The Best Albums Of 2024 So Far

The Peruvian artist A. Chal had gained some serious momentum around 2018, thanks to trap-tinged songs like “000000.” But as his team pushed for more hits, he started to wonder if making label-approved tracks was actually what he wanted. So instead, he decided to go off completely on his own with Espíritu, a deeply experimental, alt-leaning album that pulls from New Wave, Peruvian traditions, and Latin American punk. Songs like “Saico” and “Walk on Everything” channel the deep history of rock en español  — and show A. Chal at his most honest. —J.L.

The Big Thief singer-songwriter’s fifth solo album carries an aura of raw, one-take candidness. It’s sweet and subtle in its sound, though Adrianne Lenker’s lyricism remains characteristically brutal and brave. The tracks share a similar sparseness and uniformity in instrumentation — piano, violin, guitar, and occasional percussion — but rather than melding together, each song stands strong, poignant, and singular. It’s a body of incantations that explore reconciliation, resignation, and reverence. —L.L.

The latest from Puerto Rican artist Álvaro Díaz is a 20-song splurge that bristles with post-genre ambition and heart-on-sleeve intensity. Díaz opens the album with Blink 182-indebted post-breakup moaner “Te Vi En Mis Pesadilla,” and proceeds to swerve from reggaeton to synthy emo to hip-hop, ending it all with a rock-guitar ballad. His musical confidence recalls Bad Bunny and Tainy (who appears on the house hallucination “Fatal Fantasy”), turning his anthemic heartbreak into an artistic coming-out party. —J.D.

Twenty-six-year-old Atlanta rapper Anycia has risen rapidly thanks to her vibrant personality and entrancing baritone. She follows through on her debut album, Princess Pop That, the kind of smooth listen that fits into a playlist of hustler braggadocio, except it’s a woman on her boss shit. “I hope you get up out the car, and then your phone crack,” she raps on ““Nene’s Prayer.” The album further entrenches her as one of the “rap girlies” who make music for the turn-up as well as chill vibes. —A.G.

Ariana Grande’s latest is a divorce album that goes through all the stages of grief, and the singer navigates a new beginning with some of the most honest and inventive songs of her career so far. After “Intro (End of the World)” poses the album’s central question, she spends the next couple of songs fighting for either herself or her relationship, in music that can evoke anything from Robyn to Diana Ross to Aaliyah. She toggles between moments of resilience, acceptance, and hope for the future, no matter how uncertain it may be. —B. Spanos

Last year, the Pakistani singer-musician-composer collaborated with pianist Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily for the beautifully experimental Love in Exile, one of 2023’s best albums. Aftab’s dreamlike new LP, Night Reign, finds her getting even more rangy than usual — whether she’s teaming up with poet and experimental musician Moor Mother for a meditation on the tenuous nature of reality in a fucked-up world, or turning the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves” into an almost foreboding nocturnal landscape. —B.E.

With the follow-up to her 2021 debut, 19 & Dangerous, Ayra Starr asserts a musical maturity that could be considered far beyond her years, but perhaps more aptly serves as a reminder of the emotional depth, logical prowess, and enviable passion young people often possess. Across it, Ayra refreshes tried-and-true Afrobeats elements with the type of songwriting that SZA fans flock to, darting between Nigerian pidgin, Yoruba, and English with endless finesse and attitude in all three languages. —M.C.

Few artists out there write a melancholic smasher like Babehoven’s Bon and Ryan Albert, whose swaying and unique melodies can make the listener feel like they’re hearing something totally new. The songs on Water’s Here in You blend indie rock with folk and country twangs, occasionally venturing into shoegaze-y territory. At times, the music feels holy and hymn-like. Part of that disarming enchantment comes from the contemplative loop-like quality of the duo’s songwriting. Bon’s use of chant-like repetition can feel almost liturgical, as if her purely emotional confessions might someday become sacraments. —L.L.

Like everything Beyoncé has done, Cowboy Carter is a college dissertation of an album: richly researched and meticulously constructed. And while she has something to prove to a whole musical community, it’s more of a love letter to her Southern roots than strictly a honky-tonkin’ romp. Beyoncé’s point is made crystal clear by the time she reaches “Amen”: She is country and has always been country. There’s no doubting that, gatekeepers be damned. Her latest is a history textbook making her case from track to track. —B. Spanos

Eilish’s third album is her coming-of-age album but also her coming-out album, with a nonstop rush of emotional and musical quick-change swerves. She moves from depression, isolation, and misery to the explicit electro-goth lust of “Lunch,” where she raves over a muse who’s “a craving, not a crush.” Hit Me Hard and Soft makes you marvel at how far she’s traveled as a pop artiste. But it’s also a propitious omen that the greatest Billie is yet to come. —R.S.

The surprise with the Black Crowes’ first studio album in 15 years is how fun, energetic, and unmistakably not-crusty it sounds, even as the references they lean into are all roughly a half-century old. Songs like “Rats and Clowns” and “Wanting and Waiting” are glam-rock with gritty down-home spirit. But whether Happiness Bastards works because the Robinson brothers are reanimating the past, or merely reenacting it, what matters is they’re rocking now. —J.D.

The Black Keys’ 12th album is their most collaborative album yet, with assists from Beck, Noel Gallagher, indie-rap innovator Dan “the Automator” Nakamura, and others. The duo say they wanted to re-create the feel of their “record hangs,” parties they’ve hosted in cities all over the world, where they spin classic 45s. Whether they set their retro-rock wayback machine to Memphis in the Sixties, the Midwest in the Seventies, or Manchester, England, and L.A. in the Nineties, it all flows together like a beautifully paced DJ set. —J.D.

Howard’s second solo album shows her to be budding a master of making forward-moving music that still passionately honors tradition. “I Don’t” is a yearning Philly soul reverie. “Prove It to You” suggests Prince doing acid house. By the time you reach the album-ending “Every Color in Blue,” with liquid In Rainbows-era Radiohead guitar backing Howard’s powerhouse Nina Simone-esque vocals, what should be a willful marriage of opposites feels stunningly natural. —J.D.

Brittney Spencer spent the bulk of her first decade in Nashville paying dues. My Stupid Life is a debut country record that’s certain to cement her place in the genre. The album takes a few songs to find its footing, but once it does, it lifts off and soars: It’s hard to think of a stronger run on a country LP in recent memory than the five-song stretch beginning with the self-reclamation ballad “The Last Time” and ending with the tender heartbreak of “If You Say So.” —J.B.

The Brooklyn-born rapper’s 21-track new project comes after a prolonged period when, he says, he lost his creative fire due to the demands that the industry, especially DSPs, put on artists. His dense, abstract lyricism forms the shafts and columns through which he alternately reflects on his life, dropping gems like “Loud and corny the new clout,” from “Custard Spoon.” Cavalier deploys a range of flows over a diverse, Quelle Chris-crafted canvas — from the jazzy “Pears” to the entrancing “Come Proper.” —A.G.

Charley Crockett has been at it for a decade, longer if you count his busking days, but he’s never sounded as sure of himself as he does here. The lyrics on $10 Cowboy are a mix of honky-tonk hooks, phrases from drifters and gas-station clerks, and stories written in the back of his bus across America. Like the country he’s looking out at, the album is a whole made of disparate parts: soul, country, blues, Americana, and more. —B. Stallings.

On her sixth album, Charli XCX stays out later and goes harder than ever before. And while she’s spinning around on the dance floor she’s also spiraling out in her head, digging deep into the types of insecurities and fears reserved for the comedown the morning after. Opening with the one-two punch of “360” and “Club Classics,” Brat seesaws between extremes from song to song, a hyperpop roller coaster of post-Saturn return, early-thirties anxieties, and It-girl bravado. —B. Spanos

Keef sounds like he’s leading a rebellion, cutting against the grain by staying out of the news and simply sounding like himself. The most striking element of Almighty So 2 is his emotional progression. Keef’s greatest skill, even as he came onto the scene at age 14, was his ability to translate exactly what he was feeling. At the time, that meant plenty of rage. Regret doesn’t linger in the background of Keef’s more grown-up bars, but you can hear the weight of experience. —J.I.

Put aside, if you can, the anti-hype cycle around this extraordinary double album — the mysterious release as an unmarked YouTube link, the wild praise that followed from fans and critics hungry for anything that resembles a true underground phenomenon. What you’re left with is two hours of mind-melting low-fi gold, deftly interwoven with threads of psychedelia, funk, garage rock, torch songs, and AM melodies. Unfolding slowly with its own dream logic, Diamond Jubilee is a gem worth getting dazzled by. —S.V.L.

Claire Rousay has spent the past few years building her own adventurous style of electronic collage, calling it “emo ambient.” Sentiment is her self-described pop album, building her late-night diary entries out of synth textures, warped melodies, robot AutoTune vocals, and rock guitar weaving in and out of the mix. he whole album flows like Brian Eno’s Another Green World through the ears of a big Pedro the Lion fan. —R.S.

In the decades since these German industrial icons got their start, Einstürzende Neubauten have dialed back most of the aggression. Rage is more like a steely intensity on Rampen, which finds them dwelling largely in quieter textures. They’ve always been expert conceptualists — true artists who create works meant to be interpreted and felt more than to be intellectualized. By giving themselves over even more to their concepts they’ve created a new set of structures to explode. —K.G.