Welcome to the first part of a selection of favourite albums of 2022, many of which continue to come to terms with pandemic, climate change and other current issues but also show how music can continue to innovate, surprise and entertain. Best of selections, or top 50 countdowns? We don’t really see the point of those here, and even to pare down from the hundreds of releases is a challenging and certainly imperfect goal, but the music speaks for itself and many more can be found, not only on the Albums section, but also others as Songs of the Day on New Songs, which includes many more as well as one highlighted song, EPs and other releases.
Other examples of shorter alternative albums? See also the extraordinary Stromae album, Multitude, and the song Fils De Joie, featuring harpsichord, chanson, and hip hop, as well as its video, from the recent third album, Multitude, by the innovative Belgian artist of Rwandan Tutsi descent, Paul Van Haver. Or perhaps Cocteau Twins singer Liz Fraser’s EP under the name Sun’s Signature, and the song Golden Air.
There’s always more and you can explore Part 2 here.
Grace Cummings: Storm Queen
A truly outstanding voice and second album to match on this second LP by the Australian singer-songwriter and actress, her primal growl and guttural power combined with full-bodied ethereal purity in this gorgeous folk release, flavoured with elements of psychedelia and country.
Yard Act: The Overload
Following various singles including Fixer Upper, a set of newer, sharp, funny, talky, wordy and witty post-punk-funk numbers in this debut LP by the Leeds quartet, filled with ironic observation about Britishness, echoing some delivery elements of the Fall and Sleaford Mods.
Lady Wray: Piece of Me
A wonderful third album by American singer Nicole Monique Wray of rich, high-quality retro soul decorated by her soaring voice, 70s Detroit-style grooves and emotional songs that carry you with their energy and sheer class.
Imarhan: Aboogi
Mesmerically beautiful third LP by the Algerian tuareg desert quintet, all atwirl with superb vocals, clever layering, intricate guitar work, and a somehow wonderfully entwined guest vocal appearance by Gruff Rhys.
Cate Le Bon: Pompeii
The brilliant Welsh musician’s follow-up to 2019’s Reward is a low-key, slower paced affair, simmering with lockdown’s solitudinous lyrics, sparse keyboards, spongy bass, sax and little brass blasts, with echoes of Bowie and Talk Talk.
Mitski: Laurel Hell
The Japanese-American indie artist Mitski Miyawaki’s newest LP is her most mainstream pop release to date, with big 80s piano ripples and echoes of Abba and even Hall & Oates, but also brilliantly laced with dark images and emotions laid bare.
Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
Brooklyn’s Adrianne Lenker, Max Oleartchik, Buck Meek, and James Krivchenia return with a fifth and landmark double album of gorgeous, intelligent, campfire-flavour, free-flowing songwriting, mixing folk, pop, rock and country.
Hurray For The Riff Raff: Life on Earth
Wonderfully engaging eighth LP by New Orleans’ Alynda Segarra of “nature punk” electronica and lo-fi indie, with songs variously intimate, grand, sensual, and emotionally powerful, taking a hands-on, eco-aware vivid walk through our planet.
Nilüfer Yanya: Painless
With a clever, pared back mix of guitars, beats, synths and distinctive vocals, the Londoner’s follow-up to 2019’s Miss Universe has a more focused musical identity and style, in this excellent set of variously twisted love songs.
The Weather Station: How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars
Nothing can compare to last year’s superbly crafted LP Ignorance, but Toronto’s Tamara Lindeman returns with a still powerful, if more pared-back LP of delicacy and intimacy of voice, piano and minimal orchestration in songs recorded over three days.
CMAT: If My Wife New I'd Be Dead
Wonderful debut by the Irish pop-country singer with a great voice – Dublin’s Ciara Mary Alice Thompson has the melodies of Dolly, the panache of Glen Campbell, the range of Kate Bush, but above all a searing wit powered by self-deprecation and a caustically humorous instinct for tragedy.
Bodega: Broken Equipment
Excellent second album, following 2018’s debut Endless Scroll, by the punchy Brooklyn post-punk band, packed with sharp lyrics, driving rhythms and riffs, with a central theme of how we are defined and shaped by outside influences and perceptions, from city environment to advertising.
The Mysterines: Reeling
Dark, loud, and powerful, the much anticipated debut LP by the Liverpool rock band finally lands with a set of searing guitar riffs, stadium-filling sounds and an electrifying lyrical sizzle provided the vocal range of frontwoman Lia Metcalfe.
Midlake: For The Sake of Bethel Woods
Very welcome fifth LP from the Texas folk-rockers after nine-year gap, again with Eric Pulido taking on lead vocals, but a more settled sound than 2013’s Antiphon, and a dedication to the deceased father of keyboardist and flautist Jesse Chandler.
Ibibio Sound Machine: Electricity
Superbly energised fourth LP by the afro-funk London band fronted by vocalist Eno Williams, who utilises her Nigerian heritage and the Ibibio language, fused with guitars, electronica, Brazilian rhythms and influences from Fela Kuti to Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder.
Aldous Harding: Warm Chris
The fourth LP by the New Zealand singer-songwriter maintains her enigmatic oddness, this experimental folk-pop broadening and instrumental range, but also her voice, restlessly morphing into several personas across these 10 songs.
Rosalía: Motomami
Entrancing third LP by the 29-year-old Catalonian star singer with a voice of huge range, mixing flamenco with reggaeton, hip hop, R&B and lush pop, feminism and food, heartbreak, the staccato with the smooth, and influences from MIA to Niña Pastori and José Mercé.
Hannah Peel and Paraorchestra: The Unfolding
A beautiful conceptual collaboration between the Northern Irish composer and the Bristol orchestral ensemble of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians mixing analogue, digital and assistive instruments, the music evoking human links to nature and shared beginnings in the universe.
Warmduscher: At The Hotspot
New sleazy mischief and hedonistic humour at the hands of the British krautrock-style disco-pop funksters fronted by the engaging American drawl of Clams Baker Jr – the gang with something that certainly is, as billed, crunchy on the outside, smooth on the inside.
Miriam Elhajli: The Uncertainty of Signs
A remarkable release of rare beauty traversing genes with the outstanding voice, guitar, other strings and more by the New York-based folk singer, composer, and musicologist richly mixing traditions of her Venezuelan, Moroccan and North American heritage.
Alabaster DePlume: Gold – Go Forward In The Courage of Your Love
The nom de plume of London-based Mancunian jazz artist Angus Fairbairn returns with a mesmeric selection of 19 numbers, his intimate jittery saxophone embellished with a wider range of acoustic sounds, choral backing, and offbeat and inspiringly strange spoken word.
Father John Misty: Chloë and the Next 20th Century
Lavishly orchestrated, marrying the ironic and the romantic, filled with stories and profound lines, Josh Tillman’s theatrical fifth LP is perhaps his finest yet, a fusion of the cinematic, jazz, swing, country, and folk-pop.
Kae Tempest: The Line Is A Curve
An emotionally candid, tender, vulnerable and quietly declamatory fourth album by the writer-all-rounder, mixing hip-hop and spoken word with electronica and pop, with some nicely chosen guest appearances.
Jack White: Fear of the Dawn
Full-on and high-octane, there’s a frantic buzz-guitar frenzy, urgency and energy to White’s new LP, with songs about difficulty of relationships, but also a me-against-the-world sense of as if the world might indeed end when the night ends. It was followed up three months later by the more acoustic Entering Heaven Alive.
Wet Leg: Wet Leg
Their catchy, cute, cheeky debut single Chaise Longue made them the indie darlings of 2021, but the debut LP by Isle of Wight pair Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers proves they have the chops for similar magic.
Daniel Rossen: You Belong There
A mesmerically rich, beautifully swirling fusion of acoustic and flamenco guitar, symphonic folk, classic and jazz by the Grizzly Bear guitarist and vocalist whose voice has the sensitivity, haunting warmth and honesty of Elliott Smith, in this delicious solo debut.
Lucius: Second Nature
A sparkling mix of retro disco and 80s dance-pop with echoes of Abba by the American quartet, but also a dash of tragic country by front duo vocalists and co-songwriters Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig who capture many emotions from some recent experiences – motherhood and divorce.
Poppy Ajudha: The Power In Us
Powerful indeed, in voice and message, on the political, social and personal, and after five or more years of singles and EPs, the debut LP by the British singer-songwriter who fuses soul, dubstep, jazz and pop.
Fontaines D.C.: Skinty Fia
The Dublin indie band’s third album comes, alongside the powerful, gritty songwriting, with an expanded sonic identity – guitars atmospherically expressing the darker and unnerving, with some shades of the Cure.
Dana Gavanski: When It Comes
Gorgeous second folk-pop LP by the London-based Canadian-Serbian singer-songwriter, decorated with perfectly weighted hooks and measured arrangements, pure of voice and with pace that’s both intricate but minimal, like a ticking clock.
Oumou Sangaré: Timbuktu
Superlative ninth LP by the Malian megastar, whose songs fuse the bright, beautiful, bluesy and West African traditional with strong social and political commentary framed with her fabulous voice, and finger-picking guitars, koras and kamele ngoni.
Sharon Van Etten: We've Been Going About This All Wrong
Powerful, passionate, personal and one of her best yet, this sixth album by the New Jersey singer-songwriter has hugely relevant themes, her songs addressing how we might protect the things most precious to us from destructive forces beyond our control.
The Smile: A Light For Attracting Attention
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner join forces in an album of vivid, eerie, ghostly beauty, packed with fabulous guitar and bass riffs and rhythms, reminiscent of cinematic work as well as In Rainbows.
Kendrick Lamar: Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
The Pulitzer Prize-winner’s first album for five years is a double LP magnus opus of mind-bogglingly rapid, candid wordplay, an assortment of jazz, rock, classical and more, with so much to unpack, but further cements his place as hip hop’s leading innovator.
Angel Olsen: Big Time
Majestic, slow-paced and emotionally powerful, an outstanding country-tinged dark folk dream-pop sixth LP by the American singer-songwriter inspired by liberation and grief – coming out to her aged parents in 2021 very shortly before their deaths.
Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul: Topical Dancer
Super-sharp electro-pop by the Ghent-based duo, packed with crisp, inventive sounds created in Soulwax’s Deewee studio and clever lyrics about race issues, political correctness and cultural identity.
Honorable mentions:
There are so many other great releases from 2022 to be discovered and enjoyed. Check out more on our Albums pages including:
FKA twigs: CAPRISONGS
Silverbacks: Archive Material
AURORA: The Gods We Can Touch
EELS: Extreme Witchcraft
Los Bitchos: Let the Festivities Begin!
Black Country, New Road: Ants From Up There
Heal & Harrow: Heal & Harrow
Shamir: Heterosexuality
Beach House: Once Twice Melody
Sea Power: Everything Was Forever
OKI: Tonkori In The Moonlight
Melt Yourself Down: Pray For Me I Don't Fit In
Carson McHone: Still Life
SASAMI: Squeeze
Kojey Radical: Reason To Smile
Sondre Lerche: Avatars of Love
Red Hot Chilli Peppers: Unlimited Love
Spiritualized: Everything Was Beautiful
Kathryn Joseph: For You Who Are Wronged
Bob Vylan: Bob Vylan Presents The Price of Life
Toro y Moi: MAHAL
Soft Cell: Happiness Not Included
Ibeyi: Spell 31
Obongjayar: Some Nights I Dream of Doors
Elvis Costello and the Imposters: The Boy Named If
Bas Jan: Baby U Know
Wasuremono: Let's Talk, Pt. 2
Anaïs Mitchell: Anaïs Mitchell
Half Man Half Biscuit: The Voltarol Years
Miraculous Mule: Old Bones, New Fire
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