Tag Archives: 2023

In Search of the 23 Best Albums of 2023: The 23 Best Albums of 2023!

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Back in the misty dawn of time, I set out to catch up on new music. I think the era was called 2021?

In any case, in this distant eon I listened to critics choices for the best albums of the 2010s. I did the same for 2020. And then I set out to listen to new releases month by month throughout 2021, so I could come up with the 21 best albums of 2021. That was so much fun that I did it again in 2022, and found the 22 best albums of 2022.

There are links to the 2020, 2021, and 2022 albums in the posts above, but if you’d like an all-in playlist for each year, I have that on Spotify (I’ll be moving these to YouTube Music eventually, for reasons to be explained below):

What do you do when you have best albums lists for three years in a row/? You go for four! And so I continued my monthly review in 2023:

( January/February/March April May June July/August September October/November/December )

In all, I listened to 1,071 albums released in 2023. I then whittled that down as follows:

  • Based on first listen, I ended up with 265 “yes” and “maybe” picks
  • I re-listened to that 265, and got 148 semi-finalists
  • Those 148 then got a final re-listen resulting in…

The 23 Best Albums of 2023!

Aesop Rock, Integrated Tech Solutions– Oh the old school bass, synth, and drum machine sounds! It’s a very deliberate invocation, as the 80s IT-theme, occasional appearance of video game sound effects, and shout-outs to everything from Salt-N-Pepa to Mr. T make clear. It’s not purely an exercise in nostalgia though- the flow and the mix often feels very modern. Aesop Rock has produced some of my favorite hip hop of the past few years, and I’ll happily add this to that list!

Christian Kjellvander, Hold Your Love Still– Moody and atmospheric guitar-driven music, replete with minor chords, and haunting vocals with literate and philosophical lyrics. The musical and vocal range may be limited, but this Swedish-born, Seattle-raised singer-songwriter with indie lo-fi roots more than makes up for that with the power he runs through his music.

CMAT, Crazymad, For Me– You know those Irish singer-songwriters with a wicked wit and playful inventiveness who are lush pop vocalists with a strong country flavor? Well, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, aka CMAT is one of those. Actually, I don’t know how many more of those there are, but she’s a damn good one, and I love it!

Esther Rose, Safe to Run– I was looking forward to this given that her album How Many Times made my top 21 in 2021. And here again we have her delightfully sincere vocals, emotionally literate storytelling, and utterly authentic feeling for country, pop, rock, and their fit together. I initially wasn’t sure if I was totally sold on the track sequencing, but damn does every single individual song hold up.

Gina Birch, I Play My Bass Loud– This album from Raincoats co-founder Burch has got the dissonant sound of early post-punk, experiments with rhythm, intriguing work from her eponymous bass, and a familiar feminist edge. If it does sound of an era, well, she was one of the founders of that era, and everything here is still oh so relevant.

Grace Potter, Mother Road– My Vermont home team girl Grace Potter is in peak form here- rocking, rootsy, musically tough, lyrically feisty. This is a nearly perfect fusion between formula, form, and function. And the album even pulls off a conceptual through-line!

H31R, Headspace– Going in knowing there were 14 songs in 25 minutes and a parental advisory certainly had me feeling well-disposed. The low-fi glitchy beats and effects, spare mix, and smart and outspoken lyrics justified this inclination. There’s a lot of freshness on this collaboration between New Jersey producer JWords and Brooklyn rapper maassai.

Homeboy Sandman, Rich– Smart, positive, and often funny left of center lyrics, a pleasant conversational flow, and a varied and clever musical mix. This Queens rapper has been around for fifteen years, and it shows in how comfortable and confident he is doing his thing here. And the album reminds me how much hip hop that relaxes a little and gets into the details of small everyday life still has to say.

Joanna Sternberg, I’ve Got Me– Quirky vocals, with sharp dense emotionally internal lyrics and slightly off-kilter acoustic instrumentation. It’s often kind of sing-song, and deliberately artless, but vulnerable. All-in-all, this NYC-based singer, songwriter and visual artist is producing delightful music that I want to hear more of!

Logic, College Park– The structure of this album is literally Logic and his friend taking a drive around College Park, Maryland on the eve of his first live performance, dropping in on people and places along the way. That gives us the frame, and then the muscular musical mix, strong beats, interesting and varied flow, and self-aware narration lend it depth. At more than an hour it is a tad on the long side, but structure, contents, and fun keep it going. His 2022 album Vinyl was one of my honorable mentions, and l can see that’s no fluke!

Marnie Stern, The Comeback Kid– Blistering guitar work, booming power pop sound, 80s synth overtones, an exuberance and edge to the mix, and a unique vocal presence. All right, Marnie, all right! I also love the way she messes with us, like the second track about the sound being hard to take, which keeps layering on sonic challenges as it goes. The title refers to her decade off of new releases, but you sure couldn’t prove it by how much virtuosity is on display here.

Nat Myers, Yellow Peril– A Korean-American Blues musician, which is a story I like. But even better, it is as fine a genuine-feeling dynamic set of steel guitar traditional blues as you are going to find. It never felt less than fun and true for a single track.

No-No Boy, Electric Empire– You may find other indie rock albums with peerless chamber pop melodic instincts. You may find other musical efforts that mix in aspects of Asian musical traditions with integrity and without appeal to novelty or fetishization. You may find other nuanced and thoughtful explorations of identity and history. But I would propose that you will rarely find all those things together and done at such a high level. No-No Boy is the project of Asian-American singer, songwriter, and scholar Julian Saporiti, and this is his third album. It was a slow burn, but it really got me.

Olivia Rodrigo, GUTS– I like Olivia Rodrigo for her knack for combining chart-worthy dance/pop hooks and rocking breaks with lyrics that are somehow simultaneously bubblegum and yet acidly sharp and searing. There are a host of young female artists in this space now, but even among them she is a standout, and her plaintive and sometimes astonishing purity of voice adds another whole level to it. This is a worthy follow-up to her debut level, and an inspiring down payment on more to come.

Palehound, Eye on the Bat– Thrashy guitar with just enough poppy melody, on point vocal phrasing during both slow/quiet and loud/fast interludes, and lyrics that paint real life stories but load them with emotional meaning. Band frontperson El Kempner severely undersells when they say, “it’s kind of like journal-rock, just all of my biggest fears splurted onto some vinyl, no different from writing a diary, really.” This is their fourth album, and I look forward to hearing more!

Prewn, Through the Window– This seems constantly on the edge of being too narrow-band in sound, but also hits so many notes I like- anguished vocals, minor chords, feedback, distortion, and reverb. It can be difficult to penetrate to the dark heart of what is going on here, but the fact that there is a harrowing song about literally killing and frying every fish in the sea gives you some indication. I’m not entirely sure what Izzy Hagerup of Massachusetts is up to, but I dig it!

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, Saved!– Avant garde artist Kristin Hayter has shed her Lingua Ignota persona, and released a gospel inspired album on which she, by her own recounting, reaches, “new levels of unhinged, spiritually and sonically.” I mean, okay, I can get behind that! And in fact, it’s amazing. The spiritual yearning is sincere, but the traditional vocal and piano arrangements of the songs are mutated through the influence of electronica, metal, and noisy distorted experimental music. The results are jarring, unsettling, and sometimes abrasive, but it never feels gimmicky, and the evocative and uncanny nature of the songs that result lends itself to the quest.

Roger Waters, The Dark Side of the Moon Redux – The natural objection here is the hubris of redoing a classic, but I admire musical hubris, and if anyone has a right to re-approach this material, it’s Roger Waters. The next issue is the inherent thorniness of covers (which, again, I love), but the good news here is this meets my criteria for “gold standard” of a cover- not a too-faithful reproduction (because what would we need that for since we have the original?), but also something that substantively engages with and honors the original in some form. Waters has produced a version of these songs that isn’t a novelty or a copy, but instead pulls out their original air of darkness even more sharply and comes from the point of view of a worn yet wise observer of life. In other words, he brings the perspective of an 80-year-old self to the music he made as a 30-year-old. The effect is truly compelling.

slowthai, UGLY– I liked this British hip hop artist’s 2021 album Tyron quite a bit. This album is just as skillfully done, but more coherent and more serious. It has a brooding weight and propulsive energy as he really gets inside to wrestle with his life.

The Hives, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons– This album is single-handedly making me believe in the 2000s garage rock revival again. And with more than a little flavor of the Jam, Stiff Little Fingers and the rockier side of post-punk. There is nothing new here. But that’s gloriously the point!

Thee Headcoats, Irregularis (The Great Hiatus)– Rollicking blues rock! With the classic name checks to prove it, bolstered by a determination to be, as one song here puts it “pretty original nevertheless”. Like the “Leader of the Pack” inspired “Leader of the Sect” or album-closer “The Kids Are All Square”… The album came about when Billy Childish’s friend and musical inspiration Don Craine of the Downliners Sect died in February 2022. Childish teamed up with his former bandmates from his ’90s group Thee Headcoats and Craine’s bandmate Keith Evans to record a memorial EP. They all enjoyed that experience enough that they decided to cut this reunion LP. I love what it does so much!

U2, Songs of Surrender– Regular readers will know that I like a good concept album. This “new” album from U2 scores highly in that regard. The band presents new recordings of forty songs from throughout their career with a stripped-down acoustic approach, in four sets of ten chosen by each band member. As you might imagine, this ends up being a little long, as in, around two and three quarter hours. But it is worth it- the treatments and sometime lyrical reworkings expose anew the power of the songs, and as a set it sounds very coherent. You may think me mad, but I think this works!

Who is She?, Goddess Energy– Sweet melodies, bright chords, driving music right on the centerline between pop and punk, and energetic charmingly artless vocals. All of this, and odes to Movie Pass, Marianne Williamson, and telling off Anne Hathaway’s haters. How can I not be smitten? This “supergroup” of members of local Seattle bands Tacocat, Lisa Prank, and Chastity Belt makes some real magic together.

And there you have The 23 Best Albums of 2023! But wait, there’s more! For a limited time only we can make you the special offer of 77 “honorable mentions” to round out our list to a nice even 100:

  • 100 gecs, 10,000 gecs– I do love me some hyperpop! This particular St. Louis duo’s iteration is equal parts synth bedroom pop, autotune, and thrashy guitar feedback excess, and is high energy, silly, and total sincere.

  • Alan Palomo, World of Hassle– Originally from Mexico, composer, producer, and songwriter Alan Palomo has apparently been making beautiful and catchy genre-bending music since the late 00s but has remained off my radar until now. The loss is mine! This lush, catchy, and smart amalgam of electro and 80s soul had me smiling and bopping my head the whole time!

  • Alice Longyu Gao, Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn and Retire– The title lets you know there’s a point of view, which is great. But even better is the mix of energetic, wacky, and experimental on display here as it combines electronic, sing-song, noise rock, and high-octane dance music. This Chinese-born American singer, songwriter, DJ, and performance artist has it going on!

  • Angel Bat Dawid, Requiem for Jazz– Meant as a deliberate response to the “Jazz is Dead” line that has been kicking around since the 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, this extraordinary album by Chicago composer, clarinetist, and educator Dawid holds a literal requiem mass for the form that both celebrates it and turns it inside out, both in service of what jazz has meant in the Black world, and what something new in its spirit could mean. It’s orchestral, experimental, dissonant, exuberant, and incantatory.

  • Ava Max, Diamonds and Dancefloors– I do appreciate good dance music, and this starts off on the right note in terms of energy, production, catchiness, and verve. And it keeps going at the same level track after track. Ava Max is now my second-favorite Albanian-American musical powerhouse! (Sorry Ava, Action Bronson got there first.)

  • BabyBaby_Explores, Food Near Me, Weather Tomorrow– Musically quirky, distorted and dissonant, lyrically snarky, and vocally weird, without losing the through line of darkly inflected guitars and drums. This Providence Rhode Island trio is an exemplar of what post rock can do. I want more!

  • Be Your Own Pet, Mommy– Powered by the true force of nature Jemina Pearl, Be Your Own Pet released one of my favorite albums of the 00s, Get Awkward, and then promptly imploded. The ensuing years saw her grow up, start a family, and emerge even stronger and more in charge, and their old garage rock swagger plus her enhanced substance are a great combination here. Not to mention which, the album opens with a BDSM song. What’s not to like?
  • Big Freedia, Central City– This album from New Orleans-based rapper Big Freedia is overflowing with humor, booming bawdy energy, and classic mix motifs. This is apparently a subgenre known as “bounce music”. It’s musically delightful, and heaven knows this is a historical moment where exuberant energy from a gender nonconforming gay man who embraces femininity is extremely welcome.
  • Bun B/Statik Selektah, Trillstatik 2– There’s a light sprightly feeling to much of the lyrical and musical mix of this collaboration between Texas hip-hop legend Bub B and East Coast producer Statik Selektah, but also depth in its portraits of life. The vocal flow doesn’t always keep up but is also often affecting, and, considering the album was recorded live in one twelve-hour session, this is pretty amazing!

  • Bush Tetras, They Live In My Head– Excellent moody minor chords rock, somewhere between post-punk and 90s, and vocals with a haunted, plaintive edge. It turns out this New York band has been kicking around since the late 70s and was one of the early No Wave bands, which tells you why they sound like everything between. They’re OG!

  • Butch Walker, Butch Walker as…Glenn– Walker started off heading a glam metal band in the 80s and has ventured over all kinds of territory since then. This album finds him engaged in a very specific kind of character- it presents the persona of “Glenn”, a burned-out musician playing a cheap and rowdy bar. You’ll hear hints of Billy Joel, Springsteen, and Jackson Browne here, as well other similar voices. The concept sound is thus inherently a little derivative, but it feels fantastically sincere.

  • Ceci Bastida, Every Thing Taken Away– What I read about her was, “Since moving from Tijuana, Mexico, to the United States, the former Tijuana No! keyboardist and singer Ceci Bastida has released records and podcasts extending the Latinx punk tradition.” What I have to say is, this album is brilliant, nervy, electronic and rocking, with stripped-down beats, fun, and attitude!

  • Chase & Status, 2 Ruff, Vol. 1– Stuttering beats, glitchy sounds, metallic bass like looming dread, and the vocal autotuning actually works, turning them into urgent yet distorted prophetic voices. Dread that you can dance to! This U.K. drum’n’bass/dubstep duo has apparently been kicking around since the early 00s, and I’m told this is less polished and more like a mixtape that their usual albums. Amen!

  • Cheater Slicks, Ill-fated Cusses– Echoing clangy guitars, a thick feedback-laden background, and vocals that are consciously artless. They’ve been in the Boston music scene since the late 80s, and it turns out they can still bring it. It sounds like punk, it sounds like garage rock, it sounds like the snottier reaches of 80s hardcore.

  • Colter Wall, Little Songs– This is such a lyrically, vocally, and musically full-bodied and genuine invocation of the heyday of 70s Outlaw Country (with occasional dashes back all the way to Hank Williams) that I can barely process that it’s coming from a 28-year-old Canadian. Well done 28-year-old Canadian, and somebody please let pop country radio know!

  • Danny Brown, Quaranta– Oh, I like the mix here! Muscular, surprising, full of glitches, stutters, computer samples. The flow and the lyrics likewise have a knack for hooks, and being varied and interesting. Thank you Detroit rapper Danny Brown (and associated collaborators) for reminding me what fun hip hop can be.
  • Debby Friday, Good Luck– This Nigeria-born, Canada-based artist has been known for rave-inspired dystopian sci-fi works. How could i not love that conceptually? And actually, it’s artistic, lurching, almost like a hardcore electronic dance music. I’m in!

  • Deerhoof, Miracle-Level– I love Deerhoof, but there are a few things here that further set it apart as their oeuvre goes. It’s their first all-Japanese album and recorded live in a professional studio, another first for them. Perhaps because of that, it’s got tautness, clarity, and sometimes even a relaxed jam feeling on top of their usual off-kilter mix of sweet melody and noisy anarchy. It doesn’t feel as held-together as their best albums, but it is interesting all the way through.

  • Detwat, HiTech– I have learned that ghettotech is a fusion of electro, techno, ghetto house, and Miami bass that has arisen from Detroit’s club scene. I’ve also learned that I love this. It’s very fresh! It shows the verve of both good hip hop and electronic, with stuttering energy, humor, and a sophisticated mix.

  • Dhani Harrison, Innerstanding– Knowing he’s George Harrison’s son, I went in with a certain semi-conscious expectation, and ended up encountering something more daring and experimental. To be sure there are hints of the sunny hazy side of 60s and 70s rock here, but also aspects of electronic, experimental, shoegaze, and noise rock as well. He reminds me of one of my favorites from last year, Particle Kid (aka Willie Nelson’s son Micah), in the way he both enhances and subverts the musical legacy that he’s inherited.

  • Dhanji, RUAB– I like the old school soul G-funk samples, the sometimes-dizzying kaleidoscope mix, and the challenging experimental sounds of this 25-year-old rapper from Ahmedabad, India. Much of it isn’t in English, and much of the time I don’t care! US hip hop could learn a thing or two about shaking things up a little from this youthful debut album.

  • DJ Ramon Sucesso, Sexta dos Crias– I kind of love this! It’s grating, lurching, but also delightful in it’s use of multiple aspects of hip hop, house, techno, and 2000s EDM styles. A little deliberately rough to get through, but this 21 year-old Brazilian DJ-producer’s album is confirming for me that I need to check out some more baille funk!

  • Eli Escobar, The Beach Album– Nice classic hip hop and electronic sounds (think electro, house, early techno) and a smart varied mix. This album knows (as one track says) that it is “taking us back.” And leans into it full force, to excellent effect! Escobar began playing records, throwing parties, and making beats as a late-’80s teen, and his love for a familiarity with the evolving NY dance scene shows up here in the best kind of way.

  • Feeling Figures, Migration Magic– Crunchy and fuzzy guitars! Female vocalists! Punk and yet pop instincts! 10 songs in less than 30 minutes! It isn’t the most groundbreaking thing every, but you can’t fault a thing about how it’s done, and I likes it!

  • Florry, The Holey Bible– Country rock from this Philadelphia band with a 90s alt country feeling to it, but more than a dose of 70s sunshine, and playful wit in vocals, lyrics, and arrangement. All this is delivered without sacrificing the feeling of authenticity, and genuine emotion.

  • Foyer Red, Yarn the Hours Away– A weird, nervy, jerky, rock, multi-layered, sing-songy, with gonzo synths. If more people were as inventive with pop rock as this Brooklyn band, it would be a grand world!

  • Goat, Medicine– The opening starts with a suitably growling distorted guitar that sounds like a 70s psyche rock freakout. Track two has a bit of an ornate pop feel to it, backed up by EDM effects. The third track combines strains of all of these and pumps up the echo. And so it goes on from there! My sources tell me that Goat is a Swedish alternative and experimental fusion music group, released in the US on the Sub Pop label. I tell my sources I dig this!
  • Greta Van Fleet, Starcatcher– I mean, Great Van Fleet is a forgery, right? But their forgery of Zeppelin, Rush, and other 70s hard rock luminaries on this album is so true to the original and exquisitely delivered, I can’t help but love it as a work of art in its own right. Rock on, young lads!

  • Grian Chatten, Chaos for the Fly– This debut studio album by Irish musician Grian Chatten (best known as the lead singer for Fontaines D.C.) has the raw edge of his work with them, but also a delicate orchestration which lightens the emotional heaviness and brings new depth and subtlety, and a hint of sweetness, to his sound.
  • Immaterial Possession, Mercy of the Crane Folk– Jangly and unnerving hints of post-punk, the Doors, the medieval trippy bazaar side of psychedelia, and horror aspects of goth and industrial. It doesn’t sound totally coherent, sometimes the flow is a little off, but this Georgia quartet has something interesting going on!

  • Indigo De Souza, All of This Will End– Oh these earnest young things who so effortlessly combine singer-songwriter vulnerability, dance music fun, and crunching 90s guitar rock! There is a whole crop of them out these days, and we are blessed for it. Though it didn’t quite make my 2021 list, this North Carolina singer’s album Any Shape You Take caught my eye for the same strengths of musical inventiveness and emotional rawness that are on display here.

  • Jad Fair/Samuel Locke Ward, Happy Hearts– I found this to be nearly unclassifiable, in a good way. It comes across as almost a sing-song children’s album, except awkward, adult, and sometimes dark, with a good feeling for sweet melody, and plain vocal delivery. It definitely shows that this comes from a wildly inventive place- Jad Fair, prolific ever since he started with his brother David as Half Japanese during the mid-’70s, went into overdrive during the 2020s. During this period, he was contacted by Samuel Locke Ward, a home taper from Iowa with a strong D.I.Y. aesthetic. Working remotely, they began making one song per week, leading to this album.

  • Jeff Rosenstock, Hellmode– It starts off with an anthemic punky power-pop query about whether love will outlast finding out the singer has fucked up. From there, sometimes emo-earnest, sometimes punky overdrive, (and often snarky). It reminds me of a space somewhere between early Green Day, your 00s emo de jour, and Harvey Danger. I am told that he, “is an American musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter from Long Island, New York. He is known for his former bands Bomb the Music Industry! and The Arrogant Sons of Bitches, as well as for his work as a solo artist and as a composer for Craig of the Creek. He is the founder of Quote Unquote Records, the first donation-based record label.” Well all right!

  • Jockstrap, I<3UQTINVU– I<3UQTINVU (“I Love You Cutie, I Envy You”) is a remix compilation from this UK duo’s 2022 album I Love You Jennifer B. I found that album to be too polished and muted, but these reworkings are anything but. The glitchy beats and vocals, spare mix, and ability to go EDM, experimental, and rocking sometimes all at the same time really stand out. There are genuinely surprising moments throughout, and the sound is familiar enough to be accessible, but also challenging and a promise of new possibilities.

  • Joe Jackson, Mr. Joe Jackson Presents Max Champion in What a Racket!– The album is presented as the work of the fictional Max Champion, a turn of the century music man. As such, it’s thoroughly in early 20th century music hall style. This is what we call “high concept”. And, in the hands of someone less skillful than Joe Jackson, it might be extremely annoying. But what actually results here is a flawless set of songs that sound totally period but also feel contemporary and alive, and if the whole thing reads a bit like an album-length treatment of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, well apparently I needed that and didn’t even know!

  • Joell Ortiz/L’Orange, Signature– Producer L’Orange joins with Ortiz to re-interpret his 2021 album Autograph (hence Signature, get it?), in the process producing a new “old” album. New in that the reinterpretation stands on it’s own, “old” in the sense that they mine some classic sounds. I like the lurching offbeats, unusual and powerful mix, positive ownership of the lyrics, and the swagger and power of the flow.

  • JPEGMafia & Danny Brown, Scaring the Hoes– This collaboration between innovative Detroit rapper Brown (who already has an entry further above) and Brooklyn-based JPEGMafia (aka Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks) is a dizzying breathless ride. The flow is blistering, the mix experimental and kaleidoscopic, and the fun they had in making it is manifest.

  • Kate Davis, Fishbowl– Oh the crunching guitars. The driving songs. The melodies! The crystal-clear vocals and emotionally literate lyrics. I do so enjoy what Kate Davis does

  • Kesha, Gag Order– Wow! I did not know a lot about Kesha beyond some vague sense she was dance-related. Which she is, but also raw, ragged, angry, powerful, spiritual, musically varied, and given to unusual production choices. Compelling all the way through!

  • Laura Cantrell, Just Like a Rose: The Anniversary Sessions– Well that is some lovely countrified electric Americana! Full of brightness and clarity, with lyrics and chord changes that have a feeling for authentically honoring country while bringing in pop rock energy. Cantrell has been recording in this vein since the late 90s, and this is her 6th solo album (raising a family and having to work for a living having taken a lot of her time along the way).

  • Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Sticks and Stones– Willie Nelson’s son is here with some good old-fashioned country (a la outlaw) and rock (a la southern rock and 70s singer songwriter). It’s not the newest sound in the world, in fact anti that, but it is a great delivery of said sound that never rings false.

  • Macklemore, Ben– As your contemporary pop superstar hip-hop goes, Macklemore is top of the crop. It’s heavily produced, but the production flourishes are earned, and in service of substantive lyrics and a winning persona. Even the ubiquitous guest star mania is well-deployed.

  • MJ Lenderman, And The Wind (Live and Loose!)– This live album from Asheville singer-songwriter Lenderman is full of distorted guitars, sometimes in a country vein, sometimes more like southern rock or even noise rock. All topped with a yearning drawled melancholy to the vocals, and a lyrical side featuring heartache, humor, and oddly poingant slices of life.

  • Morgan and the Organ Donors, M.O.D.s– Holy retro soundscapes! Driving, chiming guitars, cracking drums, harmonies. You will hear some 60s girl-group, some garage rock, some pop side of punk, some 80s jangle, some 90s riot grrrl. And it never sounds less than organically whole and fresh, which isn’t an accident. Morgan and the Organ Donors are a band made up of four friends who play a few shows a year at a bar they like in Olympia, Washington. Except the friends are former Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail on drums, as well as two K Records artists, James Maeda of Spider & the Webs and Olivia Ness of C.O.C.O., on lead guitar and bass.

  • Mozart Estate, Pop-up! Ker-ching! And the Possibilities of Modern Shopping– Based on the name of the album alone I went in already half in love. What a delight then to hear a perfectly-delivered version of the most exuberant varieties of pub rock, early UK new wave, and UK 80s alt pop acts like Squeeze and The Beautiful South. It is in all wise a familiar sound, but so beautifully rendered that I cannot get mad at it!

  • Noname, Sundial– Smart metaphysical poetic hip hop, positive but with plenty of raunch and bite, disarmingly approachable vocals, and a compelling swirl in the musical mix including jazz, gospel choruses, Brill Building pop, and classic 80s beats.

  • Oddisee, To What End– Oddisee is the stage name of Brooklyn-based Sudanese-American hip-hop artist Amir Mohamed el Khalifa. The pure dynamism of what he puts out here musically, lyrically, and mixologically is extremely winning! It reminded me of certain veins of personal story directed 2000s hip-hop (think Jay-Z or Kendrick Lamar), with some of the feelings and concerns of conscious hip-hop.

  • Olivia Jean, Raving Ghost– Olivia Jean is the lead of the “garage goth” band the Black Belles and, incidentally along the way, Jack White’s newest wife. I mention those only because both factors, maybe, give you a clue to what her musical POV is. Swinging, retro, and vaguely sinister on the first track, slightly punky power pop on the second, a metal feeling on the third. And later, there is the version of “Orinoco Flow” that turns it into a girl-group/punk number. It may all be a little formulaic, but damn it’s a good formula- Olivia Jean is a cool rocking righteous chick, and I am here for it!

  • Open Mike Eagle, Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering– This Chicago MC really delivers on the album title! Great attitude and presence, a smart and interesting low fi mix, hooky and poetic with both positivity and darkness.

  • Owl City, Coco Moon– I heard this was from an electronica collective, which put me a little on edge. In fact, it turns out to be electronic , but in the way, for example, the Postal Service is electronic. And in truth reminds me of the brighter and more quirky side of Ben Gibbard’s work. Somewhere between deep storytelling and high-energy summer fluff, and unusually informed by the artists’ Christianity. Per Wikipedia: “Owl City is an American electronic music project created in 2007 in Owatonna, Minnesota. It is one of several projects by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam Young, who created the project while experimenting with music in his parents’ basement.” Three cheers for experimenting with music in parent’s basements!

  • Pink Navel & Kenny Segal, How to Capture Playful– The dense and quirky flow and lurching left-field mix here caught my attention up front. The intelligence of the geeky pop culture-obsessed lyrics and varied and unusual sample and mix choices kept me tuned in. This collaboration of innovative L.A. producer Kenny Segal and nerd culture aficionado and Massachusetts hip hop artist Pink Navel (aka Devin Bailey) is great!

  • Pretenders, Relentless– The album opens with a bruising start almost at home in grunge. At other times it feels like an old blueswoman holding court. Or punk returning. Or 80s hard rock radio. But Chrissie Hynde’s voice is unmistakable, and her chords still chime like bells. It ends on an oddly muted note, but the darkly textured songs throughout commanded my attention.
  • Quasi, Breaking the Balls of History– Janet Weiss did not take her summary dismissal from Sleater Kinney lying down, instead joining with her ex-husband to put out the first new Quasi album in ten years. Quasi has been a reliably interesting and challenging band since the 90s, and they’re still in the game here. By turns crunchy, shimmery and shoegazey, and kaleidoscopically weird, this is a delightful listen from start to finish.

  • RAYE, My 21st Century Blues– Sophisticated emotional R&B informed by hip hop, full of musical surges and a voice that is remarkable for precision of phrasing and versatility. The album also grapples with real life- abuse, relationships gone bad, emotional and physical bottoming out, in a way that feels authentic but is still pop music smooth.

  • Ron Gallo, Foreground Music– A blistering guitar open with echoing vocals is an effective way to worm your way into my heart. But he was already there thanks to his album PEACEMEAL being in my top 21 list for 2021. As for this album, is it extremely self-referential? Entirely tongue in cheek? So musically and lyrically fucking clever you don’t care which? Yes! And yet, though undeniably often wacky, it’s not all fun and games, there’s a heart of furious dissent. Is there a better contemporary protest song than the sharp and yet ultimately poignant, neo-psych “BIG TRUCK ENERGY” or a more anguished love song than “I LOVE SOMEONE BURIED DEEP INSIDE OF YOU”?

  • Rosa Pistola, Cumbiaton Total– Well this was wonderful! Such lively, varied, and over the top hip-hop and dance music glee. Per Bandcamp: “Cumbiaton Total is a headfirst dive into Mexico City’s raw and unique take on the reggaeton sound, and its rising recognition. Compiled by NTS with Rosa Pistola (a central figure at the heart of the scene), the release coincides with a mini-documentary that explores the community spirit around the scene, with interviews and footage of the artists that feature on the release.”  It is entirely in Spanish, but so fun I don’t care that I can barely understand a single lyric.

  • RP Boo, Legacy Volume 2– The spare excellence, stuttered pop culture sampling, and driving repetition of these DJ mixes reminds me of the 90s heyday of this kind of music. And indeed, Kavain Space, aka RP Boo, had gotten his start DJing in the Chicago house music scene of the 90s and was already legendary for developing the “footwork” style before he began finally publicly releasing his mixes in the 2010s. This sample collects mixes from the 00s, but it’s new to us. And excellent!

  • Ruen Brothers, Ten Paces– An atmospheric indie rock with cowboy ballad flavorings, minor chords, and weird western themes. How am I not going to fall for this? I’m NOT not! Turns out on subsequent investigation that they are an English duo infatuated with American music a la rockabilly. Well, okay lads!

  • Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, Dancing on the Edge– Spontaneous feeling stripped down Americana-flavored indie rock with articulate personal lyrics and transparent vocals. It has an often-upbeat feeling, but with an undertow of complexity and sadness. Louisville Singer-songwriter Davis has headed the band State Champion, started a music festival, and founded a DIY record label, and here on his first solo outing he proves to be a dynamic voice worth listening to.

  • Sextile, Push– Dance instincts, a stuttering electronic beat, and a punk heart. All Music Guide tells me this LA band is “Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Electronic, New Wave/Post-Punk Revival”. Whatever they are, I like it!

  • Shamir, Homo Anxietatem– An unusual vocalist with a surging voice, music that’s equal parts new-wave, electronic dance, folk, and hard rocking (with a bonus blues song thrown in), and a powerful point of view. This Las Vegas native is a bundle of talent who has been beaming out great indie pop since 2012, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down.

  • SKECH185, He Left Nothing for the Swim Back– NY-based hip-hop artist SKECH185’s fiery social and political truth-telling and producer Jeff Markey’s swirling, lurching sonic mix of sounds combine for a powerful package.

  • Sleaford Mods, UK Grim– I was on the fence about this the way I was about their last album. There’s the sameness and simplicity, but also the power in the simplicity, the propulsive poetic barrage, and the witty trenchant and literate rant attached.

  • Snooper, Super Snooper– Punk in a vein that reminds me of early Jam and American hardcore, but also includes playful distortion, drum machines, and sound effects reminiscent of new wave, hip hop, and electronic music. The album rips through 14 songs in 23 minutes without every losing vitality and fun. I am now more than halfway in love with this Nashville band!

  • Sweeping Promises, Good Living Is Coming for You– Such a bright clear classic new wave sound! They wouldn’t sound out of place on a circa 1983 double-bill with Missing Persons. Which is not to say there is anything inauthentic here, behind the slinky synthy excellence, there’s some genuine heft and personality to the vocals of lead singer Lira Mondal. Dagnabit, I think I love this Kansas by way of Austin by way of Boston by way of Arkansas band!

  • Teke::Teke, Hagata– Their album Shirushi made my 2021 Honorable Mention list, and this one is charming me in a similar fashion. Eclectic, alternately serrated and swinging, with an edge of dark frenzy and a hefty dash of mirthfulness. Yes, it is all in Japanese, and no that doesn’t matter, the wealth of its sonic landscape is well worth the journey.

  • TERRY, Call Me Terry– Ringing jangly propulsive guitars, walls of synth sound, catchy refrains, delightfully artless vocal phrasing delivering elliptical lyrics. Listening to this felt like I was in a great part of the alt 80s, yet also contemporary. Three cheers little Australian indie band!

  • The C.I.A., Surgery Channel– You know, this sounds a bit like a surgery channel! It leans toward a nervy sharp-edged post-punk, with more than a hint of the rawer end of 90s alt bands like Babes in Toyland, but also some chilly electronic/synth work a la Kraftwerk. This turns out not to have been released by a national intelligence agency, but by musical auteur Ty Segall, his wife Denée Segall, and Emmett Kelly of Cairo Gang. I really like it, and I don’t even feel the need to be clandestine about it!

  • The Go! Team, Get Up Sequences, Pt. 2– Get Up Sequences, Pt. 1 was one of my honorable mentions for 2021, and Part 2 is entirely as charming. Imagine a high school AV team made an album exuberantly mixing electronic dance, international music, and hip-hop with liberal use of synthesizer. This gives you some sense of what this Brighton, UK six-piece band is up to, and it is glorious!
  • The Men, New York City– With the band name, and the album name, you might expect getting a rocking outing that would fit in well with the garage rock revival of the early 00s. And you would get it! Not the most original thing ever, but joyful noise well delivered.

  • The Reds, Pinks & Purples, The Town That Cursed Your Name– I love the shimmery achy thing that they do here, an invocation of hazy summer days listening to the Cure in the alternative 80s. It’s suffused through with a lyrical nostalgia as well. It is rather same track to track, but a gorgeous sameness.

  • Thy Slaughter, A. G. Cook & Easyfun, Soft Rock– The glitchy mix, degraded sound effect kaleidoscope, and over the top melodic fragmented songs are super fun. Even if this collaboration of artists from London-based record label/art collective PC Music doesn’t quite come together with an album’s coherence, things like this that give me hope that pop music may eventually find its way to a genuine “new”. Or at least an “interesting”!

  • Tyler Childers, Rustin in the Rain– You could be forgiven for thinking that you had fallen into some kind of country music historical review here, with hints of the outlaws, the Burrito Brothers, and the 70s and 80s Nashville Sound. But you’ll get hints along the way of a modern sensibility animating things- references to e-mail, tips of the hat to electronic music, a country ballad cast as an ode to a same sex partnership. Six albums in, this 32-year-old singer songwriter remains a vital sign that a country that embraces both the old and the new is possible.
  • Van Morrison, Accentuate the Positive– Gadzooks, he’s done it! After a string of COVID conspiracy screed albums, his last album was a skiffle and covers-heavy outing that I rather liked. But it still had a hint of COVID rant about it, and continued the bloated 1 1/2-2 hour length of those other albums. Here we have all covers, a one hour run length, and a relaxed master having fun with rock, country, & R&B standards. If it’s not revelatory, it works from start to finish.

  • Wild Billy Childish & CTMF, Failure Not Success– The attitude and snark! The wordplay! The sure feel for decades of ass-kicking rock! Opening with a spot-on cover of “Love Comes in Spurts”! Yes, it’s his second entry on this post alone, but I’ll say the same thing I did when I put his 2021 album Where The Wild Purple Iris Grows on my honorable mention list for that year- How did I not hear of Billy Childish until now?!?!

  • Willie Nelson, Long Story Short: Willie Nelson 90 (Live at the Hollywood Bowl)– You may think I’ve lost my mind! It’s not that common to get a live album that works as a fully satisfying album. It’s even rarer for me to sign off on something that clocks in at more than 3 hours. And, as a (largely) covers album, this even breaks the cardinal rule of having the same song appear more than once! Nevertheless, this live album of a concert at the Hollywood Bowl celebrating Willie’s 90th birthday is a delight from start to finish. It starts with a hefty set of great covers by many obvious choices, with some brilliantly unobvious ones thrown in as well, and then a thirteen song set of Willie himself teaming up with various luminaries, ending in a rendition of “Happy Birthday”. I may be hallucinating, and it’s not something you could listen to in full every day, but I think this is an essential piece of the legacy of an essential American musician.

  • Witch, Zango– “On their first album in nearly 40 years, the Zamrock pioneers prove their malleable, genre-spanning style still sounds like the future.” So says Pitchfork, and I don’t disagree! It reminds me of the sunny rock/soul crossover of the late 60s a la Sly Stone, the African polyrhythms informing new wave, good old fashioned crunchy 90s guitar rock, and other things besides. The musical approach is so fresh and alive I’ve got to consider it!

And there you have even more ! The 23 Best Albums of 2023, and 77 honorable mentions.

If an all-in playlist for the the 23 best would be appreciated, I have you covered on YouTube Music (as mentioned above, I’m switching to YouTube Music because of the artist’s protest against Spotify mass-demonetizing musicians that weren’t “popular enough”):

And if you’d like a “list only” version, I can respect that:

The 23 Best Albums of 2023

  1. Aesop Rock, Integrated Tech Solutions
  2. Christian Kjellvander, Hold Your Love Still
  3. CMAT, Crazymad, For Me
  4. Esther Rose, Safe to Run
  5. Gina Birch, I Play My Bass Loud
  6. Grace Potter, Mother Road
  7. H31R, Headspace
  8. Homeboy Sandman, Rich
  9. Joanna Sternberg, I’ve Got Me
  10. Logic, College Park
  11. Marnie Stern, The Comeback Kid
  12. Nat Myers, Yellow Peril
  13. No-No Boy, Electric Empire
  14. Olivia Rodrigo, GUTS
  15. Palehound, Eye on the Bat
  16. Prewn, Through the Window
  17. Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, Saved!
  18. Roger Waters, The Dark Side of the Moon Redux
  19. slowthai, UGLY
  20. The Hives, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons
  21. Thee Headcoats, Irregularis (The Great Hiatus)
  22. U2, Songs of Surrender
  23. Who is She?, Goddess Energy

Honorable Mention


To all the faithful brethren, sistren, and otheren who enjoyed this ride in 2023, rest assured that, while medical conditions have sputtered our start a bit, I am planning on a 2024 review. In face, doing so is vital to a 2025 project I have in mind. About which, announcements sooner or later…

In Search of the 23 Best Albums of 2023: October-December

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I mean, at least it’s not 2025 yet? And with that, here we are, the last pre-finale round-up of our quest to find the 23 best albums of 2023!

For those just joining, what happened so far: In 2021, to re-familiarize myself with the latest releases after a new music drought of a decade or so, I listened to the critics choices for the best albums of the 2010s, and picked my favorites based on their choices. I did the same for 2020, picking my top 20 from the critics lists for that year. At the same time I started listening to new releases each month, eventually arriving at my picks for the 21 best albums of 2021. I figured that one good year deserves another, so I did it again in 2022, reviewing new releases monthly and discovering the 22 best albums of 2022. And I’ve doing it again for 2023!

There are links to the 2020, 2021, and 2022 albums in the posts above, but if you’d like an all-in playlist for each year, I have those on Spotify:

And if you want to catch up on our voyage through 2023, this year’s earlier posts are here:

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( January/February/March April May June July/August September )

Each month is divided into “yes” and “maybe” categories as follows:

Yes– This represents the albums that, upon first listen, could definitely be in the running for best of the year. That’s no guarantee though, there are now 132 “yeses”, and only 23 spots. The fields will be soaked with the blood of dead albums!

Maybe– These albums have a lot to recommend them, but also some factor that gives me pause. I put them in their own category, because “maybes” sometimes linger and eventually become “yeses”. As of this post, there are 133 “maybe” albums. More blood! More soaking!

And there you have it! With that, here are my final contenders for 2023 from 224 October-November new releases.

Aesop Rock, Integrated Tech Solutions– Oh the old school bass, synth, and drum machine sounds! It’s a very deliberate invocation, as the 80s IT-themed album cover, occasional appearance of video game sound effects, and shout-outs to everything from Salt N Pepper to Mr. T make clear. It’s not purely an exercise in nostalgia though- the flow and often even the mix feels very modern. Aesop Rock has produced some of my favorite hip hop of the past few years, and I’d add this to that list!

Ceci Bastida, Every Thing Taken Away– What I read about her was, “Since moving from Tijuana, Mexico, to the United States, the former Tijuana No! keyboardist and singer Ceci Bastida has released records and podcasts extending the Latinx punk tradition.” What I have to say is, this album is brilliant, nervy, electronic and rocking, with stripped-down beats, fun, and attitude!

Chase & Status, 2 Ruff, Vol. 1– Stuttering beats, glitchy sounds, dub on noisy overdrive. The metallic bass feels like looming dread, and the vocal’s autotuning actually works, it turns them into the urgent yet distorted voices of prophets. Distorted dread that you can dance to! This U.K. drum’n’bass/dubstep duo has apparently been kicking around since the early 00s, and I’m told this less polished and more like a mixtape that their usual albums. Well amen!

Christian Kjellvander, Hold Your Love Still– Moody and atmospheric guitar-driven music, replete with minor chords, and haunting old-time vocals with literate and philosophical lyrics. The musical and vocal range is limited, but this Swedish-born, Seattle-raised singer-songwriter with indie lo-fi roots is powerful.

CMAT, Crazymad, For Me– You know those Irish singer-songwriters with a wicked wit and playful inventiveness who are lush pop vocalists with a strong country flavor? Well, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, aka CMAT is one of those. Actually, I don’t know how many more of those there are, but she’s a damn good one, and I love it!

Danny Brown, Quaranta– Oh, I like the mix here! Muscular, surprising, full of glitches, stutters, computer samples. The flow and the lyrics are likewise delightful in having a knack for hooks, and being varied and interesting. Thank you Detroit rapper Danny Brown (and associated collaborators) for reminding me what fun hip hop can be.

Dhani Harrison, Innerstanding– Knowing he’s George Harrison’s son, I went in with a certain semi-conscious expectation, and ended up encountering something more daring and experimental. To be sure there are hints of the sunny hazy side of 60s and 70s rock here, but also aspects of electronic, experimental, shoegaze, and noise rock as well. He reminds me of one of my favorites from last year, Particle Kid (aka Willie Nelson’s son Micah), in the way he both enhances and subverts the musical legacy that he’s inherited.

Goat, Medicine– The opening starts with a suitably growling distorted guitar that sounds like a 70s psyche rock freakout. Track two has a bit of an ornate pop feel to it, backed up by EDM effects. The third track combines strains of all of these and pumps up the echo. And so it goes on from there! My sources tell me that Goat is a Swedish alternative and experimental fusion music group, released in the US on the Sub Pop label. I tell me sources I love this!

Guided by Voices, Nowhere To Go But Up– With Guided by Voices and their habit of releasing multiple albums a year, these annual reviews are a little like a visit to the optometrist- Is #1 better? Or #2? #1? Or #2? This one’s got bruising guitar with plenty of distortion and a feeling for chord progressions that are heavy but melodious. The lyrics are evocative as ever, and there isn’t a track here that lags. Update my prescription and get me new glasses doctor, I’m in!

Jockstrap, I<3UQTINVU– I<3UQTINVU (“I Love You Cutie, I Envy You”) is a remix compilation from this UK duo’s 2022 album I Love You Jennifer B. I found that album to be too polished and muted, but these reworkings are anything but. The glitchy beats and vocals, spare mix, and ability to go EDM, experimental, and rocking sometimes all at the same time really stand out. There are genuinely surprising moments throughout, and the sound is familiar enough to be accessible, but also challenging and a promise of new possibilities.

Joe Jackson, Mr. Joe Jackson Presents Max Champion in What a Racket!– The album is presented as the work of the fictional Max Champion, a turn of the century music man. As such, it’s thoroughly in early 20th century music hall style. This is what we call “high concept”. And, in the hands of someone less skillful than Joe Jackson, it might be extremely annoying. But what actually results here is a flawless set of songs that sound totally period but also feel contemporary and alive, and if the whole thing reads a bit like an album-length treatment of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, well apparently I needed that and didn’t even know!

Joell Ortiz/L’Orange, Signature– Produce L’Orange joins with Ortiz to re-interpret his 2021 album Autograph (hence Signature, get it?), in the process producing a new “old” album. New in that the reinterpretation stand son it’s own, “old” in the sense that they mine some classic sounds. I like the lurching offbeats, unusual and powerful mix, positive ownership of the lyrics, and the swagger and power of the flow.

Kurt Vile, Back to Moon Beach– You know I like about lackadaisical low-fi songs with an acoustic/country flavor, evocative but elliptical personal lyrics, and interesting distortion-laden production? Everything! A lot of these are about making music itself, which further recommends itself to me, and it includes a genuinely haunting ode to Tom Petty, and a ridiculously fun song about Santa. If the vocal and musical range is limited, the excellence and the strangeness keep it in contention.

Marnie Stern, The Comeback Kid– Blistering guitar work, booming power pop sound, 80s synth overtones, an exuberance and edge to the mix, and a unique vocal presence. All right, Marnie, all right! I also love the way she messes with us, like on the second track about the sound being hard to take, which keeps layering on sonic challenges as it goes. The title refers to her decade off of new releases, but you sure couldn’t prove it by how much virtuosity is on display here.

Mayer Hawthorne, For All Time– Classic grooves and electro drums and synths are apparently a great way to get my attention! Which is to say this is redolent of late 70s/early 80s R&B in a pleasing way. Mayer Hawthorne turns out to be the soul crooning alter-ego of former DJ/Beatmaker Andrew Cohen, and this is his sixth album in that guise. He is darned good at it!

Mndsgn, Snaxxx– A bright kaleidoscope of beats, quirky effects, and chopped samples, with a lighthearted wit- the second track warns against falling in the lava with the singer- and genuine soul chops and jazz accents along the way. Mndsgn (pronounce “Mind Sign”) is an LA-based producer and artist, and I love what his synths and samplers are doing here!

MJ Lenderman, And The Wind (Live and Loose!)– This live album from Asheville singer-songwriter Lenderman is full of distorted guitars, sometimes in a country vein, sometimes more like southern rock or even noise rock. This topped with a yearning drawled melancholy to the vocals, and a lyrical side featuring heartache, humor, and oddly poingant slices of life. Reminding me of Uncle Tupelo in their early days, Lenderman is a telent worth keeping an eye on!

Pink Navel & Kenny Segal, How to Capture Playful– The dense and quirky flow and lurching left-field mix here caught my attention up front. The intelligence of the geeky pop culture-obsessed lyrics and varied and unusual sample and mix choices kept me tuned in. This collaboration of innovative L.A. producer Kenny Segal and nerd culture aficionado and Massachusetts hip hop artist Pink Navel (aka Devin Bailey) is a delight!

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, Saved!– Avant garde artist Kristin Hayter has shed her Lingua Ignota persona, and released a gospel inspired album on which she, by her own recounting, reaches, “new levels of unhinged, spiritually and sonically.” I mean, okay, I can get behind that! And in fact, it’s pretty amazing. The spiritual yearning is sincere, but the traditional vocal and piano arrangements of the songs are mutated through the influence of electronica, metal, and noisy distorted experimental music. The results are jarring, unsettling, and sometimes abrasive, but it never feels gimmicky, and the evocative and uncanny nature of the songs lends itself to the quest.

Roger Waters, The Dark Side of the Moon Redux – The natural objection here is the hubris of redoing a classic, but I admire musical hubris, and if anyone has a right to re-approach this material, it’s Roger Waters. The next issue is the inherent thorniness of covers (which, again, I love), but the good news here is this meets my criteria for “gold standard” of a cover- not a too-faithful reproduction (because what would we need that for since we have the original?), but also something that substantively engages with and honors the original in some form. Waters has produced a version of these songs that isn’t a novelty or a copy, but instead pulls out their original air of darkness even more sharply and comes from the point of view of a worn yet wise observer of life. In other words, he brings the perspective of an 80-year-old self to the music he made as a 30-year-old. The effect is truly compelling.

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, Dancing on the Edge– Spontaneous feeling stripped down Americana-flavored indie rock with articulate personal lyrics and transparent vocals. It has an often-upbeat feeling, but with an undertow of complexity and sadness. Louisville Singer-songwriter Davis has headed the band State Champion, started a music festival, and founded a DIY record label, and here on his first solo outing he proves yet again to be a dynamic voice worth listening to.

The Exbats, Song Machine– AllMusic says: “Father-daughter garage punk combo with a love of simple but hooky songs and witty tales of love and pop culture.” I am repeating that because I couldn’t say it better. And I love it! This could be my favorite underground bubblegum yet rocking & substantive band of any decade from the 80s to now!

The Serfs, Half Eaten by Dogs– The album has a hard rocking start, then electronic music effects and drum machines kick in on track two. It gets more electronic as it goes, throwing in influences from industrial and post-punk while staying loaded with echo and reverb. How am I not going to love this? This Cincinnati trio has something good going on!

Maybe

  • Chris Stapelton, Higher– Country? Yes. Rock? Yes. Blues? Also possibly yes. A reminder in a way of the eras when all those things could be the same, but not strictly a throwback sound, and a recall of how powerful American music can be.

  • Creation Rebel, Hostile Environment– After Prince Far I was murdered in his Jamaican home in 1983, Creation Rebel disbanded. Several decades later, U.K. dub impresario Adrian Sherwood invited three of the group’s members to join him for live dates, and they then worked on music together during the COVID-19 lockdown. The result, Hostile Environment, is the first Creation Rebel album in over 40 years. The newest sound in the world? No. But performed and produced by masters, and I like dub way too much to not love it!

  • DJ Ramon Sucesso, Sexta dos Crias– I kind of love this! It’s grating, lurching, but also delightful in it’s use of multiple aspects of hip hop, house, techno, and 2000s EDM styles. A little deliberately rought o get through, but this 21 year-old Brazilian DJ-producer’s album is confirming for me that I need to check out some more baille funk!

  • Duff McKagan, Lighthouse– Axl and Slash are such big presences that one could be forgiven for not remembering that everyone in Guns N’ Roses was banging. One of the first things I noticed listening to this is what a major contributor to their sound Duff was. But this isn’t purely a block of GNR nostalgia, there are studied lyrics-heavy acoustic sections here, reminders of 80s hard rock radio, and grunge (Jerry Cantrell even shows up on a track), and a polish that never sounds ingenuine.

  • Feeling Figures, Migration Magic– Crunchy and fuzzy guitars! Female vocalists! Punk and yet pop instincts! 10 songs in less than 30 minutes! It isn’t the most groundbreaking thing every, but you can’t fault a thing about how it’s done, and I likes it!

  • Maria Jose Llergo, Ultrabelleza– This is as perfect a set of EDM pop as one might wish for. There is the language issue (it’s almost entirely in Spanish) that I know is keeping me from getting the full impact, but the music, intelligence of the mix, and emotive power in the vocals of this Spanish singer needs no translation.

  • Poppy, Zig– Blistering stuttering electronic dance breaks? Check. Pop sad girl instincts with noise rock attitude? Check. Gothy darkness? Check! It may not be the most profound thing out there, but I like the noise the young kids are making in this space- it’s a pop that suits our era.

  • Slauson Malone 1, Excelsior– This outing from multidisciplinary artist Jasper Marsalis combines post-rock experimentation with modern abstract-fueled left-field hip hop. What results is experimental, challenging, and unusual! It’s not always an easy listen, but it is a worthwhile one.

  • Tele Novella, Poet’s Tooth– The beginning (and end) was a little muted, but by the second track it was sparkling. It reminds me in a way of The Velvet Underground and Nico as read through an Omnichord, with forays into cowboy ballad and English country madrigals along the way. All of which is to say, as was true of my 2021 list’s honorable mention from Tele Novella, Merlynn Belle, this is delightfully eclectic, charming, and not like anything else you will hear this year.

  • The Mountain Goats, Jenny From Thebes– I loved their album Bleed Out last year. Musically, vocally, and in terms of lyrical twists I’m still there with feeling good about this outing, and in fact a few songs here seem like overflow from that album. But the thematic unity here doesn’t seem quite as tight, which is keeping it off of the “yes” list.
  • Therion, Leviathan III– Look, I just can’t help it! Is the mix of orchestral chorus and paint-stripping technical metal a little overblown? Yes. Does it also keep pulling you in track after track? Yes. Swedish metal for the win!
  • Thy Slaughter, A. G. Cook & Easyfun, Soft Rock– The glitchy mix, degraded sound effect kaleidoscope, and over the top melodies amidst fragmented songs are kind of delightful. Even if this collaboration of artists from London-based record label/art collective PC Music doesn’t quite come together with an album’s coherence, it’s things like this that give me hope that pop music may find its way to a genuine “new” at some point. Or at least an “interesting”!
  • Van Morrison, Accentuate the Positive– Gadzooks, he’s done it! After a string of COVID conspiracy screed albums, his last album was a skiffle and covers-heavy outing that I really rather liked. But it still had a hint of COVID rant about it, and continued the bloated 1 1/2-2 hour length of those other albums (I liked them too when they weren’t as ranty, musically and vocally they were great). Here we have all covers, a one hour run length, and a relaxed master having fun with rock, country, & R&B standards. If it’s not revelatory, it works from start to finish.
  • Willie Nelson, Long Story Short: Willie Nelson 90 (Live at the Hollywood Bowl)– You may think I’ve lost my mind! It’s not that common to get a live album that works as a fully satisfying album. It’s even rarer for me to sign off on something that clocks in at more than 3 hours. And, as a (largely) covers album, this even breaks the cardinal rule of having the same song appear more than once! Nevertheless, this live album of a concert at the Hollywood Bowl celebrating Willie’s 90th birthday is a delight from start to finish. It starts with a thick set of great covers by many obvious choices, with some brilliantly unobvious ones thrown in as well, and then a thirteen song set of Willie himself teaming up with various luminaries, ending in a rendition of Happy Birthday. I may be hallucinating, and it’s not something you could just throw on to listen to every day, but I think this is an essential piece of the legacy of an essential American musician.

And there you have it. Other than my hip hop 50th Anniversary series, the next time you hear from me will be to announce the 23 best albums of 2023!

In Search of the 23 Best Albums of 2023: July/August

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No surrender on the journey to finding the 23 best albums of 2023- We may be lagging a little, but July & August are here!

My quest to get familiar with newer music started in 2021, when I listened to the critics choices for the best albums of the 2010s, and picked my favorites based on their choices. I did the same for 2020, picking my top 20 from the critics lists. And I started off listening to new releases each month, eventually arriving at my picks for the 21 best albums of 2021. That whole process was so amazing that I decided to do it again in 2022, listening to all the new releases and discovering the 22 best albums of 2022.

There are links to the 2020, 2021, and 2022 albums in the above-linked posts, but if you’d like an all-in playlist for each year, I have set that up on Spotify:

And if you need to catch up on my voyage through 2023, the earlier posts for this year are here:

( January/February/March April May June )

In those posts, you’ll see I’ve divided things into “yes” and “maybe” categories as follows:

Yes– This represents the albums that, upon first listen, could definitely be in running for best of the year. Keep in mind that, as of this post, we have 91 “yeses”, so at least 75% of those will die on the way to the top 23. And that’s before we even get to…

Maybe– These albums have a lot to recommend them, but also something that gives me pause. I put them in their own category, because I’ve found “maybes” sometimes linger and eventually become “yeses”. As of this post, there are 109 “maybe” albums.

Now that we’ve got that established, let’s get on with my top picks from the 167 July and August new releases!

Be Your Own Pet, Mommy– Powered by the true force of nature Jemina Pearl, Be Your Own Pet released one of my favorite albums of the 00s, Get Awkward, and then promptly imploded. The ensuing years saw her grow up, start a family, and emerge even stronger and more in charge, and their old garage rock swagger plus her enhanced substance are a great combination here. Not to mention which, the album opens with a BDSM song. What’s not to like?

Cautious Clay, Karpeh– This multi-instrumentalist known for self-released bedroom pop and writing and producing for other artists branches out to the Blue Note label for a (fittingly) jazz-flavored soul sound. The music has a kind of spontaneous low-fi feedback-laden feel at times, and some interesting electronic and effects flourishes along the way. This kind of thing can be borderline for me, but the exuberance and dynamism, and an unguarded openness in the vocals and lyrics are quite winning.

Colter Wall, Little Songs– This is such a lyrically, vocally, and musically full-bodied and genuine invocation of the heyday of 70s Outlaw Country (with occasional dashes back all the way to Hank Williams) that I can barely process that it’s coming from a 28-year-old Canadian. Well done 28-year-old Canadian, and somebody let Pop Country Radio know!

Dhanji, RUAB– I love the old school soul G-funk sounding samples, the sometimes-dizzying kaleidoscope mix, and the challenging experimental sounds of this 25-year-old rapper from Ahmedabad, India. Much of it isn’t in English, and much of the time I don’t care! US hip hop could learn a thing or two about shaking things up a little from this youthful debut album.

Diners, Domino– Arizona native Blue Broderick delivers 24 minutes and ten songs worth of straight-ahead sunny rock with classic 60s chords and low fi nerdiness on this album. I am extremely pleased.

DJ K, PANICO NO SUBMUNDO– Okay, it’s almost entirely in Spanish. But darned if the hypnotic repetition, deep bass beats, and weird glitchy layers of electronic sound doesn’t weave a spell. I am told that DJ K is a Sao Paulo producer, and he works in baile funk, an electro/funk/bass subgenre that emerged in Brazil in the 80s. I am also told that he “pushes the edges of baile funk to horrorcore extremes with a style he dubs “bruxaria,” or witchcraft.” I’m telling you that I love it!

Florry, The Holey Bible– Country rock from this Philadelphia band with a 90s alt country feeling to it, but more than a dose of 70s sunshine, and playful wit in vocals, lyrics, and arrangement. All this is delivered without sacrificing the feeling of authenticity, and genuine emotion comes through on the tracks that need it.

Grace Potter, Mother Road– My Vermont home team girl Grace Potter is in peak form here- rocking, rootsy, musically tough, lyrically feisty. This is a nearly perfect fusion between formula, form, and function. And it even pretty much pulls off a conceptual through-line!

Greta Van Fleet, Starcatcher– I mean, Great Van Fleet is a forgery, right? But their forgery of Zeppelin, Rush, and other 70s hard rock luminaries on this album is so true to the original and exquisitely delivered, I can’t help but love it as a work of art in its own right. Rock on, lads!

Guided by Voices, Welshpool Frillies– Nice crunching guitar in a solidly classic vein redolent of the 60s, but sometimes sounding more 90s, and doing detours into prog rock and Bowie territory. I am not entirely sure what they’re going for here, but I love it anyway!

Half Japanese, Jump Into Love– Snarky and joyfully experimental, this reminds me of how College Rock bands of the 80s played around and had fun with their music, vocals, and lyrics. The album fits into the space between early Camper Van Beethoven and the Dead Milkmen at their weirdest, with some Wall of Voodoo thrown in. This is not accidental, as Half Japanese front-person Jad Fair has been kicking around the fringes of indie production since the late 70s. There is never an uninteresting moment here.

Homeboy Sandman, Rich– Smart, positive, and often funny left of center lyrics, a pleasant conversational flow, and a varied and clever musical mix. This Queens rapper has been around for fifteen years, and it shows in how comfortable and confident he is doing his thing here. And shows how much hip hop that relaxes a little and gets into the details of small everyday life real still has to say.

jaydes, ghetto cupid– Glitchy, fragmented, and densely layered, with elements of hip-hop, EDM, guitar samples and experimental music. The collage is made even more hallucinatory by the 17 songs flashing by in 33 minutes. Besides stylistic unity, the whole thing is held together thematically and by repeated samples and loop motifs as well. Wit, ambition, and skill mark this Florida teen as someone to keep your eye on!

Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Sticks and Stones– Willie Nelson’s son here with some good old-fashioned country (a la outlaw) and rock (a la southern rock and 70s singer songwriter). It’s not the newest sound in the world, in fact anti that, but it is a great delivery of said sound that never rings false.

Noname, Sundial– Smart metaphysical poetic hip hop, positive but with plenty of raunch and bite, with disarmingly approachable vocals and a compelling swirl in the musical mix including jazz, gospel choruses, Brill Building pop, and classic 80s beats.

Open Mike Eagle, Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering– This Chicago MC really delivers on the album title! Great attitude and presence, a smart and interesting low fi mix, hooky and poetic with both positivity and darkness.

Osees, Intercepted Message– The venerable San Francisco indie rock band takes us on a great excursion into the more rocking side of new wave. Though the synths are cranked up too, and we get some great 808 beats in there! Deliberately lost in time, but so flawlessly done.

Palehound, Eye on the Bat– Thrashy guitar with just enough poppy melody, on point vocal phrasing during both slow/quiet and loud/fast interludes, lyrics that paint real life stories but load them with emotional meaning. Band frontperson El Kempner severely undersells when they say “it’s kind of like journal-rock, just all of my biggest fears splurted onto some vinyl, no different from writing a diary, really” but that does give you a kind of idea. This is their fourth album, and I look forward to hearing more!

PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying– The album expands on Orlam, her epic poem about the coming of age of Ira-Abel, a young Dorset girl whose companions include the bleeding, ghostly soldier Wyman-Elvis and Orlam itself, a lamb’s eyeball that serves as the village oracle. As overdone as this sounds, the concept lends a depth that you can constantly feel but doesn’t stand in the way of getting to the songs. Which yes, are dissonant and challenging, but also strangely accessible.

PWNT, Play What’s Not There– Pop so sweet I almost get a toothache, and textures so shimmery it’s like cotton candy. There is more than a little psychedelic sheen, and I think I also detect an omnichord in there somewhere… AMG says: “L.A. musician Kosta Galanopoulos named his solo project, PWNT, after the Miles Davis credo “Play what’s not there,” the title he bestows to his sophomore album.” I say, amen!

Shamir, Homo Anxietatem– An unusual vocalist with a surging voice, music that’s equal parts new-wave, electronic dance, folk, and hard rocking (with a bonus blues song thrown in), and a powerful point of view. This Las Vegas native is a bundle of talent who has been beaming out great indie pop since 2012, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down.

Snooper, Super Snooper– Punk in a vein that reminds me of early Jam and American hardcore, but also includes playful distortion, drum machines, and sound effects reminiscent of new wave, hip hop, and electronic music. The album rips through 14 songs in 23 minutes without every losing vitality and fun. I am now more than halfway in love with this Nashville band!

Various Artists, Tell Everybody! 21st Century Juke Joint Blues from Easy Eye Sound– Since founding the Easy Eye Sound label in 2017, Dan Auerbach has produced and issued dozens of recordings. And indeed, we get Auerbach on one track, the Black keys get another, but it’s mostly filled with the label’s artists. Held together by a cohesive spirit between the musicians, this is as fine a batch of non-formulaic but utterly classic contemporary blues as you are going to find.

Voivod, Morgoth Tales– Between the band name, the album name, and an opening track named “Condemned to the Gallows”, you might be expecting something in the metal vein. And you would be right! It reminds me, favorably, of the heyday of thrash metal in the 80s, with a hint of grunge in there, and a little of the extra punch of doom metal but, glory glory hallelujah, none of the technical frigidness or orchestral flights of fancy that makes so much contemporary metal lose its vitality, and with vocals that, while properly shouty, are actually somewhat legible! Heavy and yet dynamic, dark but with wit. This Quebec thrash band that started in the 80s celebrated their 40th anniversary by recording whole new versions of deep cuts from throughout their history. This album has more than a thing or two to teach the kids these days, and it makes this sometime-metalhead very happy.

Who is She?, Goddess Energy– Sweet melodies, bright chords, driving music right on the centerline between pop and punk, and energetic charmingly artless vocals. All of this, and odes to Movie Pass, Marianne Williamson, and telling off Anne Hathaway’s haters. How can I not be smitten? This “supergroup” of members of local Seattle bands Tacocat, Lisa Prank, and Chastity Belt makes some real magic together.

Maybe

  • Alice Cooper, Road– I don’t think Alice Cooper ever puts on a bad show, and that includes here. Is it a little formulaic? Sure. Is his formula rollicking metal and shock rock? Yes! There is even a kind of unifying theme/metaphor of being on the road. There’s a (well done) “Magic Bus” cover as the last track that doesn’t quite fit with the rest, but otherwise good clean (but play dirty) fun.

  • Being Dead, When Horses Would Run– It has that shimmery 60s sound with 90s quirky verve, lyrics about buffaloes, horses, days off, and God, and a classic psychedelic sound effect catalog. This, of course, adds up to this Texas-based band’s album being compulsively charming and likable. Some concerns about back half pacing are the only thing keeping me from an enthusiastic “yes.”

  • Bethany Cosentino, Natural Disaster– Clear as a bell vocals, wordy lyrics that wax both personal and social, and a ringing guitar wielded by someone familiar with rock, folk, and country who knows how to work its chords. This reminds me more than a little of the 90s. Cosentino is from the lo-fi duo Best Coast, and makes a great authentic-feeling sound, even if it doesn’t necessarily stand out as original.

  • Bush Tetras, They Live In My Head– Excellent moody minor chords rock, somewhere between post-punk and 90s, and vocals with a haunted, plaintive edge. It turns out this New York band has been kicking around since the late 70s and was one of the early No Wave bands, which tells you why they sound like everything between. Everything in between actually derives from them!

  • Diego Raposo, Yo No Era Así Pero de Ahora en Adelante, Sí– Okay, it was all in Spanish, there was one song near the end that lost me by being too lulled out, but in general I was very taken with the complex and lively mix this Dominican multi-instrumentalist and producer has going on here. Per Pitchfork “Melding jungle breakbeats, fuzzed-out electric guitar, and frantic bass with melancholy downtempo production”. Per me, yay!

  • draag me, Lord of the Shithouse– The title has attitude! Musically, this outing from Spirit of the Beehive members Zack Schwartz and Corey Wichlin is making some beautiful noise, delivering a diverse (and often pleasingly unhinged and fragmented) electronic sound. It is sometimes a challenging listen and I’m not totally convinced that it hangs together enough to work as an album at its length, but the soundscapes are compelling.

  • Edsel Axle, Variable Happiness– Rosali Middleman, usually a singer-songwriter, here goes for an electric-guitar instrumental album. And, if you get me minor chord-heavy, reverb-laden instrumental electric guitar, I am going to like it. Does it entirely hold together as an album? Not sure, but I do like it!

  • Gaadge, Somewhere Down Below– Good bell-ringing lo-fi guitar rock with fuzzy crunch and distortion from this Pittsburgh band. Is it terribly original? No. But so well done!

  • Grian Chatten, Chaos for the Fly– This debut studio album by Irish musician Grian Chatten (best known as the lead singer for Fontaines D.C.) has the raw edge of his work with them, but also a delicate orchestration arrangement. This lightens the emotional heaviness and brings new depth and subtlety, and a hint of sweetness, to his sound. I’m not sure it comes together, but it is affecting, and I never wanted to leave.

  • Hiss Golden Messenger, Jump For Joy– Sunny indie rock with some 70s country rock and southern rock feeling. I kept going back and forth between thinking it sounded too samey track-to-track, and thinking it sounded beautifully classic. And since I did that to the end, that is the very definition of a “maybe”!

  • Horrendous, Ontological Mysterium– Good old fashioned blistering metal that still remembers melody, has just the right technical shininess (and more than a hint of British new wave metal), and actually has somewhat approachable vocals! Is it the most original thing ever? No. But thank goodness someone is keeping metal hope alive!

  • ICYTWAT, Final Boss– I love the low-fi sound of this hip-hop album with its distortion, loops, and reverb. It all sounds a little sinister and buried in feedback, and the lyrics that make it through reinforce this feeling of menace. The album takes more than occasional dips into a more conventional contemporary autotuned mumble-rap, but when it’s not doing this the sonic mix made my ears happy.

  • Jon Batiste, World Music Radio– The beats! The grooves! The energy and positivity! The production that sweeps in hip-hop, rich and varied strains of soul and R&B, EDM, world rhythms! It feels simultaneously old school and fresh. All Music Guide says “Grammy-winning New Orleans pianist and singer known for his eclectic crossover music that juxtaposes jazz, soul, pop, gospel, and NOLA R&B”. I say, he’s amazing, and the only thing I’m unsure of here is the sprawl and if it holds together at the full hour+ run rate.

  • Lifeguard, Crowd Can Talk/Dressed In Trenches– 2023’s Crowd Can Talk/Dressed in Trenches is the first release from Chicago trio Lifeguard that has gotten much traction outside their hometown, though you might not guess that to hear it. This collection of two EPs — one previously released, one not is full of fuzzy goodness! It has just the right mixture between harshness and some kind of melody. The second EP is harsher and noisier than the first, but both have their charms.

  • PVRIS, Evergreen– Sometimes this sounds more like indie rock (in an arch intellectual version of that), more often like a dance super-mix (in a good way!), and always experimental and intelligent. I don’t know if it quite holds together, but frontperson Lynn Gunn’s presence, and the daring smarts of the whole thing kept me listening.

  • Rauw Alejandro, Playa Saturno– I can’t help it, I have a soft spot in my heart for reggaeton. Actually, it may be a sweaty, pulsing spot. Either way, even with nearly nary a word of English from this Puerto Rican reggaeton master, I am here for the high energy multi-layered mix.

  • Rhiannon Giddens, You’re the One– She’s got a voice! This North Carolinian musician romps through soul, blues, bluegrass, and jazz standards with a phrasing that is sometimes a little smooth to a fault, but also very authentic-feeling.

  • Ruth Garbus, Alive People– Spare. Folky. Intellectual and philosophical. Abstract. Recorded live in Greenfield, Massachusetts by the, among other things, sister of Merrill Garbus from Tune-yards, though it doesn’t feel like a live album in a crowd feedback kind of way. It’s all of a tone, but so powerful, compelling, and lyrically surprising it kept bringing me back in.

  • The Hives, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons– This album is single-handedly making me believe in the 2000s garage rock revival again. And with more than a little flavor of the Jam, Stiff Little Fingers and the rockier side of post-punk. There is nothing new here. But that’s gloriously the point!

  • Various Artists, Barbie The Album– If you were to picture what would be on the Barbie soundtrack, you might envision girl power icon singers and high energy dance music. You would be right about both of those! Given the nature of the film, you might also picture musings on the meaning of femininity and image/expectation versus reality. Again, you would be right. You might be surprised, though, that there are also some equally substantive takes on masculinity in the process, and an array of musical styles beyond the obvious. And it pulls off a kind of emotional arc along the way. I’m not sure yet that it totally hangs together, but for a soundtrack album to amount to a real album is no small feat!

  • Veps, Oslo Park– If you tell me you’re a Norwegian 90s pop-rock influenced girl group, you can’t add more adjectives I respond positively toward. Energetic, fun, and well put together, and, if I’m not sure yet how far it rises above its derivations, I’m definitely giving it another listen!

  • Your Heart Breaks, The Wrack Line– Fuzzy guitar, slow melodious chords, fun musical surprises, intelligent lyrics, and vocals with equal hints of nostalgia and whimsy. Your Heart Breaks is a project led by musician, artist, and filmmaker Clyde Petersen, and this is their first release for Kill Rock Stars. Written in collaboration with others, it’s loaded with well-deployed guests (including several delightful turns by Kimya Dawson), and for good measure, there’s even an ode to Wesley Crusher. Because it is lo-fi and low-key, the pacing sometimes lags toward the end of its hour-long run, but the considerable charms kept me tuned in.


    And there we are! Will we get September out before the end of November and then try to do October-December in a blaze of glory? Stay tuned to find out…

In Search of the 23 Best Albums of 2023: June

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The journey to find the 23 best albums of 2023 continues! That’s right, we’re listening to new albums as they come out each month and sorting the standouts into “yes” and “maybe”. Next up: June!

If you’re new here, this all started in 2021. In a quest to get familiar with newer music, I listened to the critics choices for the best albums of the 2010s, and picked my own favorites based on their choices. I did the same for 2020, picking my top 20 from their lists. And I started off listening to new releases each month, eventually arriving at my picks for the 21 best albums of 2021. I had so much fun in the process that I decided to do it again in 2022, listening each month and discovering the 22 best albums of 2022.

There are links to the 2020, 2021, and 2022 albums in the posts, but if you’d like a one-stop playlist for each year, I’ve set that up on Spotify:

And if you want to catch up our voyage through 2023, the earlier posts for this year are here:

( January/February/March April May )

As for how those “yes” and “maybe” categories I mentioned above work, as I listen to the new releases for each month I sort the ones that particularly catch my attention into two categories:

Yes– This represents the albums that, upon first listen, could definitely be in running for best of the year.

Maybe– These albums have a lot to recommend them, but also something that gives me pause. I put them in their own category, because I’ve found “maybes” sometimes linger and eventually become “yeses”.

Now that we’ve got that established, let’s get on with my picks from the 121 June new releases I listened to!

Albert Hammond, Jr., Melodies on Hiatus– What with his work with the Strokes and all, Hammond is clearly a top rate guitarist, and this makes me aware of just how much the sound of that band owes to his rhythm guitar work. But this is not just a matter of a Strokesque album, though those flourishes are delightful. It’s the deft way he has with balancing melody and rocking guitar, and genuine melancholy yearning that leaves an impression.

Baxter Dury, I Thought I Was Better Than You– Dry wit and more than vaguely unsettling lyrics wrapped in sophisticated pop and laid-back detached spoken word vocals. You might think from all these descriptors that he’s English. You would be right! He is also, incidentally, the son of Ian Dury of Blockheads fame, and it is apparent that a great deal of the sardonic deadpan passed down to him.

Big Freedia, Central City– This album from New Orleans-based rapper Big Freedia is overflowing with humor, booming bawdy energy, and classic mix motifs. This is apparently a subgenre known as “bounce music”. And heaven knows this is a historical moment where exuberant energy from a gender nonconforming gay man who embraces femininity is extremely welcome.

Bob Dylan, Shadow Kingdom– We all had to figure out something to do during COVID. For his part, Bob Dylan put out a black and white film of a live-in-the-studio concert where he revisited songs from earlier in his career. Two years later he’s released an album version of that concert. Casting early Dylan into later-day Dylan with a slowed down and precise vocal phrasing and musical reworkings of his old standards is kind of a revelation. It makes you realize what he’s been doing since Time Out Of Mind, and both the links it has with his earlier work, and the phase shift involved.

Boris/Uniform, Bright New Disease– New York industrial noise-rock band Uniform toured with the also noisy and pan-genre Japanese trio Boris in 2019. The two groups then began recording music together. The result is unhinged in the best way- it has elements of noise rock, metal, hardcore, all delivered with an edge of madcap experimentalism.

Detwat, HiTech– I have learned that ghettotech is a fusion of electro, techno, ghetto house, and Miami bass that has arisen from Detroit’s club scene. I’ve also learned that I like this. It’s very fresh! It shows the verve of both good hip hop and electronic, with stuttering energy, humor, and a sophisticated mix.

Dream Wife, Social Lubrication– I was on the edge with this- at first it seemed punky, but not terribly originally so. And pleasantly featuring girl-power, but not overly notably. But then the lyrical bite kept coming, and the 80s and 90s alt influences got piled on top of the punk. This London-based band won me over!

Joanna Sternberg, I’ve Got Me– Quirky vocals, acoustic, with sharp dense emotionally internal lyrics and slightly off-kilter instrumentation. It’s often kind of sing-song, and deliberately artless, but vulnerable. All-in-all, this NYC-based singer, songwriter and visual artist is doing something delightful and that I want to hear more of!

Juan Wauters, Wandering Rebel– The lyrics here are at times wistful and at times tongue in cheek, the musical mix light and inventive, the whole thing shot through with his signature experimentalism, and winning multi-cultural mix. The formerly Queens-based artist has relocated to his native Uruguay, and both landscapes show through here.

King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard, PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation– This Australian psyche band par excellence is nothing if not constantly morphing, and this morph has them going full-out metal- there’s some thrash, some psychedelic, some stoner, and it doesn’t falter for a single one of its 7 tracks.

Nat Myers, Yellow Peril– A Korean-American Blues musician, which is a story I like. But even better, it is as fine a genuine-feeling dynamic set of steel guitar traditional blues as you are going to find. It never felt less than fun and true for a single track.

Owl City, Coco Moon– I heard this was from an electronica collective, which put me a little on edge. But in fact, it turns out to be delightful! It is electronic , but in the way, for example, the Postal Service is electronic. And in fact, reminds me of the brighter and more quirky side of Ben Gibbard’s work. It’s somewhere between affecting storytelling and high-energy summer fluff, and unusually informed (for indie electronica) by the artists’ Christianity. Per Wikipedia: “Owl City is an American electronic music project created in 2007 in Owatonna, Minnesota. It is one of several projects by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam Young, who created the project while experimenting with music in his parents’ basement.” Three cheers for music that comes from parent’s basements!

Ruen Brothers, Ten Paces– An atmospheric indie rock with cowboy ballad flavorings, minor chords, and weird western themes. How am I not going to fall for this? I’m NOT not! Turns out on subsequent investigation that they are an English duo infatuated with American music a la rockabilly. Well, okay! Well done lads.

Speech Bebelle, Sunday Dinner on a Monday– This British hip-hop artist has an interesting voice, in both senses of the word, and a lush richly-produced mix backing her. I really appreciate her poetic flow, and the fact that it takes on social concerns and reveals internal emotional truths with equal fluency, organically joining the two.

Sweeping Promises, Good Living Is Coming for You– Such a bright clear classic new wave sound! They wouldn’t sound out of place on a circa 1983 double-bill with Missing Persons. Which is not to say there is anything inauthentic here, behind the slinky synthy excellence, there’s some genuine heft and personality to the vocals of lead singer Lira Mondal. Dagnabit, I think I love this Kansas by way of Austin by way of Boston by way of Arkansas band!

Teke::Teke, Hagata– Their album Shirushi made my 2021 Honorable Mention list, and this one is charming me in a similar fashion. Eclectic, alternately serrated and swinging, with an edge of dark frenzy and a hefty dash of mirthfulness. Yes, it is all in Japanese, no that doesn’t matter, the wealth of its sonic landscape is well worth the journey.

Witch, Zango– “On their first album in nearly 40 years, the Zamrock pioneers prove their malleable, genre-spanning style still sounds like the future.” So says Pitchfork, and I don’t disagree! It reminds of the sunny rock/soul crossover of the late 60s a la Sly Stone, the African polyrhythms informing new wave, good old fashioned crunchy 90s guitar rock, and other things besides. The musical approach is so fresh and alive I’ve got to consider it!


Maybe

  • Bobbie Nelson/Amanda Shires, Loving You– One of my 2022 top picks, Amanada Shires, with Willie Nelson’s sister covering country-flavored standards with associations with Willie Nelson. Well shucks! It isn’t the most original thing ever, but it is pretty darn nice.

  • Bombadil, In Color– What a sunny, multi-layered, weirdly fun world this invokes! Color me a fan of this eclectic neo-folk North Carolina band. Also, it’s surprisingly coherent given the way it was recorded in different locales during the pandemic, though there are some pacing issues.

  • Bully, Lucky For You– I feel like this fell straight out of the 90s! Crunching guitar rock, ragged vocals, a deliberately unkempt, in your face energy. There are glimmers of 00s dance, because she is of the generation that is pop-fusing that with 90s alt rock (witness guest track by Soccer Mommy). It’s derivative, but it’s a good derivation.

  • Cory Hanson, Western Cum– A little southern rock, a little country rock, gets into 70s classic rock riffs, and occasionally ventures into country hardcore territory. Sometimes reminiscent of Neil Young. All with a great deal of humor! It’s a mood, it’s an era, but it is a great evocation of it.

  • Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Weathervanes– I am such a sucker for what Jason Isbel does. On this album, he starts on a genuinely dark and spooky note musically and lyrically, then lightens up from there- mixing in his signature combination of country, 70s rock, Springsteen-reminiscent anthemic songs, and Dylan-reminiscent sketches. But even as the music grows more exuberant, the darkness and ache is never far away. It’s a little incoherent for its sprawl (with a run time of an hour), but that’s the only thing keeping it from “yes”.

  • Jenny Lewis, Joy’All– Comparing Jenny Lewis to the best of Jenny Lewis is maybe unfair to her, but that’s what you get for being great! On that front, her lyrics here are occasionally shallower, her vocals sometimes more washed out, and the music not always as sharp as her best. in other words, sometimes it is merely “good” instead of “really, really good”. But definitely good enough for a second listen!

  • Jess Williamson, Time Ain’t Accidental– A country folk excursion with hints of Jenny Lewis, Nanci Griffith, and others. The lyrics are richly visual, evocative of the musical space without being cliché, and her voice warmly invites you in. It has a fairly narrow musical and vocal range but bears repeated listening.

  • Kool Keith, Black Elvis 2– Sequel to the well-regarded 1999 solo album from this founding member of the Ultramagnetic MCs. And, indeed, it has a certain kind of 90s verve to it- hard metallic drive to the beats and the flow, clever lyrics, varied if not downright whacky samples. As if to prove the point, there’s even a guest spot from Ice-T. And there’s a track devoted to Marvel comics, so you know that’s going to reel me in.

  • Laura Cantrell, Just Like a Rose: The Anniversary Sessions– Well that is some lovely countrified electric Americana! Both musically and vocally it’s full of brightness and clarity, with lyrics and chord changes that have a feeling for authentically honoring country while bringing in pop rock energy. Cantrell has been recording in this vein since the late 90s, and this is her 6th solo album (raising a family and having to work for a living having taken a lot of her time). The musical and vocal range is rather narrow track to track, which is about the source of my “maybe”, but it shines with sincerity.

  • Louise Post, Sleepwalker– I like cooking with salt. Do you know what kind of salt I like best? Veruca Salt! So, in service to my evergreen love affair with 90s loud guitar alt rock female singers, I am always going to be interested in what Louise Post is up to. And she’s up to classic form here! Not to mention self-consciously looking back and reminiscing. As such, it sounds a little dated. As such, I can’t help but love it.

  • Lucinda Williams, Stories From a Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart– Lucinda Williams rocking out is going to be a pretty good combination to bring me on board with. And indeed, this album is full of fine moments. It lulls toward the second half, but even if It isn’t “great” Lucinda Williams, “good” Lucinda Williams is pretty great.

  • Metro Boomin, Metro Boomin Presents Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Soundtrack From and Inspired by the Motion Picture)– This soundtrack is led up by hip-hop and trap DJ/producer DJ Leland Tyler Wayne aka Metro Boomin, but loaded full of guest stars. The surprising news, to me, is how successful it is as an album. Perhaps because of the focus the film provides, perhaps because of a skilled producer with a clear vision, it feels “together”. And even uses auto-tune in a way that feels holistic to the songs and tone of the album without sacrificing dynamism and vitality. I’m not totally sold, but I can’t dismiss it as a possibility!

  • Pardoner, Peace-Loving People– A nice snotty jangly guitar sound that reminds me of a certain strain of American alt 80s and 90s alternative, with occasional dips into total hardcore, delivered via 14 songs in 28 minutes. Not the most original components ever, but I will say I liked it more as time went on. And wouldn’t you know they’re a San Francisco band?

  • Protomartyr, Formal Growth in the Desert– Solid post-punk, with an edge of industrial, and some weighty anger, as befits a band from Detroit. They remind me of many things from the 80s and 90s, and as such, it’s not a startlingly new or different sound. If you read Rage Against the Machine through Magazine, you might get something like this. But the feeling conveyed is genuine, urgent, and timely.

  • Son Volt, Day of the Doug– This tribute album to Tex-Mex musician Doug Sahm was conceived by Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar. What results is classic Son Volt, lent a little bit of focus by the theme. Not “different” from the countrified rock space they usually operate in, but very well done.

  • Special Friend, Wait Until The Flames Come Rushing In– Their 2021 album Ennemi Commun was on my semi-finals list. This has that same feeling for fuzzy guitar, pop melodies, and genuine emotion with quirky twee delivery. I won’t be mad at listening to it again!

  • The Baseball Project, Grand Salami Time– This starts off feeling like a lost album from the original American punk scene(s) somewhere between New York and LA. Not on the hard thrashy side, but on the more melodic, and conversant with 60s harmonies side- think Richard Hell, Television, X. Or the New York Dolls. More than a hint of garage psyche gets into it from there, a la the Nuggets collection. I am a little unsure due to the multiplicity of dated feels but darn it’s a good exemplar of its sounds!

  • The Dead Milkmen, Quaker City Quiet Pills– In a way, this could have been an album from them at any point in the 80s or 90s. But the snarky excellence and low-key brutality of their approach on songs like, “Grandpa’s Not Racist” is pretty damn timely. Dated? Timeless? Any which way, I have to consider it.

  • Youth Lagoon, Heaven is a Junkyard– This is musically and vocally extremely low-key, which had me on the fence. But also, haunting, and compelling in the melodic yet ragged spell it weaves. Youth Lagoon is the vehicle of Idaho-bred bedroom pop/neo psychedelia musician Trevor Powers, returning after a break since 2016. Welcome back!

And there you have it, June, coming to you before the end of August. We’ll keep working on the pipeline. Because you can’t quit when you’re halfway there!

In Search of the 23 Best Albums of 2023: May

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All right, not quite before the end of June, but we’re getting May out in early July. We’re catching up to real time! But catching up on what, you ask? Well, we’re on a journey to find the 23 best albums of 2023 by listening to new albums as they come out each month and sorting them into “yes” and “maybe”. Join us!

Okay, you say. I’m intrigued. But how did this come about? In 2021, in a quest to get familiar with newer music, I listened to the critics choices for the best albums of the 2010s, and picked my own favorites. I did the same for 2020, picking my top 20. And I started off listening to new releases each month, eventually finding the 21 best albums of 2021. I had so much fun in the process that I decided to do it again in 2022, listening each month and discovering the 22 best albums of 2022.

There are links to the 2021 and 2022 albums in the posts, but if you’d like a one-stop playlist, I’ve set that up on Spotify:

And if you need to catch up our voyage through 2023, the earlier posts for this year are here:

( January/February/March April )

Did I mention “yes” and “maybe” above? I did! As I listen to the new releases for each month, I sort the ones that are in contention for best of the year into two categories:

Yes– This represents the albums that, upon first listen, I think could definitely be in running for best of the year.

Maybe– These albums have something to recommend them, but also something that gives me pause. I put them in their own category, because I’ve found “maybes” sometimes linger and eventually become “yeses”.

Got it? Good. Now let’s get on with my picks for the most promising albums from the 105 May new releases I listened to!

Alice Longyu Gao, Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn and Retire– The title lets you know there’s a point of view, which is great. But even better is the mix of energetic, wacky, and experimental on display here as it combines electronic, sing-song, noise rock, and high-octane dance music. This Chinese-born American singer, songwriter, DJ, and performance artist has it going on! (Note this is not actually a May release, it’s from Pitchfork’s Spring list of “33 albums you might have missed”. As you know, we miss NOTHING.)

Arlo Parks, My Soft Machine– Her album Collapsed in Sunbeams was in my top 21 list for 2021. Compared to that, this album smoother in some ways due to a lusher more pop-oriented production. But lyrically it’s more directly personal and the vocals often have an uncloaked sense of vulnerability. So, its strengths are different, but she is no less powerful here for it.

Charlotte Cornfield, Could Have Done Anything– One of my picks for 2021 honorable mention was her album Highs in the Minuses, and it remains a sentimental favorite of mine. This has the same plain-spoken honesty of lyrics and vocals, warm presence, and music with an acoustic base but enough production polish and melody that moves it along nicely.

Dave Matthews Band, Walk Around the Moon– Nobody is more surprised than me to find myself liking this! After the freshness of his initial intro in the 90s Dave Matthews has been, well, very Dave Matthews. Reliably, dependably, relentlessly Dave Matthews. This, however, finds him in a darker and more pensive mood, and a musically rich one- there are hints of grunge, 60s psychedelic pop, and various other soundscapes along the way, and a less sunny, more interior dive than we have come to expect from him.

Foyer Red, Yarn the Hours Away– A weird nervy, jerky, rock, multi-layered, sing-songy, with gonzo synths. If more people were as inventive with pop rock as this Brooklyn band, it would be a grand world!

Galen Ayers/Paul Simonon, Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?– In a way, it is no surprise to have a member of the Clash on a musical venture that mixes up ska, Latin, and retro-rock influences. Former Clash bassist Simonon worked out these songs while riding out COVID in Spain. He has actually mostly been creating as a well-regarded painter in recent decades, but the experience of street playing got him interested in his first musical venture in five years. When he returned to London after the pandemic receded, he partnered with singer/songwriter Galen Ayers to bring his new songs out as this album. It legitimately delights, retaining the feeling of warmth and relaxed spontaneity from the set’s origin.

Kassa Overall, Animals– “Equally adept as a jazz drummer, rapper, and producer, Seattle’s Kassa Overall makes records whose approach to musical modernism is informed amply by beat consciousness.” That’s the description, and it’s a great mix! Wildly variable jazz, experimental electronic, left field hip hop all at once.

Kesha, Gag Order– Wow! I did not know a lot about Kesha beyond some vague sense she was dance-related. Which she is, but also raw, ragged, angry, powerful, spiritual, musically varied, and given to unusual production choices. Compelling all the way through!

Olivia Jean, Raving Ghost– Olivia Jean is the lead of the “garage goth” band the Black Belles and, somewhere incidentally along the way, Jack White’s newest wife. I mention those only because both factors, maybe, give you a clue to what her musical POV is. Swinging, retro, and vaguely sinister on the first track, slightly punky power pop new wave on the second, a metal feeling on the third. And later, there is the version of “Orinoco Flow” that turns it into a girl-group/punk number. It may all be a little formulaic, but damn it’s a good formula- Olivia Jean is a cool rocking righteous chick, and I am here for it!

Peter One, Come Back to Me– A good story: The U.S. debut at age 67 of a Nashville musician from Côte d’Ivoire who found fame in Africa as a folk musician in the 90s before emigrating to the U.S. in the 90s and doing just regular life for decades. Even better: It’s a lovely album that delivers an intriguing hybrid of acoustic Afro-pop, jazz, blues, and American folk. From these disparate parts comes a unique whole. And how often these days do you hear something that doesn’t sound like anything but itself?

Rosa Pistola, Cumbiaton Total– Well this was delightful! Such lively, varied, and over the top hip-hop and dance music glee. Per Bandcamp: “Cumbiaton Total is a headfirst dive into Mexico City’s raw and unique take on the reggaeton sound, and its rising recognition. Compiled by NTS with Rosa Pistola (a central figure at the heart of the scene), the release coincides with a mini-documentary that explores the community spirit around the scene, with interviews and footage of the artists that feature on the release.”  It is entirely in Spanish, but so fun I don’t care that I can barely understand a single lyric. (Note this is not actually a May release, it’s from Pitchfork’s Spring list of “33 albums you might have missed”. As you know, we miss NOTHING.)

Seán Barna, An Evening at Macri Park– I really like this! Singer/songwriter Barna bases this cycle of songs around Macri Park, a local bar that is a historical anchor for the Queer community in Brooklyn. So, we’ve got that going in for concept, and then new wave/Bowiesque arty melodrama, vivid literary storytelling, and a strong feeling for 70s chords and melodies to top it off.

Maybe

  • Alex Lahey, The Answer Is Always Yes– This is snarky, a little nervy, with just the right edge of power pop 90s and noisier rock. It’s not the newest, freshest thing ever, and is designedly simple and straightforward musically. But darned if this Australian singer-songwriter isn’t doing a classic sound well!

  • bar italia, Tracy Denim– A guitar-driven post-punk sound, redolent of the Cure, Siouxsie, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Church, et al, but also with a hint of the 90s to come. The sound is in all wise a little dated and derivative, but darn is it sincere and well done.

  • billy woods & Kenny Segal, Maps– Billy Woods has made several albums that caught my attention in the last few years, but this collaboration with LA producer Segal takes that to a whole other level. It sounds and feels very DIY and is so delightfully varied in terms of the mix. The flow is a little more low key, and it sometimes feels a little incoherent because of it’s very variety, but I can’t fault it for that. Much.

  • Brandy Clark, Brandy Clark– It begins with a murder song, delivered so plain and simply vocally you can’t help but love it, and on the musical side it goes from spare to rocking. There are a variety of musical approaches and subject matter that follow, all informed by the same spare story-telling with just the right dose of pop refrains. It may play a little too conventionally sometimes, and pacing/speed is an issue, but for this strong songwriter I will give another listen.

  • Conway the Machine, Won’t He Do It– There’s a glower and a swagger to this, as well as a muscular mix. If the subject matter isn’t the freshest ever, the flow and personality are strong.

  • Cusp, You Can Do It All– The hushed opening gave me pause, but I liked the slightly-off guitar rhythm and phrasing of the second track. It goes from there to a fuzzy 90s kind of sound, but retains being slightly off kilter, mixed with sweet melodies. In parts familiar, in parts feeling fresh.

  • Graham Day & the Gaolers, Reflections in the Glass– Now that’s some good old-fashioned 60s garage rock! It’s not the most original sound in the world, but Graham’s been plying this trade, both in a variety of UK bands and solo, since the 80s, and as a result, it feels like an original example of it. Too fun and well done not to consider!

  • Immaterial Possession, Mercy of the Crane Folk– Nervy music, jangly and unnerving. There are hints of post-punk, the Doors, the medieval trippy bazaar side of psychedelia, and horror aspects of goth and industrial. It doesn’t sound totally coherent, sometimes the flow is a little off, but this Georgia quartet has something interesting going on!

  • Jonas Brothers, The Album– I semi-despise myself for even doing this, but I think it’s a gosh-darn maybe! The thing is, I listened through to the end, because each song had enough charm and 2020s peak pop perfection to keep me going. A little pre-packaged? Yes. But a package with a powerfully efficient design!

  • Masego, Masego– His mix of soul, house, hip-hop, and jazz is winning. It’s musically and vocally interesting, and if not lyrically profound, what’s going on fits the sunny mellow whole. I’m not sure it comes together as an album with enough energy to sustain it, but worth another listen. (Note this is not actually a May release, it’s from Pitchfork’s Spring list of “33 albums you might have missed”. As you know, we miss NOTHING.)

  • Panic Pocket, Mad Half Hour– This London duo lands somewhere between heavy crunching guitar and poppy melody, with multi-layered female-lead vocals, i.e. it could have come straight from the 90s. The references and concerns are thoroughly contemporary though, and tilt toward a welcome snarky feminism even if the lyrics are sometimes a little too on the nose.

  • Radiator Hospital, Can’t Make Any Promises– This Detroit by way of Michigan indie rock band is somewhere between 80s jangle rock, 90s lo-fi, and 00s garage. Not groundbreaking, but sounds I love and so very solidly done.

  • Rhoda Dakar, Version Girl– I know her from being a key figure in the 70s/80s U.K. ska scene, and singing one of the most harrowing songs I have ever heard, “The Boiler”. So, she’s coming in here with a lot of credibility, and this is a covers album, which always tickles my fancy. And indeed these are great versions, delivered in relaxed and easy ska.

  • Rodney Crowell, The Chicago Sessions– In 2020, Rodney Crowell happened to meet Jeff Tweedy of Wilco at a festival they were both playing at, and Tweedy suggested Crowell should come to Chicago sometime and record at Wilco’s rehearsal space and private studio there. The result is this album, and it’s a great example of fit between the sensibilities of artist and producer. If it’s not the newest sound in the world, darn is it a good one.

  • RP Boo, Legacy Volume 2– The spare excellence, stuttered pop culture sampling, and driving repetition of these DJ mixes reminds me of the 90s heyday of this kind of music. And indeed, Kavain Space, aka RP Boo, had gotten his start DJing in the Chicago house music scene of the 90s and was already legendary for developing the “footwork” style before he began finally publicly releasing his mixes in the 2010s. This sample collects mixes from the 00s, but it’s new to us. And excellent!

  • The Murlocs, Calm Ya Farm– An exuberant sound with country and southern rock flavors. Weirdly for the very American sound they are channeling, they’re from Melbourne. It’s not the most original formulation ever, but a thoroughly enjoyable one.

And there you have the May review, out in the first week of July! Can we get June out before the end of the month? Stay tuned…

In Search of the 23 Best Albums of 2023: April

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Do you mostly listen to older music? Me too! In fact, I spent a lot of the new millennium so thoroughly backfilling on genre deep dives and missed gems of the 60s through 90s that I hit 2020 with very little familiarity with newer artists. What to do?

I set out to educate myself! In 2021 I listened to the critics choices for the best albums of the 2010s, and picked my own favorites. I did the same for 2020, picking my top 20. And I started off listening to new releases each month, eventually finding the 21 best albums of 2021. I had so much fun in the process that I decided to do it again in 2022, listening each month and discovering the 22 best albums of 2022.

There are links to the 2021 and 2022 albums in the posts, but if you’d like a one-stop playlist, I’ve set that up in Spotify:

And now in 2023 I’m doing it again! I got a little behind in the beginning of the year, so I batched the “yes” and “maybe” albums of the first three months together:

( January/February/March )

Speaking of “yes” and “maybe”, this is how those categories work:

Yes– This represents the albums that, upon first listen, I think could definitely be in running for best of the year.

Maybe– These albums have something to recommend them, but also something that gives me pause. I put them in their own category, because I’ve found “maybes” sometimes linger and eventually become “yeses”.

Now that we’ve got all that sorted it, let’s proceed with my picks for the most promising albums from 99 April new releases!

Black Thought/El Michels Affair, Glorious Game– The Roots founder Black Thought and producer El Michels Affair have teamed up well on this album, with Black Thought’s philosophical lyrics and authoritative flow marrying up with an innovative and sharp live/sampled mix from Michels. Add to this the dub and classic soul elements, experimental touches, and the import of the lyrics combine to make a thoroughly excellent package.

Esther Rose, Safe to Run– I was looking forward to this since her album How Many Times made my top 21 in 2021. And here again we have her delightfully sincere vocals, emotionally literate storytelling, and utterly authentic feeling for country, pop, rock, and their fit together. I’m not sure if I’m totally sold on the sequencing, but damn does every single individual song hold up.

Facs, Still Life in Decay– A spare, glowering, bruising set from this Chicago experimental trio. There are also layers of depth in the billowy darkness, a kind of emotional transformation even. It reminds me of the more metallic ends of post punk, of industrial, of the heavy break of a Nirvana song.

Kero Kero Bonito, Intro Bonito– High-energy mix, playing with fragments of electronic, classic video-game sound effects, dance, new wave, J-pop, and hip-hop. It is sweet, melodic, and so darn catchy that it works equally well whether the individual songs are in English or Japanese.

Natalie Merchant, Keep Your Courage– If Natalie Merchant can make a bad album, we have not yet discovered it. The songs here are serious and it ends on a somber note, but not unusually for her, and with much lush beauty, soaring emotion, and poetic turns of phrase along the way. About the only complaint I can lodge is that this could have come from her at almost any time in the last 30 years. Well…

Nourished by Time, Erotic Probiotic 2– I read before listening that Baltimore-raised singer-songwriter and producer Marcus Brown (aka Nourished by Time) “channels everything from ’90s alt-R&B to bedroom indie-pop and bubbly synthpop in the vein of ’80s Prince”. I would say that’s correct, though it doesn’t quite convey how delightful the meld is. What results is recognizably part of its various influences but doesn’t quite sound like anything else out there. More of this please!

Spencer Cullum, Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2– This Nashville-based English pedal-steel master has produced something redolent of the more acoustic side of psychedelic and prog, a la 70s AM radio sound, with pleasingly ornate yet whimsical musical touches a-plenty. It never sounds like it is taking itself too seriously, but without a moment’s lag in musical quality. All-in-all, a weird delight.

TERRY, Call Me Terry– Ringing jangly propulsive guitars, walls of synth sound, catchy refrains, delightfully artless vocal phrasing delivering artsy elliptical lyrics. Listening to this felt like I was in a great part of the alt 80s, yet also contemporary. Three cheers little Australian indie band!

TisaKorean, Let Me Update My Status– The energy, inventiveness, and sheer fun in the first two tracks here alone shows up most of the hip-hop albums so far this year. The multi-layered production makes it like an orchestra, but an orchestra of voice samples, bright synth music, and repeated tonal motifs that provide a structure that holds the whole thing together. I had a similar reaction to this Houston-based artist’s 2021 album mr.siLLyfLow, and if this is lower on the delightfully gonzo factor than that outing, it is higher on coherence.


Maybe

  • Bruiser and Bicycle, Holy Red Wagon– So much goes on in the first track alone in terms of high energy, quirky moments, and off-kilter arrangements. And there are at least two songs going on simultaneously in the second song. By the time the third track shifts from shoegaze to electronic to 70s folk to 90s guitar, you’re 22 minutes in. They are apparently a “freak folk” group. They are apparently from Albany, NY. By the end of it, I’m not sure what journey I’ve been on, and if it quite came together as an album, but I never once wanted to turn it off.

  • Indigo De Souza, All of This Will End– Oh these earnest young things who so effortlessly combine singer-songwriter vulnerability, dance music fun, and crunching 90s guitar rock! There is a whole crop of them out these days, and we are blessed for it. Though it didn’t quite make my 2021 list, this North Carolina singer’s album Any Shape You Take caught my eye for the same strengths of musical inventiveness and emotional rawness that are on display here. I’m not totally sold on the sequencing, but it’s got a chance!

  • Kara Jackson, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?– The power of the plain voice of this one-time National Youth Poet Laureate is what drives this album, but the stripped-down musical settings- spare piano backings, minimal instrumentation, make everything pop that much more. Her voice itself is a choral instrument, and the songs have poetry, but also stories, and know how to have melody and structure as well. And the variety of approaches is amazing, none of them feeling less than heartfelt. The whole thing is a slow burn, but more powerful for it. I’m not quite sure about the overall flow as an album, but it never let go of me.

  • Lael Neale, Star Eaters Delight– There are the chilly artsy edges, the arch intelligent lyrics, a driving directness to the musical approach. I can see why I like her, even if I’m not 100% sure that flow and sequence came together.

  • motifs, Remember a Stranger– I loved this album from Singaporean dream pop quintet motifs almost as much as I loved Air Guitar by the Singaporean band Sobs last year, for all the same reasons. The fact that it is so dreamy has me a little on the fence, but apparently there is a scene in Singapore I need to check out!

  • Poison Ruin, Harvest– Orchestral intros that give way to rocking menace, sometimes shambling metal, sometimes something more like hardcore (which the vocals are reminiscent of as well). It is a good deal more accessible and fun than so many a recent metal album. I don’t know that it’s great, but it’s certainly welcome!

  • Robbie Fulks, Bluegrass Vacation– Chicago singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks has a decades-long love of country music roots. That, and a basket-full of talented bluegrass musicians recording in Nashville has produced this delightful album. This is not “new,” but it certainly does ring true.

  • Teleman, Good Time/Hard Time– The parts are recognizable enough- synth pop, new wave, a little disco revival, a pinch of art/prog. But together they work in a way that, if it isn’t new and fresh, still sounds genuine and is engaging from end to end.

  • The National Honor Society, To All the Distance Between Us– The sound here is somewhere between a chiming 60s, a paisley jangly 80s, and a dreampop 90s. It isn’t the most original thing ever, but so solidly done. Surprisingly, given the UK-feeling influences, they are a Seattle band, and they’re doing it well- the album won’t let you down for a single track.

  • Wednesday, Rat Saw God– Oh I like this! Moody layers of guitar, alternating feedback-laden surges and quiet lulls, lead-vocalist Karly Hartzman singing with just the right tone of lackadaisical anguish. On the song “Bull Believer” they let it all go for 8 minutes, and then on “Get Shocked” they show they can pull it together into a two-minute package. Either way, there are worlds of feeling inside these songs. There are sequencing issues with the faster and slower moments, but that’s the only thing keeping this Asheville, North Carolina from “yes”.

And there we have the April review! Out before the end of June, so I think we’re catching up. There’s even a chance I’ll have May out too before month’s end, and if not, shortly thereafter…

In Search of the 23 Best Albums of 2023: January-March

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I mean, it worked out so well in 2021 and 2022, how could I not do it again?

If you’re just joining us for the first time, a few years ago I set out to catch up on newer music. I listened to the critics choices for the best albums of the 2010s, and picked my own favorites. I did the same for 2020, picking my top 20 from the critics most highly rated albums. And I started off listening to new releases each month in 2021, eventually picking the 21 best albums of 2021. I had so much fun in the process that I decided to do it again in 2022, listening each month and picking out the 22 best albums of 2022.

There are links to the albums in the posts, but if you’d like a one-stop playlist, I’ve now set that up in Spotify for the 2021 top 21 and the 2022 top 22.

And now I’m doing it again! Lots of life the last few months delayed things so I may be batching months together, like this Q1 update, until I catch up. Heck, I may decide to batch them together more in general! The other major change I’m making from the last two years is that I’ll just be listing the “yes” and “maybe” albums. I came to believe neither you or I needed lengthy lists of “no”s. If I’m missing something you think I should have picked, ask me about it!

Speaking of “yes” and “maybe”, those two categories work the same way they have in previous years:

Yes– This isn’t a guarantee, but it represents the albums that, upon first listen, I think could definitely be in running for best of the year.

Maybe– These albums have something to recommend them, but also something that gives me pause. I’m putting them in their own category, because I have found “maybes” sometimes linger and eventually become “yeses”.

And now, without any further ado, let us get on with my top picks from 243 new January-March releases!

100 gecs, 10,000 gecs– I do love me some hyperpop! This particular iteration from this St. Louis duo is equal parts bedroom pop synth, autotune, and thrashy guitar feedback excess, and is high energy, silly, and total sincere.

Angel Bat Dawid, Requiem for Jazz– Meant as a deliberate response to the “Jazz is Dead” line that has been kicking around since the 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, this extraordinary album by Chicago composer, clarinetist, and educator Dawid holds a literal requiem mass for the form that both celebrates it, and turns it inside out, both in service of what jazz has meant in the Black world, and what something new in its spirit could mean. It’s orchestral, experimental, dissonant, exuberant, and incantatory.

Ava Max, Diamonds and Dancefloors– I do appreciate good dance music, and this starts off on the right note in terms of energy, production, catchiness, and verve. There is, of course, the phenomenon of putting your strongest track first, and having things rapidly decline from there. But this keeps going at the same level track after track. Nothing overstays its welcome either- the longest track is 3:26. Ava Max is now my second-favorite Albanian-American musical powerhouse! (Sorry Ava, Action Bronson got there first.)

BabyBaby_Explores, Food Near Me, Weather Tomorrow– Musically quirky, distorted and dissonant, lyrically snarky, and vocally weird, without losing the through line of darkly inflected guitars and drums. This Providence Rhode Island trio is an exemplar of what post rock can do. I want more!

Benny Sings, Young Hearts– I really liked his 2021 album Music‘s feeling for relentlessly sunny and utterly sincere pop. That same delightful groove is on display here.

BIG|BRAVE, nature morte– This album rode the edge of being too abstract, but the industrial edges, vocal violence, and serrated dark emotion won me over. I like what this Montreal band is on to!

Debby Friday, Good Luck– This Nigeria-born, Canada-based artist has been known for rave-inspired dystopian sci-fi works. How could i not love that conceptually? And actually, it’s artistic, lurching, electronic, almost like a hardcore electronic dance music.

Doug Paisley, Say What You Like– A classic 70s sound redolent of Southern California singer-songwriters, with a little of the “80s comeback” production gloss of the same. Not the most original sound ever, but literate, heartfelt, and never strikes a false note.

Gee Tee, Goodnight Neanderthal– Turns out a nice old-fashioned LA-scene punk band right on the edge of their “maturing 80s alt” phase is still a good sound! And as befits it sounding “classic” for the space, it from Australia’s excellent contemporary punk scene. It isn’t super-original, but it’s such fast sunny fun that I can’t deny it!

Gina Birch, I Play My Bass Loud– This album from Raincoats co-founder Burch has got the dissonant sound of early post-punk, experiments with rhythm, intriguing work from her eponymous bass, and a familiar feminist edge. If it does sound of an era, well, she was one of the founders of that era, and everything here is still oh so relevant.

H. Hawkline, Milk For Flowers– Golden lazy pop that reminds, as do so many things these days, of the 70s, but also of twee and the more baroquely pop-minded singer-songwriter side of the alt 80s in the UK. Rich vocals, lyrical depth, sparkling musical flourishes, and even an honest to goodness emotional arc. This relatively young (38) Welsh singer-songwriter has got a lot going on!

Icecoldbishop, Generational Curse– There’s an edge of menace, and even desperation, to the flow and mix of this album. Add on top of that interesting and varied musical and vocal choices and lyrics that, not without humor, but also often with horror, meditatively delve into street life, drugs, and family loss. This L.A. rapper has put out about as good a hip-hop album as I’ve heard this year.

Jad Fair/Samuel Locke Ward, Happy Hearts– I found this to be nearly unclassifiable, in a good way. It comes across as almost a sing-song children’s album. Except awkward, adult, and sometimes dark. With a good feeling for sweet melody, and plain vocal delivery. It definitely shows that this comes from a wildly inventive place- Jad Fair, prolific ever since he started with his brother David as Half Japanese during the mid-’70s, went into overdrive during the 2020s. During this period, he was contacted by Samuel Locke Ward, a home taper from Iowa with a strong D.I.Y. aesthetic. Working remotely, they began making one song per week, leading to this album.

JPEGMafia & Danny Brown, Scaring the Hoes– This collaboration between innovative Detroit rapper Brown and Brooklyn-based JPEGMafia (aka Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks) is a dizzying breathless ride. The flow is blistering, the mix experimental and kaleidoscopic, and the fun they had in making it is manifest.

Kate Davis, Fishbowl– Oh the crunching guitars. The driving songs. The melodies! The crystal-clear vocals and emotionally literate lyrics. I do so enjoy what Kate Davis does.

King Tuff, Smalltown Stardust– This is great! Musically, it noticeably hearkens back to familiar sources: psychedelia, T Rex, 60s pop a la George Martin. Lyrically, it is weird, metaphysical, sometimes sweet, sometimes unsettling. And this Sub Pop artist has been a member of Ty Segal’s band and headed a stoner rock outfit is from Vermont too! Go home team!

Lana Del Ray, Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd– The lush beauty that is a Lana Del Ray song, and the bite that is her lyrical sharpness and dark emotion under the sweetness (kind of like a tunnel under Ocean Blvd…) is in full form here. To this she’s added experimental touches (raucous speech samples from various sources that are just this side of opaque) whose energy makes everything that little touch extra unsettling. It’s not the most unified thing she’s ever put out, it’s not the most impactful, but that’s like evaluating different gradations of gold.

Lisa O’Neill, All of This Is Chance– Folk with a musically dark edge and vocal phrasing that’s both prickly and vulnerable. She reminds me in a way of Dylan in his younger days and how much he could charge a traditional number with new and urgent vital power.

Logic, College Park– The structure of this album is literally Logic and his friend taking a drive around College Park, Maryland, dropping in on people and places along the way to a show. So that gives us the frame, and then the muscular musical mix, strong beats, interesting and varied flow, and self-aware narration lend it depth. At more than an hour it is a tad on the long side, but structure, contents, and fun keep it going. His 2022 album Vinyl was one of my honorable mentions, and this is in contention as well.

Macklemore, Ben– As your contemporary pop superstar hip-hop goes, Macklemore is top of the crop. It’s heavily produced, but the production flourishes are earned, and in service of substantive lyrics and a winning persona. Even the ubiquitous guest star mania is well-deployed. This album means something and I would listen to it again, which in 2023 is not a given.

Maneskin, Rush– This is sleazy high-verve rock and roll of the kind rarely seen in the wild these days. As is so often the case when you do find it, a foreign band is doing it (Italian in this case). Are the lyrics always genius? No. Is the music often a bit obvious? Yes. Gloriously, exuberantly so!

Margo Price, Strays– Having picked her album That’s How Rumors Get Started as one of the best of 2020, I was listening carefully. I started off thinking this had too conventional a pop approach. Then her electric power, deeply stated lyrics, and powerful inventive and lush fusion of pop, rock, and country won me over anew. She really is a singular talent.

Melanie Martinez, PORTALS– Do you like your dance music hallucinatory, crackling with sharp wit, and at times more than vaguely terrifying? I do! Former The Voice contestant Martinez has gotten progressively further out there since a fairly standard pop debut, and I am here for it.

Morgan and the Organ Donors, M.O.D.s– Holy retro soundscapes! Driving, chiming guitars, cracking drums, harmonies. You will hear some 60s girl-group, some garage rock, some pop side of punk, some 80s jangle, some 90s riot grrrl. And it never sounds less than organically whole and fresh, which isn’t an accident. Morgan and the Organ Donors are a band made up of four friends who play a few shows a year at a bar they like in Olympia, Washington. Except the friends are Bikini Kill and Frumpies drummer Tobi Vail on drums, as well as two K Records artists, James Maeda of Spider & the Webs and Olivia Ness of C.O.C.O., on lead guitar and bass.

Mozart Estate, Pop-up! Ker-ching! And the Possibilities of Modern Shopping– Based on the name of the album alone I went in already half in love. What a delight then to hear a perfectly-delivered version of the most exuberant varieties of pub rock, early UK new wave, and UK 80s alt pop acts like Squeeze and The Beautiful South. It is in all wise a familiar sound, but so beautifully rendered that I cannot get mad at it!

Oddisee, To What End– Oddisee is the stage name of Brooklyn-based Sudanese-American hip-hop artist Amir Mohamed el Khalifa. The pure dynamism of what he puts out here musically, lyrically, and mixologically is extremely winning! It reminded me of certain veins of personal story heavy 2000s hip-hop (think Jay-Z or Kendrick Lamar), with some of the feelings and concerns of conscious hip-hop.

PACKS, Crispy Crunchy Nothing– Darn these kids with their sound bridging singer-songwriter folk and crunching 90s guitars, emotionally complex lyrics, and not so subtle bite. There are a lot of them out there, but the album from this version from Toronto indie rock band PACKS led by musician Madeline Link works from start to finish.

Quasi, Breaking the Balls of History– Janet Weiss did not take her summary dismissal from Sleater Kinney lying down, instead joining with her ex-husband to put out the first new Quasi album in ten years. Quasi has been a reliable interesting and challenging band since the 90s, and they’re still in the game here. By turns crunchy, shimmery and shoegazey, and kaleidoscopically weird, this is a delightful listen from start to finish.

quinnie, flounder– The yearning earnest vocals, literate and emotionally complex lyrics, mix of sweet vulnerability and raw snark, and playful production choices on this New Jersey indie-folk singer’s album are a nearly perfect combination. The subject matter is both timeless (romantic longing vs. reality, disillusionment, wrestling with the mysteries of self) and littered with contemporary social and technological references. I’m not sure how it will fare as a document post “now” but there is no doubt it’s an effective one for the moment.

RAYE, My 21st Century Blues– Sophisticated emotional R&B informed by hip hop, full of musical surges and a voice that is remarkable for precision of phrasing and versatility. The album also grapples with real life- abuse, relationships gone bad, emotional and physical bottoming out, in a way that feels authentic but is still pop music smooth.

Ron Gallo, Foreground Music– A blistering guitar open with echoing vocals is an effective way to worm your way into my heart. But he was already there thanks to his album PEACEMEAL being in my top 21 list for 2021. As for this album, is it extremely self-referential? Entirely tongue in cheek? So musically and lyrically fucking clever you don’t care which? Yes! And yet, though undeniably often whacky, it’s not all fun and games, there’s a heart of furious dissent. Is there a better contemporary protest song than the sharp and yet ultimately poignant, neo-psych “BIG TRUCK ENERGY” or a more anguished love song than “I LOVE SOMEONE BURIED DEEP INSIDE OF YOU”?

SKECH185, He Left Nothing for the Swim Back– NY-based hip-hop artist SKECH185’s fiery social and political truth-telling and producer Jeff Markey’s swirling, lurching sonic mix of sounds combine for a powerful package.

slowthai, UGLY– I liked this british hip hop artist’s 2021 album Tyron quite a bit. This album is just as skillfully done, but more coherent and more serious. It has a brooding weight and propulsive energy as he really gets inside to wrestle with life.

The C.I.A., Surgery Channel– You know, this sounds a bit like a surgery channel! It leans toward a nervy sharp-edged post-punk, with more than a hint of the rawer end of 90s alt bands like Babes in Toyland, but also some chilly electronic/synth work a la Kraftwerk. This turns out not to have been released by a national intelligence agency, but by musical auteur Ty Segall, his wife Denée Segall, and Emmett Kelly of Cairo Gang. I really like it, and I don’t even feel the need to be clandestine about it!

The Go! Team, Get Up Sequences, Pt. 2– Get Up Sequences, Pt. 1 was one of my honorable mentions for 2021, and Part 2 is entirely as charming. Imagine a high school AV team made an album exuberantly mixing electronic dance, international music, and hip-hop with liberal use of synthesizer. This gives you some sense of what this Brighton, UK six-piece band is up to, and it is glorious!

Thee Headcoats, Irregularis (The Great Hiatus)– Rollicking blues rock! With the classic name checks to prove it, bolstered by a determination to be, as one song here puts it “pretty original nevertheless”. Like the “Leader of the Pack” inspired “Leader of the Sect” or album-closer “The Kids Are All Square”… The album came about when Billy Childish’s friend and musical inspiration Don Craine of the Downliners Sect died in February 2022. Childish teamed up with his former bandmates from his ’90s group Thee Headcoats and Craine’s Downliners bandmate Keith Evans to record a memorial EP. They all enjoyed the experience enough that they decided to cut this reunion LP. I love what it does so much!

Tzusing, Green Hat– Malaysia-born, Shanghai- and Taipei-based DJ. You may be surprised to hear me say this given it’s almost entirely instrumental and 100% EDM, but this selection of sharp metallic dance music, surprising and energizing electronic effects, and an actual social point of view introduced through computerized voice memos is a win!

U2, Songs of Surrender– Regular readers will know that I like a good album concept. Even when the concept doesn’t totally work, I admire the ambition. This “new” album from U2 scores highly in that regard. The band presents new recordings of forty songs from throughout their career with a stripped-down acoustic approach, in four sets of ten chosen by each band member. As you might imagine, this ends up being a little long, as in, around two and three quarter hours. But it is worth it- the treatments and in some cases lyrical reworkings expose anew the power of the songs, and as a set it sounds very coherent. You may think me mad, but I think this works!

Wild Billy Childish & CTMF, Failure Not Success– The attitude and snark! The wordplay! The sure feel for decades of ass-kicking rock! Opening with a spot-on cover of “Love Comes in Spurts”! Yes, it’s his second entry on this post alone, but I’ll say the same thing I did when I put his 2021 album Where The Wild Purple Iris Grows on my honorable mention list for that year- How did I not hear of Billy Childish until now?!?!

Maybe

  • A Certain Ratio, 1982– For a band who has been kicking around since 1977, this Manchester post-punk outfit and early pioneer of the Factory Records scene sound surprisingly lively. Part of that is well-deployed contemporary vocal talent on some tracks. And part is that their mix of sounds- post-punk, dub, house, African- are very much a contemporary mix. Is it fresh enough? I don’t know. But it kept me listening!

  • Aly & AJ, With Love From– These two ladies know their way around pop song harmonies. It reminds me, in a way I like, of Wilson-Phillips. There is sunniness, emotion, and if it’s in a smooth package, well, that’s kind of the point.

  • Anna B Savage, in/FLUX– I’m not always sure about the tempo and pacing here, but the carefully chosen vocal phrasing, arch lyrics and modulated music combine to produce a powerful effect. This London artist is controlled and stylish while still being full of feeling.

  • Belle and Sebastian, Late Developers– I mean, there’s no such thing as a bad album from them, right? This one is more sonically varied than their entry from 2022 and, if that makes it fall a little short in coherence, it also keeps things interesting. It’s not the newest sound in the world for them, but it is a good sound!

  • Black Belt Eagle Scout, The Land, The Water, The Sky– Sometimes folky, delicate, and shimmery, sometimes a gorgeous shredding noise that would be familiar from, for example, Galaxie 500 or My Bloody Valentine. This Portland based artist is doing something interesting here, livened further by her tackling identity issues both Queer and Indigenous.

  • boygenius, the record– Indie supergroup of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker. There is an incredible synergy between their complimentary musical approaches, a whole here bolstered by its parts. The music, vocals, and lyrics are consistently rich and often surprising, and my only real complaint is the sequencing, where a few lulled out tracks keep it from fully gelling.

  • Bun B/Statik Selektah, Trillstatik 2– There’s a lightness, a sprightly feeling to much of the lyrical and musical mix of this collaboration between Texas hip-hop legend Bub B and East Coast producer Statik Selektah, but also depth in the sources and portraits of life. The vocal flow doesn’t always keep up but is also often quite affecting. And, considering the album was recorded live in one twelve-hour session, it has no business being as successful as it. But it is!

  • Butch Walker, Butch Walker as…Glenn– Walker started off heading a glam metal band in the 80s and has ventured over all kinds of territory since then. This album finds him engaged in a very specific kind of forgery- it presents the persona of “Glenn”, a burned-out musician playing a cheap and rowdy bar. You’ll hear hints of the 70s incarnations of Billy Joel, Springsteen, and Jackson Browne here, as well other similar voices. The concept sound is inherently a little derivative, but it feels fantastically sincere.

  • Cheater Slicks, Ill-fated Cusses– Echoing clangy guitars, a thick feedback-laden background, and vocals that are consciously artless. They’ve been kicking around the Boston music scene since the late 80s, and it turns out they can still bring it. It sounds like punk, it sounds like garage rock, it sounds like the snottier reaches of 80s hardcore. It sounds like I’m going to listen to it again!

  • Daisy Jones & The Six, Aurora– Soundtrack froma streaming show/debut album of the fictional Fleetwood Mac era band from the show. So, you know it’s a derivation. But it actually fails, to the extent it does, by not sounding enough of that era, and reading more modern, like an 80s alt or 90s indie band enamored of that sound. As such though, it’s good, if a tad eclectic (another reason it doesn’t ring true as an album), and the most authentic moments are genuinely amazing.

  • Deathcrash, Less– If this alternation between fuzzy feedback and faster thrashier music, and combination of aching earnestness and tongue way inside cheek feels familiar, it is no less welcome because of it.

  • Deerhoof, Miracle-Level– I love Deerhoof, but there are a few things here that further set it apart as their oeuvre goes. It’s their first all-Japanese album and recorded live as in a professional studio, another first for them. Perhaps because of that, it’s got tautness, clarity, and sometimes even a relaxed jam feeling on top of their usual off-kilter mix of sweet melody and noisy anarchy. It doesn’t feel as held-together as their best albums, but it is interesting all the way through.

  • Depeche Mode, Memento Mori– Death and loss loom large in Depeche Mode’s 15th album and first without founding member Andy Fletcher, who was often the intermediary between Martin Gore and Dave Gahan. It feels like a memorial, heavy and yet strangely melodic, while revisiting many eras of Depeche Mode. The mood is a little heavy, but, well, you can understand why.

  • Gnoomes, Ax Ox– I saw the band described as “Russian shoegaze-psychedelia-Krautrok-techno”. And indeed, it sounds like all of those. Abstract? More than a tad. But also weirdly listenable! If you were in the right club, you know the one, various parts of this sound like you could have heard it there at any point in the 70s, 80s or 90s.

  • Guided by Voices, La La Land– And here they are again! This old warhorse of an indie band put out multiple albums in 2021 and 2022, and their first for 2023 is in “classic” territory for them, a kind of Pink Floyd/Moody Blues side of psychedelia. It’s not the newest or freshest sound, but so well done I can’t help but say “maybe”!

  • Iris DeMent, Workin’ on a World– She’s been kicking around since the early 90s with her mix of country, folk, and gospel , and if it’s sometimes a little too on-the-nose lyrically, it’s also sincere, and is relaxed and confident in its retro musical and vocal stylings.

  • jonatan leandoer96, Sugar World– Based on the title and the extremely wholesome looking artist on the cover, I was afraid things would be a little too sugary, but in fact this ends up being a beautiful vocalist with solid pop sensibilities turning a variety of 80s alt rock musical approaches into pop gold. Not the deepest thing ever, but rather refreshing!

  • Lil Yachty, Let’s Start Here– I’ve liked some other things I heard from this Georgia-born hip-hop artist/producer, but this is a whole other level. Yes, it is heavily autotuned, but in this case the medium is part of the message. That is to say, the autotune is folded into layers of production, soul samples, and sometimes philosophical lyrical excursions in a way that supports the whole. It almost feels like a Pink Floyd approach to a hip hop album. Not entirely sure it comes together, but it is worth another listen. Or two!

  • MIKE, Beware of the Monkey– This wasn’t always distinct enough to break through on an individual track basis, but the metaphysical and socially conscious sampling and lyrics, warmness of the vocal flow, and depth and richness of the musical mix was very compelling. This Bronx-based hip hop artist originally from London has got something very interesting going on.

  • Paramore, This is Why– I do like me some Paramore! They know how to rock, they know how to be funky, they know how to be dancey, they know how to speed up and slow down within the same song. Not to mention the welcome lyrical bite. I will say there is a sense in which this could have been recorded any time in the last twenty years, and sounded right for its era, but it’s a good rendition.

  • Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Land of Sleeper– I mean, the name, right? And the description I read of the band is, “Standing at the nexus of doomy stoner metal, fuzz-blasted psych-rock, and bracing post-rock, Newcastle’s Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs confront existential dread with creativity.” They live up to it! I haven’t been quite this happy with a batch of metal since the heyday of Mastodon, and if the vocals are a little hoarse/shouty, the music is primo.

  • R. Ring, War Poems, We Rested– I kept thinking how strongly this was hitting my “female-led 90s alt rock” weak spot, and then read that the band is a collaboration of Mike Montgomery of Ampline and Kim Deal’s sister Kelley (also of the Breeders and the Kelley Deal 6000). Well that explains it! It’s not the freshest thing in the world at this point, but I was a sucker for the sound in 1994, and I’m a sucker for it now.

  • Samia, Honey– A singer-songwriter with indie rock and electronic influences, her music has a kind of simplicity, but the incisive and emotive lyrics and vocals bring something extra to it. She’s recognizably of a school currently populated by the likes of Soccer Mommy and Olivia Rodrigo, and there are stretches that feel a little too hushed, but the wit and bite demand attention.

  • Shonen Knife, Our Best Place– Shonen Knife’s mix of girl group pop and Ramones-style punk sounded great and refreshing in the 80s. Their growing musical range while keeping sunny punky pop in the forefront sounded very timely in the 90s. They’ve continued to sound good in the 00s, the 10s, and now in the 20s. Even if these songs could fit in any of those decades, and be from any of their albums, it is impossible to dislike them or say they don’t work.

  • Sleaford Mods, UK Grim– I am on the fence about this the way I was about their last album. There’s the sameness and simplicity, but also the power in the simplicity, the propulsive poetic barrage, and the witty trenchant and literate rant attached.

  • The Men, New York City– With the band name, and the album name, you might expect getting a rocking outing that would fit in well with the garage rock revival of the early 00s. And you would get it! Not the most original thing ever, but joyful noise well delivered.

  • The Nude Party, Rides On– Early on it reads like imagining the Rolling Stones as a new band just starting out today, with a similar approach to musical inspirations, but American and with a good dose of country along with the blues. Eventually it reminds me of Dylan in his country phase. Either way, it’s not totally original, but this North Carolina band knows their space and is inhabiting it very well.

  • The Reds, Pinks & Purples, The Town That Cursed Your Name– I love the shimmery achy thing that they do here, an invocation of hazy summer days listening to the Cure in the alternative 80s. It’s suffused through with a lyrical nostalgia as well. It is rather same track to track, but a gorgeous sameness.

  • The Tubs, Dead Meat– The Tubs is kind of a super-group of London-area rock band members, and their collective experience shows here in this well-executed set of songs redolent of the poppier side of original UK punk (think the Buzzcocks, the Jam) and 80s jangle-pop.

  • Van Morrison, Moving On Skiffle– This dip into a skiffle sound is delightful! He sounds so relaxed and spontaneous, and it’s nice that he’s not putting out full-length COVID conspiracy rants anymore as on his last two albums. The hour and a half-length is really the only issue. I think there’s a 45-minute version of this album that would have been an automatic “yes”.

  • Vigro Deep, My House My Rules– South African musician/producer Vigro Deep put together this guest-star loaded album based on the “amipiano” genre that has emerged in the South African club scene. Weirdly, given my general electronica-skepticism, and an almost two-hour run time, the sounds were so fresh, interesting, and fun that I must call it a maybe!

  • Yo La Tengo, This Stupid World– You could make a case that they are the godfathers of indie rock, and here on their 17th album their sound, if not unfamiliar, is still challenging in its mix of charging clanging guitars, quieter moments, elliptical lyrics, fuzzy melodies, and dissonant touches. I’d be down for another 17 albums from them given this, though it did have some pacing concerns for me with a marked slowdown for a big block in the middle.

And this concludes your review of new releases from Q1 2023! I’ll try to get something new out for you before too long…