The 2023 Year End Music Thread

[DFF]

Wrapping up my listening of 2023 albums in the coming week or so - if y'all could pick a handful of must listen to albums, what would they be? 

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

No set order but "Sanguivore" by Creeper, "No Joy" by Spanish Love Songs, "Life Is But A Dream" by Avenged Sevenfold, "Take Me Back To Eden" by Sleep Token, and "Dead Club City" by Nothing But Thieves are probably my current top five for the year.

[RPS]

Here is my list wherein I provide honorific to the top 5 albums of the year.

Top album for anxious dudes in the 21st century - Jeff Rosenstock - HELLMODE: Jeff Rosenstock always is trying to explore how to silence the voices of self doubt in your head. How much money is enough to be comfortable? What if I can't change and people think I'm a shitty person? How do you deal with depressive feelings that don't allow you to be productive.  HELLMODE takes the anxieties of mid 30s dudes who grapple with balance responsibility with freedom. Sometimes it's great to just scream about stuff. 

The album that makes you ponder what if - Jaimie Branch - fly or die fly or die fly or die ((world war)): What would the next album from Jaimie Branch. I truthfully had never heard of her until this album, but what an introduction. Every song is like a little adventure through different genres and styles. The story is told through different instruments, but most importantly the trumpet, which Jaimie played. It's an album that you put on and it draws your attention. Each time you can listen to a different element of the songs and be caught off guard. 

Album most deserving to be in the Louvre - 100 Gecs - 10,000 Gecs: writing about the music in this album diminishes it. All you need to know is this. 100 Gecs first EP was called 100 Gecs. In following it up with their first album, they asked - how can we top 100 Gecs? They named their debut album 1000 Gecs. It's objectively better - there are more Gecs. Their second album us 10,000 gecs. Again - objectively better. More Gecs. 100 Gecs forces you to ask many questions- am I old? Am I the butt of the joke? Why is the frog on the floor? Why is there so much autotune? Will 100 Gecs kill my dad and take his money? Can I ever truly love anything as much as a rotten tooth? Can I have a million dollars? 

The greatest album about desire ever - Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn Into You: this album has really sat in my brain. Desire is a universal concept - babies, kids, adults all chase desire. As a 30 something with three kids, desire is something we often turn away. Time, responsibilities,  expectations make us decline desire and instead sacrifice.  For 45 minutes, Caroline asks you to embrace desire. Embrace standing on the edge of oblivion to feel the ecstasy. To transport yourself to an island to feel the ocean run over you. To feel the desire and sexual tension of heat. This album at times feels like young love. You have known someone for two months. Love still obscures your vision and view and you say yes to everything. Yes to dancing on the beach at midnight; to partying until 2am and making poor decisions; to giving into your desires. It's wonderful stuff. 

So devastating it's great - Sufjan Stevens - Javelin: my husband passively enjoys music. But this year, he became obsessed with Sufjan Stevens. We would stay up after the kids were in bed, chatting about the music. My husband would ask profound questions about the nature of Sufjan Stevens grief. This is an album about trauma and all the parameters of it. Sadness, regret, anger, happiness. 

[Skummy]

I have a few still to check out, but here's what's stuck out to me most so far:

 

Joyous and Danceable Pop/Rock Category:
Sparks - The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte
The Go! Team - Get Up Sequences Part Two
Jake Shears - Last Man Dancing
Dorian Electra - Fanfare

Extremely Heavy Category:
Khanate - To Be Cruel
Godflesh - Purge
Boris and Uniform - Bright New Disease
Divide and Dissolve - Systemic
Wolves In The Throneroom - Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge
Racetraitor - Creation And The Timeless Order of Things

Transcendently Beautiful Category:
Ahnoni & The Johnsons - My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
PJ Harvey - I Inside The Old Year Dying
Bonnie Prince Billy - Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You
World's End Girlfriend - Resistance and the Blessing

Hip-Hop/Rap/R&B Category:
DJ Shadow - Action Adventure
Aesop Rock - Integrated Tech Solutions

Quirky Not Quite Fitting Another Category Category:
Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter - Saved! 
Half Japanese - Jump Into Love
Laibach - Love Is Still Alive
Alabama 3 - Cold War Classics Vol. 2


Buddy & Julie Miller's In The Throes is in there somewhere too. 

 

I might write more about some of these later, but that's everything that has felt like it really needs documenting from this year. The new Creeper is an outlier, in that I think it's ridiculous fun, but probably doesn't quite make the cut.

[METALMAN]

Uh I tend to listen to music from a given year a year late because I just collate all those best of [year] lists and give them a go the following year because I'm too lazy to follow new releases as they happen. So I'm going to tell you my favourites of 2022 instead. Sorry.

Alvvays - Blue Rev

Angeline Morrison - The Sorrow Songs (Folk Songs of Black British Experience)

Cerys Hafana - Edyf

Charles Lloyd - Trios: Sacred Thread

Fern Maddie - Ghost Story

FKA Twigs - Caprisongs

Jenny Hval - Classic Objects

Khruangbin and Leon Bridges - Texas Moon EP

MIA - MATA

Makaya McCraven - In These Times

Mali Obomsawin - Sweet Tooth

Mary Halvorson - Amaryllis

Rosalia - Motomami

Sabrina Claudio - Based on a Feeling

Sarathy Korwar - Kalak

Sélène Saint-Aimé - Potomitan

Steve Lacy - Gemini Rights

Sudan Archives - Natural Brown Prom Queen

Takuro Okada - Betsu No Jinan

Tove Lo - Dirt Femme

Tumi Mogorosi - Group Theory: Black Music

 

Here are a few from 2023 that I'm aware of and did like, though I wouldn't necessarily say any are album of the year material. They are just albums from this year that I listened to and liked:

Angel Bat Dawid - Requiem for Jazz

Blur - The Ballad of Darren

The Coral - Sea of Mirrors

The Damned - Darkadelic

Dario Acosta Teich - Accostando

Janelle Monae - The Age of Pleasure

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Weathervanes

Kayhan Kalhor & Toumani Diabate - The Sky is the Same Colour Everywhere

That Lana Del Rey one with the long name I cba typing

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Nico Georis - Cloud Suites

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Council Skies (srsly)

Paul Simon - Seven Psalms

The Rolling Stones - Hackney Diamonds

Sufjan Stevens - Javelin

Tinariwen - Amatssou

[DFF]

Stumbled across this lovely collab album from Mathew J. Rolin, Cole Pulice and Jen Powers called "Prism". It's instrumental, sort of Ambient Americana meets Spiritual Jazz. Very relaxing and in places uplifting. If you love some tasteful tenor sax action, then I highly recommend. It's warm, summery, somwhat uplifting, pastoral... it's a whole vibe. 

[GoGo Yubari]

As I've tended to do for the last few years, I made myself a little playlist of some songs from this year that I really liked, enough to properly lodge themselves in my brain in a lasting way (and this was a really hard year for songs from this year to do that), and I'm gonna post it on here, so here's the link on

• YouTube
• and Spotify

And if you'd rather just read what the tracklist is, here it is behind a cut:

Spoiler

1. "Electric Fish" by Ana Frango Eletrico

2. "I Wish You Roses" by Kali Uchis

3. "Astral Plane" by Say She She

4. "bad idea right?" by Olivia Rodrigo

5. "Chosen to Deserve" by Wednesday

6. "Satanist" by boygenius

7. "Special Treat" by Hello Mary

8. "Bogus Operandi" by The Hives

9. "St. Charles Square" by Blur

10. "Avalanche of Love" by WITCH (ft. Sampa the Great)

11. "決心 (Determination)" by CENT

12. "running out of time" by Lil Yachty

13. "Tormenta" by Gorillaz (ft. Bad Bunny)

14. "Black Classical Music" by Yussuf Dayes (ft. Venna & Charlie Stacey)

15. "Ms. America' by Bully

16. "My Love Mine All Mine" by Mitski

17. "Waters of March" by John Roseboro & Mei Semones

18. "Lifetime" by Faye Webster

The only returning artist from last year's playlist is Faye Webster, who has been on every playlist since my 2020 one. "Lifetime" is probably my song of the year, though the complete opposite energy of "Electric Fish" really pushes it. The artist that most suffers from my decision to only have one song per playlist is Say She She, who could have just as easily made the list for "C'Est Si Bon" or "Entry Level" or any other number of songs off Silver.