My favorite 20 albums of 2023

As usual (two years running at least), I’ve compiled a list of my 20 favorite albums of the year. I acquired (legally!) a lot music this year, so this list, including the honorable mentions, represents about 10% of the total, all things considered. I think that sample size is enough to make this at least a little valid in the overall scheme of things.

Note: I’ve marked certain links as preferred for purchase or streaming (the artist’s Bandcamp page if present) for a pretty simple reason. I like the artists to receive as much monetary support as possible form our consumption of their art. It ain’t an easy way to make a living folks. Unfortunately, not all these albums are available on all platforms.

I’m not exactly a music critic, but I really enjoyed these albums

20. Lil Yachty – Let’s Start Here

Where do I start with this one. I read a little about it and was curious. And even upon listening to, I found it didn’t tick any of my ordinary boxes. In fact, it has a lot of things going one that would usually be off putting: I’ve never really liked anything else Lil Yachty has done, it uses autotune extensively (which I usually despise), and the songs a much longer than most of what I usually listen to.

To the first point though, this album is a hard left turn for him, venturing into weird psychedelia and epic scope. I respect an artist that does that. And for the other two points? Despite all that, I couldn’t stop listening to it. It’s an album that is best savored in its entirety.

19. Palehound – Eye on the Bat

Palehound is a band I hadn’t heard of until sometime this fall. I only learned about them when they did a Sirius XMU session, and I really enjoyed what I heard. I’ve since listened to this record a lot, and it improves to me with every listen. The music is dynamic and varied. And the title track, “Eye on the Bat,” might be one of the finest songs written about the pandemic that I’ve heard. It chronicles the bands cross country journey in an old van when the entire world was shut down. For that song alone, it’s a worthy inclusion in this list.

18. Queens of the Stone Age – In Times New Roman

First, this is a blistering rock and roll album, or as NME put it, “QOTSA’s most bludgeoning sonic assault yet—and that’s saying something.” The last few albums by Josh Homme and company veered into much tamer territory that their earliest releases. But after a few years of personal turmoil for many of the band members (a messy divorce, a cancer diagnosis, and losing friends), they understandably veer in to dark and harder territory.

And I like this version of QOTSA. It’s not always easy to listen to, but that’s understandable.

17. Sufjan Stevens – Javelin

This album captures Stevens at his most bereft, recalling the “Casimir Pulaski Day” on his masterpiece C’mon Feel the Illinoise. This album is his most intimate and personal effort since Carrie and Lowell, but you get the sense that he is much more connected to the pain of lost love here than the distance from his parents on that earlier record. While the songs mostly feature him singing alone, occasionally he’s joined by a chorus of voices to drive his heart ache home.

I mentioned Illinoise already, but this, in my mind, is the most moving and powerful record, not to mention his best, since that one.

16. The Mountain Goats – Jenny from Thebes

First, Jenny from Thebes sounds like a sequel to All Hail West Texas for me in the story that it tells throughout the album, and John Darnielle is a master storyteller. But the sound here sounds much bigger and more polished that that earlier effort. It brings everything you expect from The Mountain Goats to bear. The horns are there, and the confident vocals contrast the quiet-ish guitar work. While this is a concept album in the purest sense of the word, it never feels like the stories and songs are jammed into an artificial construct. It puts square pegs in square holes. And while the character of Jenny is explored in depth, we never can seem to crack what really makes her tick.

15. Marnie Stern – The Comeback Kid

Another artist I had never really heard of until late this year. Her first album in over a decade, The Comeback Kid is a very fun record to listen to, combining explosive guitar finger taps and vocal howls. As Pitchfork put it, it sounds like “Yoko Ono and Eddie Van Halen combined and led a friendly takeover of Sleater-Kinney.” I can’t really improve on that description to be honest. And it just works.

14. Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings

The Greater Wings is haunted by loss. Byrne’s delicate folky music feels at its most intimate on this album, and her eye for the jarring detail as a song writer makes it even more present. Written in the wake of the death of her long-time collaborator, Eric Littmann in 2021, it presents a profound meditation of the subject of loss, grief, but also hope.

13. bar italia – Tracey Denim

bar italia have been compared to a wide range of musical references as they emerged from London’s underground music scene, so much so, the comparisons become almost meaningless. Articles just name check influential bands like Pulp, Slowdive (more on them later), and the Velvet Underground (them too), and hope the comparisons stick. Their first of two albums this year, however, is entirely their own. Tracey Denim arrived fully formed.

They have their own immediate sound, from brooding to disconnected and anxious. They can also pull off fuzzed out rock and roll with the best of them.

12. The Rural Alberta Advantage – The Rise and the Fall

If The Rural Alberta Advantage puts out an album in a given year, chances are it will make my end of year list (you need only to check the history here of this particular feature). Their fuzz-rock-folk sound uncannily calls to mind the landscape from whence they sprang (as much as Explosions in the Sky call to mind the stretches of Texas plain).

On The Rise and the Fall, they continue the frantic pace in their songs, all driven by explosive drum work and haunting melody from the vocals. Just listen to “10ft Tall,” a song that would fit anywhere in their discography.

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11. Mitski – The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are WE

Two years. Two albums. Two times at #12. The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We is a much different animal than Laurel Hell though. Whereas the latter is a synth rock masterpiece, Mitski’s new album is as bleak as the title suggests. The music is quiet and very exacting, making these upsetting songs relistenable despite their subject matter.

At this point whatever Mitski does, I’m all in.

10. Bully – Lucky for You

Mention Lose You featuring Soccer Mommy

Bully (Alicia Bognanno) returns with another collection of straight-up, raw, anthemic rockers, but this time with a bit of a pop bent. While it has a poppier sound, the songs are still mostly about disappointment. On Lucky for You, she backs up the sleek guitar hooks with a punch in the rhythm section.

Perhaps the crowning song on the record though is her collaboration with fellow Nashville musician, Soccer Mommy on “Lose You.” But overall, this is probably her best album to date (and I really liked her last few albums as well)!

9. Ratboys – The Window

Midwest rootsy indie! Chicago’s Ratboys were a pleasant discovery this year—another band I hadn’t heard of before this year. The entire album is full of sonically polished songs that belies how raw the emotions underlying them really are. On The Window, their fifth album, they feature a mix of edgy guitars and wistful, sometimes twangy vocals from lead singer Julia Steiner. The album at times echoes Wilco and at other times, you can hear a bit of Death Cab for Cutie, especially in the arrangements. And neither of these are bad places to start.

8. Speedy Ortiz – Rabbit Rabbit

Rabbit Rabbit showcase Speed Ortiz at their denseist best. The lyrics are sometime cryptic, but always poetic in a way that you usually don’t find in an indie rock band. And this only makes sense, as lead singer Sadie Dupuis is a published poet with an MFA in poetry from Amherst.

This album races from start to finish as guitar riff run into one another and sometimes distort, while Dupuis’s vocals float in melodies above the occasional chaos.

7. PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old Year Dying

PJ Harvey is a master a taking unexpected turn and has been throughout her illustrious career. Her 10th albums, I Inside the Old Year Dying, may be her hardest left turn to date. This album is adapted from her book length poem Orlam, an account of a farm girl, presumably a stand in for Polly Jean herself, coming of age watched over by the eye of her pet lamb.

It’s a very experimental album in its way, and in no way does it tread paths that she has trod before. It evokes a folky and mythic world that creeps up on you and then seeps into you from the very ground it sprang from.

6. Hotline TNT – Cartwheel

In 2023, shoegaze seems to be having a moment again, and Hotline TNT is leading the charge with Cartwheel, their sophomore album. This album uses all the tools in the shoegaze toolbox, and uses them well to seem loud, even when it really isn’t. Waves of guitar and pulses of sound pervade most of the songs, and this wall of sound is balanced with lead singers Will Anderson’s earnestness and emotion. This album is a fine modern heir to the masterpieces of the genre, Loveless and Souvlaki.

5. Slowdive – Everything Is Alive

Speaking of shoegaze, this year gifted us a new album by one of the OGs and masters of the craft, Slowdive with Everything Is Alive. Their second reunion albums finds them overlaying almost ethereal vocals over an ever-present swirl of guitars and percussion beneath. They remain a benchmark by which shoegaze band, such as Hotline TNT, will be measured. It’s still a pretty high bar.

4. Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World

Can you believe this is Yo La Tengo’s 17th album? It boggles the mind really. They’ve been so good for so long. As the title suggests, the album depicts an uneasy feeling about the world around them. This is Yo La Tengo at their best with noise crashes into the forefront, as in the seven minute groove in “Sinatra Avenue Breakdown,” which is Ira Kaplan doing what he has done so many times over the band’s career.

But nowhere does this disquiet come more to the forefront that in the album’s title track, where the trio repeat lyrics like a mantra: “This stupid world/It’s killing me/This stupid world/Is all we have.” I suppose that’s as close to optimism we can all get these days. Whatever else you can say about Yo La Tengo, they ain’t standing still.

3. boygenius – the record

What can you say about the modern bonafide supergroup boygenius. I’ll start, the record, lives up to the enormous hype that preceded its release as a successor to their 2018 EP. Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers play the part of a supergroup very well indeed.

The album itself, apart from the hype (and inevitable backlash), is meticulously arranged and lovely throughout. It manages this without completely subsuming the tendencies of each of its members. You get Baker’s anthemic tendencies contrasted with Bridger’s folk tendencies, all around Dacus finely crafted lyrics.

2. Black Belt Eagle Scout – The Land, The Water, The Sky

Black Belt Eagle Scout is the stage name of Katherine Paul, who released her third album this year, The Land, The Water, The Sky. On this record, she documents a return to her Swinomish Tribal Community, and celebrates it on songs such as the powerful “My Blood Runs Through This Land.” She can also be almost prayerful on other songs (“Salmon Stinta”).

This album runs deep, but always brings the listener along for the journey into her pride for her tribal community. It features sometimes delicate instrumentation but is also measured and echoing in its rhythm.

1. Wednesday – Rat Saw God

This is my album of the year. The stats bear it out too. I knew it would be my favorite album of the year upon my first listen to the album, barring anything earth shattering. Obviously, it didn’t. This album feels like the perfect album for this moment.

Wednesday sound like southern Appalachia at it’s most twisted wrapped up in hammering rock, screeching vocals (at times), and enveloping shoegaze howl of MJ Lenderman’s guitar. But it’s the stories that Karly Hartzmann tells and the precise details she includes in the lyrics, like the “piss-colored Fanta” in the song “Bath County.” She tells stories of the dead end small towns that dot the southern Appalachian mountains.

At the end of the day, Rat Saw God builds a world for the curious onlookers who are its listeners that do not have to inhabit it.

The inevitable playlist

I write a lot about music here, and one of the reasons I do this is to share things that I like with others, hoping they may find something they like too. And I really don’t trust my blathering on about this album or that band will inspire anyone quite like actually hearing the music will, so here is playlist of songs, two from each of the selected albums above (and one from each honorable mention). I’ve picked an obvious one (the wisdom of charts or crowds) as well as a more personal choice. The difference may be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer, but…

I certainly hope that you find something that you like as much as I do (or even more). As always, if you have something you think I should give a listen to, don’t hesitate to let me know. Direct link to playlist (as it only sporadically works in certain browsers)

And honorable mentions (albums that really didn’t meet my criteria)

These list above are the new albums from 2023 that I liked the most, but there are others that didn’t quite make the cut because there were either box sets or live albums (two of each in this case). These are also well worth your time.

Superchunk – Misfits and Mistakes

A career spanning box set of b-sides, demos, and live tracks. It doesn’t contain anything new, so it technically doesn’t quality (rules are rules people!) That said I highly recommend this for Superchunk fans (or anyone else who wants to see what all the fuss is about).

Black Country, New Road – Live at Bush Hall

This was quite the turn from Black Country, New Road. After their lead singer left the band for mental health reasons, they huddled and wrote an album’s worth of new songs. But, rather than release a traditional album, the debuted the songs in a four night stand at London’s Bush Hall. This album, understandably, is a little uneven at times, but when the songs shine, they really shine.

The Replacements – Tim: Let It Bleed Edition

I really dithered on whether I should splash out money for this one, since Tim as it is ranks very highly in my book. However, after reading more about it (Pitchfork gave it perfect 10 for real!) and hearing numerous friends here in ATL raving about it, I took the plunge. The new mix included cleans up a lot of that 80s sound and makes them sound much closer to what you expect the Replacements to sound like.

The Feelies – Some Kinda Love

Lou Reed once said that one of the few bands that truly understood the Velvet Underground were The Feelies. This album is a live set of VU covers, and what Lou said rings totally true. They don’t monkey around with the songs, playing them in a very straightforward, Feelies jangly sort of way. And let’s be honest, any time The Feelies do anything, I’m going to consider it for the end of year shenanigans.

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