Saying that anything is the “album of the year” is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Putting “album of the year” on something immediately adds a bizarre amount of baggage to deal with, an unnecessarily high expectation to live up to. “Album of the year” also has a terrible time curse; say it too early in a year, and that album will inevitably fail to live up to the expectation. Say it too late in the year, and it either comes across as being too final on top of the fact that it still could be proven wrong. With all that being said, “WORRY.” is the album of the year.

Some background information: Jeff Rosenstock has been playing music for quite some time (or “half my years” as he states in “Pash Rash”), but only recently moved into doing solo music. However, it was clear from his first major solo album “We Cool?” that he not only enjoys putting punctuation in his album titles, but that he could also make passionate pop-punk music about growing older without losing any youthful energy. This trend continues on “WORRY.” as Rosenstock addresses love, aging, paranoia, self-consciousness, police brutality, online surveillance, gentrification and the commodification of punk culture.

While all of this sounds like a lot to address, Rosenstock manages to make it all feel personal and relatable. Even if the exact situations differentiate from one’s own personal experience, the emotions he talks about (feeling lost, in love, confused, upset) are easy to connect with. Not to play down the political side of the album; “Festival Song” is a scathing indictment of shady corporate-sponsored music industry operations and “Planet Terror” rages against the machine for 30 brief but wonderful second. However, Rosenstock truly excels when bringing the personal and political together.

Take, for example, “Blast Damage Days.” Both the literal and thematic center of the album, it is an almost apocalyptic love song set in the here and now. “The systems we start are destined to fall apart / when we let power and greed corrupt our collective heart,” Rosenstock softly sings over dreamy verses before finally letting the song explode into a bombastic chorus. This album grapples with heavy themes, but Rosenstock’s ability to keep the human core amidst all of this is astounding.

Even the music pounds the point home on every song. The aforementioned “Festival Song” plays nice in the verses before breaking into an eruptively discordant chorus, while “I Did Something Weird Last Night” puts some woozy chords in the bridge to accentuate Rosenstock’s lovesick feelings. Beyond pounding the point home, some of the music is just plain awe-inspiring, such as the intricate drum fills scattered all over “We Begged to Explode” or the neat and tidy bass runs in “Wave Goodnight to Me.” Rosenstock and his band have crafted an album that not only explores new musical directions, but implores people to pay attention to the world around them, and for that this album could easily be album of the year.