I think I’m only an aspiring music nerd at the best of times. I don’t know nearly as much as I’d like to. Music is a hard thing to get into if you weren’t born into it. There’s just so much of it, and the niche-ification of popular music has made it impossible to find out what’s worth listening to. You just have to dive in and hope you come up with some treasures.
I’ve also realized it makes it difficult to decide whether a given year was good or bad for music. I think 2022 was good. Very good, actually. There was a point sometime in the spring where I was begging for the new releases to stop so I could just have a minute to sit with the newest album and appreciate it for a bit. But I do wonder: Is the music getting better, or have I just expanded my awareness enough that fewer great albums are slipping by me? I have no idea.
But I do think 2022 was a really good year for music. (I actually think it was a really good year for most of the arts — keep an eye out for that movie list, which I’m already excited about even though it’s nowhere near finished.) I thought 2021 was a worse year than a handful of the ones that preceded it, and2022 is a significant improvement. And there was a moment this year when we got new albums from Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead (basically Radiohead), and Florence + the Machine on the same day; I know that’s not something that happens often.
Who really knows? The important thing is that I’m very excited to share this list with you. Let’s get started!
10. Viagra Boys, “Cave World”
It is a constant with me that the stupider your band’s name is, the faster I’ll run to listen to your music. Anyway, these guys just missed the list last year, when I discovered them. There’s some very good stuff on “Welfare Jazz,” but long stretches of it are just too thin. I kind of thought that would be the end of it; they didn’t seem like a band with another bag of tricks, and punk always seems like the genre most likely to flame out quickly. I am very glad to be wrong! While there are still a few screws that could be tightened, “Cave World” is an across-the-board improvement over its predecessor. The Viagra Boys evolved their sound in probably the only way a band called the Viagra Boys could: made it louder and stupider. It’s more political, but in a way well-suited to obnoxious punk music, i.e., not so much searing commentary as taking the piss out of the right-wing doofus community. An album-length “I know what you are but what am I.” It is glorious.
9. Little Simz, “NO THANK YOU”
I hereby declare that there shall be no more surprise albums in mid-December. I was ahead of the curve! I had this list all sorted out by the first of the month. Then this happens in the eleventh hour and suddenly I have to cram as many listens as possible into the remaining weeks of the year to figure out where to slot it. In short, this is the album I could most easily see moving up or down this list given time. I’ve only listened to it five or six times. I don’t have a great sense of it yet. My opinion right now stands at: Little Simz remains the most exciting new talent in the rap game. We need more rappers with big sounds — bands and instruments and such — and her technical abilities are unimpeachable. That said, fresh off a gigantic, feature-length epic like “Sometimes I Am Introvert,” I feel like maybe it’s best to let the next album germinate for a bit instead of cranking it out just a year later. “NO THANK YOU” can’t help but feel like that album’s B-sides. And I don’t mind, really; that’s a great album. But it isn’t as fresh or exciting to revisit that well so quickly.
8. Jack White, “Entering Heaven Alive”
I was as stoked as anybody when Jack White announced that he’d be dropping two new albums this year. But between the two, I definitely had less hype for “Entering Heaven Alive,” advertised essentially as “the acoustic one.” I’ve never liked sensitive Jack White as much as rock ’n roll Jack White. As such, “Entering Heaven Alive” rated as a very pleasant surprise for me. I did not expect to like it as much as I did. It’s also a rarity for White in that it feels more like an album listen than an individual-tracks listen. He’s always struck me as oriented more in the other direction — stellar songs on albums that sometimes devolve into take-it-or-leave-it filler. I always love a good, stripped-down record that surprises you with the amount of texture that remains to be discovered in such simple instrumentation. There’s quite a tapestry of sounds spread across this one’s forty minutes.
7. The Smile, “A Light for Attracting Attention”
Look, this is a Radiohead album. It seems like the only reason it isn’t listed as such is loyalty to the band’s core membership. “A Light for Attracting Attention” is a 53-minute tour of everything Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have been doing for the last five or six years. They’re continuing to drive more toward painting sonic landscapes than crafting tight, radio-ready songs. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t losing some of its freshness at this point, but god, nobody else is doing this kind of music this well. No one’s blending this many genres into this seamless a whole. “A Light for Attracting Attention” isn’t my favorite album of the year outright, but it does claim 2022’s Best Music To Write To honors.
6. Jack White, “Fear of the Dawn”
Hey, I’m a simple creature. As pleasant a surprise as “Entering Heaven Alive” was, of course I’m going to give precedence to the one where Jack White melts my face. It’s been a while since a rock ’n roll album left me feeling like I’d just lost a staring contest with the sun. Those first two tracks alone might qualify for its list even if I hated everything else on here, which I don’t (though nothing else quite achieves those heights). You’ve got bluesy Jack White, you’ve got shaking-the-walls Jack White, you’ve got dark and moody Jack White, and you’ve even got weird and possibly ill-advised Jack White (no clue what’s going on with “Hi-De-Ho” but man I respect it for trying). Even when I don’t like this, I like it. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is.
5. Spoon, “Lucifer on the Sofa”
Spoon is just, like…a good band, right? Just a good, solid rock outfit that shows up, delivers, and gets out of your hair. I don’t really know what else to say about them at this point. No one in music exudes professionalism like they do. They know exactly what they want to do and how to do it. No frills, no strain, no visible effort. Cool and casual. The premier act in rock ’n roll to nod your head to while driving.
4. Sudan Archives, “Natural Brown Prom Queen”
I should be upset about this album leaning much harder into hip-hop than its predecessor. I feel like we’re hurting way worse for good R&B artists than we are for good rappers right now. It should bother me to see Brittney Parks making such a significant leap away from the former in favor of the latter. It’s a testament to how good she is at it that it just…doesn’t. Not a lot, anyway. Gun to my head, I still prefer what she was doing on “Athena.” My favorite songs of hers — and most of my favorites off this album — are the ones that are heavy on the violin, the pretty and emotive ones. But her whole deal slots so interestingly into hip-hop that it’s impossible for me to be mad about it. No one is making anything like this right now. Sudan Archives skipped the rap debut and went directly to the huge, experimental mission statement and completely got away with it. I have no idea where Parks goes from here. For once, I mean that in a good way.
3. Wet Leg, “Wet Leg”
I love them. I love them I love them I love them. I listened to this album four times consecutively the day I first checked it out. I never do that. This is the most promising debut in recent memory. Wet Leg seems to have arrived fully formed. There is no doubt whatsoever about the kind of band they want to be after listening to this. They don’t immediately read as weird, and yet I feel like they completely own this sound. It’s punk, it’s alt rock, it’s pretty, it’s loud, it’s snarky, it’s crass, you can dance to it. A hundred things going on at once, and yet the band never loses control of it. The songs are a different experience depending on the headspace you’re in when you press play. The only thing I don’t like about this album is the fear that it’s the kind of thing they’ll never be able to surpass. This is a high bar to set for yourself right out of the gate.
2. Big Thief, “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You”
There’s this movie Grand Piano. I’ve never seen it. Elijah Wood is in it. It’s like Speed, except “driving a bus” is replaced with “playing a piano.” I think Adrianne Lenker might be in one of those situations. Blink once if you need help. Big Thief already feels like an alt rock legacy band just because of sheer output over the last four years. It’s easy to forget they’re relatively new on the scene. They hit us with two albums the year they made a name for themselves, then Lenker dropped a solo record during the pandemic, then they skipped a year, and then the band had to release a mammoth double album to appease whomever has taken them hostage. Even being that prolific is an accomplishment. That they’re not only keeping pace but actively getting better feels like someone made a deal with the devil. I don’t know how they aren’t burned out. I don’t know how they haven’t run out of ideas. But I know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, and the gift horse named “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” is just…phenomenal. There is not one bad song among the twenty here. There are only two or three that rate as just OK. There’s enough material here that they could have spread it across two AOTY-level records. But I’m sure they had to get it out so they can work on, I don’t know, their riff on “69 Love Songs” that’s probably coming out next week. I don’t know what to tell you. We do not deserve Big Thief.
- Kendrick Lamar, “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers”
Yes, whatever, I KNOW I’m a cliche, OK? Oh, look, fancy music critic man put Kendrick Lamar at number one on his list, how original, yeah, yeah, I know, hypothetical person I’m having an imaginary argument with, first off, I am neither fancy nor a music critic, and second…if you asked a bunch of people to rank their top ten favorite things to breathe most of them are probably going to give the top slot to air, all right? To be fair, Kendrick Lamar and Big Thief are really running neck and neck here. I spent a lot of time thinking this over, and there’s a very good chance I’ll change my mind eventually. But right here, right now, this is what feels right. What it comes down to, for me, is this: there’s no one in the industry now who cares this much about albums. I’m fundamentally an album-oriented listener. A great song is a great song, but there’s only so much you can pack into a few minutes. I love it when it feels like someone is telling a story, like each track is meant to accomplish something super specific, when you have the full weight of the whole set accumulating in the final minutes. I’ll let smarter people than me decide if this is Kendrick’s best album, but I think it’s easily his most cohesive one. I felt like I went on a journey listening to “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.” This year, no music moved me like it did. More than anything, that’s what I’m after, so how could I put it anywhere else on this list?
That’s the list! Thank you for reading! Please continue to do so (I am not too proud to beg)! Next time will probably be my Oscar predictions, so stay tuned for those.
Matthew Triponey 