Best albums of 2024: Indian American pianist Vijay Iyer and top pop from Jessica Pratt to Kendrick Lamar

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Looking back on this disorienting year in America, I think I wanted to hear music that promised some kind of future. I wanted to hear Kim Gordon make fresh noise on new margins as she entered her 70s. I wanted to hear Vijay Iyer imagine new forms of virtuoso cooperation. I wanted to hear how Kendrick Lamar really feels about where this planet is headed. I was so future-hungry, I even wanted to hear contrasting futures overlap – which meant wanting to have a “Brat” summer and a Pratt summer (see below). These are the pop albums of 2024 that held the most promise and made the most sense.

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10. Elori Saxl, ‘Earth Focus (Original Score)’

Composer Elori Saxl’s music resides on the fault line between nature and technology, juxtaposing manipulated field recordings of whooshing wind and gurgling water against the sounds of synthesizers and woodwinds. It’s a fascinating, polymorphic sound that naturally makes the ear curious. What’s real here? What’s fake? And what’s at stake when those two things touch? That last line of inquiry makes Saxl a perfect fit to score the latest season of “Earth Focus,” a PBS television docuseries that most recently explored how human development is encroaching on the ecosystems of Southern California.

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9. Ice Spice, ‘Y2K!’

Wait, what? You wanted Ice Spice to change things up? Why? Ever since her 2022 breakout single, “Munch (Feelin’ U),” swept her to the highest planes of pop stardom (Taylor Swift remix, “Barbie” soundtrack, Grammy nods), this young Bronx rapper has refused to pander, flinch or budge, channeling a proud, New York-ish staunchness that dates back to Mobb Deep or maybe even the Ramones. With the expectations of the pop machine pressing her from every direction, she doubled down with her Day 1 producer, RIOTUSA, and made a tight, 10-song album in a style that belongs to her. Imagine if every rapper – every pop star – had this much faith in their own ideas.

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8. Anno, ‘Anno’

Depending on the calibration of your musical radar, you might remember Anno as the D.C.-based singer, producer and performance artist who went by Olivia Neutron-John – until a cease-and-desist order prompted a rebrand and a reinvention. Thankfully, Anno hasn’t completely abandoned the intensely stylish, deeply disciplined electro of ON-J. “I’ve been moving slow,” Anno sings at the start of this self-titled re-debut. “Not what you think you know, life dissolving, closing in.” It feels like music about negotiating death. Anno says it’s about time management. What if they’re the same thing?

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7. Vijay Iyer, ‘Compassion’

The celebrated pianist Vijay Iyer says he titled his purposeful, clarifying new album “Compassion” because he “wanted to hear that word as much as possible.” He’s obviously trying to cultivate compassion, too. Joined by the agile Linda May Han Oh on bass and the inventive Tyshawn Sorey on drums, Iyer makes this trio’s swapping of virtuoso gestures feel like a metaphor for human cooperation at the highest levels. It sounds like jazz, for sure, but even more so like a model for living through rancorous times.

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6. Straw Man Army, ‘Earthworks’

What to make of Straw Man Army bringing its thrilling, chilling trilogy of dystopian punk albums to righteous completion? Does the world end now? I wish this band’s timing wasn’t so good. “Empires end,” singer Owen Deutsch declares soberly at the fulcrum of “Earthworks,” an album that frequently evokes the conjoined politics and propulsion of Crass, Fugazi and the Ex, among others. “Daily life is the scene of the crime.” And as daily life continues, so does Straw Man Army’s musical forward motion. The future feels hard to imagine right now, but this band is going there.

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5. Molly Nilsson, ‘Un-American Activities’

For too many pop singers, the creative process involves calling up some Jack Antonoff type and asking to be tutored through a homework assignment. For Molly Nilsson, a Swedish pop singer unconcerned with popularity, the process involves setting up shop in the former Los Angeles home of writer-activist Lion Feuchtwanger and recording songs about the war in Gaza, the Red Scare and the 21st-century reemergence of fascism – any of which might sound like they’re playing at an ’80s birthday party in your dreams.

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4. Kim Gordon, ‘The Collective’

When Sonic Youth co-founder Kim Gordon performed this album’s most mesmerizing cut, “Bye Bye,” at Washington’s Black Cat in March, a distinct sensation rippled across the room. Importance. Ever felt that? Like you’re experiencing a little piece of history unfolding through a big, new sound? The big, new sounds on “The Collective” – trap rhythms, guitar shreds and poetry sighs all smashed together – have allowed Gordon to enter new dimensions of expression late in her career, proving that music has no horizon, that we’re never finished with it.

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3. Kendrick Lamar, ‘GNX’

When it comes to thinking about Kendrick Lamar’s place in American culture, there are a thousand ways to get lost in your head, so here’s a chance to check your sensorium. “I want y’all to feel this,” he says near the start of his most visceral and direct album, letting his feelings flow while the bass goes boom. Has his voice ever sounded this rich? Have his emotions – his anger, his playfulness – ever sounded this close to the surface? The blunt-force candor of “GNX” might not align with some people’s less imaginative expectations of Kendrick Lamar, Voice of a Generation, but to quote one of this album’s more sensational left turns, “I’m loving it.”

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2. Jessica Pratt, ‘Here in the Pitch’

The term “singer-songwriter” can feel so suppressive, but on her expansive fourth album, Jessica Pratt stretches that hyphenate into some kind of cosmic ribbon. As a singer, she has a voice like nothing you’ve ever heard. Helium-toked, celestial, paralyzing. But as a songwriter, she pulls on disparate strings you probably have heard: Dionne Warwick, Laura Nyro, Nina Simone, Scott Walker, the Mothers of Invention, “The Simpsons.” She’s both a studied classicist and a freaky visionary, but more than anything, she’s meticulous. In a careless world, that counts as courage.

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1. Charli XCX, ‘Brat’

For all of the magicians currently residing in the tower of song, the sweet-and-sour pop anthem must be the hardest trick to pull off. If it weren’t, we’d have more albums like “Brat,” which already feels like one of the most vivid bundles of beats and melody to drop this century. Charli XCX has spent years in the music industry trenches, getting lost on different paths pointing toward fame, but here she’s finally trusting her impulses. Her broadly colorful, deeply cathartic hooks describe euphoria and self-doubt, and they come punctuated by little distortions and discordances, as if to underscore the awesome beauty throughout. If that isn’t a metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.