1. BEYONCÉ “Lemonade” (Parkwood/Columbia) As a set of songs, “Lemonade” plunges into one troubled marriage: a cycle of distrust, betraya...
1. BEYONCÉ “Lemonade”(Parkwood/Columbia) As a set of songs, “Lemonade” plunges into one troubled marriage: a cycle of distrust, betrayal, fury, loyalty and wary reconciliation. It moves sure-footedly through styles from the rooted to the futuristic; it touches down in gospel, blues, soul and country with all the programming expertise of the 21st century. And it presents Beyoncé the singer in guises from ethereal grace to raw ferocity and pain. Then, as a multimedia work, “Lemonade” goes even further: Its video album, directed by Beyoncé and Kahlil Joseph with crucial interludes of poetry by Warsan Shire, magnifies the personal to the archetypal, situating Beyoncé among generations of African-American women in a long, unselfish, unfinished struggle. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)
2. DAVID BOWIE “Blackstar”(ISO/Columbia) Bowie made his final album not a summation but a final metamorphosis. He assembled a studio band of forward-looking jazz musicians to play songs full of tense ambiguities: harmonic, structural, verbal. The album confronts mortality with a last burst of probing, passionate invention. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)
3. A TRIBE CALLED QUEST “We Got It From Here ... Thank You 4 Your Service”(Epic) A Tribe Called Quest reunited long enough to record a full album, its first since 1998, with all three of its founding rappers: Q-Tip, Jarobi White and Phife Dawg, who died in March. The group reaches back to the dense, swinging, sample-from-everywhere sound of its 1990s hip-hop, but it replaces its old whimsical storytelling with a deeper sense of urgency and impending danger. Rich with multileveled allusions, the raps confront gentrification, nativism, the dumbing-down of hip-hop and the rise of Donald J. Trump. “Troubled times, kids, we got no time for comedy,” Phife Dawg rapped, summing it up. (Read the interview | Read the review)
4. RADIOHEAD “A Moon Shaped Pool”(XL) The sounds are often gauzy and pretty on Radiohead’s long-gestating “A Moon Shaped Pool”: bell tones, hovering vocals, shimmery reverberating keyboards, string arrangements. But that’s no protection at all against the malaise that fills the songs. Gazing at demagoguery, environmental ruin and intimate betrayal, Thom Yorke croons threnodies, not lullabies. (Read the review| Listen to the Popcast)
5. LEONARD COHEN “You Want It Darker” (Columbia) Mr. Cohen’s entire catalog was, in a way, a mediation on love, death and spirituality. His last album remained somber and sly, still pithy and still skeptical about both the human and the divine; it was also attentive to musical detail. Mr. Cohen’s sepulchral, deadpan intonation is set within angelic voices, Gypsy violins and often an organ that can be churchy or bluesy; each verse could be last words. (Read the appraisal | Listen to the Popcast)
6. BON IVER “22, a Million” (Jagjaguwar) Justin Vernon set the homespun aside for his third album as Bon Iver. It applies Auto-Tune and other gadgetry; it unleashes samples and distortion; it tucks phalanxes of overdubbed saxophones and backup vocals into its mix. And its songs take the cryptic introspection of his previous work into even more convoluted realms. Yet somehow, something comes through all the multitracking: a yearning, a compulsion to explore, a vulnerable heart within. (Read the review | Read the interview)
7. MARGARET GLASPY “Emotions and Math” (ATO) Ms. Glaspy’s stubborn songs need nothing more than drums, bass and her own voice and electric guitar. Her sinewy music finds an intersection of roots-rock and indie grunge, as she sings, mostly, about relationships in various states of misapprehension and unequal expectations. Her voice wraps her lyrics in burlap: flexible, sturdy and a little rough to the touch.
8. ANOHNI “Hopelessness” (Secretly Canadian) The intent is vociferously political in this set of songs by Anohni, previously known as Antony Hegarty. Her voice remains arresting and androgynous, while the perspective, often, is dystopian and blatantly ironic: calling down a drone bombing, welcoming constant surveillance and looking forward to boiling oceans and burning forests. Anohni trades the chamber-pop of Antony and the Johnstons for caustic, arresting electronica — veering between stark and vertiginous — produced with Hudson Hawke and Oneohtrix Point Never. It’s not exactly dance music, but it pushes hard. (Read the interview | Read the live review)
9. SAVAGES “Adore Life” (Matador) Love is a elemental, colossal force on the second album by Savages: one that can be barely contained within the drone, gallop, blare and incantations of the English quartet’s post-punk onslaught. At once muscular and enveloping, the music nonetheless makes way for Jehnny Beth’s high-beam voice, clear and determined even as her lyrics battle to figure things out. (Read the review)
10. ELZA SOARES “A Mulher do Fim do Mundo” (Mais Um Discos) No translation is necessary to recognize the wrath and nerve of “A Mulher do Fim do Mundo” (“The Woman at the End of the World”) by Ms. Soares, a 79-year-old samba singer who has long been celebrated in Brazil. She uses the raspy but still commanding state of her voice to hurl songs about abuse and abusers, poverty and history, lust and violence. (The album package has thorough translations.) Ms. Soares is abetted by musicians from São Paulo who describe their music as “dirty samba”; they spike traditional samba with distorted guitars, pushy drums and unruly electronics that underline how indomitable Ms. Soares remains.
11. KANYE WEST “The Life of Pablo” (Def Jam) A grand, caustic album about grace: finding it, praying for it, falling from it. There remains no more adept fuser of the sacred and profane working in pop, and no one else who, time and again, will unflinchingly assess — at his own peril — the costs of audacity. (Read the review | Read the live review)
Kanye West, who made “The Life of Pablo.”
12. CHANCE THE RAPPER “Coloring Book”(self-released) In a turbulent year, Chance the Rapper preached the values of exuberance, of sweet nostalgia, of prayerful vigilance, of shocking jolts of love. (Read the review | Read the festival review)
13. STURGILL SIMPSON “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth” (Atlantic) A broken soul album from a hardened country singer. Tender yet serrated, Mr. Simpson finds unexpected fertile ground at the intersection of Bill Withers, Merle Haggard and Elvis Presley, replete with roadhouse guitar and spiky classic R&B horns. (Read the interview)
14. YG “Still Brazy” (Def Jam) and PAYROLL GIOVANNI & CARDO GOT WINGS “Big Bossin, Vol. 1” (self-released) All nostalgia is imagination of a sort, but not always the same kind. Here are two complementary interpretations of California rap history. For YG, who is from Compton, it’s the sound of his upbringing, thick with local hits and local quarrels. For the Detroit rapper Payroll Giovanni and the Texas producer Cardo Got Wings, it’s invention and faithful homage. (Read the review)
15. DRAKE “Views” (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic) and THE WEEKND“Starboy” (XO/Republic) Too big to fail. (In a good way.) (Honest.) (Read the Drake review | Read the Weeknd review)
(Read the review)
