2023, huh? What a year. I don't know that there were any releases this year that had an instant classic cultural status, nor were there any ones that personally blew me away completely, but that was made up for by the fact that there were so many albums that were very strong even if they weren't era-defining. According to my Last.fm, I've racked up 12,627 song plays this year at the time of writing this, so I was listening to quite a bit of music in 2023. Here's a rundown of some of my favorites that took up much of that listening time.
The rules: Everything is the same as usual. The window of eligibility for this list is anything released from January 1, 2023 to now. This list can include albums, mixtapes, EPs, and anything in between.
Honorable Mentions (25-21)
On perhaps her best work since cult favorite Emotion, Carly Rae Jepsen's The Loveliest Time lives up to its name with her delightful bops. While Slow Pulp don't necessarily reinvent the wheel with their music, Yard is a particularly excellent piece of emotive indie rock. With an impeccable sense of cool and tunes to match, bar italia make hypnotizing post-punk on Tracey Denim. Speaking of post-punk, Paramore channel the 2000s strain of it into This is Why, their rousing comeback after six years away. Origami Angel pared down the super-sized ambitions of their previous double album and gave us eight-song mixtape The Brightest Days, but they didn't lose any of their catchy charm in the process.
At 41 tracks totaling just under four hours, Destiny is certainly one of the most daunting records of the year, but it's worth the undertaking because it contains so much incredible music within it. Blending the sample-heavy plunderphonics of The Avalanches' Since I Left You with the playful spirit of Daft Punk, Destiny hits you with waves of euphoria and nostalgia. Despite how difficult it seems from the outside, its learning curve is pretty low, more designed for you to check in and out of at will than requiring your constant attention -- all the better for it to catch you off guard with a crescendo that grabs you when you're least expecting it. Its songs smear together and go on long journeys that are entrancing, endorphin-releasing experiences. No matter how you approach Destiny, you're bound to get some kind of reward out of it. It's basically a Choose Your Own Adventure novel in audio form.
Highlight songs
1. Brave
2. Dance Now
3. Actions Speak Louder
19. Gumm - Slogan Machine
18. Wednesday - Rat Saw God
17. Olivia Rodrigo - GUTS
16. En Attendant Ana - Principia
15. Young Thug - Business Is Business
14. M83 - Fantasy
13. Noname - Sundial
12. Rome Streetz & Big Ghost Ltd - Wasn't Built in a Day
11. Lana Del Rey - Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd
10. Pinkpantheress - Heaven knows
9. Boygenius - the record
8. Yeule - softscars
7. NewJeans - Get Up EP
6. Bully - Lucky For You
5. feeble little horse - Girl with Fish
4. JPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown - Scaring the Hoes
3. Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
2. Ratboys - The Window
1. Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good!
Slogan Machine makes the most out of its 22 minutes. Just listen to "No Frontier," which is only three minutes and has three of the sickest riffs you'll ever hear in it. This is a nasty, hulking beast of an album. It's all menacing guitars and pummeling drums, then at the perfect moment something resembling a hook rises to the surface, as it does on "Slogan Machine," and it's pure bliss. It's difficult to describe in terms that aren't purely visceral. You'll furrow your brow in a mean looking way when you hear the charging bull momentum of "Give You Back Your Youth," and they'll make you screw your face up in inhuman directions when the guitar bend in the "Crowded Mind" riff hits. Sometimes with music, words fail you. Give yourself over to Slogan Machine and you might find the same thing happening to you.
Highlight songs
1. No Frontier
If life is nothing but an accumulation of details, then Rat Saw God is full of life. Lead singer Karly Hartzman piles her stories with rich specificities: hot breath looming off the grill of a truck, a bird flying through the window every day at the same time, taking too much Benadryl and needing to get your stomach pumped, having sex in the back of an SUV in some cul-de-sac underneath a dogwood tree, a kid sipping piss-colored bright yellow Fanta, overhearing that someone died in a Planet Fitness parking lot, the rain-rotted house on the dead end of Baytree, neighborhood boys sitting in a baby pool watching their parents fight on the front lawn in their underwear, the kid from the Jewish family who got the preacher's kid pregnant, a police call for a domestic dispute leading to a discovery that the house is a front for a mob thing, the sex shop off the highway with a biblical name, TVs in gas pumps blaring in the dark. That rich lore would make the album special even if the tunes weren't good, which thankfully they are.
Highlight songs
1. Quarry
The amazing thing about Sour was that it was such a confident debut, even though it still pointed to Olivia Rodrigo being a work in progress as an artist. Her sophomore album might be that work becoming fully formed, starting things off with "all-american bitch," the perfect encapsulation of the sweet and sour mix that's at the heart of the Olivia Rodrigo project. True to its title, Guts sifts through messy emotions with clear eyes and a fiery spirit. Rodrigo puts a voice to alienation so well -- alienation from peers, from men who've wronged her, and even from her own body on "pretty isn't pretty." And those roiling feelings are served with a lethal injection of plucky pop songwriting. "Bad idea right?" is a blast of invigorating insouciance, all buzzsaw guitars and playful line deliveries. "Ballad of homeschooled girl" has so much energy it could power several residential blocks. There are still some kinks to work out -- she has that zoomer pop artist habit of being overly enamored with ballads -- but we've got a real deal talent on our hands here.
Highlight songs
French quintet En Attendant Ana make music that gives the feeling of a word that's right at the tip of your tongue, something you know but can't quite name. Their brand of indie pop has a comforting familiarity, even if you're unable to pinpoint any exact influence on their sound. The band sports some impressive instrumentation given the easygoing nature of their songs. It feels like all five instruments get equal prominence in the mix, dancing around each other and rewarding close listening. "Wonder" -- one the best songs of the year -- is the pinnacle of that, a chugging rocker that repeats and builds upon itself for six thrilling minutes. And the added element of brass in most of their songs gives them a unique quality, infusing them with an extra texture and sense of sweep. Principia isn't a high-stakes or ambitious album, but its coy, wistful songs are full of feeling. We'd be better off if there was more music like this.
Highlight songs
1. Wonder
Before Business Is Business, it seemed like Young Thug's best days were well behind him, and there was nothing wrong with that. When you go on an insane imperial phase run the way he did up until about 2019, you're bound to slow down and show evidence of your mileage. The same thing happened to his closest antecedent, Lil Wayne, after Tha Carter III. This album isn't necessarily up there with his peak work, but it is his best release in a minute. On an assortment of tracks recorded over the last few years -- in case you haven't heard, he's currently in the midst of a criminal trial after being indicted in a huge RICO case -- Thug delivers triumphant music that features everything he does best. He flexes his hooky side on various songs. He gets downright weird on "Uncle M." He drops iconic lines like "I saved the world in a dress, baby." He and Future switch lanes like a Ferrari and Jaguar on "Cars Bring Me Out." If you want an example of the value of what he does, see how he skates on "Wit Da Racks" while Travis Scott tries something similar with his verse and completely flops. Things aren't looking good for Young Thug's case, but hopefully some miracle happens, because this can't be the end of the road for his career.
Highlight songs
1. Oh U Went (ft. Drake)
2. Uncle M
3. Mad Dog
Fantasy is the ideal title for a musician who's always been concerned with evoking a dreamy nostalgia, and here we have another record of arms-towards-the-sky synth pop music. If Anthony Gonzalez's dopey French earnestness has been too much for you in the past, then you're unlikely to have your mind changed with this one. But if you're the kind of person who's excited by hearing that this album starts with a spacey instrumental followed by a track whose only lyrics are "Beyond adventure!" over a layer of huge, surging keyboards, then you're in for a treat. Fantasy is full of songs that are so maximal they feel like they're going to burst through the speakers, songs that reach a point that you think is the climax, only for them to soar higher. And just when you're about to get sick of the audio candy, it'll change the pace with a long, slow burn song like "Deceiver" or "Kool Nuit." This is an expertly sequenced journey, one that works best if you have the 66 minutes to carve out and listen to it in full.
Highlight songs
1. Earth to Sea
2. Deceiver
3. Fantasy
Most publications are leaving this out of their Noname blurbs, but it feels insane not to mention it: There's a stain on Sundial, which is that "balloons" features a Jay Electronica verse that could be read as anti-Semitic at worst and full of tedious Brother Mouzone bars at best. And Noname's abdication of responsibility after the backlash to that verse was embarrassing, especially for someone whose persona is based around righteousness. It's a shame too, because otherwise "balloons" is the best song on the album, and Sundial is her best record yet. Her music has always been respectable and thoughtful, but her slam poetry flow dragged things down. With a more conventional cadence, and songs that are just 10% more straightforward, there's a world of difference made here. Over lush, jazzy songs she raps with purpose and a reflective worldview. There's always something new to uncover in the layers of these warm, challenging tracks. Let's just hope the next one leaves Jay Electronica off the feature list.
Highlight songs
1. balloons (minus Jay Electronica's verse)
2. toxic
3. hold me down
Rome Streetz is a rap classicist at heart. That's not just because he sounds alot like the deceased 90s legend, Big L. He's also signed to Griselda Records, home to the leading purveyors of 90s New York hip-hop revivalism and rapping over boom-bap beats with heavy record crackle. And if you listen to Wasn't Built in a Day, or last year's fantastic Kiss the Ring, or any of the albums and EPs Rome Streetz dropped before that, you'll hear someone who's really invested in the craft of rapping in a way many aren't in the current age of punch-ins and vibes-based rap music. His verses are dense, with a fusillade of rhymes in an unrelenting succession, and he puts considerable thought into how to build and pace 16s. If you allow yourself to release your inner oldhead, you'll find lots to enjoy in Wasn't Built in a Day.
I owe Lana Del Rey an apology. It's not that I was unfamiliar with her game, it's just that I didn't appreciate it enough. I was actually on the train way back when "Video Games" first came out, but by the time her debut album Born to Die dropped I had kind of checked out, assuming I wasn't the target audience. And since Norman Fucking Rockwell! launched her into the upper echelon of vaunted modern songwriters, I've listened to her new releases, but always admired them more than I loved them. Ocean Blvd has completely blown me away. An excavation of her personal history, the album is obsessed with memory -- both what we have remembered and will remember -- as it details death, family trauma, and Lana's own mental health struggles -- all the beauty and pain that marks her lineage. While most of these confessions are told in downtempo piano ballads, Lana's melodic gifts hold your attention. Her melodies are so beautiful because they feel like she's guiding you by the hand every step of the way, wandering down unclear paths to surprise you when you arrive at something breathtaking. It's embarrassing to come to a conclusion that women who love astrology came to a long time ago, but Lana Del Rey rocks.
Highlight songs
1. Let the Light In (feat. Father John Misty)
2. Paris, Texas
Music that originally pops off on TikTok tends to be annoying and half-formed, but the UK's Pinkpantheress was one of bright spots of the earlier days of "TikTok artists." Her 2021 mixtape to hell with it felt fresh and invigorating, reviving genres like drum 'n bass and breakbeat and turning them into bite-sized pop songs full of nostalgia and longing. Heaven knows largely keeps things the same, it's just more polished and confident. The choruses hit harder and the grooves are deeper. And when she does add more ingredients to the formula, as she does on the danceable "The aisle," it works swimmingly. Even all of the guests fit in perfectly, never feeling like forced cash-ins, and she finds a genuine smash hit with the Ice Spice collaboration "Boy's a liar Pt. 2." Pinkpantheress has gone from a bedroom artist to a star -- complete with a song on the Barbie soundtrack -- in just three years, and her music has only gotten better in that span.
Highlight songs
1. Another life (feat. Rema)
2. The aisle
Alot has happened in the five years since Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker -- all acclaimed and well-liked singer-songwriters in their own right -- teamed up to record a six-song EP together. Since then, they've each amassed large cult followings as individuals, to the point that they're no longer just indie-popular. That 2018 EP was always too good to be considered a mere side-project, but even if it wasn't, the separate rising stars made it so it'd be unwise for them not to team up again. And so they did on the record, a full-length that fulfills the promise of the beauty and likability its predecessor only gave us a taste of. The trio show their range right in the first two tracks -- from the sparse harmonies of "Without You Without Them" to the rocking rhythm of "$20," the chemistry they exude off-record shines through in the music as well. There's a simplicity to these songs that make them more powerful. It's just rock-solid songwriting that cracks your emotions wide open, delivering gorgeous and down-the-middle indie rock music at a time where that seems to be in dwindling supply. Boygenius are so intensely beloved that you can start to trick yourself into thinking the hype isn't warranted. That is, until you spin the record again and realize it's just that good.
Highlight songs
2. Satanist
3. $20
The original pitch of softscars that made me intrigued was a tweet describing it as "Grimes meets Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins." There's almost no point of even writing a blurb, because you can't explain the album better than that. After not connecting with a sampling of Glitch Princess last year, softscars was immediately engaging to me, presenting a disorienting roulette of tender melodies, gauzy guitar tones, and gut-scraping lyrics about transcending your corporeal self. It's a rollercoaster of juxtapositions: sweet and sour sounds, love and despair, pain and pleasure. On the title track, they sing, "You stabbed me right in the chest / And made me bleed, and made me wet." That's the thrilling tension Yeule provides all over the album in a nutshell.
Highlight songs
1. bloodbunny
2. 4ui12
3. dazies
I'm by no means speaking from any place of expertise, but I hadn't been able to vibe with any of the K-pop I had heard before. The popular groups that cross over here in America like BTS and Blackpink all feel too mechanical and overproduced, and I can't stand the shoehorned rap verses in the songs. When I first gave NewJeans a shot earlier this year, I was instantly hooked by what seemed to be the exact antidote to everything I didn't like about the K-pop I dabbled with. On Get Up, they play with sounds that are much less common, like UK Garage ("Cool With You," "NewJeans") and drum n' bass ("Super Shy"). And the production, while filled with sound, never feels overbearing. That chintzy horn sample on "ETA" is the perfect encapsulation of their musical ethos. The group makes catchy, musically savvy songs that are in and out in two and a half minutes, always leaving you wanting more. In fact, the most tantalizing song might be the R&B-inflected title track, which cruelly only lasts for 36 seconds. There could be more K-pop out there like NewJeans -- I genuinely don't know! But if there is, I definitely need to hear it.
Highlight songs
1. ETA
2. Get Up
3. Super Shy
I loved Bully's debut album from 2015, which was one of the best and most authentic versions of the wave of 90s inspired alt-rock that seemed endless around that time. After that, the next two releases bounced off of me. They weren't bad, but aside from a couple of songs, they never really had the staying power that first one did. Lucky For You fully won me back over with its ability to turn turbulent, grief-tinted emotions into hooky, heartfelt rock music. Starting off with commemorating Alicia Bognanno's sobriety on "All I Do," the album only gets heavier from there, shifting to its main focus -- the death her dog Mezzi, who she had for 13 years. Bognanno often described Mezzi as her best friend, and she writes about that loss in tactile, raw terms on songs like "Days Move Slow," "A Wonderful Life," and "A Love Profound." But despite the subject matter, the sound of the LP is surging and adventurous. Bognanno's history as an engineer has always made the band's songs sound crisp, but this is the biggest, most free collection yet. It features abrasive experimentation and spoken-word verses, but also the most massive hooks of her career. If you had the same previous trajectory with Bully that I did, Lucky For You makes a strong case for hopping back on the train.
When they were still gathering buzz as a DIY band, the members of Pittsburgh's Feeble Little Horse mentioned that they didn't want being in a band to be a full-time thing or their primary source of income. Maybe that accounts for the palpable freedom in their music. Girl with Fish is an album full of thrilling choices, starting with the crazy guitar tones all over it. Sometimes they don't even sound like guitars. And the range of them, too -- they can veer from the noisiest squall you've ever heard to the prettiest little lick, sometimes within the same song. That careening feels like it's altering your brain chemistry. This is a strange album, but it also possesses a strange beauty. There's nothing I've heard this year that's as affecting as the delivery of the line, "Did I make it worse, trying to sympathize?" on "Slide." Meanwhile, "Paces" has a quality to its melody and instrumentation that evokes an odd mixture of soothing and melancholy. Feeble Little Horse announced they were going on an indefinite hiatus shortly after the album's release, but thankfully Girl with Fish is strong enough to hold us over until whenever they decide to come back.
Highlight songs
1. Slide
2. Paces
3. Tin Man
Though Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA aren't two rappers you'd immediately think to pair up out of the blue, they make sense together pretty quickly once the idea is put into your head. Both are say-anything stylists, with lyrical instincts as wild as their beat selections. Their album as a duo finds them planted firmly in their comfort zone when it comes to their subject matter -- Peggy littering lines with left-field references ("you get hit, you gon' sing like Bilal") and Brown delivering his hedonistic bars -- but it's so fun to hear their styles blend over the former's idiosyncratic production. JPEGMAFIA constrained himself to only using an old Roland sampler to make the beats on the album, which make the songs sound like they're blasting from blown speakers. The effect is a record that feels like listening to a leak that you're not supposed to be hearing yet, but it's all the more exciting because of its verboten nature. Over and over, Scaring the Hoes finds brilliance in limitations and beauty in collaboration.
Highlight songs
3. Kingdom Hearts Key (feat. Redveil)
And so the cycle continues. That is, the pattern of Sufjan Stevens releasing a clanging, challenging album that alienates a portion of his fans followed by putting out a delicate, gorgeous record that wins people back over. Real ones know that 2020's The Ascension was terrific in its own right, but Javelin finds even greater success in returning to traditional Sufjan mode. The ornate arrangements, the angelic chorus of background vocals, the emotional swells in his music -- they're all back in full force here. And in working in that comfort zone, he delivers a few songs, most notably "So You Are Tired," that stand up there with the best work of his career. This album came with an announcement where Stevens publicly came out as gay and dedicated the record to his partner who passed away this past April. In that light, it's amazing he was able to gift us something so beautiful amidst that much pain.
Highlight songs
Faced with the difficult task of following their "level up" album, Ratboys recruited super-producer Chris Walla for The Window, the perfect move to make in their position. "Morning Zoo" may have that alt-country twang that was present in their earlier work, but with Walla on the boards, it's got that polished finish to make it pop. Likewise, the fuzz rock of "Crossed That Line" would be at home on Printer's Devil, except for the fact that it's much punchier thanks to the production. For an example of the band's steady growth, look no further than the expansive, "Black Earth, WI," which features a gorgeous guitar solo that lasts four minutes. Julia Steiner also continues to be one of indie rock's most captivating lead singers. The combination of her soft voice and gently searching lyrics is sublime. The album's most attention-grabbing song in that regard is the title track, written from the perspective of Steiner's grandfather, whose wife died during the height of COVID, and had to say goodbye to her through the window of her hospital room due to safety restrictions. But even more simple personal subject matter like "I Want You (Fall 2010)," which chronicles her relationship with bandmate and college sweetheart Dave Sagan, manages to tug at the heartstrings. That ability to provide cozy comfort while also being highly emotional is what makes Ratboys and The Window so special.
After years of making excellently sultry adult contemporary music, Jessie Ware took a left turn into dance pop with 2020's surprising and delightful What's Your Pleasure? But it turns out even that was apparently tasteful and refined for her, as she's fully let her hair down with this year's That! Feels Good! Her latest record is an absolute party, offering a guided tour through decades of dance music like disco ("Pearls"), deep house ("Free Yourself"), French house ("Freak Me Now"), and more. An album so backwards-looking could feel like cheap imitation, but there's an electric passion running through the writing and production of these songs that make them sound authentic. The cinematic, string-laden sweep of "Hello Love" isn't just pastiche -- it sounds like it could genuinely be a lost Donny Hathaway song with female vocals. There's even a campy flair to songs like the title track, "Beautiful People," and "Shake the Bottle" that's true to a genre that's always had Black and queer people at the vanguard. No matter how you shake it, That! Feels Good!, like What's Your Pleasure? before it, is a pure joy, one that's the byproduct of an artist thrillingly coming into her own.
Highlight songs
1. Hello Love
2. Freak Me Now
Well, that wraps things up for my best albums of 2023 list. I love reading other lists, so feel free to share yours in the comments. Or if you want to share your thoughts on my list, then you can do that too! Most of the highlight songs contain YouTube links if you want to listen to them, but I've also created a Spotify playlist if that's your preferred method. You can find it below. And if you want a complete ranking of all the albums that were in consideration for this list, along with some other data you might find interesting, you can find them on this Google Doc.
For a long time I was also not gripped by Wednesday (and I still think the anointment of Rat Saw God as the unanimous indie rock record of the year is kind of insane). I saw somebody in the Stereogum comments recently criticize their songs for having no melodies, so maybe that might be what you're struggling with lol. Eventually it really started to sing its teeth into me. I just love Karly's lyrical style, and the back half is where the songs really kick into gear imo.
ReplyDeleteYou've gotta get on the Ratboys train if you haven't tried yet! They're the ultimate "sometimes twangy, sometimes fuzzy" indie rock band that people say Wednesday are. You might dig Feeble Little Horse too.
I honestly didn't even listen to the Mitski album this year. I'm kind of done with her. Never really loved her as much as other people did anyway. It just feels like there are so many others in that lane of "artists who women on TikTok make their whole personality" that do what she does better (Waxahatchee, Soccer Mommy, Phoebe Bridgers, etc.)
My strategy with the DJ Sabrina album is to just break it up into hourlong chunks and just listen to the first hour for a week, then move on the second hour, and so on. It splits pretty cleanly that way and makes the experience much less daunting.
Wait I lied when I said I didn't listen to the Mitski album. According to Last.fm I listened to it once when it first came out. I don't remember a single thing about it.
ReplyDeleteI haven't listened to a lot of these. (I am old and lame.) And one I have and didn't get much out of (Lana). But I'm right there with you on Olivia, boygenius, Sufjan, and--especially--Bully. Plus you made me curious about New Jean's.
ReplyDeleteThere's so much music out there that it's hard to keep up! I also feel old and lame sometimes, especially with rap music, which moves so fast that I feel out of touch with alot of stuff that appears on year end lists.
DeleteGod that Bully record, I just kept coming back to it over the year. Some really heartfelt bangers on there.
Hope you enjoy the NewJeans EP if you listen to it. It's so fun!