Yahoo Movies The best albums of 2022 (so far)
If the past six months have taught us anything, it's that life can change on a dime. But one constant remains (at least for now): good tunes to soundtrack almost every mood we find ourselves in (and these days, we're pretty moody).
Below, 10 albums that have distracted us, delighted us, devastated us, and made us feel alive when we needed it most — from FKA twigs' globe-trotting debut mixtape to the best technically-not-Radiohead Radiohead record we've ever heard.
Angel Olsen, <i>Big Time</i>
Last year, Angel Olsen came out as queer, introducing her partner to the world on Instagram. Soon after telling her father and mother, both of them died, within two months of one another. These are the sort of capital-C changes that can take decades to process, but the singer-songwriter wasted no time heading back into the studio to record her sixth album, which draws on the vintage twang of Tammy Wynette and cinematic soul of Dusty Springfield to telegraph her profound loss and the reprieve that only newfound love can bring. It's impossible to hear lines like "I was looking at old you / Looking at who you'd become" and not wonder if Olsen is addressing past flames, her late parents, and herself all at once. —Jason Lamphier
Best tracks: "All the Good Times," "Big Time"
Big Thief, <i>Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You</i>
The tireless indie-rock quartet's fifth album in six years shows them perfecting the gorgeous, forlorn folk of their early records, but Big Thief have bigger ideas now. Buoyed by fiddle and a springy jaw harp, "Spud Infinity" name-checks potato knish and garlic bread while reminding us that we can't kiss our own elbows (it seems to be about accepting our limitations and practicing compassion). Meanwhile, the back-porch hootenanny "Red Moon" ("Open the screen door / Talking with Diane Lee / That's my grandma!" singer Adrianne Lenker roars) is easily the most joyous, uninhibited thing the group has done. Over the course of 20 sprawling tracks, you'll hear flute, electric guitar, tambourines, accordion, and someone playing icicles. Eve takes a bite of the apple. Hearts are broken. Days rush by. Time stands still. Dragon chronicles all of it. —JL
Best tracks: "Change," "No Reason"
FKA twigs, <i>Caprisongs</i>
Alas, the title of FKA twigs' lockdown-inspired mixtape is not a nod to the beloved juice pouch. It might as well be, though, given how Caprisongs (which refers to her Capricorn sun sign) manages to reshape the sugary rush of pop into strange new forms. Tapping a network of international cohorts (including the Weeknd, Nigerian singer Rema, U.K. rapper Shygirl, and Spanish producer El Guincho), the British iconoclast tears her way through 17 tracks and as many genres, dabbling in trap, avant-R&B, early-aughts dancehall, Afrobeats, choral music, and glitch. What grounds her is a thirst for connection, in the club and beyond, and the results are riveting from the moment you press PLAY. —JL
Best tracks: "Meta Angel," "Papi Bones"
Fontaines D.C., <i>Skinty Fia</i>
They hail from Ireland ("D.C." stands for Dublin City, not District of Columbia), but the young fivesome's third record falls under a flag of no nation: the Disunited State of Post Punk. In a 2022 that badly needed it, Skinty's urgent churn of spiraling vocals and serrated guitars — which debuted at no. 1 in the U.K. — blew the cobwebs off a moribund genre dominated by corpo-rock and tired retro revivalists. The Irish elk the album is named for is sadly extinct; guitars, God bless them, aren't quite yet. —Leah Greenblatt
Best tracks: "In ár gCroíthe Go Deo," "Jackie Down the Line"
Leikeli47, <i>Shape Up</i>
Her flow and wordplay may rival that of her peers Cardi and Megan, but to call Leikeli47 a rapper at this point is to shortchange her — and you don't wanna shortchange a lady who spits lines like "You ain't gotta mail my check, n---- / I'm outside." On her third album, the anonymous Brooklyn firebrand proves she's as confident shifting tempos as she is telling exes to piss off. The jangly "Free to Love" flirts with doo-wop, the Miss J–assisted "Jay Walk" is a sleek slice of runway-ready house, and the aching "Hold My Hand" evokes Mary J. Blige's '90s-soul touchstone "Not Gon' Cry." We may still not know who Leikeli47 is, but we know who she isn't: someone we should ever underestimate. —JL
Best tracks: "Secret Service," "Carry Anne"
Mitski, <i>Laurel Hell</i>
"Let's step carefully into the dark," the singer born Mitski Miyawaki coos on Hell's ghostly opening salvo. Caution, though, is not the operative word on an album so sonically adventurous and lyrically open-veined that it feels less like a record than a manifesto. Songs crash and surge, careening from hypnotic road-trip hymnals ("Valentine, Texas") to Velvet Underground dirges ("Heat Lightning") and shimmering starlit disco ("Stay Soft"). —LG
Best tracks: "Working for the Knife," "Love Me More"
Pusha T, <i>It's Almost Dry</i>
For the man who is to cocaine rap what Drake is to memes, a new record is an event. And Dry, which lands four years after his last, Daytona, feels epic from the first notes — a wash of sinuous synths and rim-rattling bass thrumming beneath trap tales as old as time (or at least Clipse). That's Kanye rasping over Donny Hathaway's chopped-up cover of "Jealous Guy" on "Dreamin' of the Past," and Jay-Z and Pharrell trading loose-limbed bars on the liquid, squiggling "Neck & Wrist"; Kid Cudi, Lil Uzi Vert, and Don Toliver drop by too. They're excellent party guests, but it's still Pusha T's house, Biblically: "The book of blow / Just know I'm the Genesis." —LG
Best tracks: "Neck & Wrist," "Diet Coke"
Rosalía, <i>Motomami</i>
If you want to know what you're in for with Motomami, it's all there in the first track. "Saoko" is a skittish, pitch-slapped fusion of jazz, dirty industrial, and deconstructed reggaeton in which the Spanish phenom declares, "I contradict myself / I transform / I'm everything / I transform." In the epic journey that follows, Rosalía refuses to be pinned down. She really can be everything: downcast lover, lonely bachata pop star, spiritual goddess, cyberpunk Björk disciple, a sex kitten who sings about wanting to ride you like a bike. Even when she calls on the Weeknd, Dominican rapper Tokischa, and producers Pharrell Williams and Michael Uzowuru (Frank Ocean, Beyoncé, SZA) to rev up the proceedings, she remains behind the wheel, changing lanes whenever she pleases, always just out of reach. —JL
Best tracks: "G3 N15," "CUUUUuuuuuute"
The Smile, <i>A Light for Attracting Attention</i>
It sounds like a Zen koan, or a riddle: When is a Radiohead album not Radiohead? When it's just Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood with jazz drummer Tom Skinner, basically. But six years out from A Moon Shaped Pool, it's hard not to treat the Smile like a second coming, even if Light lands somewhere markedly more jammy and spacious. Thom is indubitably Thom, a relentless chronicler of all our modern calamities, but he seems looser and less hemmed in by expectations here. And on songs like the furious garage-rock thrasher "You Will Never Work in Television Again" and the wizard-king "Thin Thing," he sounds freer (maybe even happier?) than he has in years. —LG
Best tracks: "You Will Never Work in Television Again," "The Smoke"
Wet Leg, <i>Wet Leg</i>
Their name sounds like an unfortunate medical condition for old-timey sailors, but Wet Leg is actually Hester Chambers and Rhian Teasdale, two college friends from England's Isle of Wight churning out some of the hookiest, scrappiest, most joy-sparking indie-rock anthems in recent memory. (If there's any justice, "Is your muffin buttered?" will go down in rhetorical-question history.) And their self-titled debut turned out to be the best, most cathartic kind of cardio: Just try staying off your feet for the fuzzed-up bliss of "Chaise Longue" and "Ur Mum." —LG
Best tracks: "Chaise Longue," "Wet Dream"
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