9 of the best albums from April 2024

Tortured Poets this, AI Drake that, this month’s music landscape hasn’t been short of drama. The biggest news to hit the datastream was by far Taylor Swift’s eleventh album, which dominated charts and feeds, even becoming the topic of one particularly viral Monica Lewinsky tweet – “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me”. A rap feud involving Drake and Future resulted in a pile-on that somehow brought Kenrick Lamar and Ye into the picture, and AI recreations of Tupac and Snoop Dogg. I could go on, but let’s get into the albums.

March’s best albums include Claire Rousay’s sentiment, a folk-pop offering featuring sparse guitar and yearning sonic textures, and Chanel Beads’ hazy debut, Your Day Will Come, an indie record that perfectly captures the disaffected sounds of lower Manhattan through dreamy melodies and janky production. On the heavier end of the spectrum is bela’s Noise and Cries and Lord Spikeheart’s The Adept, which both see the artists harness their inner screams, funnelling their rage into pounding industrial rhythms and gutteral death metal. Elsewhere, Lanark Artefax returns with his first EP in four years and the anonymous artist known as Pigbaby shares his lo-fi debut album – mixed by Rainy Miller and released on Vegyn’s label PLZ Make It Ruins.