This year’s best electronic albums span the widest range of styles of any genre, ranging from poppy and melodic electro to the experimental outer reaches.
Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor is a self-contained dance record, an unqualified triumph, and a study of dance music from the 1970s to the 2000s.
Previously released on cassette in Mali, Kel Tinariwen offers a very different sense of style than the rugged sounds for which Tinariwen are so well known.
What stranger things can happen to Magdalena Bay after transforming from prog-rock high schoolers to an electro/synthpop pair? Time will tell how far they go.
On Midnights, Taylor Swift reflects on the ghosts of the past and maps the rarely straightforward journey of fully becoming one’s self with pristine popcraft.
Britney Spears’ Blackout feels fresher than ever 15 years on. It captured the darkness of her personal life and cemented new dance music in the pop lexicon.
JB Dunckel, half of the electronic duo Air, battles self-doubt and scientific equations to craft a new electro record that is as evocative as it is immediate.
Jockstrap’s experimental pop makes their debut I Love You Jennifer a bewildering yet rewarding listen. Jockstrap play with expectations to keep listeners on their toes.
Electropop’s Pineross delivers a cinematic exploration of Southwestern history on his unconventional new LP, Dragoon, and he discusses the LP with PopMatters.
The xx’s Oliver Sim goes solo with Hideous Bastard, which deals with deconstruction and learning to surrender to desire as a means of a resurrection.
Instead of offering reassurance or solace, Hercules and Love Affair’s In Amber reflects our unsettling times with themes and lyrics that are challenging and worrying.
Sylvan Esso’s No Rules Sandy disavows much of electropop’s iconography, preferring to disrupt the well-trodden paths of radio-friendly bangers.
