Meanwhile, the closing “I Wouldn’t Ask You,” about Cottrill’s struggle with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, is born directly from fresh pain: A choir of children lifts the song up, and you’re reminded how, in early adulthood, you wonder if you’re ever going to figure life out. Do you stand in solidarity with DJ Sprinkles in her anti-streaming stance? Synth stabs that at first seem uniform take on entirely new shapes with every repetition. She buoys her bleak lyrics with the bright melodies and buzzing guitars that soundtracked Beavis and Butt-Head’s bickering on MTV in the ’90s. But Lilitri shows why that spotlight—that glow to bask in—is worth fighting for. Rather than muddling her meaning, this single instrument’s ambiguity—of feeling, timbre, gender, even species—suggests a state of perpetual transformation. –Sheldon Pearce, Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Bandcamp |  Spotify | Tidal, Hannah Read can make a melody out of anything. But the raw energy of Apple’s voice is the album’s life force, and there’s no mistaking the subjects of her missives—be it the men who refuse to recognize their abusive behavior; the women who, like Apple, were conditioned to compete with other women; the mean girls and those who called their bullshit; the users and the silencers; the people she fears will leave her. Writing with more personality and candor than ever about a range of difficult themes—depression, loss, misogyny, the complications of loving on one’s own terms—they’ve also loosened their taut pop rock just enough to breathe more life into it, incorporating the ‘90s Lilith rock of Sheryl Crow, the blue-skied strums of Wilco, and a groovy Lou Reed interpolation. Let’s face it: listening to new music wasn’t exactly easy this year. This music invites friends to wade in its relief, conjuring an aura of lush abundance amid solitude: Shore’s opening moments are ceded to 21-year-old newcomer Uwade Akhere, who murmurs about summer passing into fall, and loving with a violent passion; later on, over 400 recorded voices, solicited by Pecknold over Instagram, swell in the chorus of “Can I Believe You.” As Pecknold reaches his mid-30s, he leaves behind the fidgeting anxiety of youth. –Mankaprr Conteh, When Big Thief scrapped their international tour this year, Adrianne Lenker found a world of her own in a cabin near the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. With its loose, almost jazz-like form, When I Get Home elevates Solange’s artistry to another plane: The grace and wisdom that flowed through 2016’s A Seat at the Table is chopped and screwed, complicated not just spiritually but musically as well. Much like Sufjan Stevens in the songs of Carrie & Lowell, Allison ventures into the tundra of her despair and emerges with an unsparing and unsentimental account of survival. Jay Electronica: Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn) 13. “Power has come to me,” Vernon said earlier this year, “but it’s not fun to wield by yourself.” i,i is the solution, a collective effort as endless as it is empathetic. He searched for the perfectly turned phrase to articulate pain because it helped him feel less of it; he added jokes because the absurdity of life is funny. Throughout Hannah, her fifth album as Lomelda, her expressive warble blooms and shrinks into strange and beautiful phrasings, heightening their meaning. Within these entrancing soundscapes, stray ruminations float to the surface. Róisín Murphy: Róisín Machine 16. Abel even got snubbed on the Pitchfork list. Lead vocalist and songwriter Dana Margolin is incisive in her observations, and she often points them inward. –Sam Sodomsky, On Eternal Atake, Lil Uzi Vert employs an extraterrestrial concept that should be kitschy—in the album’s trailer, he’s jetted into the cosmos in a saucer the size of a city block by a humanoid cult—but instead lends the LP an intergalactic sheen. Fuzzy guitar, looped strings, and expansive guest spots from fellow vets Blood Orange and Run the Jewels underscore a new phase of Brown’s work without blotting out the high-pitched urgency that made him a compelling figure in the first place. Her fifth album’s title is a personification of the anthropocene, a theorized geological epoch in which civilization provokes its own destruction via climate crises. Even the title i,i nods to the Rastafarian idea of “I and I,” of oneness. Designer is a fitting headphone companion for wandering the city in a melancholy fog, but it never fades into the background. 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