The pop-music critic discusses the best three albums of the year.
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00:00 My name is Amanda Petrusich,
00:01 and I'm a pop music critic at The New Yorker.
00:03 The third best album of the year is "Again"
00:10 by One O' Trix Point Never.
00:12 One O' Trix Point Never is the alias of the producer
00:15 and composer Daniel Lopatin,
00:18 who you may know for his film scores
00:20 for movies such as "Uncut Gems" and "Good Time,"
00:23 or for his work producing and writing for "The Weeknd."
00:26 "Again" is Lopatin's 10th album as One O' Trix Point Never,
00:29 and like all of his releases,
00:31 it's really concerned with ideas of time and memory,
00:35 and in particular, the instability of time and memory.
00:39 One of the things I really like about his compositions
00:42 is that they always feel just slightly out of reach for me,
00:45 like I'm grasping to understand what he's doing.
00:49 He's also an artist who I think
00:50 is using artificial intelligence
00:52 in some really compelling and surprising ways.
00:56 [dramatic music]
00:58 It's a little slippery melodically.
01:05 It's a little compositionally challenging.
01:08 It's a little unpredictable.
01:09 You think his songs are one thing,
01:11 and then suddenly there's something entirely else.
01:14 "Again" is one of those albums that for me really exploded
01:18 and then rebuilt my idea of what music could do
01:21 or how it could make me feel.
01:24 The second best album of the year
01:26 is "Javelin" by Sufjan Stevens.
01:29 Some critics will talk about "Javelin"
01:31 as a kind of return to form for Stevens,
01:34 but for me, it really feels like an apotheosis
01:37 of everything he's done.
01:39 It's a high point in his discography.
01:41 It is just stunningly beautiful, real, raw,
01:45 intimate collection of songs.
01:47 There's a track on "Javelin" called "Will Anybody Ever Love Me?"
01:50 and you might hear that title and think, yikes.
01:54 ♪ I really wanna know ♪
01:57 ♪ Will anybody ever love me ♪
02:01 But at the same time,
02:02 it's such a plaintive and bold and courageous question.
02:06 And "Who Among Us" does not reach a point
02:08 where they simply wanna know
02:10 if they will ever be received and cradled
02:12 and held and seen and understood by another consciousness.
02:16 And for me, Stevens' voice sounds really kind of thin
02:19 and high and hungry on the song.
02:21 And it's just so unpretentious,
02:24 which I mean in the kind of purest sense of the word.
02:26 It is entirely without pretense.
02:29 It is just really, really, really human.
02:32 ♪ Hello, wildness, please forgive me now ♪
02:37 ♪ For the heartache ♪
02:39 Shortly after he released this album,
02:41 he spoke publicly for the first time about his private life,
02:45 and in particular, his late partner, Evans Richardson,
02:48 who passed away in April.
02:50 "Javelin" is dedicated to Evans' memory,
02:53 and it's really suffused with grief and longing
02:58 and shame and questioning and searching,
03:00 but it's also such a hopeful record.
03:03 For me, it really sounds like someone choosing a future,
03:07 choosing to go on and kind of find light and love
03:11 despite all of the pain and loss they've endured.
03:14 The best album of the year is
03:17 "My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross"
03:19 by Ann and Me and the Johnsons.
03:21 Ann and Me is one of my favorite contemporary singers,
03:24 and because her voice is so singular, so otherworldly,
03:29 so ethereal, so spooky,
03:31 her work always feels a little bit like a conjuring to me.
03:35 It's as if she's here with us on Earth
03:37 to help us understand what's happening to us.
03:40 ♪ It's just the way we're born ♪
03:45 ♪ And in this society ♪
03:49 So for me, "Scapegoat" is probably the album's
03:52 single most devastating track.
03:54 It's sung from the point of view
03:56 of someone with a tremendous amount of hate.
03:59 "You're killable, you're just so killable."
04:02 ♪ You're so killable ♪
04:08 ♪ And disappearable ♪
04:11 Is a line that seems impossible to sing
04:14 with grace and elegance, but somehow Ann and Me does it.
04:17 She delivers it with empathy and with understanding.
04:21 She herself has been a remarkable advocate
04:23 for queer and transgender rights.
04:26 There's a portrait of Marsha P. Johnson
04:28 featured on the album cover.
04:30 That's in fact where Ann and Me and the Johnsons
04:32 get the band's name from.
04:34 Martha P. Johnson was of course a prominent figure
04:36 in the Stonewall riots in 1969.
04:39 But the appeal of this record isn't political really,
04:42 or it's certainly not exclusively political.
04:45 I found that these songs really kind of kept me afloat
04:48 during a year in which depravity and bloodlust
04:53 and spite and hatred felt like such inescapable forces.
04:58 And to respond to that, to kind of teach listeners
05:01 to respond to that with love,
05:03 really feels like an incredible thing.
05:05 ♪ My hand to your ♪
05:08 ♪ Welcome to your world ♪