We made it! Well, we mostly made it. The world could well end in the next 25 days. But we’ve made it through 11 months of this godless year, and for that, we deserve to congratulate each other. It’s been rough. Every morning, we’ve woken up to some new, terrible surprise: Another brazen violation of justice by the people in charge of our country, another indication of our government descending into irreparable chaos, another powerful man accused of sexual abuse, another beloved icon dead. If we didn’t have music to help us get through this, I don’t know what we would’ve done.

But we did have music. We had so much music, from so many different corners of the universe. We had sharp, observant R&B and hazy, chiming guitar-rock. We had bracing hardcore and thundering trap and emotionally devastating indie rock and primally soothing doom metal and playfully irreverent folk-rock. We had a number of beloved canonical artists returning, after years-long absences, with some of the best music of their careers. And we had the two albums at the top of this list, both of which are towering achievements that, at least for the members of your Stereogum staff, dominated the year.

Those of us lucky enough to work at this website vote on our favorite albums every year, assigning a finite number of points to an infinite number of albums. The two albums at the top of this list ended up within a few points of each other, and they ended up many, many points beyond every other album on our list. The artists who made those two albums don’t have a ton in common, but they’re both young, they’re both popular, and they’re both topping charts and festival bills. With artists like those two thriving, we are in good hands for the foreseeable future. Or, at least, we’re in good hands as music fans. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same thing in any other aspect of our lives. –Tom Breihan

50 Jay-Z – 4:44 (Roc Nation) The Lemonade was sweet for a lot of people, but it was probably the most bittersweet for one Shawn Carter, and it seems to have left a hell of an aftertaste. Though this album is not solely a reaction to Lemonade just as Lemonade is about much more than Jay-Z, both we and Hov have Beyoncé to thank for its creation. Who knew Jay had this left in him? Especially after that “Lemonade is a popular drink, and it still is” business last year? 4:44 is not his best album, but it’s the most revelatory, timely, and astute of his entire catalogue. So thank you, Bey, for getting Jay to rap about something other than fine art and couture in this decade. –Collin Robinson STREAM IT: Apple Music

49 Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit – The Nashville Sound (Southeastern) The title of The Nashville Sound is bitterly facetious. It comes from a line in “White Man’s World,” a song about raising a baby daughter in a scary society: “Her mama wants to change that Nashville sound, but they’re never gonna let her.” That line is an indictment of country-music status quo, and yet the country-music gatekeepers behind the CMA Awards still nominated The Nashville Sound for Album Of The Year. That’s Isbell: An outsider so sharp and gifted and observant that the insiders can’t help but pay attention. And The Nashville Sound, with its character sketches and laments and love songs, is a great place for you to start paying attention, too. –Tom

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48 Roc Marciano – Rosebudd’s Revenge (Marci Enterprises) Roc Marciano is a better writer than most of the Western canon heralded by high school American literature courses. Even “baby shoes” Hemingway never wrote anything as precise and evocative as “The whips ceiling-free, rip the brick up like cream of wheat.” Rosebudd’s Revenge, a showcase for Roc’s high-definition film-noir soundscapes, is filled to the brim with that sort of luxurious tinted-windows tough talk. Kanye West may write his curses in cursive, but Roc’s out here doing his in calligraphy — all immaculately crafted couplets delivered with the bravado of a head honcho. He’s both the poet and the pimp: a vivid storyteller, and an even more visceral shit talker. –Pranav Trewn STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music

47 Thundercat – Drunk (Brainfeeder) This album is just so damn noodly that you wouldn’t think it had any other purpose than being an outlet for a man who expresses himself better through six strings than he does with his mouth. But as wandering and playful as Drunk is musically, it gets just as far-flung lyrically, and it makes for an endlessly engaging body of work. Just when you could get lost because he’s been going nuts on the bass for minutes at a time, Thundercat yanks you through the full gamut of hilariousness, darkness, melancholy, buoyancy, and seriousness that comprises everyday life. Stephen Bruner the songwriter and Thundercat the virtuoso are in lockstep on this album like they’ve never been before, and the result is wonderfully controlled chaos. –Collin STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

46 Ted Leo – The Hanged Man (SuperEgo) Back in July, we ran a powerful, in-depth profile on Ted Leo, who was then preparing for the self-release of his first proper album in seven years, The Hanged Man. In that forum, Leo wasn’t just candid; he talked at length about numerous issues he’d faced over his 47 years on this Earth, any one of which in isolation would have carried its own feature and been worthy of its own album. Collected in one place, Leo’s revelations felt like a deeply reflective immersion into a truly complex existence. The Hanged Man is every bit as conflicted and accomplished as its creator. It’s Leo’s most adventurous album, his most interesting album, and his most exciting album. He pulls from influences only hinted at in his earlier work, and he pulls it the fuck off. The big, catchy songs are the biggest, catchiest things he’s ever done; the sad songs are sadder than anything this side of Carrie & Lowell; the lyricism throughout is worthy of a MacArthur Fellowship. It all works. –Michael Nelson STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music

45 Guerilla Toss – GT Ultra (DFA) If these really are the end times, Guerilla Toss intend to go down dancing. Kassie Carlson has always been part carnival barker and part mad prophet, but on GT Ultra, she welcomes the apocalypse by taking on a new role: frontwoman of an honest-to-god pop band. Of course, for G-Toss, “pop” is less Top 40 and more the sound of a neon balloon exploding, but still, the impenetrable noise-punk chaos has given way to rubbery grooves and sci-fi synths that pogo their way right into your skull. I can think of worse ways to go. –Peter Helman STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

44 Jlin – Black Origami (Planet Mu) Listening to Black Origami is a borderline spiritual experience. The Gary, Indiana-based producer known as Jlin conjures worlds with her deconstructed dance music. It’s a wonder that something this intensely finessed breathes with such an overwhelming sense of fluidity and life. These tracks are spontaneously but exactingly constructed front-to-back, and Jlin’s technique is apparent in every snapping ricochet. Her sonic baseline is a rhythmic tap tap tap that veers off script wildly and often, which allows her music to be entrancing but also visceral. When she unexpectedly doubles back around, you can feel it in your bones. –James Rettig STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

43 Zola Jesus – Okovi (Sacred Bones) Zola Jesus’ Okovi was forged from a depressive episode, the kind that forces you to reckon with your small place in this great, big universe and wonder whether or not your presence in it is needed. On the towering single “Siphon,” Nika Roza Danilova wills a friend lost to suicide back to life, while “Remains” untangles the moments after someone dies over a skittering backbeat. That beat is impossibly heavy, as is all of the production on Okovi, and Danilova’s voice barrels forth with an unparalleled strength that dominates your brainspace and makes it near-impossible to do anything other than listen. –Gabriela Tully Claymore STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

42 Hundredth – Rare (Hopeless) In the months following the June 2015 release of Hundredth’s third full-length, Free, the Myrtle Beach, SC melodic hardcore band parted ways with lead guitarist Blake Hardman. Soon afterward, Hardman got picked up by Hundredth tourmates Counterparts, who’d recently lost their own longtime lead guitarist (and primary songwriter) Jesse Doreen. Generally, that sort of intra-scene personnel-juggling precedes periods of artistic stasis and/or diminishing returns. Somehow, though, these particular swaps resulted in both bands destroying old barriers and hitting astonishing new altitudes. On their fourth LP, Rare, Hundredth reinvented their sound, engaging with softer textures and spacier influences. The final product is a front-to-back ass-kicker in the style of ’90s metal-derived shoegaze bands like Catherine Wheel or Swervedriver. The guitars are roaring. The hooks are hammering. The melodies are luscious. And the sky is the limit. –Michael STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

41 Oddisee – The Iceberg (Mello Music Group) Oddisee is so shamefully slept-on at this point that he should be signed to Simmons, Sealy, or Serta. The Iceberg addresses the political with the same deft balance of force and grace that Solange did on A Seat At The Table — except with the punchiest of drums and irresistible go-go swing. There is plenty of bite in lines like “How you gonna make us great/ When we were never really that amazing?” and “I make more than my sister/’Cause I was born as a mister,” but Oddisee has a way of making you feel them without leaving teeth marks. The artists that deserve the tallest soapboxes rarely get them, but the PG County MC made the most out of the highest platform he’s had so far. –Collin STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

40 Feist – Pleasure (Interscope) Leslie Feist’s fifth album is a lesson in restraint. A decade after launching into the popular consciousness with The Reminder, the Canadian songwriter went back to basics, tapping into her folk roots to make what is perhaps her most powerful and cohesive work to date. Pleasure is constructed around the spaces between words, a desire for simplicity in the face of an increasingly noisy world. It’s a respite that’s sturdily centered. For every soul-searching song like “Lost Dreams” or “Baby Be Simple,” there’s an outward-facing countercurrent. “Pleasure,” “Any Party,” and “Century” are the kind of songs that play out the push-and-pull between engaging with the world and being shut off inside of yourself, a battle that’s as taxing as it is revelatory. –James STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music

39 Heaven In Her Arms – White Halo (Daymare / Translation Loss) Japan’s Heaven In Her Arms copped their name from a song off Converge’s 2001 classic Jane Doe. It’s a fitting tribute and an apt reference point. But on the astonishing White Halo, HIHA primarily recall countrymen Envy, whose own sound provided a blueprint for iconic American post-metal screamers like Deafheaven. Tonally, White Halo basically shifts between two gears: hauntingly beautiful and ragingly torrential. But these guys do so much with both those extremes that the resulting work often feels like something entirely new. It’s magical and hypnotic and weirdly amorphous. Listening to the album can feel like being captured in an especially weird and vivid dream: You never quite know where you are, or where you were just a moment ago, or where you’re going. But you’re there. And you don’t want to leave. –Michael STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

38 The Weather Station – The Weather Station (Paradise Of Bachelors) Self-titled albums usually denote something: an introduction, a culmination, a new self-realization a few years in. For Tamara Lindeman, The Weather Station marks an evolution into the fullest-sounding version of the project yet, with string arrangements and rock elements fleshing out the sparse folk of past outings. Much of The Weather Station traces distance — geographic and emotional and temporal — as memories and experiences pile up. But the album doesn’t dwell. It’s Lindeman’s most urgent music yet, acknowledging the weight of time but resolving to storm ahead immediately after that acknowledgement. As she calmly closes “Thirty,” the album’s highlight and mission statement: “That was a year, now here/ Now here is another one.” –Ryan Leas STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

37 Paramore – After Laughter (Fueled By Ramen) Anyone who’s found fleeting solace venting their frustrations through a perfectly crafted Facebook rant can probably relate to After Laughter. Lots of songwriters chronicle depression and disaffection, but few do it with the frankness and seething bile Hayley Williams brought to Paramore’s latest. Whether lashing out against unfounded optimism (“Rose-Colored Boy”), polite society’s false veneer of contentment (“Fake Happy”), or the futility of faith in heroes (“Idle Worship”), she spiked Paramore’s punchy pop-rock with shots of startling pessimism that would be tough to stomach if the music wasn’t so contagiously constructed. Once you adjust to the band’s retro makeover, the songs are uniformly spectacular — especially ballads “Forgiveness” and “26,” on which the pain driving the more aggressive tracks is laid bare and converted into something like beauty. –Chris DeVille STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music

36 Girlpool – Powerplant (Anti-) It’s fair to worry that the raw quality of Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad’s voices might get muddled with the addition of drums to Girlpool’s signature guitar-only sound. A full band isn’t necessarily the key to a great record, but in the case of the duo’s sophomore release Powerplant, a full band allows Girlpool to reach higher, deeper — even rawer — potential. Their eager and observational lyrics once again come alive with harmonies that stab you in the gut. With Girlpool you can be silly and serious at the same time. You can use jokes and poetic one-liners to express disenchantment and frustration with your surroundings. As time goes on and Tividad and Tucker enter their early 20s, they’ve become even more in-sync than before, if that was even possible. –Grace Birnstengel STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

35 Lomelda – Thx (Double Double Whammy) Lomelda’s Thx is an album worthy of a road trip, which is perhaps one of the most enduring compliments you can give to a collection of songs. Hannah Read navigates the feeling of being in-between with a dexterity that doesn’t rely on easy tropes, and the inner thoughts that creep into her lyrics during moments of stasis probably sound a lot like your own. In Read’s universe, small actions lead to big revelations delivered in a whispering half-yodel. Her utterances are quiet enough to creep into your conscience and give you a boost of strength when you need it most. –Gabriela STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

34 Incendiary – Thousand Mile Stare (Closed Casket Activities) Imagine Zack de la Rocha fronting Earth Crisis as produced by Kurt Ballou circa 2012 and you have a pretty good idea of Thousand Mile Stare, the third album from Long Island beatdown-hardcore crew Incendiary. They sound like the riot that erupts after the first Molotov cocktail shatters and the flames jump out of the bottle. I dunno if Incendiary are socialists, anarchists, or just fed-up motherfuckers, but their lyrics read like Jacobin polemics, shredding social media (“The Product Is You”), gun advocates (“Sell Your Cause”), racist idiocy peddled as cultural heritage (“Hanging From The Family Tree”), and just about every other jackboot pressing down on the throats of the 99%. There are too many great lines to pick one as a representative sample, but here’s a favorite (from “Fact Or Fiction”): “SUFFERING/ LEADS TO/ FRUSTRATION/ AND FEAR THROUGH/ MEDIA-ISSUED/ PANIC-STRICKEN WORLDVIEW.” Incendiary know the deal and they aren’t here for the bullshit. They’re here to burn it the fuck down. –Michael STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

33 Migos – Culture (Quality Control / 300 / Atlantic) Any decent blockbuster rap album has hits, and Culture came correct in that regard: “T-Shirt”? Tremendous. “Slippery”? Sublime. “Bad And Boujee”? Agreed on both counts! (Like, in a good way.) But ruling a radio landscape largely molded in their own image is not the only reason Culture was Migos’ crowning achievement. It also finally practiced what this triplet-spouting trio has always preached: Quality Control. Deep cuts on Atlanta trap releases can be disposable, but here they’re indispensable, be they bangers (“Get Right Witcha”), ballads (“Out Yo Way”), or zone-outs about eating molly like it’s rice (“Kelly Price”). And when they went symphonic on the thunderous “Deadz,” it just about killed me. –Chris STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music

32 The National – Sleep Well Beast (4AD) Considering the National are a politically-outspoken band and Sleep Well Beast is their first album of the Trump years, it was easy to expect or yearn for a more scathing document of contemporary America this time around. Instead, Sleep Well Beast highlights the National’s penchant for magnifying insular conflicts into something a lot of us can relate to in that moment, a record detailing marital struggles and familial bonds during what feels like the end of the world. Defined by its experiments with claustrophobic and anxious electronics, Sleep Well Beast captures the experience of living through a time where every day is too insane, too shocking, too simultaneously numbing and infuriating. It’s the sound of a static, cloudy headspace surrounded by turmoil, with songs like “I’ll Still Destroy You” and “Sleep Well Beast” simmering to muted catharses that, rather than offer resolution or release, can only leave you with the hope that, sometime in the future, something’s going to break. –Ryan STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music

31 Alvvays – Antisocialites (Polyvinyl) Here we have 10 guitar-pop tunes so gorgeously conceived you’ll wonder if you’re dreaming. (You’ll also wonder if you’re dreaming because they made the album sound like you’re dreaming.) Alvvays LP2 improved upon their exceptional debut in every way, elevating both Molly Rankin’s poetic reflections on romantic tumult and the sparkling, shimmering backdrops through which they propel. Very few artists this year strung together a sequence as brilliant as “In Undertow,” “Dreams Tonite,” and “Plimsoll Punks”; this would be one of 2017’s best albums based on that opening trifecta alone. But don’t stop there. On Antisocialites, impeccable aching reverie awaits at every turn. –Chris STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

30 Converge – The Dusk In Us (Epitaph) Five years after their last album, the most important hardcore band of the 21st century return, ready for battle. The Dusk In Us is an album shot through with anxiety, one that takes a necessarily apocalyptic view on what it’s like to raise kids in a world that appears to be falling apart. But it also projects a feverish, rabid strength, the band’s musicians once again becoming a mercilessly precise machine. Converge remain just as great at forbidding doom-grooves as they are at blenderized math-metal tantrums. And now they’ve found ways to blend those two approaches for maximum intensity. Wear a helmet for this one. –Tom

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29 Counterparts – You’re Not You Anymore (Pure Noise) If I had to triangulate You’re Not You Anymore, the fifth album from Canadian melodic hardcore band Counterparts, I’d put the music on a map somewhere between Converge, At The Gates, and Jawbreaker. But Counterparts stand too tall to fall in the shadows of their forebears; YNYA resists reference points because it is a reference point. The album comprises 11 tracks that are done in under half an hour, but it has enough ideas for a hundred songs, and somehow, it all flows like a single perfect sentence. YNYA is elegant, expansive, wrenching, and ripping. The album’s fierce shifts and brutal slams rattle the dome like a head-on car crash; its sweet hooks rush the body like an Oxy rail. There are drum patterns and guitar leads that sound like dares — outrageous highlights-reel shit that sane people avoid for fear of either embarrassment or injury — but they’re locked so tight into the songs you don’t even clock them till the third spin. The low end has the texture of hot pitch being shoveled onto a cracked highway. The vocals sound like a metal bin full of broken glass being dragged through subway tunnels off the back bumper of a D train, express, from Bay Parkway to the Bronx. This is fire. –Michael STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

28 Björk – Utopia (One Little Indian) On Vulnicura, Björk bared the hole where her heart was ripped out for all the world to see. And now, nearly three years later, she’s using it to let some light in. Like the thaw after a particularly harsh winter, Utopia feels full of new life and new love, teeming with flute and harp and literal birdsong. Aided by Arca and his murky, anchorless beats, Björk imagines a radical feminist utopia free of inherited violence, where sending MP3s to a lover becomes an act of transcendent beauty. –Peter STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music

27 Allison Crutchfield - Tourist In This Town (Merge) On her debut solo full-length, borne out of the breakup of her previous band and her relationship with its co-songwriter, Allison Crutchfield systematically analyzes the split like the loss of a loved one: replaying their last words, the words she would have said, the words she wouldn’t have. She expertly navigates heartbreak’s deepest contradictions, from revealing the truth of the lies she told herself to damning the one who once made her feel saved. Tourist In This Town is about revisiting the wreckage of a fire you helped fan, salvaging the ashes as nutrients for new soil — and as fertile ground for the most expertly crafted basement-pop we heard this year. –Pranav STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

26 Kelela – Take Me Apart (Warp) Kelela has a way of folding synth-soaked electro shimmer into pop like origami, transforming disparate sounds into something piercing, sensual, somber, contemplative, or any of the myriad sentiments she evokes. Take Me Apart is the most powerful union of those genres that she has offered up to this point in her career. Synth layers and sweeping ambience from Arca, the xx’s Romy Madley Croft, Kingdom, and Ariel Rechtshaid could bury a lesser artist, but Kelela bends their sounds to her will until they are the perfect complement for anything on the spectrum of paralyzing heartbreak to self-love and independence. This album can take you apart and put you back together again dozens of times if you let it. –Collin STREAM IT: Spotify | Apple Music