The Best and Worst Albums of Q1 2022

With the unending barrage of horrendous news coming at us from all angles in 2022, it’s comforting to know that for every unfortunate or disappointing event that takes place in the music world, there’s a much more pleasing one to balance it out. Valerie may have left Sweet Trip, but Florida Georgia Line are on an indefinite hiatus. Hulu announced a documentary on XXXTentacion, but A. G. Cook announced a new PC Music compilation. Kanye may be becoming a more indefensible person by the day, but his Donda 2 livestream was a monumental and hilarious failure. In keeping with that perfect balance, here are three great albums and three grating albums that dropped in the first quarter of this year.

BEST: Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up There

It’s quite possible that the discourse surrounding Black Country, New Road’s second album (and final release with outgoing lead vocalist Isaac Wood) has become tired by this point. But you can largely put that down to the exponential amount of emotion – both in the album’s lyrics and the context surrounding it – that there was and still is to unpack. If a throughline were to be drawn, however, it could be said that this album is a bittersweet farewell: to failed romance and family members, but also to the act of songwriting itself, and to a relationship with a devoted fan base whose appraisals and expectations may have become too exhausting to handle. Musically, it often feels like a more brooding and less doe-eyed Sufjan Stevens or Arcade Fire record, with jagged guitar lines offsetting delicate saxophone and violin melodies. The arrangements are nonetheless gorgeous and almost always lead to jaw-dropping catharses. Seemingly simple touches like the prolonged pauses in ‘Mark’s Theme,’ or the group vocals at the end of ‘The Place Where He Inserted the Blade’ – an early but strong contender for song of the year – are powerful enough by themselves to get the waterworks flowing. Though it can be overwhelming at times, especially in its final leg, Ants From Up There is essential listening, and closes out the first chapter of an infinitely exciting new band in near-perfect fashion.

WORST: Bastille – Give Me the Future

Seemingly hellbent on carving themselves a more significant place in pop history than just being ‘The Guys Who Did the “ay ay oh ay oh” Song,’ Bastille’s latest album is an attempt at capturing the pervasive sense of anxiety and uncertainty that goes hand-in-hand with modern living, as well as the escapism provided by technology and, more specifically, virtual reality. It’s easy to empathise with and relate to singer Dan Smith’s perturbed musings on technology dependence, deceptive politicians and, of course, ‘fake news,’ but he seems less concerned with developing any novel or insightful ideas about these issues than with rattling off cultural buzzwords (“Feel like we danced into a nightmare / We’re living 1984”). The music here is equally nondescript, largely boiling down to mild and uninspired synth-led tunes that only occasionally stand out, albeit for all the wrong reasons (e.g. unpleasant use of vocoder or autotune, cluttered mixing). The best thing this album has going for it is the spoken word piece Riz Ahmed delivers on ‘Promises,’ who manages to represent the album’s dystopian themes through a relationship narrative in a pretty insightful and layered fashion, before Smith does the exact same thing on the following track to much lesser effect. Fans of the band, milquetoast synthpop and/or bad Black Mirror episodes will probably get something out of this album, but if none of the above appeal to you, it’s best to skip it. 

BEST: Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

As good as their previous material was, Big Thief have never been a particularly ambitious-sounding band. Rather, their charm has come from the sense of rawness that’s consistent throughout their discography. This is to say that if it weren’t for the brilliance of frontwoman Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting, you’d think the band were completely making up their songs as they recorded them. It’s indicative of their new album’s quality, then, that despite its more expansive sound and successful ventures into multiple genres other than their usual folk rock wheelhouse, they still retain that in-the-moment magic. From the opening track, ‘Change,’ the enchanting intimacy of the album is immediately apparent, thanks in no small part to Lenker’s delicate voice and vivid lyricism. Even on more energetic tracks like ‘Little Things,’ her passionate screams as well as the wrong notes heard in guitarist Buck Meek’s erratic solos make you feel like you’re witness to a private jam session, and it’s simply impossible to not be following the song wherever it may go. While it may appear to be an odd comparison, the allure of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is similar to that of Talking Heads’ 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense: even in its more poignant moments, it never stops reminding you how intoxicatingly fun it is to play in a band with your friends.

WORST: Kim Petras – Slut Pop 

TW: Sexual assault

Though it’s actually an EP, and its brevity may make its inclusion on this list questionable, very few releases from the last few months have been as contextually controversial and subsequently reviled as Slut Pop. What was undoubtedly intended to be an unabashed celebration of sexuality winds up being a deeply uncomfortable listen, given that its sole producer, Dr. Luke, was accused of sexual assault back in 2014 and has yet to face any real repercussions for his actions. Even if you were to ignore that and engage with the music on face value, you still wouldn’t be left with anything worthwhile. Composed of insipid and dated house beats and lyrics that are far too bland to be provocative, this EP is so close to unintentional self-parody that it sounds like the kind of music a self-obsessed sitcom character would make. Vitriol aside, it’s not at all enjoyable to witness a promising pop star punch well below her weight, especially when said pop star is one of the few high-profile trans women in the music industry, and it’s difficult not to root for her. But hypersexual music tends to work best when it’s chock-full of charisma (e.g. the new Jazmine Sullivan record) or its vulgarity has been heightened to the point of pure ridiculousness. In a post-Slayyyter, post-Cupcakke, and post-WAP world, Petras can and should have done a whole lot better.  

BEST: Silvana Estrada – Marchita

A warning for the impatient: Silvana Estrada’s debut solo album does not immediately present itself to you in all its lavish beauty. Rather, the first leg of Marchita is somewhat compositionally understated, but it doesn’t take too long to be wooed. There’s a heartwarming simplicity to the guitar patterns that the singer/guitarist opens many of her songs with – an atmosphere which is bolstered by some of the finest vocal performances and melodies you’ll hear all year. Whilst these elements are enticing in and of themselves, it’s the flourish of instrumentation that’s built around them that highlights the dazzling genius of Estrada’s songcraft. That’s not to discredit the more understated tracks: ‘Un Día Cualquiera,’ for example, is composed entirely of stomps, clicks, vocals, and a very light keyboard accompaniment, but it utilises that sense of spaciousness masterfully and stands out as the most haunting song on the record. While Estrada’s voice is emotionally impactful enough on a purely auditory front, those unfamiliar with the Spanish language shouldn’t ignore her lyrics, as they’re rife with stirring imagery and harrowing accounts of heartbreak, especially on the album’s title track. If nothing in this short review has convinced you this is an album worth your time, just know that you simply will not find a better use of saxophone than what you’ll hear on ‘La Corriente’ and ‘Tristeza.’ Your loss.

WORST: Oliver Tree – Cowboy Tears

If there was, in fact, a time where Oliver Tree came across as anything more than an unamusing novelty act who compensates for a lack of worthwhile music with bizarre videos and social media antics, that time has well and truly passed. As his new look and the album’s title both suggest, the singer-songwriter’s sophomore record represents a foray into country music. It’s pretty hard to gauge that from the album itself, however, as most of the tracklist consists of listless, late ‘90s/early ‘00s-era pop rock. The country elements – if you could even call them that – that make it on here largely boil down to shoddily recorded acoustic guitar loops and especially nasal vocal performances, which become excruciating on tracks like ‘California’ and ‘Playing With Fire.’ What’s more, the occasional sense of dynamism that made the singer’s debut a slightly fun ride at times is nowhere to be heard on this record. Though the album’s flat-out horrible moments are few and far between, the rest of Cowboy Tears ends up being the kind of mediocre that slowly gets more unbearable the longer it continues. Thirty-five minutes may not seem like a long amount of time, but for a colourless pop album with not a single strong hook to speak of, it might as well be an eternity.