Rina Sawayama’s vulnerability is what makes this album my favourite of 2022. There’s a journey through trauma, each song getting you one step closer to recovery. This album was difficult to get through on the first listen, but when I finished the last track, a euphoria came over me. Rina has somehow made a cohesive album while weaving through pop, rock, country, R&B, garage, trance, industrial, folk, and more. She also continues voicing complex themes without losing her pop-star quality.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava is an album that not even the band can remember the full name of. Originally built of out hour-long jams based on each of the musical modes that were then edited down to seven roughly 10-minute songs, with lyrics then written and layered at the end, the album is full to the brim of psychedelic rock and enthusiastic “woooos” peppered across the tracks.
So many obvious choices there... How about broadening peoples' musical horizons with some of these bangers: Wilderun - Epigone Csrpenter Brut - Leather Terror Sigh - Shiki White Ward - False Light