Listening to albums is the best way to explore music: long-form musical compositions allow a listener to connect with an artist more deeply and experience their story in a more cohesive way. A good album isn’t just a collection of songs, it’s a progression of art that works better together than separately. To celebrate this idea, I selected a standout album from each month of 2022, January through April. This is the first edition of a three-part series, and by the end of the year, we will have identified 12 beautiful albums that define 2022.
January
FKA Twigs has never been one to bend to the expectations of genre. Her mixtape CAPRISONGS takes a turn from her critically-celebrated 2019 MAGDALENE, mixing elements of trap, bedroom pop, and cloud rap with Twigs’ signature haunting vocals and dynamic production. From the opener ‘ride the dragon’, Twigs makes it clear that she intends to create a sound that is inherently hers. The end result is rife with mania, feverish beats, and creative melodies in the best way possible. Songs like ‘oh my love’ and ‘darjeerling’ have major production payoffs as Twigs drives the song forward via her emotional vocalizations. Features from The Weeknd on ‘tears in the club’ and shygirl on ‘papi bones’ add even more diversity to the project, and the interludes and quips from Twigs throughout provide productive rests between swells of sound. Overall, CAPRISONGS is a glowing experimental project and another exciting push forward for FKA Twigs.
February
Beach House, the Baltimore-based duo of Alex Scaly and Victoria Legrand, is no novice at creating sprawling, world-bending albums. On Once Twice Melody, the artists reach a magnum opus that gleams like golden stars in the midnight sky. The record was released in four quarters, each a kind of chapter in a storybook, over the course of three months. Now, in its completed form, Once Twice Melody is an album of magnificent proportions, building upon the duo’s seven other albums in a convincing and cohesive movement. Each track unfurls as time goes on, building a story through dreamy vocals and crescendoing production elements. The track ‘Pink Funeral’ is an early-album highlight, casting a dream of sliding among galaxies and swan’s wings. ‘Runaway’ and ‘Masquerade’ reveal the heights that Scaly and Legrand can reach, and the concluding ‘Modern Love Stories’ proves their originality through haunting, yet glorious, melodies. Once Twice Melody is a triumph for Beach House as the duo continues to expand its influence on a greater and greater scale.
March
Multitude, the third full-length product from Belgian rapper Stromae, is nothing short of inspired. His deep tenor and curling vocalization create a striking constant that ties the album together. Even as the production, tempos, and melodies twist and turn around him, the French-speaking rapper remains solid, exploring his multifaceted musicality through a lens that is distinctly Stromae. This album is aptly named, as Stromae ties together a wide range of sounds and styles in a way reminiscent of his own identity. From the opening ‘Invaincu’, Stromae has secured his footing, building an empire around himself. Each track feels crucial, like 12 perfect puzzle pieces coming together to create a completed image. Stromae effortlessly glides from deep vocalizations to soaring tones, lacing up an album that, even for a non French-speaking person, portrays an extraordinarily clear idea of the man behind the art.
April
On five seconds flat, Lizzy McAlpine emerges as an industry staple sad girl with the talent to back it up. Her second studio album guides listeners into her own mind, her singing voice a beacon of soft magnitude. five seconds flat is as experimental as it is inspired by the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo, and McAlpine doesn’t shy away from vocal and compositional risks. McAlpine reaches to her innermost thoughts, of death, betrayal, love, and loss. On the haunting opener ‘doomsday’, McAlpine muses about the circumstances of her own death with the lyrics, “Pull the plug in September, I don’t want to die in June.” On songs like ‘erase me (ft. Jacob Collier)’ and ‘ceilings’, harmonies leap from the shadows to illuminate McAlpine’s story. The duet ‘reckless driver’ with Ben Kessler touches on the beauty and tragedy of dying with a lover, and the heartbreaking ‘firearm’ references a love so strong you can’t avoid inevitable betrayal. On the final track of this album, ‘orange show speedway’, McAlpine croons over a racing guitar, reminiscing on a lost love that she barely remembers. Lizzy McAlpine’s ‘five seconds flat’ is a victory in the sad girl singer-songwriter genre and is sure to launch McAlpine into the spotlight with a Phoebe Bridgers-like trajectory.