family must be predictable: “Wow, thanks Uncle Bassekou, it’s another ngoni!” The family business' production budget incrementally increased, effects and special guest somebodies are deployed sparingly and tastefully, yet they don’t quite manage the heightened groove of their two preceding albums, which mostly speaks to the strength of their Artist of the Decade case.

Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly

Not as good as There’s a Riot Goin’ On.

James Brandon Lewis: Days of FreeMan

I like this better than Divine Travels because it's honkier, not that he's suddenly turned into James Carter or anything. The hip hop concept and J. Tacuma keep Lewis focused, and for the most part he doesn't stretch his compositions past the point of diminishing returns. And I’m shocked that the rap song is actually good.

Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth: Epicenter

That rare jazz album where the ones under three minutes and the ones over seven minutes are equally well-developed. In the middle time-wise: a clattering “All Tomorrow’s Parties” faithful enough that you can add your own Teutonic vocals.

KT Lindemann: Demo Tapes for Anxious Girls

Just Bandcamp demos, and a Facebook friend so I’m partial, but if there’s a record with 2015ier lyrics (iconic: “I was a big deal in college but so was the Harlem Shake”) then it was by Kendrick.

Shelby Lynne: I Can’t Imagine

Elder: Lore

I've worked out I like two kinds of contemporary metal: the trad stuff like Satan that Chuck Eddy is a good guide to, and the doomy stuff like Elder, whose new album Lore was at the midpoint of Chuck's April 2015 top 15 metal albums thing for Rhapsody (below the weirdos and Euro revivalists; above the extremists and Interscope mooks.) Bet the average track length of twelve minutes didn't aid his enjoyment, but they do a good job of filling time with crunchy riffs for structure and melodic riffs for texture. The 16-minute centerpiece resorts to gluing two barely related songs together with a popsicle stick bridge, but there are two genuine songs there. Not that I have any idea what they're about, so I'll look up Metal Archives: “Mythology, Fantasy, Doom, Conan the Barbarian.” I like some of those things!

Lupe Fiasco: Tetsuo & Youth

Okay, he’s not the only smart guy who, five albums in, still can’t be as clear on politics as on ghetto geography or semiautomatic clip size. But that he samples Fela’s speech instead of his beats or singing is telling.

FKA Twigs: M3LL155X EP

The first two tracks give more room for her upper register here than before, and the results are such that Spotify’s ads come as a relief. If you’re going to focus on your voice, would it be too much to sing clearly? Not that I have any idea what the other three tracks are about, but they allow more attention to her pitchbending and weird backing vocal samples.

Robert Forster, Songs to Play

I miss Lindy and/or Janet, but the boho-Romantic groove he gets on is remarkable for its lack of neurosis. Even on “Disaster in Motion,” the flood is sedate: more like a melting glacier than a tsunami. Worth replaying to tease out the subtleties in his phrasing: When he sings “Please don’t Twitter/Let me imagine you,” he shows you @robertforstermusic is as imaginary as his “you.”

Ezra Furman: Perpetual Motion People

On his third album since losing his Harpoons, he’s gone a long way toward establishing his identity, and the music is better for it. The eclecticism is hit or miss, and you might rue that his old band aren’t there to really spin out the narratives, but the middle is very strong, with the yakety “Wobbly” and the genuinely inspirational “Ordinary Life” demonstrating the rewards of perseverance.

Future: DS2 and various other stuff

Complaining about Future rapping about lean too much is as futile as telling off Kingsley Amis for writing about drinking -- would you rather they talk about women? So treat DS2 as a Metro Boomin project, which lets you ignore the bonus tracks, treat “Throw Away,” “Big Rings,” “March Madness,” and his verse on “3500” as stand-alones, and be happy that Ciara upgraded.

Gain: Hawwah EP

If you’ve ever said to yourself that what K-pop needs is more concept EPs inspired by Milton, here’s your woman. Unsurprisingly, she’s most fun when considering the upside of giving in to temptation (and Jay Park makes for a hilariously easily seduced Adam.) When the Baroque organ comes in on “Paradise Lost” you fear the worst, but the song turns out defiantly anti-authoritarian, as if she wants to build Jerusalem in Seoul’s suburbs. It doesn’t last of course, because men are terrible, but at least she goes out with what I claim is a deliberate reference to Frank Ocean’s “Bad Religion.”

The Gary McFarland Legacy Ensemble: Circulation: The Music of Gary McFarland

McFarland was a crossover-threatening vibraphone player who wrote for Bill Evans before dying of a methadone-spiked drink in 1971. This tribute, led by drummer Michael Benedict, has soloing about as good as straight-ahead jazz gets these days (esp. from vibesman Joe Locke and saxwoman Sharel Cassity,) with only the very slowest ones stagnating.

Christian Gerhaher: Nachtviolen: Schubert Lieder (2014)

Schubert deep cuts, placing some of history’s most beautiful melodies to sturm-und-drang poems like “Gee, the Moon Looks Nice and Also We’re All Going to Die” and “It Was Just a Dream? Fuck, Well, Back to Dying of Syphilis.” Gerhaher plays up the not-dying parts, which is fine with me.

Rhiannon Giddens: Tomorrow Is My Turn

The Carolina Chocolate Drops/Luminescent Orchestrii EP remains the best way to hear her -- it let her outsource the fun she can’t distinguish from redundant revivalism. Still, when she’s on she can flatten you, as she is on the Geeshie Wiley cover (paging Greil Marcus: oh too late, of course he wrote about it months ago,) “Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind,” and “Shake Sugaree.”

Girl Band: The Early Years EP

Why not cover Blawan’s “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage”? It’s not like any substantial audience has heard it, outside of Skrillex fans hardcore enough to memorize his mixes, and they’re hardly in a position to complain about lack of originality.

The Go! Team: The Scene Between

Proof of Youth is still my fave for its old school trappings, but this ones is a welcome change of pace from the retromaniacal sounds that have dominated pop this decade. The soundalike girl singers mean it does take a while for the ebullience (which is closely related to melody) to show, but from “Catch Me on the Rebound” onward it hits double-digit METS.

Colleen Green: I Want to Grow Up

LA postpunk, gets by on attitude more than power or pop, but after spending the preceding decade smoking a lot of weed, she has remarks of interest on the usual middle-aged crisis type things: depression, fear of intimacy, game shows.

Wayne Hancock, Ride (2013)

He collapsed his lung in a motorbike accident the year after this was released. The sedate pace of this record suggests he’d adapt well to pedal-powered Tours de Western Swing in future. Trombonist Bob Stafford takes a particularly enjoyable turn in front of the peloton on “Gal from Kitchen’s Field.”

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell: The Traveling Kind

One listen to their “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad” will let you know whether you need to hear this. It’s a stately reading, with none of Lucinda’s excitement. But age has its dignity -- just because their days of passionate kisses are past doesn’t mean their need for love is any less. If that doesn’t work for you, then to name their best original, “You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try.”

Angel Haze: Back to the Woods

After she and her label conspired to sabotage her inconsistent but occasionally astonishing would-be chart move Dirty Gold, and it was panned for overtly attempting crossover like she was self-titled Liz Phair, here she swears off hooks until she permits herself to sing the the title track. “Gods” and “On Fire” show her talent hasn’t dissipated, but the chance of ever getting another “Echelon” seems remote. We are monsters.

Sam Hunt: Montevallo (2014)

Got attention from Ann Powers' clique last year, but I avoided him until a summer road trip, when we heard "Take Your Time" on every radio station from Missouri to Arizona. The album has a bit more sprechgesanging over what used to be hip hop beats, but it's mostly his factory-distressed baritone singing songs about doing right by his girl, who he at least acknowledges has feelings and stuff even if he understands her ex better. A bro for sure, but apologetic about it, but not so much that he won't hit on you in the back of a cop car.

Hiatus Kaiyote: Choose Your Weapon

Grammy-nominated Australian neo-soul… wait, come back! They have key changes! There’s one called “Borderline with My Atoms”! The only person who could possibly still be reading at this point is Greg Tate, so: Hey Ironman! Burnt Sugar should cover “Laputa.”

Hop Along: Painted Shut

Mariah Carey, #1 to Infinity

All her Billboard chart-toppers in chronological order. The inspirational story this tells is of the vast improvement in monocultural taste from 1990 to 2008. That the newly-recorded track peaked at #82 is consistent with this story.

Chastity Belt: Time to Go Home

The punk formalism of Childbirth, Julia Shapiro’s other band, better fits her sex positivity and her disdain for mansplainers, but having stretching room has to be healthy for her and not bad for us.

Ciara: Jackie

While her biological-not-bothering Future has returned to critics’ good books, fans of legibility and recognizably human emotions may have more fun with this. It’s admittedly all over the place, with the statement of Atlantaness “All Good” bumped to the deluxe with the second-banana Jonas Brother remix when Diane Warren and too much Dr. Luke make the standard release. But “I Bet” is one of the year’s best singles and “Dance Like We’re Making Love” is something to aspire to.

Honey Cocaine: The Gift Rap EP

Cambodian-Canadian rapper-singer, interesting flow, writing is a bit formulaic at times but pretty good at throwing shade. Has a song called "Honeydick", as in "you can't honeydick me." Hope she gets famous enough to inspire endless unilluminating cultural appropriation arguments.

Marilyn Crispell & Gerry Hemingway: Table of Changes

If Intakt piano/percussion duos are your favorite thing, stick this between Schweizers in your rotation. Highlight is “Ev’rytime We Say Goodbye,” undeconstructed like film of shit blowing up played in reverse.

Miles Davis At Newport 1955-1975

Yes, many geniuses are present, but at four discs I was only ever going to pick out bits of it. The second quintet stuff on disc 2 is excellent but we've heard a lot of live 2nd quintet by this point. The revelation is the 1973 concert on the third disc, which might be the best available Pete Cosey, and I undertook the not-unpleasant task of replaying Dark Magus to make sure.

Death Grips: The Powers That B

One of the few acts I don't love that I classify as Not For Me rather than as shit (this list is heavy on non-traditional rap.) While co-opting Bjork for the N-ggas on the Moon disc wasn’t sufficient for an exception, Jenny Death came a lot closer. They’re angry at the right things, though unfortunately there’s no shortage of things to be rightly angry about.

Lana Del Rey: Ultraviolence (2014)

The conflicting early reviews kept me away from this for a year until I figured it was a Sunday morning and why the hell not. Isn't this much better than the debut? Simplest explanation is that she's become a more confident singer, but there's also consistency of tone, which usually doesn't matter much with albums but here it gets across that this is a Major Motion Picture and the masochism is performative, which, don’t hurt me Greil, doesn't mean it doesn't draw on her experiences while fucking up her way to the top. I look forward to waiting even longer before playing her latest album.

Desaparecidos: Payola

I wish the lead singer was better at declaiming if that’s how he’s going to sing, but this is old new left hardcore (meaning mostly that they went to college before social media) that does an uncommonly good job of uniting their thick-lined sketches into some kind of big picture, however necessarily incomplete. Solidarity extends to all but the slacktivists, who would consider them too niche to attempt #cancelcolberting. Whether standing against Arizona law enforcement or for Chilean Communists, it’s heartening that they’re paying attention to the world outside of Omaha and Manhattan -- and it doesn’t matter if you’ve forgotten who Sheriff Joe is, it’s not like there aren’t a multitude of racist officials left to fight.

DJ Deeon: Deeon Doez Deeon! EP

Four mid-Nineties tracks, the first straightforwardly setting Arthur Russell against Philly soulsters First Choice in a history lesson for those who haven’t read The Underground Is Massive yet. “Freak Like Me,” which postdates Adina Howard, underlines its vocal hook with sparse snares and rumbles that show you where DJ Rashad came from.

DJ N-gga Fox: Noite E Dia EP

Kind of Afropop, which doesn’t make the handle of the Angolan-Portuguese beatmaker less unfortunate. His second EP presents a highly idiosyncratic development of kuduro that never seems to hit the beat square on. Sometimes he'll let a series of blips skip around disconcerting for a whole track; elsewhere, he'll fling a whole array of bloops, shifting a tone here or there just when you’ve had a few bars to get comfortable. Dance to this stuff and risk losing a limb.

DJ Paypal: Buy Now EP

John Luther Adams/Ludovic Morlot/Seattle Symphony: Become Ocean (2014)

Modernist classical music turned into New Age so gradually we didn’t even notice. This could do with some whale noises and Jacques Cousteau intoning about ze little fish in ze deep water, but as it is it’s appealing and functional.

Africa Express Presents Terry Riley’s In C

Afropop turned into modernist classical music so gradually that oh great it’s the second entry and I’m already recycling jokes, this doesn’t bode well.

Rinaldo Alessandrini/Concerto Italiano: Monteverdi: Vespri solenni per la festa di San Marco

So here you have Monteverdi inventing Baroque harmony, together with special guest sonatas as well as chanty bits that are like commercial breaks for God. No idea if the connections that accumulate are intentional or just spandrels of San Marco (sorry Stephen Jay Gould, wish you were still around to make fun of Dawkins), but this flows like a good variety show should.

Allo Darlin’: We Come from the Same Place (2014)

It’s not like anyone ever mistook her for Elizabeth Morrissey, but here her first-person turns even simpler and blunter than before. And good for her! The secret to happy love songs that aren’t insufferable is to write about shared experience, and Morris sings like she want everyone to feel her kind of cautious bliss.

Les Ambassadeurs: Rebirth EP

Four remakes from a live reunion that found them in decent nick. Not nearly up to their peak, but easier to digest than the double comp Stern’s put out last year, as proven by a hard and funky “Tiecolumba He.”

Laurie Anderson: Heart of a Dog

Playing it three times in three days was probably trying to force this kind of album a little too much, but that let me reach a level of familiarity where I could drift in and out of the piece. (The part where Laurie's in traction, crucial as it is to her discussion of narrative, is an appropriate soundtrack to a quick game of QWOP.) There are some good ideas borrowed from Buddhism, ideas probably borrowed from Buddhist message boards that aren’t as good as her willingness to give them a fair trial, a lot of performance (no, regular folks don’t talk like that, even in New York) and enough art. If Kendrick Lamar’s album has the same average quality of ideas with more performance and more art, he would do well to match her career for career.

Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

Years of overcorrection have meant that I’m now slow to recognize the brilliance of a depressive Antipodean rock album. Her strumming is more pithy than her singing, but it’s not like her vignettes don’t go anywhere. Shit happens!

Batsumi: Moving Along (1976/2014)

Not a revelation like the self-titled, also reissued by Matsuli Music a few years back, but if you agree that ’70s South African jazz is life itself, then add this to the collection.

Debashish Bhattacharya: Slide Guitar Ragas from Dusk till Dawn

Have twangy chaturangui, will travel the spaceways. Bengali maestro slides along many-stringed instruments of his own design, and the tone quality of the slow bits in particular is pretty fjucking beautiful, with the primary notes bending in ways both unexpected and natural and the harmonics resonating in some other realm.

BIGBANG: MADE

They discovered self-pity, which will probably be good for them in the long run.

Bjork: Vulnicura

Even the weirdest of weirdos reaches the point where “expect the unexpected” becomes “actually, I know the exact proportions of strings and electronics and wailing to expect so I’d rather listen to the less talented FKA Twigs again. sorry about the breakup tho.”

Boof: The Hydrangeas Whisper

On which Maurice Fulton demonstrates his mastery of All Rhythmic Traditions of the twin star systems of house and techno. The bassline of “Birgit Boogie” bubbles like magma deep in some planet of good times. “Backlash” features bongos over a bed of minimal synths. Not sure to which galaxy the rip of “Take Five” (in 6/8) belongs, but when it shifts up a key it’s some transcendent 5-D (Byrds, not Interstellar) shit. Nile Rodgers, after noting that ’Nard wouldn’t have stood for such a weak guitar sound, would approve.

Jesse Boykins III: Love Apparatus (2014)

Both Prince and Beavis & Butt-head would approve of the title, though the latter might not appreciate R&B&Machinedrum as much as the former. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most Princely title, “4 U 2 B Free,” is the best song.

BTS: The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 1

Taylor: Go Giants!

Lorde: Go Royals!

Taylor: Wait, you’re rooting for the Royals? What about that song you wrote about them?

Lorde: Well, that was more about the British Royal Family.

Taylor: But you’re from New Zealand! Why do you care about them?

Lorde: Well New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy with the…

Taylor: WONDERSTRIKE ONE.

Lorder: Sigh. At least Bumgarner isn’t pitching tonight.

Taylor: Watch your language. WONDERSTRIKE TWO. Words are so much more fun to say when you put “wonder” in front of them. Your Mom’s a poet, did she ever teach you that?

Lorde: Somehow it didn’t come up.

Taylor: My Mom is so great. She still comes around to babysit on Fridays and bake chocolate eclairs. Have you ever had a chocolate eclair?

Lorde: Well, I…

Taylor: WONDERSTRIKE THREE. You’ve got to try one. Though maybe not yet, wait a few years. Oh Ella, everything’s better when you’re twenty. The sun is brighter, chocolate eclairs taste better…

Lorde: I’m kind of tired of being told to put my hands on an eclair.

Taylor: You’ve got to support the underdog, Ella. The Cowboys, the Lakers…

Lorde: The All Blacks…

Taylor: Leave that to Lily Allen. When you’re fifteen, Ella, you’ll learn that…

Lorde: I’m seventeen.

Taylor: Look here, Lana Del Raisin…

Lorde: What?

Taylor: I’ve been there before. I’m nearly twenty-five.

Lorde: “Lana Del Raisin”? What the hell kind of an insult is that?

Taylor: Language. Look, your sorry album hasn’t sold a million all year. I sold a million in WONDERSTRIKE FOUR.

Lorde: Do you even know how this game works?

Taylor: You know, back when I was twenty-three, I would’ve been mad at you. But now I know it’s not worth it. Because you know, we’re on each other’s team.

Lorde: Oh for… yes, Taylor. We are.

Taylor: And that team is the Giants.

Lorde: Royals.

(The Royals win 10-0)

1. Grenier Meets Archie Pelago

Sax, cello, electronics, a song called “Pliny the Elder” that i’m 60% sure is about the beer: it’s what they used to call downtempo except not terrible (says the guy who still owns a Groove Armada t-shirt). Lapsed dubstepper Grenier and no-band-is-an-island Archie Pelago hint at precursors both high (Reich on “Octavia”) and sub-basement (Deep Forest on “Hyperion”), but it’s all liquefied into a bicoastal blend with just enough acidity. More claret? Give me the whole damn jug.

2. Jenny Scheinman: The Littlest Prisoner

2014-to-date’s best-written and best-performed country album is by a jazz violinist -- it’s been that kind of year. Perhaps it takes someone who can’t differentiate between rednecks and hippies to fuse those genre staples the prison song and the pregnancy song, but it shouldn’t take a jazzbo to recall that not every tune has to build to an F-150 driving through a ring of fire -- that a chorus can also colour or clarify. Then again, it shouldn’t take an Americana turn for a jazzbo to sing well -- you’d better trust in the languid lines to resolve if you wrote them. Bill Frisell and Brian Blade offer well-weighed support, but Scheinman gets the instrumental showcases, as she deserves.

3. Paramore (2013)

On release I thought it too plastic, but the radio hits broke me, though most could be improved with a tweak or two. “Still into You” understands how to use dynamics in an over-compressed world, though it resolves too easily, as if a thoughtful anniversary present meant you were good for another year. “Daydreaming” timeshifts Blondie, though Hayley's new backing band makes Clem and Nigel (I think it was Nigel) seem like household names. “Ain’t It Fun” makes you wait for the exhortation to not be a mama's boy but delivers in multiple chordal contexts. “Crazy Girls” could use a better string arrangement. Not sure they needed to close with an eight-minute Joy Formidable track but other than that there's only one too many wannabe Old Navy ads on the back half. Perfect: “Anklebiters.”

4. Vasily Petrenko/Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 (2013)

The reasonably accurate conventional wisdom is that Shostakovich was a Stravinsky disciple until Pravda called him out for making formalist jazz and he made a hard turn to Mahler. This earned him the lasting enmity of those consarned modernists, but Virgil Thomson didn’t have a firing squad. The Fourth Symphony, written in 1936 but premiered only after Stalingrad got a less awkward name, is a key transitional work, with a great big orchestra playing great big dirges with the odd jig tossed in for light relief. If this sounds oppressive, this version, conducted by accidental sexist Vasily Petrenko, emphasizes the rhythmic elements, creating an impression of scale without bloat. By unifying the Stravinsky and Mahler approaches it makes something new, and that’s finally enough to sell Shostakovich to a consarned postmodernist like myself.

5. Miranda Lambert: Platinum

Nothing's bad -- I’m a little underwhelmed by the singles for not being Kerosene/Gunpowder & Lead/White Liar, not for any stinkiness. But the whole enterprise sounds a little too... shrill? Compressed? Avril? (Though i'm glad she addresses her famehound's-wife song to Mrs Presley rather than Mrs Kroeger.) Still, it’s hard to argue for a shorter album when nobody seems to agrees which tracks are the weak ones. I like “Bathroom Sink,” though i might just be glad to hear a country song instead of a meta-commentary on the radio prevalence of bros/trucks, and “Hard Staying Sober” is the album's best attempt at a Clark/McAnnally way-we-get-by song (better than the actual Clark and McAnnally co-writes). Could do without "Girls" but even that's not bad, just a limp choice for an opener.

6. Craig Handy & 2nd Line Smith

The “Smith” is the late Jimmy; the “2nd Line” means there's a sousaphonic New Orleans dance mojo backing Handy's tenor and Kyle Koehler's Hammond. Handy grooves hard and with authority.  Dee Dee Bridgewater and a couple of Marsalises show up and perform efficiently. Easy fun for jazz dabblers and discographers alike.

7. Royksopp & Robyn: Do It Again

It’d be going too far to call Royksopp the weak link, given that all the rhythm tracks move and fascinate, though not for ten minutes. Still, the goodness here is proportional to the amount of Robyn, inasmuch as her lyrics prevent sax solos. And at her least personal, she outsings her virtual duet partner. Take that, Turing!

8. Vic Mensa: Innanetape (2013)

For everyone quietly muttering that none of 2014’s breaking rappers are in Chance’s league (quietly muttering over DJ Mustard beats is all you need for 9/10 from Spin), here’s an internet-not-inane tape I missed last fall from his boy (and uh Jeff Tweedy protege, but that’s not important right now) Vic Mensa. Same Chance flow, same Chance thoughtfulness, he only lacks the warmth that every blog’s favourite lowercase black hippie radiates. His co-productions are some of the tape’s best beats, especially the drum-and-bass-lite “Lovely Day,” giving him maybe a 3% chance of going Kanye. It’s not like anyone else has better odds, so hope someone is trying to break his heart.

9. Made to Break: Cherchez La Femme

Ken Vandermark saxes-and-loops project, with three long tracks, each dedicated to two women artists (Sleater-Kinney yay! Betty Davis, okay i guess.) I unequivocally like the Davis/SK one, where Vandermark and knob-twiddler Christof Kurzmann shadowbox before funking up, and the abstract expressionist one, which starts as jazz trio before Kurzmann goes subterranean, with Vandermark providing intermittent lighting. Last one buzzes and clatters and does get good for a bit.

10. John Fullbright: Songs

1. The Rough Guide to the Music of Mali

The selection might be a bit obvious if you've been tracking the Mali music renaissance of recent years, but for those of us who realistically weren't going to get back to that Fatoumata Diawara album anytime soon, it's hit after hit by specialists in all styles. Highlights include ngoni patriarch Bassekou Kouyate, desert-drone knuckleballers Terakaft, monarch in all her majesty Oumou Sangare, and shit-why-not-a-xylophone Neba Solo. Not much old school (could use some Rail Band) but a generous slice of mostly the present.

2. Withered Hand: New Gods

The same old subjects -- fidelity, mortality, free will, California -- only by a Scot who’s a better songwriter than the best coast has produced in years. The masterpiece is “Horseshoe,” which makes the international object of the title seem as mysterious as the Fates’ scissors, but all the melodies unfurl and the arrangements help them flutter about. And like all the smart singer-songwriters, he’s turned his creaky voice into an asset.

3. Starlito: Funerals and Court Dates (2012)

Starlito’s second verse on the closing “Money Cacti” is one of the finest examples of the recently fertile introspective thug persona. He ruminates over his rise-in-progress from Challenger to Corvette, which still isn’t enough to pay for college. Elsewhere he says all introspective thugs have to look forward to are the social occasions of the title, which might make them not too different from the theme-sampled Golden Girls.

4. Ariana Grande: Yours Truly (2013)

When Mariah sampled “Genius of Love,” she omitted “What do you consider fun?” -- when you’re in Mottola jail, you don’t need an answer until you escape. Grande came up through Nickelodeon, which seems the least traumatic environment for child stars (Disney is dystopia), making the understandable early-Mariah comparison that kept me away from the album misleading. She realizes that making a debut album with a truckload of major label money to beef up your somewhat thin four octaves and to usurp Mika’s duet partner out of his best song in years is as good as hard work gets. Maybe not natural fun, but fun.

5. Neneh Cherry: Blank Project

Her first comeback since two years ago, Blank Project isn’t as likely to leave you bleeding to death from paper cuts as was The Cherry Thing. On the title track, synth scientists RocketNumberNine get jagged while Cherry describes her marriage, and it ends up a pile of tangled limbs and asses. On the moodier, rumbling “Weightless,” Cherry makes her idiosyncratic melodic lines sound natural. She’s a better singer than she was as an ingenue (key guest Robyn knows all about that).

6. Tamar Braxton: Love and War (2013)

Critics are right to bemoan the whiteness of today’s top 40, but with the exception of Al Shipley, whom I guess I like now, fail to champion the Braxton who would cross over in a country that wasn’t resegregating. Of the three singles rotating on urban radio (according to the charts; my nearest R&B station is too busy repeating “Dark Horse”), “Love and War” (hardly lungbusting at all by reality-show veteran standards) and “All the Way Home” (if “home” is such a great line-ender that Drake can make it signify, imaging what a real singer can do) are classics and “The One” is pretty good. Fizzles after track 10, but remembering Toni skipped one Love, Marriage & Divorce track, ten good ones is as many as anyone in the family has managed on one album.

7. Traxx: The House That Garage Built (2013)

Garage is back! So say the short-lived cheers of singers without the lungs to sustain an entire song, though for all I know it’s gone away again in the year since this compilation was released. If the choices trend bourgie, they hearken back to a time when the middle class was shameless about its pleasures. Guess it’s time to elect a Clinton again.

8. Amel Larrieux: Ice Cream Everyday (2013)

You know, from Groove Theory? “Tell Me”? Never a dynamo, five solo albums down the road she’s more versatile, harmonizing her still flexible, girlish upper register with her experienced, warm midrange. “A Million Sapphires” shows she’s for quantity, and while sixty-eight minutes is too generous, she’s still, as we old people say, the shhh.

9. Drive-By Truckers: English Oceans

A good album, though more “this sounds a bit more muscular than Go-Go Boots” than “the songs are nearly as vivid as on Decoration Day or Brighter Than Creation’s Dark.” Atwater-referencing title aside, I remember the jangles better than the dour words, a good indication it’s Cooley’s album rather than Patterson Hood’s, and a clear limitation.

10. Tye Tribbett: Greater Than (2013)

When weaksauce Katy Perry choruses get the genius treatment in Slate, I’m prepared to turn to non-secular music for craftsmanship. Look, any fake doctor can follow a punishingly dull section, with a slightly less forgettable moment and make it feel like an ascension (Lars von Trier got away with it for years). Tribbett knows how to keep the pot simmering before boiling over into heavenly froth. If he relies heavily on a gospel choir, well, it is gospel music (the Vengaboys lift is more difficult to explain). Better lyrics than “Teenage Dream,” too.

Ten songs:

Laura Cantrell: “All the Girls Are Complicated”

Meek Mill: “Lil N*gga Snupe”

Mlimani Park: “Mtoto Akililia Wembe”

Shakira: “Empire”

Dierks Bentley: “I Hold On”

Juanes: “La Luz”

2NE1: “Come Back Home”

Tune-Yards: “Water Fountain”

Tessela: “Hackney Parrot”

1. Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile (2013) Wasn’t excited enough about Chapter One that when this second volume (of twelve) was pitched at a crossover press ill-equipped to judge the quality of the playing, I put it well down my to-do list. My bad. This one is broken up into short sections of outstanding clarity, with plenty of musicology lessons if you want to explore the references. It’s a less expressionist vision with a more concrete tussle with racism ("Was the Sacred Day" quotes her grandmother's diary on segregation-era brutality), and she and her sextet do their darnedest to realise it -- even the opera guy valiantly, if unsuccessfully, tries to understate. 

2. Haiti Direct: Big Band, Mini Jazz & Twoubadou Sounds

Richard Gehr’s eMusic review says to start with disc two, good advice for Win Butler but not for anyone who’s spent years swallowing anti-horn tutti propaganda. The first disc is more akin to Afropop -- sax breaks aside, the mini-jazz cuts make Haiti sound like the guitar paradise of west Hispaniola. The second disc polishes syncopations invented and borrowed into accomplished bourgie pop that might inspire tutti-haters to take a few dance lessons. And yeah, “Jive Turkey” is the best “Hotel California” reanimation Don Henley never shut down.

3. Live from Festival au Desert Timbuktu (2013)

Pros old and new issue a state of the musical nation (much better than the state of the political nation). Must say that for starpower and commitment to entertainment I like the women, led by Khaira Arby (who leaves you in doubt she's for "La Liberte"), Kiran Ahluwalia, and Leila Gobi, more than the men on this one, though Habib Koite’s actual tune comes as welcome relief.

4. Toni Braxton & Babyface: Love, Marriage & Divorce

In which hateship, loveship, etc. don’t necessarily form a tidy sequence. Braxton has always been reliable; the revelation is that Babyface finally deserves both adjectives in “grown and sexy.” Screw song-cycleness; the juxtaposition of contrasting tracks creates narrative enough, even if this plays a trick on “Reunited.” The heart of the album consists of the back-to-back divorce solo tracks, with “I hope that you’re okay” morphing into “I hope she gives a disease,” suggesting the good cop is a butterfly-flap from becoming the bad cop.

5. Angola Soundtrack 2: Hypnosis, Distortions & Other Sonic Innovations 1969-1978 (2013)

Yet another comp of buzzy Seventies Afrogroove, only this time, we’re in Angola! As to whether it’s any good, well of course it is, the barrel is deep and Analog Africa are pros. Levis Vercky’s gets the star for successful execution of a tempo change. Otherwise the almost Brazilian grooves are frantic, as if they can’t wait for kuduro.

6. BFlecha: βeta (2013)

Galician singer-writer-composer-arranger-producer quilts appropriated beats -- I half expected a Luger Transformer to show up -- to create a sunset-over-the-Rías Baixas mood. She’s more comfortable constructing shiny happy symphonies for you-know-you're-'90s-kids (she missed a trick by not titling "Mundo Bizarro" "Como Bizarro") than having to play Aaliyah and Timbaland simultaneously, though her low-key singing fills out the sound. An album you could put on repeat for days, remember fondly, and never play again. I played it again.

7. Sembe Ma Fa Fe: Roots Volume (2013)

The gyrating pelvis of this album compiled by a San Franciscan with the handle Dub Snakkr consists of remixes marked by electrodrum tattoos so spare I want to refer to artist Kadiatou Sylla a/k/a MyBaby, whose “Sida” appears in three versions, as MyBoo, thanks to the Boima & Giku mix  in particular (not Bulma and Goku, thank you autocorrect). The Latin-tinged Guinean pop around it is similarly dinky and danceable, though not as lowdown.

8. Katy B: Little Red (continuous mix)

Rumblings that the 66-minute bonus disc made a hell of a lot more sense were well-founded. In this format the half-dozen peaks, highest of all the star-igniting “Crying for No Reason” (though that one was better on Graham Norton), are more imposing, and the valleys give you somewhere to gaze from.

9. Isaiah Rashad: Cilvia Demo

He can rap, which these days we can’t take for granted even among kids who idolise Weezy and Andre 3000 --- especially among kids who idolise Weezy and Andre 3000. Thoughtful too, from time to time, with moments of desperation that explain the escapist/power fantasies/blowjob if they don’t justify them.

10. Hard Working Americans

Pretty good for a Friday-night-at-the-local covers band. The singer could at least try to hit the notes, but he makes the Bottle Rockets’ “Welfare Music” sound as vital now as it did in the Gingrich era. Wait, we’re still in the Gingrich era? Well, fuck.

Ten songs:

1. Alisa Weilerstein/Daniel Barenboim: Elgar & Carter Cello Concertos (2012)

Weilerstein plays with the authority of a MacArthur-winning Columbia grad (hey, at least it’s not Oberlin). It would go too far to suggest the working-class Tory and the belated hypermodernist were doing the same thing, but Barenboim, who knows this shit, shows the greatest cello concerto of the early 20th century at least gestures toward the more raucous future inhabited by the greatest cello concerto of the 21st, which in its synthesis of Eastern and Central European ways of making it new, has its own kind of lyricism. Bruch’s Kol Nidrei provides a nostalgic finish.

2. Mary Halvorson Septet: Illusionary Sea (2013)

Adding a tenor and trombone to her ensemble, Halvorson plays with her new toys like an offensive coordinator with two first-round picks, while the performers retain considerable freedom within her strange progressions. Check out the decent into the uncanny valley in “Smiles of Great Men” and the intricate work on “Nairam” while the leader plucks treated arpeggios.

3. William Parker: Wood Flute Songs (2013)

I was at the first Yoshi’s show included in this box, and if much of it went over my head at the time I don’t claim to get it all now. Nine hours is a lot of music even for the guy who’s played on more good albums than anyone else this decade, but every disc has many moments of interest. If you are time-constrained, pick hits are Creation, the ensemble disc, Kalaparusha on the Edge of the Horizon, from 2012’s Vision Festival, and “Malachi’s Mode” and “Hopi’s Spirit” from the Yoshi’s shows.

4. Elizabeth Morris: Optimism EP (2013)

If you’re going to sing accompanied only by your own after-school piano and guitar, you’d better be writing at a Joni Mitchell-circa-Blue level, and with the aid of bathroom graffiti, she is. “Optimism” comes from a pre-Tumblr tradition of evoking big feelings with small gestures. Determined not to lose her true lover by courting too slow, the happiest moment of her life is over before the chorus begins, and the song ends in uncertainty ninety seconds after that.

5. Tal National: Kaani (2013)

The rock of these Nigeriens-with-an-E is close to Malian, as you’d expect from geography, but there are Nigerian-with-an-A moments of roll, without the Nigerian-with-an-A lackadaisical attitude toward playing in tune. Almost every cut feels like it could go on forever, so thank them for keeping the average at six minutes. The rotating vocalists are strong throughout, but you’re here for the repeated guitar figures on “Nouvelles” and the talking drums on “Tchana.”  The single “Wongharey” is fantastic.

6. Angel Haze: Dirty Gold (2013)

I was initially disconcerted that she made a stadium-rock-goes-self-help album a la almost-grown Eminem, but got over the “is this what it is?” feeling much more quickly than I did with Pink Friday, in part because Sia is a more human Rihanna than Rihanna but more because she’s blunt about her trauma. If her anti-religious schtick is very early-twenties, her greatest-love-of-all solution is better at dissipating angst than either gay jokes or anything Vampire Weekend came up with.

7. Revolutionary Ensemble: Counterparts (2013)

Leroy Jenkins (RIP), Sirone (RIP), and Jerome Cooper (still with us, phew). Jenkins takes his usually clean-toned violin along scales ancient and modern; as the concert proceeds, he ups his skronking along with a rhythm section that’s light-footed even when Cooper switches to balafon. Recording quality is a bit off, but what a way to go out.

8. Eric Revis 11:11: Parallax (2012)

This all-star lineup hasn’t put the hours in to match Revis’ trio album City of Asylum, though you can drop Ken Vandermark into any setting and he’ll not only turn on a dime, he’ll contribute the most rollicking tune (on an album with a Fats Waller number, no less). The leader tirelessly holds the record together, yet sounds best unaccompanied.

9. Lobi Traore: Bamako Nights: Live at Bar Bozo 1995 (2013)

I have no idea how easy it is to get weed in Mali, but this record reeks of it, which is a negative only on the comparatively meandering opener and closer. In between, “Dunuya” sounds like an audition for Josh Homme, which he fails by raising the BPM in the moshable “Sigui Nyongon son fo.” In the same class as Bwati Kono.

10. Against Me!: Transgender Dysphoria Blues

Like the Dismemberment Plan’s Uncanney Valley, it’s about finding yourself confused by a new stage of your life, and reverting to the same bag of tricks you relied on to deal with adolescence. If the shortcomings of the rhythm section make this less enjoyable than it could be, that’s not going to stop this album from saving people, one hopes starting with Grace. Note to Macklemore, Sara Bareilles, etc.: this is how you be brave.

Ten songs:

Katy B: “Crying for No Reason” (live on Graham Norton)

Childish Gambino: “Telegraph Ave. (Oakland by Lloyd)”

Rosanne Cash: “When the Master Calls the Roll”

Inaya Day Allstars: “Good Feeling (A Director’s Cut Master)” (at 13:27)

Davido: “Skelewu”

Charles Lloyd/Jason Moran: “God Only Knows”

DJ Snake & Lil Jon: “Turn Down for What”

Klingande: “Jubel”

Albert “Tootie” Heath: “The Charleston”

1. Tegan and Sara: Heartthrob: About the only case I could see against the album is that individually they’re not outstanding singers, but I'd counter that they play off each other better (the Shakespearean as in Marcella-and-Siobhan contest between “go” and “please stay” on “Now I'm All Messed Up”) than any other vocal duo at the moment, what with Brooks & Dunn splitting and all. Clearly, they sing in service to their songs rather than vice versa. Take Tegan's rising final syllable in “Closer.” It's a hook in itself, one too shameless for her to have sung three albums ago, but it also emphasises that the song conveys an attraction that’s very college-freshman, a time of not only freedom from parents but also freedom from one’s own adolescence -- it’s physical, not just physical. I’m not saying that all of this consciously goes through Tegan’s mind when her “errrrr” turns into a yelp, but with countless good decisions like this on the album, i wouldn't rule it out. And then there are the pre-choruses that build logically from verses and are effortlessly topped by giant choruses; the abundance of telling details (“where you're leaving your makeup”); the Greg Kurstin million-little-hooks production job that finally proves he has talents beyond knowing the limits of plagiarism law (though he certainly still has that). All this lets T&S engage in the human-scale drama that's their bag; the overall effect is edifyingly melancholy. If this makes Heartthrob sound like a better-written Carly Rae Jepsen album, (i) as everyone on Tumblr knows Kiss was pretty good darn it, and (ii) the only 2013 album I've heard that might have more consistent songwriting than Heartthrob is Modern Vampires, and really, T&S know more about break-ups than Ez & Ros know about the Lord. 2. Brandy Clark: 12 Stories: Worst you can say is the lyrics are the only way to tell the songs apart, but why wouldn’t you listen to these lyrics? She’s a smart singer who understands how narrative and melody works, and she has as many angles on her chosen milieu as Lives of Girls and Women-era Alice Munro -- and Munro took decades to get jokes down. 3. Rilo Kiley: Rkives: After spending a few plays moaning about how it didn’t flow, i gave in and accepted that song for song, it was their second-best album after More Adventurous, which flows. If the break-up has been harder on him than her, it’s not like rock’s best singer (listen to the way she places the adverb “aimlessly” in “A Town Called Luckey”) has written five songs as good as the median Under the Blacklight outtake since.

4. Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba: Jama Ko: The tightest and most professional live act i saw all year. Kouyate arrived with this tiny instrument which looks like a kid's toy, and then got all kinds of tones out of it, often at blazing speed but also sometimes laying back and letting his family show off. And here i acknowledge i wouldn't know an ngoni from a kora if it weren't for (still) our greatest reviewer of Afropop championing a plethora of the music while insisting on the resemblances between its pleasures and those of, say, rap. Get that book done, Christgau.

5. M.I.A.: Matangi: I would say we’re taking our greatest creator of fight songs since Public Enemy for granted except i found the abrasions on Maya weren’t much fun, exceptions like “Born Free” aside. Here, the abrasions come with tunes, her singing is tougher, and her ideas on everything besides reincarnation are pretty much right. If you think this is how political music should work then occupy Pitchfork.

6. Roswell Rudd: Trombone for Lovers: A metric shitload of fun for the four Steven Bernstein tracks alone, esp. the evolutionarily-paced “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” the best version of the song possible at this point in history (no lyrics). Then when the NYC Labor Chorus show up (with lyrics) it's righteous.

7. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City: It’s impossible to not be annoyed by something on this; me, i find “Hannah Hunt” as deadfishy as the worst of Noah Baumbach. But if staring into the abyss isn’t too tough, the arrangements and Koenig’s singing continually play tricks on the words, throwing an ambiguity party because they R who they R.

8. Pet Shop Boys: Electric: Just when Random Access Memories made you wonder if disco really did suck, these guys came out from behind the cricket pavilion and made their most danceable record in decades. Both bourgie and bolshy, like the best of the old New Left.

9. DJ Koze: Amygdala: Michael Tatum jibed that “we’re all sensitive people” wouldn’t be his “Let’s Get It On” quote of choice, but this fucking year asmidgen of sensitivity was worth a million sledgehammer licks. Koze’s psychedelic minimalism punctuated by song snippets and Motown lifts seemed exactly right during a spring addled by unrecreational cough syrup.

10. Home Brew (2012): The best-written rap record since XXX, sez i. They're Aucklanders and I don't know how much home field advantage I'm giving them (though it’s not like i liked Pure Heroine), but if you value clarity, a lot of cheek, and occasional honest-to-goodness wisdom you might agree. What I like best is how well the first disc evokes the classic milieu of New Zealand musicians -- the dealings with the officers of the welfare state, the substance abuse, the smorgasbord of music coming from all sides (Yellow Moon! Voodoo! Eric Clapton ft. Babyface! The music absorbs these influences (well, not “Change the World”) while anchoring itself the present) -- before the second disc gets analytical and resultingly enraged in a way that your favourite Flying Nun band would never dare -- hard to imagine Martin Phillipps telling the Prime Minister to suck his dick as in “Listen to Us” or make an argument for atheism as vituperatively as in “Good God.” Still, it's the first disc that's more replayable -- try “Benefit,” which shows that while the social safety net has developed holes since all those Dunedin bands lived on the dole, the doledrums remain.

11. Chance the Rapper: Acid Rap: It’s Kendrick’s era, but the Black Hippy has still yet to make a full-length as compelling as this reminder that rap can be light and serious and witty and heartbreaking.

12. Big Bang: Alive (2012): U.S. critics treat K-pop as cultishly any other kind of teenpop, so G-Dragon, the guy with the abs, and the other three will have to settle for massive sales and huge acclaim in Asia, the poor fuckers.

13. Jeremy Denk: Ligeti/Beethoven (2012): The notoriously difficult Ligeti etudes are played with precision and panache. Beethoven 32 is Beethoven 32.

14. Oneohtrix Point Never: R Plus Seven: Distancing himself from the “my vintage Moog is moogier than yours” arms race, he embraced MIDI and squashed and stretched like he was Bob Clampett. This ’trix is for kids.

15. Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold: Why do these millennials draw comparisons to pre-Pitchfork mainstays like Pavement and the Fall? Because i’m not the only one who misses bands that give a shit about musicianship.

16. Rachid Taha: Zoom: Rai king teams with the other last rockers standing -- Mick Jones and Eric Cantona -- and makes another outstanding album, ho-hum.

17. Le Grand Kalle: His Life, His Music: The first disc is Kabasele creating a musical identity for a new nation if not a continent. The second disc has some good songs too!

18. Eric Revis Trio: City of Asylum: Bassist with Cecilians old and young Andrew Cyrille and Kris Davis try to be everywhere and everywhen, sound best doing Monk like everyone else does.

19. My Bloody Valentine: m b v: In a wretched year for guitars, they cared about beauty as much as ever. Only a bit worse than Loveless!

20. Epik High: 99 (2012): Aging K-rappers make their seventh-yes-seventh album in the tunetastic YG house style, pre-emptively saying fuck-the-haters.

21. Future: Pluto 3D (2012): Mike Will Making the Same Beat Over and Over hit diminishing returns months before Miley, but that doesn’t stop this collection from sounding like last year’s future.

22. The Group: Live (1986/2012): Billy Bang triumphant! A crazy-hot rhythm section! A twenty-five minute version of a Miriam Makeba song! No really, a fucking great twenty-five minute version of a Miriam Makeba song!

23. Khaled: Liberte (2009): After a summer of rai, he became my distant second-favourite (see #16). These hits recycled with the help of a proper Egyptian orchestra are what i’ll play when i want to hear him.

24. The Knife: Shaking the Habitual: It clicked when i learned “Fracking Fluid Injection” was made from a bedspring: it’s a Tom Ze album! I still skip the nineteen minute one though.

25. Ciara: If cunnilingus, undersinging, and Nicki’s guest swag make this the rockist’s R&B album of choice, they’re welcome to be late to the body party if they bring dessert.

26. Evoken: Atra Mors (2012): Let the eloquent-not-grim Deafheaven play for collegiate respectability. Having visited Jersey this year, i can say that if i lived there, i'd make funeral doom too.

27. Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Slippery Rock!: Vies with Forty Fort as their most party-rocking set. Peter Evans needs to have a late-night brass duel with Steven Bernstein for jazz MVP.

28. Ashley Monroe: Like a Rose: If having the biz behind you gets crack session musicians and production, then it's worth putting up with Blake Shelton, though Miranda might no longer agree.

29. Kevin Gates: Stranger Than Fiction: His redneck twang ("Careful") and fake patois ("Tiger") illustrate the multitudes in his interior life -- amidst the bullets and programmed orchestras, he's loyal, introverted, needy. "The worst thing you can give any nigga or bitch is rejection," he says, before denouncing men who crave the attention of other men as hoes. He's working on the border between masculine and feminine codes, dangerous territory for a rapper. Gates isn't worried about sleeping with the fishes. He's worried about ending up as alone as Michael Corleone.

30. G-Dragon: Coup d'Etat: Appropriating American sounds (chief beatmaker Teddy can fake anything from pop dubstep to Blood Orange) and language (guap guap guap) without scruple, all he got for his efforts was a Complex Magazine digital cover and a U.S. #161 album. He'll never be a trans-Pacific star even after he passes his TOEFL. Off-peak Missy shows up and cuts him, and he lacks the expressive range to become a go-to foreign weirdo like Robyn. But top 40 listeners who realize they deserve better than 2013 Timberlake should try "Crooked," in which he gets over a broken pinky promise by rocking eyeliner and a whole can of hairspray.