This is the pitchwork review. I'm the editor-in-chief, Puget Patel.

And I'm Jeremy Larson, the reviews director.

So around this time of year, we always like to take a minute and look back at all of the music

that has already come out this year and do a little reassess it.

Has an album grown with a little bit of space and time?

Was our immediate reaction the right one?

And what is really hitting for us?

What do we think we'll stand the test of time for months, maybe years to come?

Joining us to talk about all of this is senior editor Anna Gautza. Hi. Hello. Okay, so I figured

we could start by just doing some kind of trend spotting here. Like, are there themes that we're seeing pick up this year?

I think one thing that we've been talking about so much that we have almost stopped seeing it

because it is just suffusing a lot of the alternative pop that we're into is this wavy,

vibe, quasi-ambient, mellow feeling. And it's created some of these

records that feel really like full album focused rather than singles focused. And I'm thinking

of like, Kalella's album this year, Gigi's album this year, both very sort of vibey. They don't

have really like high, highs are low lows.

They're really, like, mellow, oceanic, just weaving with it.

So I go where they home me down.

And I go where they hold me down.

Like I feel like this is like inner monologues and like inner meditations that have very slowly wafted out of them instead of the last couple of years of like, let's hit the clubs.

Right. There's clearly this other branch of people who are like, I'm really tired.

I don't want to think about what I'm wearing. I just want to wear flowy, long linens and just

...