Lots of good stuff this year. Here’s a playlist:

My very favorites

Additionally, here are a few albums and singles I wanted to call special attention to. They’re presented alphabetically becasue I’ve choosen to ditch the “best of” framing I often go with; I’m not writing music criticism here, and I have no editor telling me what to do. I don’t even know how many things I called out, so this isn’t a top-ten list, either! It’s just What I Loved in 2023. Mostly captured for me, but if others get something out if it, all the better.

Album: Animal Collective: Time Skiffs ✅

Their best group of songs since MPP, for my money.

Album: Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You ✅

A rare double record that never overstays it’s welcome, but rather creates a world I want to live inside, not unlike the White Album or Wildflowers.

Album: Destroyer: Labyrinths ✅

After nearly two decades of dabbling, I have finally become fully Bejar-pilled.

Song: Gabriels: Remember Me

If you’re not moved when the full strings kick in at about 2:30, I don’t know what to tell you.

Song/Video: Ghost: Spillways

I have no commentary on this band or their schtick, but I do know a well-written sugary pop-metal jam when I hear it.

Song: Goose: Dripfield

The vapors of this song have seeped into my bones.

Song: Hammered Hulls: Abstract City

We all need a bit of classic Dischord sound in our lives, and this tune checks that box with authority.

Albums: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s entire 2022 output, specifically Omnium Gatherum and Changes

I am intimidated by this band. They are very Extra in the best sense of the word.

Song: Steve Lacy: Bad Habit

R&B from another planet. I dig. A lot.

Album: The Mountain Goats: Bleed Out

John Darnielle is a national treasure.

Album: Aofie O’Donovan: Age of Apathy ✅

I’ve really been enjoying Aofie’s work since I fell down a deep Live From Here well several years ago. She truly brings all of her unique talents as a songwriter, vocalist, arranger and guitarist together on this record. (Related: this Tiny Desk concert is delightful.)

Song: Angel Olsen: Go Home

Haunting.

Album: Beth Orton: Weather Alive

Haunting, but in a different way. So great to have new music from Beth Orton.

Album: Plains: I Walked With You A Ways

This record gave me a lot of reminders of my mom’s early-90s pop country radio phase. (I mean this as a compliment, obviously.)

Song: Maggie Rogers: That’s Where I Am

Another single that grabbed me by the lapels and demanded my full attention from its first notes.

Album: Will Sheff: Nothing Special

I couldn’t describe this record better than Sheff himself did in this wonderful interview with Fluxblog’s Matthew Perpetua:

My experience of art is like the wind in the trees. You blink and you miss it. A little bit of it is like “Did you guys hear what I heard?” It’s a very quiet, subtle thing that gets under your skin.

Album: Sister Ray: Communion ✅

If I had to pick a “favorite” record of 2022, it would probably be this. Those that know me and my tastes will have no problem figuring out why.

Album: Soccer Mommy: Sometimes Forever ✅

A nearly perfect distillation of my late-90s record collection. I mean this as a high, high compliment. Truly another one of my absolute faves on the year.

Album: Spoon: Lucifer On The Sofa

Their best since probably 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. All killer, no filler.

Song: SRSQ: Winter, Slowly

The first time I heard that little whammy-bar vocal effect on the chorus (starts around 0:50), something in my brain slipped loose and my thoughts still aren’t thinking right.

Album: Bartees Strange: Farm to Table ✅

This is truly an Important Record, a call-to-arms, a statement of purpose.

Song: Tenci: Two Cups

Tenci came onto my radar after seeing them open for Hop Along in 2021, and I’m really glad they did.

Album: Sharon Van Etten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong ✅

Much like the Destroyer record, this was the one that converted me from “hey, SVE is pretty cool” to a full-fledged fan.

Album: Immanuel Wilkins: The 7th Hand ✅

A gifted arranger who can still layer sheets of sound with the best of them.

(✅ indicates that I’ve purchased the album on vinyl, for accountability’s sake. Support the musicians you love, folks!)

Playlist available on Apple Music, Spotify and Last.fm.

Once again, I pushed myself to listen to lots of new music this year. A full six of my top ten records were by artists who are either new or new to me… seven if you count Aeon Station, who are technically a “new” band. That’s pretty good, I think!

10. Dan Campbell: Other People’s Lives

I had foolishly dismissed The Wonder Years as kiddie emo that Wasn’t For Me (I was wrong!) until I read this piece on Campbell’s reasons for writing and releasing this record. Campbell has that rare gift for making the extremely specific feel universal.

9. Ani DiFranco: Revolutionary Love

I always have and probably will always have a soft spot for Ani DiFranco, and this record’s “Ani as funk bandleader” vibes really agree with me.

8. Julien Baker: Little Oblivions

She still manages to bring the same level of emotional devastation, even with full band arrangements on many tracks and a more produced sound.

7. Lunar Vacation: Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp

Right in my sweet spot: vaguely shoegazy indie with female lead vocals. (See also: Snarls from last year’s list.)

6. Grace Vonderkuhn: Pleasure Pain

An absolute ripper of a rock-and-roll record from my favorite Wilmington, DE-based power trio, and a huge leap forward from their last record.

5. Geese: Projector

There’s no way a bunch of teenagers made this record, right? Either way, Geese have spent a bunch of time with their dad’s Talking Heads records and their older sister’s Strokes records and turned out this impossibly tight, ambitious and mature record.

4. Aeon Station: Observatory

I could write a book about this record, which I’ve been waiting for, in a roundabout way, for about 15 years. I hate that it came out under these circumstances but I’m glad this record is finally available to the public, because it is a triumph. (I am still very eager to hear the Charles Bissell portion of what was to be the follow-up to The Meadowlands, of course.)

3. William The Conqueror: Maverick Thinker

An incredible Scottish swamp-blues record that sounds like a lot of things I love but also not quite like anything I’ve ever heard before.

2. Katy Kirby: Cool Dry Place

Hard to overstate how much this record came out of nowhere and smacked me right between the eyes. It has an emotional resonance for me unlike any record since maybe Bark Your Head Off, Dog.

1. Japanese Breakfast: Jubilee

Reading Crying in H Mart this summer was… a lot, but it helped me understand this record for the celebratory masterpiece it truly is. If joy truly is an act of resistance, this record is as punk as it gets.

Honorable Mentions:

• Floatie: Voyage Out
• Flock of Dimes: Head of Roses
• Hiss Golden Messenger: Quietly Blowing It
• Olivia Kaplan: Tonight Turns to Nothing
• Arlo Parks: Collapsed in Sunbeams
• Anna Fox Rochinski: Cherry
• Rosali: No Medium
• Snail Mail: Valentine
• Adia Victoria: A Southern Gothic
• Ryley Walker: Course In Fable
• The War On Drugs: I Don’t Live Here Anymore
• Yasmin Williams: Urban Driftwood

Playlist available on Apple Music and Spotify.

I’ve done some sort of year end, “best of” list as long as I can remember. This probably hasn’t been the “best” year of music over that span, but it certainly has been the most important, to me. We’ve all had a trying year, to put it mildly. These are the albums that helped get me through it.

The Albums

10. No Thank You: Embroidered Foliage

A delightfully tight, punk-adjacent indie rock record. Would have fit perfectly on Kill Rock Stars' mid-90s roster.

9. Fiona Apple: Fetch The Bolt Cutters

It takes a lot of work to make something so meticulously crafted sound so loose and “messy.”

8. Laura Marling: Song For Our Daughter

A near-perfect singer/songwriter record.

7. Ellen Siberian Tiger: Cinderblock Cindy

As I noted on Twitter, this record stopped me in my tracks and lit my hair on fire.

6. Lianne La Havas (S/T)

The cover of “Weird Fishes” is perfect, and somehow better than the original, but this record deserves way more than to be remembered as “the one with Weird Fishes on it.”

5. Snarls: Burst

This seems like it was grown in a lab specifically to check my boxes: dreamy, almost-shoegazy mid-90s indie vibes with wonderful female lead vocals.

4. Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud

This was a slow burn for me, but really worth the time… just a perfect record for Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning, or almost any other time.

3. Empty Country (S/T)

Was never a huge Cymbals Eat Guitars fan, but this gem from former CEG frontman Joseph D’Agostino’s new project is a pastoral masterpiece. It’s made waiting for that new Wrens record a liiiiiitle bit easier.

2. HAIM: Women In Music Pt. III

The Fleetwood Mac comparisons work for me, not not necessarily because of the sound (although there are plenty of late-70s Laurel Canyon vibes here); it’s more the sheer relentlessness of the quality of the hooks in every. single. song.

1. Hum: Inlet

Dropped out of nowhere in the middle of summer and swallowed me whole. I can’t do justice to describe this perfect soundscape of a record, but Sebastian Sterling can.

Also great

• The Beths: Jump Rope Gazers
• Phoebe Bridgers: Punisher
• Dogleg: Melee
• Fleet Foxes: Shore
• Frances Quinlan: Likewise
• Run The Jewels: RTJ4
• Soccer Mommy: color theory
• Spanish Love Songs: Brave Faces Everyone
• Taylor Swift: folklore
• Touché Amoré: Lament

The Playlists

• Listen on Apple Music
• Listen on Spotify
• Watch on YouTube