On “Oh No” and “Man of the Moment”, Milbourn really lets it rip. Massive choruses, big hooks, and yes, crazed howling, dominate these songs. They’re fantastic.

On other tracks, like “Daisy” and “Darlin’”, the band’s tender side is revealed. “Daisy” sees them turn a quieter song into a giant anthem, and “Darlin’” sees them exploring a tender blues sound. The whole EP is pure rock and roll from start to finish. It’s refreshing to hear rock music this good.

In 2012, Goodbye June released their first record. They won a big-time award in 2014 that earned them attention at Interscope, where they signed earlier this year. This EP is their first since then, and like the sophomore album that will soon follow, it’s been purposefully focused on old-school, straight-forward rock and roll.

I could have told you that without reading the press release. Suffice it to say: they nailed it.

The title track, which is the last track on the EP, is a blues rock track with a massive chorus and a great hook. The songwriting is impeccable, too: There’s a huge, guitar-filled chorus that leads directly back into the verse, which gets more intricately layered the second time around. The song continually builds on itself.

Goodbye June knows what they’re doing here: this is intricate, quality songwriting. All the parts work together.

Danger in the Morning is one of the most promising EPs I’ve heard all year, and I’m looking forward to the eventual sophomore release (and major-label debut) from Goodbye June. If this EP is a sign of what’s to come, we’re all in for a treat.

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It’s a level of thinking that’s clearly part of the thinking throughout Kiwanuka’s sophomore album. I think the great majority of people are going to be talking about “Black Man in a White World,” the album’s second track, because it’s both a good single and a reflection of Kiwanuka’s personal politics. It’s an impeccable song, but to focus exclusively on it would be doing the musician a great disservice. It implies he’s only grown lyrically.

But the truth is, Kiwanuka has grown a great deal from his debut to where he is today: as a singer, as a songwriter, and as a performer. There are elements of “Black Man in a White World” that are well above and beyond most of what soul performers are doing today — the choral arrangements, in particular, are excellent. And that’s all without mentioning Danger Mouse’s superb production.

But the rest of the record is astounding in other ways. Kiwanuka’s use of atmospheric elements is impressive. His vocal performance is indelible, buttery smooth, and transfixing. On “Place I Belong,” his voice soars above the instruments. Both the instruments and his voice sound like traditional roots rock. On “One More Night,” his performance makes a traditional blues line feel like something new.

The title track is perhaps the best track on the record, though: Kiwanuka combines everything he’s good at in one track: there’s a rolling bass line and that carries the song. His vocal lines are strong throughout, and his performance is tender. The atmosphere builds throughout with subtle use of a strings section, and excellent backing vocal performers who carry the beat. The bridge has such momentum to it that it elevates the song to another level — and the guitar solo is so evocative that it might make you weep.

And I should mention that the guitar solos throughout the record — and there are many — are each emotionally relevant, tasteful pieces that truly add to the songs in question. Somebody said years ago that guitar solos should be written for the song, not the other way around (and I neither agree nor disagree), but Kiwanuka is one of the few artists who really seems to have taken that advice to heart. The solos throughout are all excellent.

This is real soul music. It’s immense. It’s emotional. It’s incredibly satisfying. But at the same time it wouldn’t sound out of place in a film soundtrack. For some odd reason, it reminds me of The Lion King — perhaps because it evokes some of Elton John’s finest moments as well. Kiwanuka would be excellent in musicals.

Most importantly, though, is that when Kiwanuka sings, “You can’t break me down, you can’t take me down, you can’t break down,” I believe him. It’s an endearing performance, one that is stronger than the sum of its parts.

There are some performers who identify by their name when they should, perhaps, include the name of their backing band. (Brad Paisley comes to mind as one example, on occasion.) But with Michael Kiwanuka, it feels like he’s truly carrying the band with him. They follow his lead. His performance is excellent, his songwriting is without compare in the genre, and his storytelling ability is second to none.

Love & Hate is the maturation of Michael Kiwanuka’s sound and abilities. If you don’t know him, now’s the time to get to know him. If you like his debut, you’re going to love this.

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Hearing the admission was unsettling for those of us who kept up with the show (or the criminal case), but hearing it on a pop record feels all the more disturbing.

That’s not to say that Shura’s music is disturbing. Most of it feels like it straddles the line between modern pop and throwback electronica-influenced work. Take “Nothing’s Real,” which is the first “real” track on the record after the introduction. With a bass line that feels like it’s walking, the chorus feels influenced by the 1980s — Jackson in particular. But the chorus, and Shura’s vocal approach, is thoroughly locked into the 21st century. The bass line is overwhelmed by synth, and Shura’s vocal work builds into an emphatic, almost shouted final line.

Her vocal performance betrays the fact, though, that this album would have fit right in amongst the women making music in the ’80s. Even tracks like Touch fit right in to that decade. The album imbibes vibes from that era without ever sounding anything less than modern and twenty-first century, which is a feat in and of itself, but perhaps more impressive is Shura.

For a debut album, Shura sounds remarkably self-assured — even if she doesn’t trust herself or her emotions anymore, as the title of the record (and the content of the songs) suggests. For her, the record is her way of announcing liberation from her emotions during a particularly difficult time in the hospital. She’s a free woman, one bound to struggle with the difficulties of liberation — as she openly does throughout the record — but one who’s striving to become fully self-aware. “2Shy” is the embodiment of the entire record, the moment where it comes together thematically.

Within that framework, Nothing’s Real is the definition of what a good debut should be: Shura is sure of what she is, but grappling with the details. As her skills become more honed, I look forward to even more records in the future.

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And it’s pretty clearly a project, not a record, something Kendrick has just experimented with. It’s jazzier than TPAB, and more free-form with its ideas too. It’s also riskier, often more flawed, clearly unsure even of its own edits. Untitled 7 feels like four songs instead of one. Untitled 3 and untitled 8, already performed on late-night TV, differ from their televised versions in significant ways, but also lose much of their urgency and immediacy on record.

That’s not to say the album is a mixed bag: when Kendrick is on fire, he’s on fire. Untitled 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 are all stunning, and they have enough depth that I suspect we’ll be talking about them for the rest to come. Kendrick struggles with his faith in God and in America, but also continues to struggle to rectify his experiences in Africa with the “first-world” problems of North America.

Untitled 3 also sees him exploring the expectations of people around him, particularly noting that the “white man” wants more success before it will reward him, going so far as to argue that they’d rather have him compromise and make more money for them than keep his artistic integrity.

Lyrically, Kendrick is still at the top of the game. Musically too, the album is less concerned with the thematic rigidity that accompanies a 60-minute-plus tour-de-force like To Pimp a Butterfly and takes more time to explore. Some moments are pure jazz, and some feel like old-school Kendrick. Jazz solos and twiddling positively abound here, and if ever there was a record where we could compare Kendrick to old-school Roots, this is probably it.

It’s hard to say if the album is a bunch of leftover tracks from TPAB, as Lamar suggests on Twitter. They sound more recent, and reference many of TPAB’s accolades, so it’s not likely that they’re B-sides. They also don’t sound unfinished. Like the rest of Kendrick’s tracks, these beg repeated listening. They carry depth. They’re not throw-aways, and they’re thematically complete and socially relevant. The album’s marketing is deceiving.

As a result, untitled unmastered. raises a lot more questions than it answers. It’s clear that untitled isn’t meant to follow up Butterfly, and that a full follow-up will come later, but then how do we evaluate untitled? If it’s not an album, and it’s not a mixtape, what is it?

untitled feels like Kendrick is playing with the act of releasing an album as an experiment, acknowledging that it’s coming out with warts and all. It’s a reflection of our social media times, maybe, but it’s also a reflection of the way music recording and distribution is changing.

There’s a moment on untitled 7 where Kendrick says the track is “15 minutes long” before picking up an acoustic guitar and nodding. As he strums a few chords, he spends a little bit of time noodling and making jokes, much to the joy of the others in the room. But if it wasn’t clear before, it’s made absolutely clear here: this record isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. It’s dark and it’s often thought-provoking, but this isn’t a full statement. It’s a thought, a brief letter, a social media update from Kendrick letting us know he’s still around and he’s got more to say.

It’s telling, then, that even when Kendrick isn’t trying to be at the top of his game, that he’s still at the top of his class and one of the best rappers out there. I suspect we’ll still be talking about untitled unmastered. at the end of the year, and like To Pimp a Butterfly, this project’s shape will shift and change with the times.

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Partially, that was to avoid being reactive: while it’s easy to hop on the same bandwagon as everybody else and claim a record to be the best of the year, it’s also very easy to make a mistake with claims like that and look foolish later. Hindsight is 20/20, but I needed time to step back before saying anything that would look ridiculous later.

At this point, it seems conclusive — and even President Obama agrees — that Lamar owned 2015.

What’s not as conclusive is how important To Pimp A Butterfly will be five years from now. I’d go so far as to say that the album is the most important of the decade thus far. It’s not just its jazz experiments — although that’s definitely a part of it — but it’s also the album’s cultural significance.

As Lamar explores his status as a rich black man exploring Africa for the first time and going back home to Compton, he incidentally sheds light on his generation’s biggest plight in cities like Ferguson. As black people (and other non-white nationalities) are mistreated and abused by police, To Pimp A Butterfly feels like a call to act — and a call to recognize each other as people. It’s an incredibly important record that shines a light on the way music can speak for our culture, and how it draws attention to the real issues we otherwise might not have even noticed.

The standout from the record is, no doubt, How Much A Dollar Cost. Against a laid-back jazzy beat, Kendrick discusses an encounter with a homeless man who asks him for money and reveals himself later to be God. Kendrick’s lyrical and rhythmic abilities as a rapper here are unparalleled, as he explains and justifies his behaviour despite knowing he’s sometimes no better than the white racist.

It’s not just that song, of course. Alright has become the theme song for the Black Lives Matter movement. The Blacker The Berry is powerful, and Kendrick’s live performances of the song seem to generate a simultaneously rabid and uncomfortably tense response from its audiences. And at the end of i, Kendrick breaks out a spoken word performance that’s hard to top.

But top it he does, with a so-well-done-it-feels-real interview with Tupac that Lamar scraped together with a bunch of unreleased tapes. It caps off an unbelievable album on a somber note: some things never change.

It’s more than the lyrics that make the album stand out, though: the music itself is incredible. To Pimp A Butterfly is one of the jazziest hip hop records ever made. It’s not a jazz record, but it has so many of the greats on it (like Terrace Martin and Thundercat) — as well as some new faces (like the immensely-talented Kamasi Washington). And it oozes the same sort of sexual, raw, and kinetic energy that the best jazz records eked.

Not to mention the way Kendrick Lamar uses jazz’s best inclinations to continually surprise the audiences with unpredictable beats, rhythms, and song structures. It makes To Pimp A Butterfly immensely rewarding with deeper listening.

There’s a point in the album, around the For Sale? Interlude, when you realize you genuinely have no idea what Kendrick is up to or where he’s going with the whole record. It’s full of surprises. And by the time it’s done, you let out a giant exhale, no matter how times you’ve heard it before. While Alright and King Kunta are great singles, it’s clear that the album is best when you listen to it from beginning to end without skipping a track.

Every ten or fifteen years, an artefact comes out of our pop culture that seems to be the perfect depiction of something happening in our society. It happened fifteen years ago with The Lord Of The Rings, a film trilogy that seemed perfectly time to capture our fears and hopes concerning the War on Terrorism. With To Pimp A Butterfly, we have something similar: a time capsule that is perhaps the closest thing to a perfect record that we’ve ever had, but it also means so much more. It’s our time, no matter how bad it is, recorded onto vinyl. It’s a thing of beauty.

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If you live under a rock or missed this record when it came out, Them Crooked Vultures is a supergroup consisting of John Paul Jones (from Led Zeppelin) on bass, Dave Grohl (of Nirvana/Foo Fighters) on drums, and Josh Homme (of Queens of the Stone Age and Kyuss) taking care of vocals and rhythm guitar work. This was their first and (so far) only record.

What makes the record so special is its throwback vibes delivered with modern kerfuffle and sincerity. Top notch production means that John Paul Jones’ masterful bass work can actually be heard. Grohl pounds the drums like you’ve never heard him pound drums. Josh Homme is in top form. The band sounds like a Zeppelin-inspired Queens of the Stone Age most of the time, but that’s a great thing because it makes all these guys better.

Each of the songs is worth listening to, with nary a bad one in the record, but the best songs tend to be the long ones. Zeppelin was always at their best when they were free to write epic rockers, and the formula works here too. I can’t recommend this album enough; it’s one of my favourites.

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Like the first half of the album, this is a collection of remixes and original material (with singer collaborations). Listen to Repeating Motion to get a taste of the pick-me-up anthems that litter the record. I adore All I Got, which is as catchy as anything you’ll hear all year.

While the first half of the record was largely pump-up, the second half slows things down a little bit to contemplate. Listened to in tandem with the first half, the record feels much more complete. Tracks like 405 work better alongside the rest of the album than they do on their own. While I love Cheap Sunglasses, I think the best new track here is We Belong, which is a beautiful manifesto for electronic music as a genre, but also for those of us who understand the nature of electronic things: nothing lasts.

While describing the record as melancholic would be a stretch, it would be fair to say it feels like the unravelling of a Friday evening. Pairing the album with its predecessor is strange, though: because the first half is so danceable and this record is so much quieter, it makes the album feel front-loaded to a fault. The records are better when listened to independently.

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The nature of remixes is that they’re often focused on dance songs, and while that’s true with Strangers, it doesn’t feel disrespectful to the original music. In a lot of ways, it feels like the songs RAC choose to remix are measurably improved by the remixes on this go-around, and given fresh life in addition to a new perspective.

Remixes also tend to focus on pop songs or hip hop, but the choice for RAC to focus almost exclusively on indie rock here is wise. Not only does it differentiate it from the rest of the pack, it also gives us fresh light on what the genre could sound like when it’s prepared for a different audience. This conversation is vital in expanding the vocabulary of indie and alternative rock; as the genres mature, it’s important we continue to look outside of them for both influence and direction. It’s good to escape the echo chamber.

RAC used to stand for Remix Artist Collective, but these days is the sole project of André Allen Anjos. Anjos is one of the best producers around. Don’t miss out on this one — I suspect I’ll be featuring more RAC here very soon — perhaps when Part 2 hits in April.

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