Albums of the year: Ren, Romy, Gallagher, Blur, Knopfler, Anohni and the Johnsons

Ren: “Sick Boi”

A tick, that’s probably how it started. With a tick and an unrecognized Lyme disease, and it continued with ten years of hellish torment: bestial muscle pain, paralyzing exhaustion, opaque fog in the brain, and at some point psychosis. At the height of his illness, singer Ren lay in bed 23 hours a day, had his food pureed, delirious, sick, and waited for death. Well, death didn’t come. Instead, a few doctors arrived and, in a rather controversial treatment stunt, restored him to the point where he could work. The result: “Sick Boi”. A brilliantly curated, emotional conflagration of 18 songs – at least six of them small masterpieces, about four big indie hits. The rap content is high, brash flow, casual British nastiness, but what does rap mean with music that feels like Trent Reznor has an album by The Streets remixed in a stalactite cave where strong acid constantly runs down the walls. Or sometimes, as if Jeff Buckley had developed a passion for dangerous ragga chants post-mortem. Of course it’s a cliché, but sometimes great suffering creates really great art. Jacob Biazza