Is the Baltimore band Beach House’s latest album, 7, brilliant – as Sarah Grant and Simon Vozick-Levinson would have it – or “somnambulant,” as Chris Weingarten insists? In the latest episode of Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone writers and editors Vozick-Levinson, Grant and Weingarten sit down to discuss – and sometimes vociferously debate – our list of the year’s best albums so far. To hear the episode’s entire discussion, plus music samples, press play below or download and subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
Among the most universally beloved albums on the list, it turns out, are Kacey Musgraves’ thoroughly lovely country-pop turn Golden Hour, 18-year-old indie-rock prodigy Snail Mail’s Lush and Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy. The discussion also spotlights some of the list’s less mainstream corners, including Autechre’s NTS Sessions 1-4 (a nearly eight-hour opus of abstract electronic music) and the reunited stoner-metal band Sleep’s The Sciences.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone Music Now on iTunes or Spotify, and tune in Fridays at 1 p.m. ET to hear the show broadcast live on Sirius XM’s Volume, channel 106.