I'm back, baby!
Well, for this post and a year-end movie post, at least. In terms of this blog, the big thing about 2023 is that I stopped posting regularly—and it felt nice! Not that I didn't enjoy blogging every week for eight years, but as I alluded to in my year-end movie list last year, life has just become very full and busy for me over the past couple of years (in mostly good ways), and it's been something of a relief not to have the constant pressure to keep a weekly blog deadline; I honestly don't think I realized how strong that pressure was, and going on hiatus felt like when you suddenly realize you've been holding your breath and let it out in a rush. So speaking of holding breath, I wouldn't hold yours for the grand return of the weekly mini-reviews posts.
Anyway, y'all came here for music, not for a rehash of the "I'm so busy" jig that all adults spiral into if you ask them how things are going. So: music! 2023 was a weird year for me. More than any other year I can remember, I had a hard time finding music that I loved. My usual genre blind spots have become blinder than ever (I have literally zero idea what is going on in metal, and I have mostly bounced off most of the biggest hip-hop acts of the year, though based on commercial performance [dubious, but still], I'm not the only one struggling to connect with contemporary hip-hop), and the Top 40's very chaotic, TikTok-influenced hodge-podge yielded nothing that grabbed me. I believe this is what academics call Getting Old. That said, even within my home-base genres of rock and jazz, it was harder for me to find music that I was passionate about. Part of this certainly has to do with the increasingly fractured and marginal place listening to new music has in my life because of all the other demands that pull at my attention—again, I invoke Getting Old. I dunno; my "to-listen" list is longer than ever this year, so it's not as if I didn't have options. I'm confident that there are albums out there that I haven't given much time to that would have had a good chance to make my top 10 (for example: Saved! by the Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, née Lingua Ignota), so maybe I just need to change my habits.
Whatever the case, enough reflection. There was still plenty of good music this year, so let's get on with it. I come not to bury 2023 but to praise it!
As always, I'd love to hear what music y'all readers (if you're still out there!) enjoyed this year! I view this as the beginning of a conversation—a semicolon rather than a period, if I can get English-teacher-y. Let me know what I'm missing!
Favorite Albums:
1. Sufjan Stevens: Javelin
Sufjan's most straightforward and accessible songwriting in quite some time, which might seem like it would be an issue for someone like me who definitely prefers Weird Sufjan. And initially, I was a little underwhelmed: "Carrie & Lowell by way of Illinois" was my initial, slightly disappointed reaction, but this grew in my estimation with each listen until here it is as my favorite of the year. The thing about straightforward, accessible songwriting is that it is straightforward and accessible, even for a pretentious curmudgeon like me, and I became bowled over at the beauty and clarity of this music. Plus, magic of all magic, he was able to turn "There's a World," probably the worst track off Neil Young's Harvest, into something delicate and gorgeous.
2. Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile
This isn't the kind of music people mean when they talk about ambient jazz, but it's the descriptor that comes most readily to mind when I try to describe this album: a 72-minute exploration of space and mood, Arooj Aftab's meditative vocals weaving in and out of the soundscapes laid down by Vijay Iyer's spare but precise piano and Shahzad Ismaily's Moog. I'm fairly familiar with Iyer's output and a little with Aftab's, but Ismaily' is entirely new to me, and he's a quiet revelation on here. Hypnotic music. Perfect in its own cosmic way.
3. Emergency Group: Inspection of Cruelty
Not a lot to explaining why I like this: it sounds like the early goings of electric jazz, especially Miles Davis c. In a Silent Way or A Tribute to Jack Johnson or maybe Tony Williams's Emergency!—aka some of my favorite music of all time. Probably my most-listened-to album of the year if I were able to keep those metrics. It just goes down so groovily and easily.
I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but this album sounds like Adventure Time music to me. I don't know what else to say.
5. more eaze: Eternity
Bandcamp (and, I suppose by extension, more eaze herself) classifies this as a "track," but it's 43 minutes long, so I declare an album. It's a beautiful piece of longform electronica that reminds me of early The Orb in its playfulness.
About as much fun as you'd imagine a collaboration between these two being, i.e. very. Riding a line between uproarious and vaguely disquieting while spinning some ridiculous samples, these two are a match made in alt-rap heaven. And you really beat the delirious rhymes: "Let me tell you what I'm gonna do / Tell no lies, just tell your truth / I'm a big dog like Marmaduke / Park itself when I come through." Bespoke slant rhymes from above. Great album art.
The debut album from this experimental electronica band is surprisingly diverse, pinging around from synth-core to ambient to industrial to more openly club-y material, but for as divergent as some of these sounds can be, there's a cohesive sense of space and tone that makes this feel like a unified vision of eclecticism rather than just scattershot pastiche.
I wish it hadn't taken Michael Stipe and Bon Iver being on one of his albums for Lonnie Holley to get on my radar, but better late than never, right? He's a bona-fide Southern weirdo in a way that appeals to me quite a bit, somehow very earthy and material while also coming across as a kind of cosmic mystic. Very much my speed.
Not a particularly surprising album from Fever Ray, but still good. Also, it has some of the best worst cover art of the year.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. I'm a very fair-weather Lana fan, but the weather turned out to be very fair this year. The title track and (especially) "A&W" are two of her best songs, and the rest of the album is very strong, too—except for the "Judah Smith Interlude," which may be my most-skipped track of the year.
Great 2023 Songs Not On These Albums:
Chief Adjuah: "Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning"—The pivot Chief Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott) made in his LP this year kind of threw me: there's a continuity in leaving spiritual jazz for West-African-inflected folk music that makes sense in retrospect (the connection between West Africa and New Orleans is one that Adjuah himself made very clear in his promotion of the record), but it's a left turn I certainly didn't see coming. Anyway, cool and interesting album, but one that only really coalesced into something I loved in its loping 15-minute title track, a more stripped back and somber song than many of the other compositions, with Adjuah intoning like a prophet over some picked string instrument (the liner notes aren't very specific) and Weedie Braimah's insistent, driving percussion.
Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids: "First Peoples"—I sometimes find what Idris Ackamoor does a little corny, but when he and the Pyramids hit, they hit. Exhibit A: this track, winding higher and higher around its reedy riff.
jamie branch: "burning grey"—RIP to weird jazz great jamie branch. Glad the third Fly or Die came together anyway. This track in particular rips.
Janelle Monáe: "Champagne Shit"—I could have picked any number of tracks from The Age of Pleasure, but I picked this one.
PJ Harvey: "The Nether-edge"—I wasn't a huge fan of the new PJ Harvey album, but this slinky, pulsing track lodged itself deep inside my brain and wouldn't leave.
Kieran Hebden & William Tyler: "Darkness, Darkness"—The "cosmic folk" great William Tyler working with Four Tet. I mean.
Octo Octa: "Late Night Love"—Kind of the consensus "this is the electronic dance track from this year that all the critics are into," and I dunno, critics can be right.
on4word: "Jigsaw Falling Into Place"—This is perilously close to a meme instead of real music, and the popularity of an album that recreated Radiohead's In Rainbows exclusively using samples from N64 games turned what was already a niche trend into a full-blown avalanche of imitators. But it's really good! Especially this song, which feels like boss music or maybe a really intense level where you have to outrun a robot while doing tricky platforming or something.
The Smile: "Bending Hectic"—And speaking of Radiohead, if we're not ever going to get a real new Radiohead album, I'll have to keep banging the drum for the almost Radiohead releases. When "Bending Hectic" changes gears, it thunders.
Spoon: "Sugar Babies"—Spoon just don't miss, and somehow it always sounds like something they just threw together in an hour. Surely false. Love the infectious shuffle of this one.
Xiu Xiu: "For M."—The moment when Xiu Xiu's album of already pitch-black sludge and terror pushes itself so far that it turns nearly ambient, and it's kind of beautiful.
Young Fathers: "I Saw"—I don't really understand what Young Fathers' whole deal is, and maybe that's their deal? The beginning of this song sounds furious, spitting out lyrics and that Viking-drum rock beat like venom, but then it morphs into something much sunnier and more anthemic? I can't parse it, but it's good.
