Although Charli XCX writes and sings songs about partying, hooking up, and getting fucked up, which, as a cautious introvert who largely prefers solitude, are activities I have never related to, I've recently realized she arrives at these themes from a similar place. The reasons why Charli can't stop engaging in such activities are achingly familiar: rather than allowing her creeping fears and uncertainties to consume her, she smothers them with the adrenaline rush that accompanies impulsive risk-taking, unable to stop herself even as she acknowledges that such methods do more harm than good. If Jenny Lewis is the indie queen of commemorating her insecurity-fueled fuck-ups in song, then Charli XCX is the pop princess equivalent.

Self-destruction runs rampant through much of Charli's music, but one of her most recent singles, "No Angel," perhaps brings it most sharply into focus. Here, Charli casts herself as the bad girlfriend desperately begging for a second (or third or fourth or tenth or twentieth) chance to prove her commitment. The problem is she can't stop getting in her own way. "I party, get naughty," she admits before the situation shortly escalates even further: "I'm sorry that you caught me fucking in the hotel." On one hand, she recognizes the wrongness of her actions and is "always telling myself I'll never do this again." On the other, though, the capability to change simply is not there. Acting out has become a compulsion, a habit ingrained so deeply that it now defines her entire sense of self. Past behavior has cemented her identity as a fuck-up, and since she can't envision a version of herself who isn't fatally flawed in this way, the only path forward is to maintain the self-sabotaging status quo.

I always start off these posts by uploading all the album art and arranging the layout, and the prospect of having to then fill everything in seems almost impossibly daunting. But, of course, it always ends up being easier than it seems and even fun, especially this time around because this was an exceptionally strong quarter. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if half of this list ended up comprising most of my top ten at the end of the year. I know there are still six months to go and anything could happen, but I've had some really remarkable experiences with many of these albums that remind me why I'm so obsessed with music in the first place. Basically, it's been a really enjoyable few months for me listening-wise, so I hope something here resonates with you, too! As always, scroll to the bottom for a Spotify playlist.

When I first heard "Curse of the Contemporary," it got me very excited to hear more from LUMP, a collaborative project between folk wunderkind Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay. It's a driving, energetic rock track with touches of electronica that's a refreshingly far cry from Marling's solo work. Her husky voice works surprisingly well in this context, reaching heights of smooth, soaring effortlessness I had no idea she was capable of, particularly on the verbose chorus, which she rattles off with ease. While the rest of LUMP's short album continues to find her voice at its stunning prime, unfortunately, the other songs are pretty but a bit dull in comparison to this darkly glistening gem.

OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES, experimental pop producer SOPHIE's first release since the 2015 singles compilation Product and, in many ways, her proper debut, is more than an album: it's a fully immersive experience. "There's a world inside you," she sings partway through the opening track, and OIL is an encapsulation of that world, created by herself and shared with her listeners. In this "whole new world," which transcends the restrictions of our current, often frustratingly limited reality, we can explore and embody the ideal versions of ourselves, as SOPHIE seems to do on the album's cover. Posed with regal opulence against a hyper-surreal landscape, with her sharp cheekbones, fiery crown of hair, and iridescent clothing, she resembles a Renaissance painting from the future, a sort of 31st-century mermaid-human-cyborg. The word "nothingness" appears, almost brand-like, on her gloved arm, but this isn't a negative label forced upon her by others. It's her basest desire: immateriality, the incorporeal freedom to "be anything I want." This extends beyond her personal identity as a transgender woman to a transhumanist examination of how to exist and evolve in an often antagonistic and confusing society, a theme investigated through a dizzying array of stylistic lenses across the album's nine tracks.

SOPHIE has expressed wariness at the idea of critical engagement with her music. Her goal is to make music "that goes straight to the senses, straight to the body . . . Just how does that make you feel? Is it fun and furious?" At the same time, there are clearly layers to what she's doing, which is what makes it so compulsively listenable. This is truer on OIL than ever before. Its songs are first experienced in a primal, visceral way, as adrenaline-pumping sensory overload injected straight into the veins. You're not sure what you're hearing, but you're inexplicably drawn to it even in its weirdest and harshest moments. Once you're hooked on the sound, you then realize how surprisingly deep these songs go, how much densely-embedded meaning they contain, and you can't stop listening until you feel like you've fully unlocked the enigma of them.

One of these enigmas is the album's sequencing, which at first comes across as haphazard but makes sense in accordance to SOPHIE's vision of what pop music can be. Back in 2012, she described the ideal impact of her music using the metaphor of a rollercoaster, "where it spins you upside down, dips you in water, flashes strobe lights at you, takes you on a slow incline to the peak, and then drops you vertically down a smokey tunnel, then stops with a jerk, and your hair is all messed up, and some people feel sick, and others are laughing - then you buy a key ring." Before OIL's release, her 2014 single "Hard" perhaps best embodied this philosophy, with its equally nauseating and exhilarating mash-up of industrial clamor, cutesy high-pitched vocals, and constant interruptions of shimmering synths and jagged electric-guitar-styled bursts, all synchronized to cheeky BDSM-themed lyrics ("Latex gloves, smack so hard . . . Ponytail, yank so hard").


SOPHIE employed this metaphor again in April of this year, stating, "At theme parks, when you're a child, you'd have this visceral experience of being human and I want music to feel like that . . . Just the way that rollercoasters tend to be designed - with the tension and the release and feeling those nerves and being locked into the seat - I feel like pop music could take you on that sort of journey." OIL's track order seems to be organized according to this principle. Opener "It's Okay to Cry," a sparkling synth-pop ballad about self-acceptance that sets up the album's recurring motif of fully embracing one's interior truth as a means of overcoming anxiety and doubt, is unassumingly tranquil. (Upon its video release in October, it was also unexpectedly personal, relying for the first time upon the producer's own voice and image.) It's the rollercoaster's slow, steady ascent to the top of the slope, where it hangs for a moment in breathtakingly perfect suspension before hurtling downward at top speed. The song's explosive, cathartic finale previews the descent. Then the post-industrial aggression of "Ponyboy" and "Faceshopping" arrives to furiously drop you into the ride's darkest pits.

These two tracks also introduce Cecile Believe, the primary vocalist for much of the album and, presumably, SOPHIE's creative partner in shaping it: she's credited as co-writer on six tracks and plays a vital role in the accompanying live performances. Here, her voice helps SOPHIE explore a multitude of contradictions that might be more complementary than they seem. On "Ponyboy," her squeaky, coquettish intonation during the chorus is juxtaposed against SOPHIE's vocals in the verses, distorted beyond recognition to sound militantly robotic. On "Faceshopping," a melisma-drenched bridge suited for a pop diva is plopped jarringly into the middle of a thrillingly abrasive synth drop. This relentless back and forth between loud and quiet, hard and soft, difficult and accessible, all of it tied up in stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, begins to break down the barriers that create these dichotomies in the first place to get at the raw, emotional center of what such sounds can provoke.

Thematically, "Faceshopping" is particularly relevant to the album's larger arc. With its catchy refrain, "I'm real when I shop my face," it plays with the idea of body modification, in both physical and digital realms, as a means of accessing a more authentic self. The rules dictating what can and cannot be deemed genuine expression are another social construct for which SOPHIE has no use, in both life and art. As she explains, "[With] things like body augmentation, you can find something that's actually more real," a statement that applies equally to electronic music: its artificiality can be used to access truths just as easily as more organic forms of music. Similarly, when SOPHIE growls phrases like "hydroponic skin, "chemical release," and "plastic surgery," she evokes procedures that are often perceived as vain but actually help bring many people (particularly trans individuals) closer to their true selves. This coincides with the theme of immateriality in the song's bridge. "You must be the one that I've seen in my dreams," Cecile Believe croons lovingly before commanding an ideal, interior self to "reduce me to nothingness." This goes a step beyond mere transformation, suggesting a desire to transcend the trappings of a body altogether and find more meaningful ways to define one's relation to the world.


It's at this point we reach the "dipped in water" portion of the rollercoaster ride, only it's more like being plunged into a bottomless sea. Having provided a thesis statement for what artificiality can represent emotionally, SOPHIE now sets about proving it. The hypnotic waves of arpeggiated synth in "Is It Cold in the Water?" create a sensation of being adrift and alone, questing and uncertain, that's intensified by the sparse lyrics: "I'm freezing/I'm burning/I've left my home." The chorus repeatedly asks the title question, the single syllable of "cold" stretched out endlessly, like someone on the precipice of change but hesitant to take the dive (think a futuristic spin on Kate Bush's "Under Ice"). The transition into "Infatuation" is seamless, and the songs feel like two sides of the same coin. The narrator in "Is It Cold in the Water?" is not alone but supported by someone close to them (or maybe even an alternative self) who insists, with increasing intensity, "I want to know/Who are you deep down?" It's an important inquiry, one with which the entirety of OIL grapples, and the relief of hearing it asked informs the atmosphere of the entire song, which is ethereal and serene, anchored by an inchoate synthesized voice that sounds like something being reborn.

Of course, even with support, such a complete transformation is a difficult and frightening process to undertake, and the next two tracks are a sonic representation of this. "Not Okay" is a sub-two-minute tsunami of ear-splitting bass stabs, nauseatingly ominous synths, and choppy bursts of vocal samples, under the oppressive weight of which SOPHIE's whispered "I believe in you" is barely audible. Through this, we experience firsthand the helpless thrashing against a heavy current, the drifting further and further off from the safety of an outstretched hand at shore, the final exhausted surrendering to the water's pull. The subterranean sensation of sinking slowly into the cave-like depths at the bottom of the ocean is represented in "Pretending," a six-minute ambient piece. Its muffled, slow-motion grumblings are at first peaceful, almost lovely, but they slowly morph into moans and screeches and roars, the facade of beauty peeling away to reveal terror underneath.


At this, the album's bleakest and most hopeless moment, "Immaterial" arrives like a life raft, its thumping chorus a distant but steady heartbeat as it cuts through the murk to return us skyward. As a future bubblegum pop song that's more in line with Product than anything else here, it's deceptively lightweight in sound; in substance, it's the album's linchpin, condensing its recurring themes into one ultra-catchy package. If "It's Okay to Cry" is a pep talk to one's innermost self, "Immaterial" is that self fully-realized and ready to take on anything. There are clear parallels between the opener's lyrics and those in the bridge of "Immaterial," the pitch-shifted exuberance of which delivers a shot of pure euphoria. "I think your inside is your best side" in "It's Okay to Cry" is mirrored by the breathless admission, "I was just a lonely girl in the eyes of my inner child." And where "It's Okay to Cry" offers reassurance - "I don't even need to know your reasons/It's okay, it's okay, it's okay" - "Immaterial" issues a defiant battle cry: "I don't even have to explain/Just leave me alone now/I can't be held down."


In live performances, SOPHIE stands alongside Cecile Believe as she sings these lines, passionately lip-syncing along. It's hard not to view them in light of accusations of appropriating femininity leveled against her before it was publicly known that she's a woman and SOPHIE's reluctance to address them. Here, she insists that she doesn't owe society the explanations they demand. She doesn't have to prove anything to anyone but herself, and neither does anyone else. The dawning of this realization coincides, as in "Faceshopping," with a call to discard the everyday trappings of gender expectations and stereotypes for a freer and more enlightened existence. Even layers of biologically-imposed identity are shed - "Without my legs or my hair/Without my genes or my blood" - until the possibilities are literally endless: "With no name and with no type of story, where do I live?/Tell me, where do I exist?" Having reduced to nothingness the restrictions of the body one was born into, the expectations it creates also vanish into irrelevancy. In the whole new world erected in their place, there is finally freedom to exist "anyhow, any place, anywhere, anyone, any form, any shape, any way, anything I want."


However, the staggering nine-minute closer "Whole New World/Pretend World" is less a celebration and more an admission that this ideal is largely interior and mostly untenable in our current reality. This is made apparent in the buried lyrics of the verses, where SOPHIE inhabits "visions in my head" and "feelings in my skin" before "waking up wanting growth." Then, in a tone that's half conviction and half desperation, Cecile Believe belts, "I looked into your eyes/I thought that I could see a whole new world," and the accompanying shouts of "whole! new! world!" feel similarly desperate, particularly as the song progresses and the vocals begin to warp and disintegrate as the melody falls into shambles around them. With each repetition of the main synth line, there's a subtle tweak until it finally disappears in an all-consuming wash of white noise. There are many possible ways to interpret this, but it seems more in line with OIL's philosophy to understand it as a symbol of compromise rather than defeat, of modifying the ideal to make it workable in the here and now. This seems to match SOPHIE's personal point of view when she says, "The range of knowledge available to us is so confusing. But also it's surreal and it's ridiculous. I'm trying to get to a point where I can just embrace that feeling fully, as a human." From this perspective, OIL ends on an imperfect but hopeful note.

OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES is about the danger of adhering to a hierarchy of authenticity and using it to police or devalue self-expression, but it's also about how to break free of this restraining system. In a recent interview, SOPHIE expressed frustration at how "It's Okay to Cry" was received by media outlets that had previously held little regard for her work. "Do you have to sing a ballad crying for someone to take notice of something?" she asks. "Is that what emotion feels like to people? It doesn't feel like that to me." By expanding our perception of what it means to be with this album, SOPHIE simultaneously expands our perception of what it means to feel. Are the emotions accessed truer in "It's Okay to Cry" than in "Faceshopping" because one's a pretty, sappy ballad and the other's a cold, metallic banger? Is the sentiment more valid in "Is It Cold in the Water?" than in "Immaterial" because one's artfully brooding and the other's "cheap" and "mainstream?" Is SOPHIE herself any less genuine when she alters her appearance with prosthetics than when she does not? I think her answer to these questions would be a resounding no, if she even deigned to answer them at all. She might just as well tell everyone to enjoy the music for how it sounds and shut the hell up about any deeper meanings it could contain. Herein lies the beauty of it: just like each of us, it can be anything it wants, and every permutation is as bold and challenging and innovative as the last.

I always end up dragging these out until the absolute last minute, don't I? Anyway, my listening last month was pretty heavy on the new releases again, but I did discover a few other cool things, too! Most importantly, I discovered a lot of incredibly fun and catchy summer bops I will most definitely be blasting through mid-August. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'll have enough material to do one of these for June without it overlapping too much with my other planned posts (my quarter two round-up, obviously, and also a very special and very indulgent post I hope to have up within a week or so, the content of which you can probably guess if you know me and my recent obsessions at all). So I might end up skipping it or doing a shortened version, but we'll see. Anyway, onward with the music!

10. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - Drinker

It's pretty clear from my recent posts, but I've been gravitating a lot more toward upbeat, bouncy pop music this year than ever before. Honestly, I think a lot of it has to do with the state of the world right now and the fact that music is the one thing I can count on to provide temporary escape - but I don't want to dwell on the depressing. Instead, I'll talk about Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and her totally adorable yet totally demented and, most importantly, totally addictive songs. It's only logical that my intense PC Music addiction would eventually dovetail into cutesy J-pop, especially when it's masterminded by producer/songwriter Yasutaka Nakata, who, as I understand it, is a master of auto-tuned uncanny valley bops. As the voice that brings his ultra-sugary compositions to life, what Kyary Pamyu Pamyu lacks in range she makes up for with her bubbly personality. I can't even pretend to know what "Drinker" is about, but I do know it's technicolor cotton candy fluff of the tastiest variety.

9. Galantis - Spaceship (feat. Uffie)


I've never listened to Uffie before, but last month she released her first song in quite some time, "Drugs," and it's a cute little auto-tuned bop that satisfies my desire for more Pop 2-esque sounds. A couple weeks later, this massive-sounding collaboration with Galantis landed, and it's everything I could possibly want in a summer banger. "Spaceship" hits hard and fast, wasting absolutely no time with preamble or subtlety. Uffie's voice is a rapidly-shifting chameleon, warped and twisted into a dizzying assortment of shapes, some more recognizably human, others fully alien. Its digitally-aided elasticity is buffeted by appropriately spacey-sounding synths, propulsive and bass-heavy, that blast off and power down every time the song loops back around to its repetitive but highly addicting hook. This is definitely the type of song I would expect to soundtrack an extraterrestrial rager, broadcasting out from the surface of Mars to the entire rest of the galaxy for one epic dance party.

8. Janelle Monáe - Screwed (feat. Zoë Kravitz)


The contradictory nature of "Screwed," one of the most compelling tracks on Janelle Monáe's new album, Dirty Computer, is fascinating to me in that, when you take it apart and consider its components more carefully, it really shouldn't work. On one hand, it's easily one of the catchiest and most joyous-sounding songs I've heard all year, Monáe's voice alternating with guest Zoë Kravitz's on the verses to energetically saucy effect as the sexual innuendos fly, backed by danceable, funky instrumentation and plenty of hand claps. On the other hand, the double meaning of its title reveals a more political nature, which comes to light in the chorus' lyrics: "Let's get screwed/I don't care/You fucked the world up now/We'll fuck it all back down." These lines are delivered with a sort of desperate giddiness, their message a mix of nihilism and optimism. It's a brilliant subversion of the expected Prince-inspired, oversexed groove into something with a bold intellectual bite.

7. Natalie Prass - Lost


My interest in Natalie Prass' sophomore album, The Future and the Past, was peaked by the delightfully retro groove of "Sisters," and "Lost" may be even better. Comparatively, it's a much subtler effort, but its simplicity is no hindrance or crutch; in fact, it's the song's biggest asset. The tastefully sparse piano and string arrangements allow Prass' voice, bright and clear as a bell and searingly emotive, to steal the spotlight. "I get lost when I'm with you," she croons romantically before stomping all over the listener's heart with the follow-up question, "But at what cost do I let you do what you do?" The combined effect of the lyrics, instrumentation, and vocals could easily veer over the edge into treacly sentimentality, but there's just enough restraint on display to avoid such pitfalls. Instead, the song ends up feeling utterly timeless, like it's already existed for centuries before now and will continue exist for centuries beyond.

6. Braids - Collarbones


Braids make some of the most cathartic music I've ever heard, and Raphaelle Standell-Preston's lyrics speak to the experiences of being a 21st-century woman with startling bluntness and accuracy. "Collarbones" is a beautifully intimate ballad that places Standell-Preston's impassioned vocals front and center, where they punch the listener squarely in the gut as she explores what it means to exist as a woman in the Internet age. With filters and angles at hand to manipulate her image, she can turn herself into whatever version others want to see: "Do you think it makes me look pretty when I soften all my lines away?/When I make myself look as far away from real?/Breasts pushed up, I'm trying to show you/I have collarbones and cleavage you can rest in." But this ultimately only complicates reality, putting pressure on women especially to live up to their romanticized forms, feeding feelings of unworthiness and shame: "When my clothes are off and we're together/I probably won't look this way again/And I wonder will you still want me then?"

5. Kate Tempest - Grubby


Kate Tempest is a name I've seen a lot, but between my lack of exposure to hip-hop until recently and my leeriness toward white rappers (which I still hold as a general rule), I never gave her a proper chance. Recently, a few random Spotify plays convinced me to try Let Them Eat Chaos, and it's actually one of the more compelling things I've heard recently, based specifically around the lives of seven strangers at the exact same moment in time and generally around navigating the capitalistic demands of modern London as a young adult. While Tempest has impeccable flow (which steers clear of appropriation), she draws just as much from her background as a poet. "Grubby" tells the story of Pious, who has a one-night stand with a woman she barely knows while still pining for her ex-lover. "She doesn't love/She just devours," Tempest intones as the omniscient narrator. A minute in, it explodes into a stream-of-consciousness jangle of first-person nerves and self-loathing: "I'm fighting my darkest parts/I'm frightened/Nightmares/Tighten my hands 'round my own throat/Because you're the snake charmer and I'm the old rope."

4. Ariana Grande - Be My Baby


I've been in an Ariana Grande spiral recently, and while My Everything is not actually a very consistent album (it's about half great and half borderline-awful), "Be My Baby" has to be one of the best pop songs of the last five years. It has one of the absolute catchiest choruses I've ever heard, which the song clearly knows, seeing as it wastes no time going straight into it. Seriously, I dare you to find something as satisfying to sing along to as the repeated "Be my/Be my/Be my/Be my/Be my baby" at the end. Cashmere Cat's bright, springy production touches give the song a further lift, and Grande, who's been accused of lacking charisma, gets the chance to display a real personality in the flirty second verse: "I'll give you all of my trust if you don't mess this up/You ain't trying to get no other girls when you in the club/All you got is eyes for me/I'm the only girl you see." I could possibly listen to this song on loop for the rest of my life and die happy.

3. EASYFUN - Be Your USA


"Be Your USA" is a fizzy and infectious synth-pop anthem that arrives just in time for blasting from your open car windows all summer long and adds to the body of evidence that EASYFUN is low-key one of PC Music's most valuable players. The song enlists Estonian singer Iiris for vocal duty, and I honestly don't know anything about her, but her light, bubbly (and heavily-processed) voice is the perfect vessel for its frothy sentiments, in which impossibly high expectations ("I don't want to be your USA/Never going to be your everything") are eschewed for a more intimate and meaningful bond ("I just want to be your music"). The song is essentially all chorus, but when you've written a hook this good, why not give it the showcase it deserves, hypnotically building up to a soaring release? Along the way, EASYFUN's signature screechy synths and well-timed glitchy vocal samples push it over the edge from fun to genius.

2. Half Waif - In the Evening


Honestly, Half Waif's 2016 album, Probable Depths, is so special to me that I was initially afraid to even listen to Lavender - so much so that I held off on doing so for a couple weeks after it was released. As it turns out, the album does have a very different vibe, less whimsical and more straight-up devastating, but I fell deeply in love with it almost immediately. "In the Evening" literally took my breath away with how meditative and serene it is on the surface and how dark and angry it is underneath. There are certain lines you might initially interpret as sweet - "In the morning, there'll be tea and coffee and milk/Just the way you like" - until others soon arrive to warn you there's something more sinister going on: "Don't expect me to be happy to see that you're happier than me/I don't owe you that." Ultimately, it's a song about loss, the loss of one's sense of self to the throes of an intense and tumultuous relationship, driven by Nandi Rose Plunkett's smoldering vocal presence. "There's a life going on/But it doesn't feel like me," she sings sadly before her voice is kaleidoscoped  into a digitized watercolor smear.

1. Beach House - Drunk in LA


I don't know if it was me or the music itself, but I started to lose interest in Beach House around the time Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars were released. (I've recently revisited both and have decided I quite like the latter, but the former is still a snooze to me, even though I know it has a lot of pretty intense devotees.) For this reason and the fact that none of the pre-release singles until "Black Car" really grabbed me, I wasn't overly excited to hear their latest release, 7. Once I actually listened, though, everything clicked into place, to the point where it may very well be on its way to becoming my third favorite Beach House release - but more on that later. "Drunk in LA" in particular is a track I've been playing the shit out of because it feels so quintessentially Beach House, encapsulating everything I love about their sound without seeming stale or uninspired. In fact, if anything, the band sounds revitalized. Victoria Legrand's smoky, seductive voice is at its best, the atmosphere is perfectly woozy, the melodies are golden, and the lyrics are reliably evocative. Hearing it for the first time transported me back to hearing "Zebra" for the first time, which is high praise considering it was the first Beach House song I ever fell in love with.