The Best 100 Albums of 2016 (Part 2)

To see part one of this list (numbers 67-100) click here. 

Whether you love them or hate them, you can probably agree that The 1975's expansive, glitzy sophomore bow doesn't deserve to be as good as it is. The UK pop-rockers' self-titled debut from 2013 was an overlong, somewhat monochrome exercise in jet-powered 2000s emo, its highlights ("Chocolate," "Sex") suggesting greater ambitions as yet unrealized. On  I love it when you sleep…, Matt Healy and the boys go for broke by throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. And guess what? It works. A giddy traipse through clean-as-a-whistle 80s pop, throbbing moonlit R&B, collagist IDM, and John Hughes-ian slow-dance anthems,  I love it when you sleep… is the smartest, most sonically sensual record of the year to feature lyrics about leaving your brain in a Tesco's and having an American girl stare at your fucked up teeth for too long. It's ridiculous, it's romantic, it's whip-smart, it's totally and utterly bone-headedly basic—and it's unlike nearly anything else happening in pop right now, too. — Larry Fitzmaurice

Jherek Bischoff composed his second album, a transcendent collection of modern classical movements, inside of a two-million-gallon cistern on a disused military base in Washington State. There was a 45-second reverb decay down there, enough for the California-born multi-instrumentalist to play a note, let it ring, and consider his next move.  Cistern was eventually recorded in upstate New York with the Contemporaneous ensemble because fitting a dozen or so people into the cistern itself would have meant an endless echo of shuffled shoes. The process was as much of a change for Bischoff as the music itself. His first real solo album,  Composed, was all off-kilter pop, a series of collaborations with luminaries like David Byrne and Nels Cline. His work with Amanda Palmer—most recently a couple of string tributes to Bowie and Prince—bare no real resemblance to  Cistern either. The album is occasionally eerie, often hypnotic, and never less than utterly graceful. It sets out its path with the grand violins and quiet timpani of "Automatism," moving through "Closer to Closure"'s careful clarinets and quietly sinister melodies. "Headless" is the centrepiece, Bischoff's recurring bass riff floating on the high strings like oil on water. By the time it's reached the title track, a glacial loop,  Cistern has become hypnotic. Few—if any—albums in 2016 can lay claim to such dissociative beauty. — Alex Robert Ross

Void Omnia's full-length debut, Dying Light, is everything that modern USBM should strive to be—a bold statement, yes, but after hearing the album in question, it's difficult to argue (unless you're looking for bestial, lo-fi filth; in that case, keep walkin'). The melodies are the most impressive component here, and the most powerful tool in this young (established circa 2013) project's arsenal. There's an unexpected uplifting quality to the harmonies, their undulating post-rock trills undercut by the combined harshness of the tortured vocals and propulsive percussion. However, the "atmospheric black metal" signifier doesn't quite fit, nor does straightforward "melodic black metal;" while the album is steeped in what we've come to accept as the hallmarks of modern USBM, reducing  Dying Lightto a cut-and-dried Bandcamp tag would do it a great disservice. Oakland may be best known for dismal sludge and snarling crust, but thanks to the strength of this debut, Void Omnia may well be ushering in a new age of Bay Area blackness. — Kim Kelly

Supergroups often look good on paper, but end up sounding like a fucking wreck. Too many egos, too many styles, too much chaos. But for Head Wound City, whose roster boasts members of bands like The Blood Brothers, The Locust, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, chaos is what they came for. So many familiar elements bleed through on  A New Wave of Violence, the long-awaited debut LP from the on-again-off-again project, but it somehow manages to blend together without sounding like a shit smoothie. The other brilliant trick this record pulls off is that it's not a stale retread of anything the members have done in their previous respective projects. This chaos is ripe. Like they said right there in the title, it's a new wave of violence.  —Dan Ozzi

Disclosure:  A New Wave of Violence was released via Vice Records.

2016 continued to be a good year for Indiana punk with new releases from C.C.T.V., Liquids, and Bloomington's The Cowboys, who dropped their debut album. It's difficult to make punk rock sound interesting over a full-length, but these guys break up the fastballs with cool shouty 60s pop and whacked out weirdness that sounds like a cross between Buddy Holly and hometown heroes The Gizmos. The difference between The Cowboys and the legion of punk basement dwellers is that The Cowboys can write actual songs but still keep a strong "we recorded this on broken equipment" buzz.  — Tim Scott

Few artists in the country tradition are able to straddle the intersection of gospel and Texas country as well as Paul Cauthen can. With his deep baritone and stubborn "my way or the highway" approach to life, Cauthen bucks the current idea that in order to make impactful music that attracts an audience, you have to sprinkle references to beer drinking and cut-off jeans throughout your songs. Cauthen's is the kind of music that comes from hitting absolute rock bottom and deciding that whether or not there is a God, as he told us in an interview this past October. Cauthen made his way back up ferociously, kicking and screaming all the way in opposition to Music Row in a way that would make anyone with half his talent look like they were mounting an attempt to ride the coattails of controversy. Cauthen refuses to do anything that might compromise his integrity, and makes music that reflects every facet of his existence, something that is confusingly ignored by mainstream radio DJs and music executives. — Annalise Domenighini

Red is passion. Red is anger. Red is hurt. For A Tribe Called Red, an indigenous DJ collective excelling at a time when sports teams still cling to racist names like Redskins, red symbolizes both their heritage and a rallying cry, a call to protest. On one level,  We Are the Halluci Nation is their strongest album to date, a mix of hard-hitting, festival-ready EDM anthems such as "R.E.D." with traditions of native culture, including urgent throat-singing features by Tanya Tagaq. It magnifies their signature electric pow-wow production developed in the nightclubs of Ottawa. But  Halluci Nation is far from just a Saturday night soundtrack—it's also A Tribe Called Red at their most political, overtly addressing reconciliation efforts needed to acknowledge horrors including residential schools, a corrupt system of white-washing native children that persisted in Canada as late as the 90s. With a diverse cast of narrators and collaborators including Yasiin Bey (a.k.a. Mos Def), drum group Chippewa Travellers, Saul Williams, and Columbia-born Toronto singer Lido Pimienta,  We Are the Halluci Nation is a vital education that native issues are  ourissues. Let their electric pow-wow beat compel not only dance, but action.  —Jill Krajewski

"Who are you?" a voice asks theMIND early on in  Summer Camp, prodding at his lack of faith. "No, for real," she continues, "who do you want to be? And don't say it doesn't matter because I know that it matters to you." In a year so fraught with trauma and demoralizing political narratives and massive pop culture events, it could feel difficult or even wrong to disengage and reflect on the personal, but those questions didn't go away. If anything, growth and revelation became more urgent: "Change, moreover, is what we all want," a more assured theMIND intones near the end of the project. Over the intervening tracks of cinematic, electronically fraying R&B, he offers a vision for achieving that change, a journey of self-discovery with detours through broken hearts, Parisian stoops, and jazzy speakeasies filled with Balenciaga and purple fox fur-clad women (the 30-second stretch that invokes the last two being one of the best pop songwriting moments of the year). It feels like a burst of inspiration, like stumbling across a hidden mountain vista—it's music, and a feeling, you've been waiting to discover. — Kyle Kramer

When Tyrannamen's Nic Imfeld, backed by a raucous and soulful punk band, pleads for you to leave some guy on "You Should Leave Him," the thought crosses your mind. By the time the rambunctious five-piece have kicked into full gear and Imfeld's screaming, "We could have it so great," you are ready to pack your bags. The Melbourne five-piece (which features members of The Stevens, Twerps, and Whipper) call to mind the ramshackle melody of the Undertones, Greg Cartwright's Reigning Sound, and the power pop moments of fellow Aussies Royal Headache. Led by the tuneful and raw vocals of Imfeld and others, the music pops like buttons from a ripped shirt. But between the rowdiness of "I Don't Want to Go to Jail" and "My Concrete," a song about construction sites, there are moments of soulful tenderness such as "Diamond Ring." They may seem and sound like ruffians, but deep down, Tyrannamen are true romantics. — Tim Scott

Recognizing a curator of music is an easy task when it comes to flagging figures like Rick Rubin, RZA, and Kanye West —people who masterminded the collective sound and ideologies of crews and labels that would eventually be etched in stone. Curators are typically thought of as people who conceptualize a tone for work that is not their own, but what else is there to call an artist like Travis Scott, whose arrangement of sounds is arguably more commendable than his vocal output? Is he a rapper? Most would object. Is he a producer? No one really knows. Hell, is he even himself? What last year's  Rodeo and this year's  Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight continue to confirm is that Scott, while not being particularly distinct in any one facet of his skillset, knows how to put together great-sounding music. For most moments in  Birds, what he's saying plays second fiddle to the production and harmony (most notably in "sdp interlude," "sweet sweet," and "guidance") but those are carried out so well that, you forget what he was ever saying in the first place.  — Lawrence Burney

He took one last look around, and right in the middle of a song about God and guidance, chose to skew our late capitalism: "As He died to make men holy / Let us die to make things cheap." That was almost Leonard Cohen's last statement, but he wanted to go out with something so utterly funereal—the string quartet reprisal of "Treaty"—that it's hard not to see him winking back at the camera.  You Want It Darker is Cohen's final act, just as he said it would be. It is as bound up in rapture as any of his previous 15 studio albums, and often it's just as witty. It's a graceful final statement from a songwriter and poet who prepared for his own death through art, likely aware that none of us were willing or able to do the same while listening to him.  You Want It Darker will, like the rest of Cohen's records, grow with time. There's no greater legacy than that. — Alex Robert Ross

Lil Big Pac is a poignant release. At 19, Kodak Black is not like typical teenage rappers who try to align themselves with rockstar personalities and pile up enough drugs and money to send a party into an infinite loop. The drugs and money mentioned in Lil Big Pac are instead used as tools for Kodak to liberate himself beyond the constant conflict that is living in Pompano Beach, Florida. Throughout the 13-track project, Kodak questions whether or not he's cursed, if he'll live long enough to be a father to his son, why he's lost so many friends to prison and death, and if he should run away from love. Many of these concerns have been reflected in black social media circles where the link between experiencing systematic racism, oppression, and PTSD has been increasingly discussed in detail. But what makes  Lil Big Pac special is that as a teen, Kodak can enter that conversation and articulately identify where he falls within it, except with carefully crafted bars and harmonies.  — Lawrence Burney

We weren't joking when we referred to King Dude as "our favorite whiskey-soaked Luciferian sex god" back in June, and his latest album hammers that point home even further—especially the "sex" part. The King (né TJ Cowgill) has issued his most dynamic, varied effort yet with  Sex, a long, slow ride through his customary dark folk, post-punk, swaggering rock 'n' roll, and gloomy Type O Negative-styled gothica. He's all over the place here, redefining the King Dude sound whenever he feels like it, and circling back to more familiar, lovelorn territory on the wine-stained closing dirge "Shine Your Light," his shuddering baritone holding court throughout. The snarling devil country of "I Wanna Die at 69" slithers up against the clean majesty of "Holy Christos" and surrealist garagey racket of "Swedish Boys," changing gears with every song and oozing sensual energy even when Cowgill gets truly weird (see "The Girls," a full-blown psychedelic nightmare). Whether you're trying to fuck or feel like making love,  Sex is the perfect soundtrack.  —Kim Kelly

High Spirits has got to be the most joyful heavy metal band in existence. Chris Black's exuberant vocals and upbeat lyrics are a treasure in and of themselves (whether he's wailing away in his other project Dawnbringer or serving as a one-man army in High Spirits), and his latest album,  Motivator, is chock full of unabashed positivity. Whether he's exhorting you to reach for the stars or noodling away at a high-flying Thin Lizzy-meets-NWOBHM riff, Black's enthusiasm is infectious, and his pure love for 80s heavy metal and 70s stadium rock is unsurpassed. Even on  Motivator's more downbeat songs like "Haunted by Love," Black refuses to dial down the energy (or abandon his vise-like grip on his preferred tempo). High Spirits shines as a beacon of light in a scene that's all too often obsessed with darkness. The refrain to "Thank You" is metal's rousing, electrified answer to the  Golden Girlstheme, and it just feels so  good to hear it (preferably at maximum volume). There are enough bad days coming—an album like this encourages us to look on the bright side, to keep our heads up, and, if all else fails, close our eyes and headbang. Thank  you, High Spirits.  —Kim Kelly

Given her proven talent for scorched-earth breakup anthems and the crossover pop appeal of 2014's  Platinum, there was reason to assume that Miranda Lambert's post-divorce album would be a blockbuster event. Instead, it's a quiet, assured step into more traditional territory, an embrace of the grittier East Nashville scene that has of late become a breakout force in country. But what songs! As a breakup album, it sneaks up on the listener, charting the drunken pathos of heartbreak as well as the deep sadness. "Tin Man" and "Things That Break" feel like classic Willie Nelson country, gently tackling one simple, powerful metaphor. And whether in the raspy, broken lo-fi pop of "Pink Sunglasses" or the warm spark of excitement that propels the ballad "Pushin' Time," everything finds ways to stick. Plus, the lead single is called "Vice," which, as far as this publication is concerned, is extremely nice. — Kyle Kramer

With everything Anderson .Paak accomplished in 2016—from kicking off January with the electrifying album  Malibuto putting on perhaps the most talked-about live show of the year to having standout moments on landmark albums from artists as varied as Kaytranada and A Tribe Called Quest—an album like  Yes Lawd!could easily have been a footnote. Instead, this partnership with the producer Knxwledge is pure elation, breezily channeling the raunchy spirit of blaxploitation film soundtracks, half-forgotten 90s rap love songs, and tipsy neo soul. In Anderson .Paak's world, life is unhurried, old flings can be summoned up with a glass of brown liquor or the right notes of a song coming on at the end of the night, and all the beautiful women can cook the hell out of some grits. The thirsty networkers will be cured of their ills, the weed smoke will offer salvation, and the electric thrill of bodies touching will lift us up to heaven, amen and hallelujah. — Kyle Kramer

Against Me!'s 2014 album,  Transgender Dysphoria Blues, damn near killed frontwoman Laura Jane Grace. Written and recorded as she was beginning her gender transition and dealing with the struggles that came with it—taxing hormone treatment, invasive therapist sessions, and crumbling personal relationships—the album took a physical toll as she fought to maintain her sanity. The result was a primal scream of a record that will undoubtedly go down as one of the most important punk records of all time. Now, two years later, Grace is still trying to find her place as a woman in the world but is not the wound-up ball of anxiety and raging hormones she once was.  Shape Shift With Me sees Grace starting a new life and discovering all the experiences that come with it—dating, friendships, and body image. And while there is still plenty of classic Grace-ian existential darkness here, there are also the occasional flashes of—gasp—excitement and optimism.  Shape Shift With Me is the album where Laura Jane Grace got back on track, or, more accurately, found a new one.  —Dan Ozzi

Though Radiohead have largely repelled becoming out-of-touch rockers even as their veteran status looms ever larger over them, they're still drawn to the retooled odds-and-ends collection, which is as rock 'n' roll of an album format as it gets. However, the band has spent years mastering this kind of release, and are the kings of imbuing older material with urgency and spirit.  A Moon Shaped Pool walks a curious thematic tightrope as it seeks to conflate two different kinds of destruction: the impending death of our planet and the recent dissolution of frontman Thom Yorke's two-decade-long relationship. That it tries to achieve this with songs that date back to the mid-90s just feels like the band giving themselves a welcome challenge. Yorke is as inscrutably nervous as ever, but snatches of IRL pain that he lets slip on some songs dominate other ones. "Ful Stop" is an angry rant straitjacketed by claustrophobic motorik, while the unearthly "Glass Eyes" begins as an intimate phone call ("Hey, it's me") before delving into an impressionistic emotional landscape that's illustrated with nothing but piano and fluttering strings.  A Moon Shaped Pool's purposefully muted arrangements are key to its uneasy grace, monochrome and fluid like its cover art. This is the sound of acceptance—in the contexts of both grief and of age—but the overall sensation is comfort, the same kind felt when drifting off into a peaceful slumber. If only all dreamers ever learned. —Phil Witmer

Luminous, richly melodic, and containing equal parts sweetness and swagger, Oakland rapper Kamaiyah's  A Good Night in the Ghetto is one of the most striking and fully realized debuts of the year—a textbook example of what an artist can do when feeling fully confident in their own aesthetic. Switching between sing-song hooks, even-handed flows, and low-key crooning, Kamaiyah shows an impressive versatility over various shades of bouncy Bay Area production. The title says it all, mostly—this is music for night drives, barbecues, smoke sessions, and lazy afternoons with loved ones—which makes the closing track, "For My Dawg," such a striking curveball. An unfussy, conversational, and altogether heartbreaking meditation on loss, the track is a reminder that even the best times in your life can bear the real and lasting mark of pain under the surface.  — Larry Fitzmaurice

Whitney's excellent debut  Light Upon the Lakeopens with a statement: "I left drinking on the city train." It's a simple sentiment, but one that sets a tone for a record that's full of bizarre fleeting nostalgia that we millennials love to chase. This is an album—from former members of Smith Westerns and Unknown Mortal Orchestra—made for wandering, with tracks like "No Woman" and "Golden Days" evoking that feeling of whimsical daydreaming in which you find yourself cruising down an open highway in a big truck below a bright blue sky lit by a bright yellow sun—yet the escapist sound is laced with melancholy.  Light Upon the Lakeis made for  feeling something, man.It's a wistful album that's not trying to be anything except what it is: earnest indie folk rock. And you know what? That's OK. Sometimes the best beer is a Bud Light. — Eric Sundermann

As with most anything Nicolas Jaar touches,  Sirens builds on allusions to be unpacked and reassembled—a puzzle whose solution is beside the point. While his past outputs used reference to create a forward-looking whole,  Sirens is a work of deconstruction, a pastiche intended to highlight the cyclical nature of music, politics, and culture. "We already said no, but the yes is in everything," he sings in Spanish on "No," a play on a phrase favored by 1980s Chilean activists (a "no" to Pinochet was a "yes" to democracy). It's the fulcrum around which the rest of the record orients itself: The nebulous divide between yes and no, past and present, the political flux of 80s Chile, where Jaar grew up, and his American home today. "You don't need to predict the future / To know what will happen," he continues. Like the concepts that drive them, Jaar's compositions are based less on hooks, melodies, and rhythms than contrast and dichotomy. The record is subtle, but visceral, a patient work that becomes increasingly immersive with each listen, veering from experimental electronic to post-punk to Latin folk to the soul of closer "History Lesson." The latter culminates in a soaring gospel chorus as Jaar delivers the album's ominous final lines: "Chapter one: We fucked up. / Chapter two: We did it again, and again, and again, and again. / Chapter three: We didn't say sorry…" and so on. It's glorious and crushing, high and low, a familiar paradox for which we don't yet have words, but that feels all the more honest for it.  —Andrea Domanick

Kevin Devine suffers from Nice Guy Syndrome. Over the last 20 years, his smiling face has been such a reliable staple in the indie rock scene that it's almost possible to take him and his music for granted. But over those two decades, the Brooklyn songwriter has quietly amassed a substantial catalog of solidly crafted albums. With his ninth solo effort,  Instigator, it's clearer than ever that it's time to take a step back and appreciate just how talented this guy is. Instigator's first half alone includes no fewer than four absolutely perfect songs. And the album's relentless assault of catchy hooks makes its easy to overlook the fact that Devine is tackling timely and important topics like police murder and the hypocritical nature of political criticism. Devine is not asking for your respect as a songwriter here—he's demanding it.  —Dan Ozzi

For some,  Hero might be a perfect example of what makes the current slew of radio artists awful—singing about dripping in diamonds, Diddy, Mercedes—but that's where Morris is at her strongest. Popular female voices in country music are few and far between—there are currently only five female artists in the Billboard Country Top 50—and when they do manage to break into the charts, their presence is equated to finding tomatoes in a salad. Morris knows where she stands within the industry that still has a hard time believing women can use curse words, which is what gives her debut album  Hero a much sharper edge. By using consistent references to Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, going to church on Sunday, classic cars, her strong southern drawl and history of songwriting in Nashville, and banjo picking, Morris checks off each box of what's deemed necessary to qualify this as a country record, but by mixing that with references to modern references, pop music beats, and rhyming "shit" and "rich" in her song "Rich," Morris creates a sound necessary to get her onto the country charts and an image that's just sharp enough to make her an edgy, and therefore much talked about, favorite. It's with this sound that she forces the industry to look at itself from one of the higher seats of the country music charts. — Annalise Domenighini

Finding a good pop punk album in 2016 is like walking into a hat shop and miraculously discovering a beanie tucked between rows upon rows of fedoras. This year, and for the last five, Philadelphia's Modern Baseball has been one of the most refreshing and lovable surprises in a scene that—intentionally or not—can often feel stale in content and unwelcoming for anybody who isn't a white dude. Split into two halves led by members Jake Ewald and Brendan Lukens respectively,  Holy Ghostmoves beyond their former themes of punk scene politics, fancying girls, and feeling awkward to deal primarily with personal struggles with death and depression. What sets them apart even further is the close relationship they have with their fans, from writing openly about difficult topics to consciously striving to make their live shows safe and accessible. Their remarkable ability to write nothing but Good Ass Tunes is what draws people in, but it's their lack of pretense, sense of humor, and consideration that holds them close.  —Emma Garland

Sex is gross. A roiling mass of naked flesh, weird noises, various types of ooze, squelching—it's generally a sweaty, unflattering mess, and no amount of soft lighting or artful framing can change that. It's gnarly, but at least it's real. That's exactly the kind of visceral imagery that Baltimore newcomers Cemetery Piss welcome with open arms on their debut,  Order of the Vulture, whether they're growling about bodily excretions, dissolved bones, or straight-up fucking (vocalist Adam Savage's porno 'stache doesn't exactly hurt their case, either). The band has been knocking around since 2011, but this year saw their profile rise sharply, bolstered by a spare of high-profile gigs and a mini-tour with Noisey faves Toxic Holocaust. Their compelling hybrid of black, thrash, and death metal plucks the juiciest elements of each, leaning heavily on ghoulish Second Wave black metal melodies and punctuated by a dirty DIY snarl. With  Order of the Vulture, Cemetery Piss is out here making metal sexy again. Lord knows, we need it.  —Kim Kelly

A mixed brew of Death Row tailgate parties and Aftermath theatricality,  Still Brazyends up less escapist than it seems, constantly grounded in reality. While "Twist My Fingaz" and "Why You Always Hatin" can ignite any club, more impressive is how these hits support strong storytelling in the gangsta rap tradition. "Who Shot Me" is personal and paranoid, ("All these maybe maybe maybe maybes / I'm about to say fuck it and start squeezing without aiming") but "Gimmie Got Shot" is a masterstroke, a fable about a hanger-on who "wanted a spot at the top but he ain't work for it." It speaks to the harsh nature of  Still Brazy'sCompton that YG's third-person narrator is ultimately the instrument of Gimmie's demise, revealing himself to be another participant in the kill-or-be-killed ecosystem. By deepening the funk and the hooks, the album proves that  My Krazy Life wasn't jumping on the DJ Mustard-centered "ratchet" sound solely for commerce; this is now YG's lane alone. And once the jams and cautionary tales taper off,  Still Brazypulls out its "Trump" card: a concluding trio of socially-motivated rallying cries that are as vital as any other political music released in the Black Lives Matter era. "DT" might be entering the White House soon, but as long as that bassline and that chant continue to ring out, America will be putting an "F" before the name for a long time to come.  —Phil Witmer

Indie rock is in crisis. There. We said it. When perking an ear to the records released this year, there were plenty of guitar-wielding indie acts with a pop lean that came out with a banger or three. But cohesive albums that felt impactful, where it was a tough call to skip even a single song? These were few and far between. The Growlers bucked this trend. A decade deep and five albums in,  City Clubis the SoCal band's debut effort for Cult Records and it's also the first album that welcomes outside influence in the form of label head, Strokes singer, Julian Casablancas working alongside Shawn Everett (Weezer) on production. The collaboration was clearly a harmonious one: The Growlers retain their scuzzy, spooky, surf-pop swoon ("When You Were Made," "World Unglued"), but their songwriting's more concise, sharply focused, and perfectly realized, with added flourishes including sexy sax and synth action, and some well-placed plinkety guitar lines (wassup INXS on the title track). They've opted for more pop while managing to retain their grit, and, like all the best rock 'n' roll records, listening to  City Clubmakes you feel cool as fuck.  — Kim Taylor Bennett

The internet became hostile territory once again this year, with Russian hackers and meme-shaped propaganda lurking around every corner. Luckily, Katie Dey still finds beauty in the deep nooks that technology provides. Listening to  Flood Network's conjoined, hallucinatory songs is like going on a Wiki walk. The album is deeply, passionately digital in its sound design, with Dey processing everything—especially her voice—with fragments of pitch-shifting and distortion effects. She often sounds like she's singing through an optical cable that's been split open, filaments of herself splayed in every direction. Yet  Flood Network has a warm human heart beating at its center, especially on songs like the stirring, Neutral Milk Hotel-gone-glitch opener "All" and the plaintive "Fleas." It's the next logical step from something like My Bloody Valentine's  Loveless, in which layers of surface ugliness must be peeled off before the powerful, focused songwriting reveals itself. Of course, Dey also makes the choice (the listener has the option, as well) to embrace the scuzz, to acknowledge that sometimes the strange, jutting corners are what make any artistic environment memorable. After a brief half hour that feels like a journey, the gorgeous guitar loops of "Debt" ease  Flood Network into a reassuring epilogue, affirming that the odd pockets of the internet can inspire art that's wondrous and goddamn inspirational. —Phil Witmer

Hardcore albums have a reputation for being too one-dimensional, with emotional ranges stuck in the narrow window between anger and super-anger. The large chunk of them serve as cheap background noise for stagedives and haymakers to the face. But Touché Amoré's  Stage Four is an album that is not afraid to show weakness and vulnerability, and, in doing so, it separates itself from the herd of redundant breakdown bands. The album centers around frontman Jeremy Bolm and his mother, who was claimed by cancer in 2014. Bolm goes through the emotional gamut of grief on this album—self-doubt, questioning of faith, and remorse. The result is truly beautiful and unique, with a level of introspection and depth seldom seen in the genre, and it is essential listening for anyone who has had to bear the pain of watching a loved one slip away.  Stage Four is one of the most personal and intimate albums about loss ever written, hardcore or otherwise.  —Dan Ozzi

The debut LP from this Melbourne trio opens with Schrodinger's sunbather—is that dude dead or sleeping? Frontwoman Georgia Maq probably should have checked, she knows, but she didn't, and that's enough for a re-examination of everything.  Camp Cope takes these lyrical digressions, winds them tightly around bright suburban indie rock for as long as they will run, and then picks the threads until they're frayed out. Maq, who worked as a nurse while writing the album—"Walk around / check vital signs and pretend to be useful," she sings on "Flesh & Electricity"—has plenty to work through and rage at: anxiety, disdain, society's built-in misogyny. But after all of that, there's "Song For Charlie." After her mother's partner took his life in 2014, she wanted to write to his son, a kid she says she connected to through music. It's just Maq, alone, strumming a few major chords, her voice unwavering: "Charlie, you're gonna be okay / At least tomorrow if not today / Keep playing your songs every day / And when you're not okay / You can always call." Some of the pain becomes strength because, eventually, it has to.  — Alex Robert Ross

In a year of objectively progressively shitty things happening, one positive has been the stunning debut of Durham, North Carolina's Loamlands.  Sweet High Rise is Kym Register and Will Hackney's first album together, written as a love letter to their town and the LGBT community facing the state's increasingly oppressive discrimination laws. This is folk songwriting at its finest and most pure—songs meant to inspire and encourage those hurting the most to keep on going. Following in the footsteps of Stevie Nicks (whose music Register cites as a main inspiration) and Joan Baez, Loamlands provides reassuring guidance, reminding listeners to keep a stiff upper lip and maintain a healthy belief in love. At its core,  Sweet High Rise captures the feeling of looking across the room, seeing the person you're in love with, and being over the moon that they're the person you love. Once the album establishes that love, it uses it to tackle issues like police violence and bigotry, intolerance to those different than you, and the hatred that people harbor towards those who are. — Annalise Domenighini

"I hate my yearbook photo / I hate my passport / I hate my last name / I hate everything it stands for." In 2004, Kevin Abstract's lyrics would have been signatures on web forums. His trip-hoppy alternative rock would have been ubiquitous on MTV in 1998. If history is kind to him, he'll be known as one of the first to peer through the walls that Frank Ocean broke down and claim the lands that lay beyond them.  American Boyfriend's main trick—fusing post-Odd Future angst-rap with jangly, earnest indie rock—is such a logical connection that it's a wonder so few have managed to nail it previously. But Kevin is an effortless inhabitant of both these worlds, with the strummy folk-pop of "Yellow" sitting comfortably next to the sludgy confessional "Blink." Juxtaposed against the optimistic promise of the album's music, the teenage fairytale Kevin tells is of dead-ends. To hear him bluntly lay it out, "My best friend's racist / my mother's homophobic / I'm stuck in the closet / I'm so claustrophobic." Kevin's music is unstuck in time, but he himself is trapped in "Miserable America," a place that's unforgiving to a queer black man regardless of era. As he hypnotically admits in "Seventeen," though, he'd replay all the fumbled relationships, awkward pining, and uncomfortable self-examination over again if he could. His salvation lies in layering the memories of a suburban youth, of 12-speed bikes and identical homes, with the future that this one-of-a-kind album projects onto the drive-in theater screen.  —Phil Witmer

Arriving two years after a serious bike accident that left Florist's Emily Sprague in a neck brace and unable to use her left arm, The Birds Outside Sangis comprised of 11 mini-masterpieces that find beauty in patience and a comforting fragility in weighty concepts. Her style of songwriting may belong to a long lineage of artists combining introspection and storytelling—early Bright Eyes among them—but Florist stand out like blood on snow. Beginning with Sprague singing over minimal keyboard loops (many of the songs were written with one hand before she could play guitar again), the album gradually incorporates more and more instrumentation, subtly emphasizing the same sense of growth implicit within each song. Chilly drones, warm guitars and hushed cymbals lend it a sensory intimacy, while the lyrics express abstract emotion in vivid imagery, whether it's of tree bark or getting your head stuck in a banister. It's as unique and accomplished as you could hope for from a debut full-length. — Emma Garland