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5. "Turn Blue," The Black Keys
The Black Keys, Grammy-winning purveyors of radio-friendly stadium rock, return with a record that lightens up on the crowd-pleasing and pushes the envelope more than the Akron, Ohio duo have done in years. Opener "Weight of Love" is a seven-minute exercise in ambience and bass guitar that feels like the Keys' most genuine effort so far at sonic originality, and closer “Gotta Get Away” leaves something for fans of classic Keys as the album’s sole unabashed foot-stomper. The unending deluge of blues guitar-over-synth can, at times, overwhelm, but the prospect of The Black Keys daring for once to explore their own boundaries redeems an album with just enough atmospheric, funk-infused experimentation to set it apart from the genre as a whole. —Victoria Lin
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7. "G I R L," Pharrell Williams
While the ebullient and light "Happy" may be the foundational song on Pharrell Williams's comeback album "G I R L," the artist crafted the concept LP as a serious rebuff to those who criticized his musical treatment of women after his participation in Robin Thicke's controversial "Blurred Lines." The exhilarating pastiche of soul, funk, and R&B presents females as equal participants in love—Miley Cyrus's gruff background vocals save even "Come Get It Bae," the most sexually aggressive track on "G I R L," from the machismo of the Thicke-verse. In "Marilyn Monroe," Pharrell sings of a tender relationship that eschews ego and braggadocio. The song also has an extended Hans Zimmer-composed string intro, just one of many triumphant production and thematic risks from the resurgent star. —David J. Kurlander
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Let it be known that in 2014, Annie Clark officially became a rock goddess (she shared the stage with Nirvana twice, for crying out loud). Gone are the twee trappings and Sufjan Stevens influences of old; in their place are a wild mane of silver hair and a dense mix of glitched-out dance jams and roaring guitar solos. “St. Vincent” is Clark at her most eclectic—and also her most fun—and if the album paints her in a colder light than records past, Clark remains vulnerable enough behind the space-odyssey synths and robotic beats to remind you why you fell in love with St. Vincent in the first place. —Tree A. Palmedo
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She had us at “I can fuck you better than her.” FKA twigs shook the walls and came on strong with first single “Two Weeks,” sweetly warning us that she “could rip it open.” And then that’s what she did with “LP1,” an iconoclastic debut album that takes a baseball bat to the lavish electronics of contemporary R&B and then has makeup sex in the rubble. Through its 10 tracks, she shatters expectations about what a female artist can sound like and sing about, and the awe-inspiring music videos and live performances that have followed suggest that she’s just getting started with us. —Matthew J. Watson
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Beck, loser-hero of the late ’90s and early ’00s, has gotten old, and his sound has gotten more mature too. Ethereal arrangements make for cogent, unaccustomedly cheerful content on his latest album, “Morning Phase.” Beck has billed this as the “companion piece” to “Sea Change,” emphasizing the album’s day-and-night contrast with the gloomy 2002 masterpiece. Beck’s usual acoustic bias is transformed into a lush, hypnotic orchestral landscape, with rhythmic tracks like “Morning,” “Blackbird Chain,” and “Waking Light.” —Jude D. Russo
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“Salad Days” is an album of contradictions. Put together after a series of concerts (which DeMarco calls “raunchfests”), the tracks were recorded in the intimacy of his bedroom apartment. Despite its title, the album was born out of feelings of exhaustion and old age. And the ever-unfazed DeMarco, in all of his gap-toothed glory, appears more genuine than he’s ever been over the course of his two-moniker, three-album career. It’s a little disorienting to see one of indie rock’s most outlandish figures release an album that’s so simple in its yearning, so bare in its delivery. “Salad Days” features an astonishingly direct DeMarco, who transforms his trademark abandon into sincere vulnerability. —Brian B. Kim