2021: The Albums

I have always been an albums guy. I got my first iPod when I was sixteen and by that time I had already cemented my listening habits by buying music ten LPs at a time through mail-order scams. I had a portable CD player with a simple digital display - you couldn’t see the title of the track, just the number, so sequence was vital to knowing what you were listening to at any given moment.

Streaming has of course changed all our listening habits. As playlists have replaced mixtapes and the shuffle button has moved to the fore, listening to a full album can be a subtle but refreshing shock to the system. And for me, the album will always be my favorite way of taking in music - it feels like a complete artistic statement in a way that playlists, singles, or even concerts rarely do.

And so, I’m excited to present this final end of the year list from The Crossover Appeal - the 25 best albums of the year. If you’ve been around with us since the beginning of the year you’ll know the tastes range pretty widely here, so there should be a little something for everyone here. But I promise, even if it seems like it’s a little left field, everything here is worthy of exploring at least a little bit. New Year’s is for discovery - so let’s dive in.

The List

25. Sensational - Erika de Casier

Sensational is a collection of intimate pop R&B tracks that slink from point to point, leading you on like a date that’s way way out of your league. Erika’s voice is a beguiling presence - never straining, always soft-spoken, sometimes barely whispered, and yet taking up all the space in the room. The instrumentation across the record often lies just this side of 80s softcore; sparse synth lines, plucked harps, hand drums, and programmed beats set back in a smoky haze. It’s a big, big mood from start to finish. But don’t let that fool you into thinking this record is just background tone setting, because it’s also full of hooky melodies and gorgeous grooves that demand your attention.

Key tracks:

Drama
No Butterflies, No Nothing
Someone to Chill With
Friendly

24. Palais d’argile - Feu! Chatterton

If you’ve ever watched a Wes Anderson film and struggled to jive with the quirky twee overdoes of his aesthetic, this album might explain Anderson’s popularity to you. Not to say that Palais d’argile is overly twee, it isn’t. More to say that listening to this record, really enfolded into its whole...deal, is the closest I’ve ever felt to being a character in one of Anderson’s strange, hermetically sealed worlds. And that’s not just due to the 70s lounge vibe Feu! Chatterton dabbles in throughout this record’s runtime, or to their Gainsbourg-esque posturing. Palais d’argile is a world unto itself, each song expanding and detailing in the landscape with impeccable pop production, earworm refrains, and piles of ornate instrumentation. It’s smooth, but in a slightly fussy way, endearing but undeniably suave, sincere but wry and witty, like watching a guy put his hair into perfect place or listening to someone tell you a joke that you find funny despite yourself. It’s a swinging chalet and a crisp white burgundy in aural form.

Key tracks:

Un monde nouveau
Avant qu’il n’y ait le monde
Libre
Laissons filer

23. Screen Violence - CHVRCHES

Though it’s toward the bottom of this list, I know that like many of their previous releases, this new CHVRCHES release will outlast most other albums from this year in terms of getting replayed. It might be the most listenable record of the year. Every track is pure candy to the ears, a shimmering tribute to synthpop confection. CHVRCHES are, at this point, an institution when it comes to this kind of catchy electronic pop music and its hard to imagine anyone else setting out a template for a record full of that music with more clarity of purpose than this one. It’s also an exorcism of sorts as frontwoman Lauren Mayberry leverages the sounds and tropes of 80s slasher horror to air out the abuses women suffer at the hands of Internet mobs. The final product is a record that works like a virus, getting inside your brain and infecting every neuron with the melodies of each pristine track. Some of their best work ever.

Key tracks:

He Said, She Said
Violent Delights
How Not To Drown
Nightmares

22. Mercurial World - Magdalena Bay

Take the moody, hip-hop inflected electronics of mid 2010s groups like Purity Ring or The Naked and Famous, soak it in the last five years of hyperpop evolution a la Charli XCX, Sophie, and Arca, and you’ll wind up with something like this shocker of a record from newcomers Magdalena Bay. And what a delicious debut LP it is. Funky, silky, and fun, it’s a perfectly sequenced string of undeniable bops. The duo layers Mica Tenenbaum’s sugary vocals atop a lush synthetic soundscape that draws indiscriminately across the decades of electronic pop production for inspiration. It’s a live wire from start to finish.

Key tracks:

Mercurial World
Secrets (Your Fire)
Something for 2
Hysterical Us

21. Fire - The Bug

So, I’m the idiot apparently, because The Bug has been making his unique brand of industrial dub/hip hop/dancehall music for more than two decades and I’m only hopping on board in 2021. Hopefully more people can rectify the mistake I’ve been making by listening to this incredible record, Fire. A comprehensive and harrowing journey through a dystopian, pandemic-addled landscape, it’s smoke and ash and incredibly sick production throughout. An extensive list of guests lend their voices to the journey with highlights coming from Flowdan, Moor Mother, and Daddy Freddy. This record hit me in a similar way as Death Grips’ groundbreaking The Money Store; explosive, colorful, and furious. One of the year’s most essential album experiences.

Key tracks:

Pressure (feat. Flowdan)
War (feat. Nazamba)
Vexed (feat. Moor Mother)
Ganja Baby (feat. Daddy Freddy)

20. Really From - Really From

The first time you listen to this record, it’s like opening a present only to find another present inside, a Russian nesting doll of sounds, styles, and approaches that somehow coheres by the end into a triumph of emo-inflected indie rock. Merging jazzy brass numbers with mathy guitar riffs, and the surprising complementarity of Chris Lee-Rodriguez’s and Michi Tassey’s vocal delivery, Really From have created a vibrant and original sound that stands out from the year’s thick competition of emo, emo punk, and post punk releases. It doesn’t hurt that their exploration of immigrant identity is as sharp as any of their playing and timely to boot. It’s a rich, textured listen all the way through that I gave me new things to love each time I hit play.

Key tracks:

Quirk
Yellow Fever
Try Lingual
I’m From Here

19. Draw Down the Moon - Foxing

I’ve checked in on Foxing with every new release and while I’ve always liked what they’ve put out to varying degrees, it hasn’t been until this year’s excellent Draw Down the Moon that I’ve fully connected with one of their projects. It feels a little like a throwback album, bringing their early 00s indie influences to the fore. You’ll hear shades of Modest Mouse, Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire, and Fleet Foxes as you make your way through, but Foxing manages to avoid sounding derivative thanks to the strength of this record’s songwriting. Each song feels distinct, born totally of its own purposes, and along with that, they also feel terribly present in our long pandemic moment. It’s a record that bursts at the seams with crystal-clear storytelling, impactful not necessarily for its twists and turns, but for the sharp memories it summons up at a moment’s notice.

Key tracks:

737
Go Down Together
Bialystok
At Least We Found the Floor

18. Fuck Art - The Dirty Nil

While it may not be my favorite record of the year, I have no doubt that The Dirty Nil’s nu-pop punk masterpiece, Fuck Art, is the most fun you can have listening to music in 2021. This is a record that not only resuscitates the sounds of late 90s and early 00s power pop, but is itself an argument for why that music was so compelling in the first place. From the opening track, “Doom Boy”, a song about wanting to hold hands while listening to Slayer in your mom’s minivan, to the penultimate track, “To the Guy Who Stole My Bike”, where the band indulges in bratty, hilarious self-pity, this is a record that recalls the intensities of being young and angry, and holds those memories close with an affectionate smile. For a millennial emo like myself, this is a shockingly sweet record about loving who you were and, in light of that, loving who you’ve become. All that and it’s a damn good time too.

Key tracks:

Doom Boy
Done With Drugs
Hello Jealousy
To the Guy Who Stole My Bike

17. New Long Leg - Dry Cleaning

Listening to Dry Cleaning’s debut record, New Long Leg feels like hanging out with a group of people who  are way too cool for you, but they don’t seem to mind - in fact they like that you laugh at their snidest jokes and seem to think you’re pretty cool too. It’s lit cigarette of an album, long, dry, and sexy in a student film kind of way. Post punk/new wave-ish instrumentation keeps things rolling along while frontwoman Florence Shaw narrates slice-of-life vignettes about post-post-modern living. Some songs flow by like catching snippets of half a conversation, as in “Unsmart Lady” whereas others hit more like outsider stand-up routines, as on “Her Hippo” and “Every Day Carry”. It’s a record of songs that feel both meticulously crafted and casually tossed off like it was made on a bored weekend by a bunch of art school friends. It’s 2021’s funniest and cleverest albums and certainly one of its most promising debuts.

Key tracks:

Scratchcard Lanyard
Her Hippo
John Wick
Every Day Carry

16. No Place - Danielle Durack

I play guitar and sing to de-stress myself. My guitar sits next to me at my home work desk and I pick it up whenever I need a bit of self soothing - doesn’t matter much what songs I play, it’s just the fact of feeling out someone else’s songwriting that feels good. Listening to Danielle Durack’s new record, No Place carries with it the same kind of comfort. If you’ve heard any number of indie-ish singer/songwriter records from the past thirty years, you’ll feel right at home. To an extent, the familiarity is the point. Durack’s music offers that comfortable baseline of verse-chorus-verse-bridge with the potential to occasionally blossom into blood-red heartache. And it’s in those moments of bloom that Durack really makes the most of her opportunities. The full band explosion on “Broken Wings”, the final narrative conclusion in “Billy”, and the quiet solo vocal performance on “There Goes My Heart” - it all speaks to an artist with full command over the emotional tenor of her craft. In a year full of big singer/songwriter hitters, including some on this very list, don’t let Danielle Durack’s new record get lost in the shuffle.

Key tracks:

Broken Wings
Billy
There Goes My Heart
Eggshells

15. Vince Staples - Vince Staples

Vince returned in 2021 with his leanest, most focused project to date. At only a little over twenty-minutes long you’d be forgiven for wondering if it counts as a full LP, but I would encourage you to stop caring about that and just listen to one of the year’s best hip hop projects. As always, Kenny Beats brings some inventive, at times minimalist beats to the table, and as always, Vince brings his unique voice to bear on a sequence of ice cold, autobiographical bars. But where Vince has always worked in the mode of being a prophetic voice from the streets of Long Beach, the tone here has shifted into a dire, plain-spoken register that even his darkest material rarely approaches. On this album, Staples’ jokey, witty persona drops away almost entirely, leaving bare the harshest realities of growing up Black in Section 8. It’s surprising to find after all these years that Vince might be at his most effective when he stops the rapid-fire quotables and works in this near-documentary mode.

Key tracks:

ARE YOU WITH THAT?
LAW OF AVERAGES
SUNDOWN TOWN
LIL FADE

14. Home Video - Lucy Dacus

Lucy Dacus is one of the most personal artists working in the indie singer-songwriter scene today and Home Video is the kind of searing, specific work that leaves a mark. You may have heard stories about Lucy workshopping the album’s bitter heart “Thumbs” on the road for years and that kind of care is evident across the album's entire runtime. It’s music as creative non-fiction, working almost entirely on the strength of Lucy’s voice as a writer. Which is not to say that Lucy’s musical voice is lacking at all, quite the opposite. Her singing has never sounded clearer, richer, or more dynamic, and her strength as a songwriter seems only to have grown as well. Each song, though clearly belonging to its neighbors, feels uniquely formed, demanding you reckon with it on its own merits. And though the album does feel cohesive, it also feels like any track could be yanked out of sequence, played on its own, and would feel complete. Vivid, heart wrenching, and emotional, Lucy Dacus has done something really special here.

Key tracks:

VBS
Thumbs
Going Going Gone
Brando

13. Cavalcade - black midi

After their chaotic, buzzy debut, Schlagenheim, the boys from black midi could have gone off in any musical direction and it would have captured my attention. Their wild blend of math rock, garage aesthetics, and virtuosic, technical playing was both exhilarating and intimidating. With Cavalcade they’ve expanded on that foundation to mythic heights. It’s an album that immediately shouts at you to pay attention with your whole body and dares you to look away. And you might, because truth be told, in one go this forty minute, eight song odyssey can get exhausting in one sitting, but for me it’s an exhaustion worth experiencing over and over again. There’s an extraordinary sense of place that they are able to conjure across this record, reminding me of earlier work from The Mars Volta in some ways. It’s an explosive and intoxicating commitment to their own need to explore, to push the boundaries of what rock music is doing right now. And while, yeah, that’s a lot of pretentious-sounding art rock talk, they’ve also developed a surprising attention to melody and even hook writing that wasn’t present on their debut. Terribly excited to see what black midi does next.

Key tracks:

John L
Marlene Dietrich
Hogwash and Balderdash
Ascending Forth

12. Dessner: Impermanence/Disintegration Bryce Dessner, Australian String Quartet, & Sydney Dance Company

While his brother Aaron spent the year collaborating with the likes of Justin Vernon and Taylor Swift, Bryce Dessner (who, along with Aaron, are best known for their work in The National) continued to expand his talents as a composer, working in both contemporary classical music and film soundtracks. With Impermanence/Disintegration, Bryce has produced one of his most gorgeous compositions to date. Urgent from the get go, this record is lush, focused, and full of incredible movement. It’s an expansive sounding album that, in a year where we once again spent so much time inside with only ourselves, helps to push the walls out a bit, and despite its at times anxiety-provoking string passages, feels like a grounding listen in a flood of stimulation.

Key tracks:

Alarms
Alarms 2
Emergency
Impermanence

11. Local Valley - José González

José González blessed us with his return in 2021 and I couldn’t be more grateful. His work always has a profound, humane quality to it and Local Valley, his first new solo LP in six years reaches out like the warm handshake of an old friend. Singing in three languages across record, Swedish, Spanish, and English, González creates an intimate and energetic atmosphere with his beautiful playing and soft, flexible voice. The production foregrounds the simple directness of González's songwriting approach but also incorporates natural sounds like the twittering of birds or the gusting breeze into the mix, leaving you with the impression of a porous barrier between yourself and the man playing beautiful music for you on the other side of the headphones. This is one of the year’s richest, most vibrant listens and should be something everyone carries with them forward into 2022.

Key tracks:

El Invento
Head On
Valle Local
Line of Fire

10. Wary + Strange - Amythyst Kiah

As soon as that snare kicks through the speakers on “Black Myself” and her voice blasts in after it, you know Amythyst Kiah is not here to fuck around. This is rootsy blues through and through, proud, heartfelt, and ferociously intelligent. Songs like “Wild Turkey” and “Firewater” are immediately arresting, and on my first few listens through the tracklist I almost got hung up on them, failing to notice the depth of reflection that runs throughout the rest of the record. It’s a grief-stricken album that kicks off in defiance but track-by-track falls into disrepair, fear, and disintegration. It is, in other words, a tragic listen, but it’s also full of warmth, care, and even celebration in the face of exhaustion. Bookended as it is with “Soapbox” and “Soapbox - Reprise”, Kiah’s music is about the refusal of condescension, the rejection of being talked down to or diminished, and so, even after the destruction on display in songs like “Opaque” and “Tender Organs” Wary + Strange remains defiant as its first raucous lines.

Key tracks:

Black Myself
Wild Turkey
Fancy Drones (Fracture Me)
Tender Organs

9. The Color Blu(e) - Blu

If it weren’t for a certain rapper from the UK who also dropped a record this year, Blu’s latest outing would certainly be the year’s most fully realized hip hop record. On The Color Blu(e), the LA rapper continues to demonstrate why he’s been one of the most important voices in hip hop for the past decade and a half. This record is a sample-head’s dream, drawing from a vibrant mix of live jazz instrumentation and classic jazz and blues samples (some of which surely must have been terribly difficult to get cleared), Blu floats around the off-kilter beats like a boxer, bars hitting like jabs and uppercuts coming from every angle. It’s boastful and incisive, witty and dead serious, energetic and soulful; it’s a record that picks a theme and wrings it out for everything it’s worth. And yet, it's all so deftly integrated that it’s easy to just throw on the stereo and vibe, setting aside the craft of it, and ride along with Blu’s flow until, before you know it, the record’s over. The Color Blu(e) is a smooth and shining testament to the power of hip hop and its capacity to bring historical struggle into the current moment with both the pen and the decks.

Key tracks:

I Am Blu(e)
People Call Me Blu(e)
You Ain’t Never Been Blu(e)
We Are Darker Than Blu(e)

8. Space 1.8 - Nala Sinephro

Apologies to Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders, whose extraordinary Promises will be the ambient jazz and electronic record topping many other end of the year lists in 2021, but this incredible debut from Nala Sinephro is the record that stuck to my ribs. Eclectic and intimate, the soundscapes Sinephro crafts here with her electronic production, delicate harp, and lustrous jazz ensemble sound like the backdrop to your own spiritual healing. These are esoteric compositions, no doubt, but they’re always surprisingly melodic, bursting with aural themes and movement. Listening to Space 1.8 with the lights dim and the headphones on feels like sensory deprivation or cryo sleep in that it takes you somewhere else entirely and relieves you of the burden of having to worry about your own body and mind for a little while. And let me tell you, that’s a load off.

Key tracks:

Space 1
Space 4
Space 5
Space 6

7. Friends That Break Your Heart - James Blake

A friend remarked to me that this was a mad salty album, and I guess she’s right. There is more bitterness on display in James Blake’s latest album than there’s been in a long time. And while there has always been some degree of mournful regret in Blake’s music, here it’s curdled into something more damaged and entrenched. It’s like coming back to a friend after a few years absence and noticing they can’t smile as wide as they used to, their conversations feel somehow cagey, and their jokey self-pity has lost its jokiness. At the same time, Blake’s music has never been more listenable than it is here - his powers as a tuneful vocalist and songwriter have never been clearer and there are a handful of tracks here that could easily compete with the best Blake has ever penned. It’s remarkable the number of ways Blake has found to approach his subject matter here - it is marked by hip hop production, deep house, singer/songwriter piano balladry, and murky string arrangements. The guest appearances are well placed - see especially SZA’s visit on “Coming Back” - but this is wholly James Blake's album, and his talents are center stage the whole way. The end result is one of his most complete and cohesive feeling projects in a long time.

Key tracks:

Life is Not The Same
Coming Back (feat. SZA)
Say What You Will
Friends That Break Your Heart

6. The Turning Wheel - Spellling

Definitely the witchiest pop record of the year, The Turning Wheel is the most transportive thing I listened to in 2021. It’s a bubble of experimental pop atmosphere rife with shrewd, tuneful songwriting and pitch perfect production, and at its core stands Tia Cabral herself, whose precise, rasping voice leads you through this fairy garden of dramatic compositions. It’s a weird record, in that you might feel it’s a bright, sparkling ray of sunshine and a dark, foreboding book of prophecies at the same time, depending on your mood and what snippets of lyric hit you in that given moment. Yet, despite how weird it is I truly believe you could pull most of the tracks off this record, throw them alone on any indie pop playlist, and they’d be at home there on the strength of Cabral’s melody-sense. Album opener “Little Deer” has me singing “Dead of winter, dead of eve, little deer will marry me / tender lovers of the earth, turn us back into the dirt” like it’s an Ariana track - that’s how powerful the pop spell that Spellling casts. I can’t say enough good things about this record and how much everyone ought to give it a shot. It’s a special thing that’s unlike anything else I’ve ever heard.

Key tracks:

Little Deer
The Future
Boys at School
Queen of Wands

5. GLOW ON - Turnstile

The first time I heard “BLACKOUT”, the third single from this new Turnstile record, I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The roaring punk riffs and hardcore beats along with Brendan Yates’ blistering vocals instantly took me back to being 15 years old in my first mosh pit. And that feeling never lets up across the full 15-song track list. I don’t know how to say it other than, holy shit, these boys got it right. Every song is bona fide rager, even the ones that somehow draw on dream pop and hazy bedroom emo for influence. There are samba beats on this thing that weirdly harken back to old school Offspring tunes, there are gang vocals that sound straight off a late 80s hardcore punk offering, and there are production flourishes that could have come from a SoundCloud bedroom mumbler. It’s an insanely addictive record that works so well it feels like a miracle.

Key tracks:

BLACKOUT
UNDERWATER BOI
WILD WRLD
T.L.C. (TURNSTILE LOVE CONNECTION)

4. By The Time I Get to Phoenix - Injury Reserve

It’s hard to know what to say about a record as special as this one. Sonically challenging, and brutally dim in its storytelling, By The Time I Get to Phoenix is startling document of pain and loss in the moment. It’s a sparking livewire of an album that strings you out with its abstract and industrial production while delivering layered, impressionistic bars stacked across each song, arriving to your ears like the last, fragmented words of a dying man. Listening to this record is a raw experience - it feels like being closer than you wanted to be to someone else’s heartbreak, and it lets you sit in the awkward second-hand grief of it for the duration with very few respites. And yet, it is also one of the most inventive, forward-thinking rap albums I think I’ve ever heard and is almost certain to be a touchstone for experimental hip hop production for years to come, joining the likes of Flying Lotus’ Cosmogramma, J Dilla’s Donuts, and Death Grips’ The Money Store. Even now, having listened to this album over and over, I’m marveling at how well Injury Reserve deploys these disjunctive, harsh sounds to convey such personal and intimate storytelling. It’s a hell of a thing.

Key tracks:

Footwork in a Forest Fire
Smoke Don’t Clear
Top Picks for You
Knees

3. HEY WHAT - Low

Start with nothing more complicated or less beautiful than a man and a woman singing gospel harmonies together, build harsh walls of distortion around them, add droning, lengthy instrumentals, and an apocalyptic soundstage, and you’ll have arrived somewhere close to this massive masterpiece by slowcore legends Low. This is the kind of record that draws feelings out of your chest you thought you'd dealt with. It’s the kind of music that surfaces paranoias long-buried and fears long undreamt of, but then comforts you and lays you back to bed, promising another day when the sun rises, even if it won’t be the kind of day you hoped for. Despite the moments of harshness, there is tremendous beauty on this record, the kind of beauty that sears your eyes and heats your skin. It has the scale of skyscraper and the timbre of a collapsing cave, and it asserts that these enormous sounds and feelings are held within the hearts of human beings. It’s a mystical and cosmic album, mysterious and deep but also immediate and tactile. As HEY WHAT develops across the 45 minute runtime, it morphs and reforms constantly, and you know you’re unlikely to ever hear something like this again.

Key tracks:

White Horses
Disappearing
Days Like These
More

2. Mother - Cleo Sol

I do not know what people are seeing in other music that Cleo Sol is not riding easily and firmly atop every neo-soul and contemporary R&B ranking at the end of the year. There’s a sequence of three songs that closes out the first half of Mother that rivals any sequence of three songs I’ve ever heard. It goes from a pleading cry for love and support in “Build Me Up” to an affirming reply of affection in “Sunshine” to an urgent prayer for the future “We Need You”. And in that succession Cleo makes one of the year’s strongest statements of artistic intention. This is music-as-community building. In college, I went to a church that talked about the role hymns play in tying people to each other. They aren’t so much about teaching or even praising as they are about drawing the people in the congregation closer together in mutual affirmation. That’s what Cleo Sol’s Mother is doing, but at such a bigger scale. The warmth that pours out of this record is a stunning flood of belonging. You’ll be listening comfortably and then suddenly you’ll hear Cleo’s voice come through, singing “Know you are loved / Even if you don’t love yourself” and you’ll find yourself rushing to the phone to call whoever you haven’t said “I love you” for too long. And it all works as well as it does because Cleo Sol’s voice is a honey-drenched balm, quiet and strong. Her songwriting picks all the right moments to slow down, speed up, and blow out. I can’t imagine a more perfect record to put on when you’re feeling lost, lonely, and liable as I think we all have felt these past two years.

Key tracks:

Promises
Sunshine
Music
Spirit

1. Sometimes I Might Be Introvert - Little Simz

Little Simz released not only 2021’s best hip hop record, but 2021’s best record period.

Albums this ambitious come along rarely, and albums as ambitious as this one that are executed to this level of precision and passion are absolute unicorns. As I reviewed all the music I listened to over the course of the year, I was surprised to find how much vulnerability artists were putting out in their work. Vulnerability in the midst of uncertainty, grief, anger, and tragedy is of course a vital part of creativity, but no one disclosed as much and found as much strength in that disclosure as Little Simz did on Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. Across 19 tracks Little Simz finds a million ways to examine herself, her own losses and insecurities, and to then pass along what at she found as wisdom and connection in storytelling. Her flows are of course perfection, and her taste in beat arrangement is creative and comprehensive, but it’s the commitment that SIMBI puts on display from start to finish that really makes this the most important album of 2021. Simz does her share of boasting on this record, but it’s all 100% earned. Her pedigree and her skills are above reproach and every single track proves it. She draws broadly from 90s hip hop influences, the UK conscious scene, Nigerian drum music, Afro-Caribbean compositions, and more, blending it all into something singular and expressive of her unique vision. It’s an album that honors its roots while pushing the genre forward, setting a new standard for what MCs can accomplish in the genre. Full of fire and compassion in equal parts, Little Simz has given us something truly special with this release. When she says “I’m the version of me I always imagined when I was younger,” it’s a beautiful statement of intentions fulfilled. I’m just grateful she’s shared that imagination with the rest of us.

Key tracks:

Introvert
I Love You, I Hate You
Point and Kill
How Did You Get Here