Category: 2023

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2023: Top 20 Movies

2023 was a pretty good year for movies.

Yeah, for all of my complaint — and I was full of it this year — that’s the inescapable conclusion looking over this list. This wasn’t a great year, but it more than justified its existence by the time the lights went down.

It just didn’t feel that way. Mostly I think that’s because 2023 was a very back-loaded year. We had to hold out until November and December for a lot of these; a handful of them have only been in wide release — for a certain value of “wide release” — for a month or two even now. And for me, living in a rural area means even a lot of the earlier releases were impossible to see until streaming services picked them up in the fall. Basically, Barbenheimer was all I had sustaining me for the first three-fourths of the year. Hard not to feel kind of glum about the state of things when that’s your situation! I went to a dark place when they postponed Dune.

But hey, it did result in December and January being one of the best two months of movies I’ve ever lived through. And even though I didn’t see a sizable number of these in time to save 2023 from itself, there’s still a lot of really special stuff on here. Once again, they represent a fairly diverse selection, and I’m pretty happy with them on the whole.

(And I’m glad for that because 2024’s slate is looking like a real bummer right now!)

Anyway, I don’t normally do honorable mentions for these, but this year, there is a very definitive Number 21. So I’ll just take a moment to recognize it: May December. I think it’s a lot of tension with very little release, which is ultimately why it was my last cut from the list. However, it’s genuinely insightful, one of the rare movies that I think helped me understand its subject in a new way — and of course, Charles Melton was robbed.

Now for the Top 20!

20. John Wick: Chapter 4
I’m not sure whether the John Wick movies are getting better or if I’m just getting more amenable to them. I kind of think it’s the latter, because it seems impossible to me that each of them has been better than the last, which has been my experience with them. I’ve been meaning to revisit the first one to see if I like it now, but have thus far refused to do so for the very good reason that I cannot watch that puppy die again. That said, I do think Chapter 4, at least, is better than the others — at least, better than my memory of them — which is why the series is now making its first-ever appearance on my year-end list. These movies all have a certain magic about them; even when they’re bad, they’re good. There’s a moment on the cusp of what feels like the final showdown where Chapter 4 goes, “But first, another thirty-minute action sequence!” And I sighed, but then the movie was like, “OK, OK, I hear you, but what if this scene involves Keanu Reeves killing dudes with cars and then falling down a cartoonish amount of stairs for like fifteen minutes?” And I was like, “Fine, I’ll allow it.” It kicks as much hindquarter as you need these movies to; moreover, it gives John Wick probably his best enemy yet, the first one who is not obviously more evil than him, and I think it advances the series’ central theme — can a leopard change its spots? — to an appropriately complicated place. The cool thing about this list is that no one can stop me from cutting a Todd Haynes movie to make room for Keanu Reeves shooting guys in the face.

19. Fallen Leaves
I think the best thing I can say about Fallen Leaves is that it would probably be even higher if I spoke the language. Comedy can be tough to translate across language barriers, and that can keep this one at arm’s length once in a while. It’s hard to hear the nuance in context and delivery that’ll really make the joke go the extra mile. So the fact that I loved this movie as much as I did is a real testament to how good it actually is. For me, it comes down to one thing: this romantic comedy centers on one of the most unusual fictional couples I can think of, and the fact that it makes them work is genuine magic. These two are awkward, have terrible social skills, can barely look each other in the eye, have an anti-chemistry so intense that someone it winds all the way back around into being chemistry again. Only these two people would have this kind of patience for each other. They’re destined to spend the rest of their lives sitting two feet apart on a couch, and both of them will be completely happy with that arrangement. And there’s just something kinda sweet about that. Maybe eventually they’ll exchange enough words to learn each other’s names.

18. Barbie
Shrug. This is the world we live in now. Interesting, unique, well-made art can still exist on a mainstream level, you just have to smuggle it through the system in Barbie packaging. I think enough proverbial ink has been spilled over Barbie at this point; on most levels, you can assume I’m more or less in agreement with the general consensus. For my part, I think I was always going to sign off on it so long as it delivered quality jokes and a distinctive, well-realized aesthetic. That it ended up delivering much more than that — including another peak performance by Comedy Ryan Gosling, the best Ryan Gosling — is really just icing on the cake. Like I said. It’s a Barbie world.

17. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
I will actually lose my mind if you people put Kelly Fremon Craig in director jail again. When I first saw it, I thought word-of-mouth would rescue its box office; when that didn’t happen, I thought Oscar season would breathe some life into its cultural presence; when that didn’t happen, I began to feel as though I was going mad. I have no idea why Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was allowed to pass in the night like this. Craig has now proven twice over that she may be THE voice for coming-of-age stories about girls. Just like The Edge of Seventeen, Are You There God is funny, sweet, observant, tells its story well, and gets tremendous performances out of its whole cast (we as a culture are failing Rachel McAdams). Somebody please rescue this from obscurity; I don’t want to have to wait another seven years for Craig’s next one.

16. Robot Dreams
The Oscars do serve at least one purpose — without them, I don’t think I’d ever have bothered to watch this. It’s such an unassuming thing, and yet it’s also unprecedented in its way — how it is simultaneously perfect for both adults and children, to the extent that I couldn’t even tell you which of those audiences it’s primarily for. It shows you a sort of cynical, adult world, and then views it through an innocent, childlike lens. And in doing so, it achieves a certain clarity about things. Oh, and what’s that? It’s about endings and beginnings and the transience of things, the subject most likely to reduce me to a simpering puddle of tears? Yeah, I liked this one.

15. Monster
Hirokazu Koreeda stands apart with Asghar Farhadi as a social observer of passionate moral conviction and the ability to tell stories that somehow feel as though they’ve never been told before despite never invoking anything stronger than the everyday problems of everyday people. Monster is one of the best Rashomon-style narratives I can recall seeing. It has an expert, instinctive sense of when the moment comes to most powerfully expand your understanding of its story. It might not be as airtight as some of its director’s best work, but it more than makes up for that with its resolve. I love a movie that strikes a perfect balance between concrete, clearly conveyed information and more ambiguous developments that allow you to speculate about the characters and themes. And I love movies about the interconnectedness of humanity, how everything we do ripples outward to the people around us and then to the people around them. Simultaneously crushing and beautiful — which is to say, exactly what you expect from a Koreeda film, and exactly what you want most.

14. The Boy and the Heron
A Hayao Miyazaki film that attends more to its metaphorical dimensions than its literal ones, thus positioning it somewhat farther from my comfort zone than a lot of his work. And yet, it’s a Miyazaki film — gorgeous, on all levels, without fail, and to the extent that it’s something a little off the beaten path, at least getting your head around it is an arresting challenge. It’s the sort of movie you could watch a dozen times without failing to find something new. I’ve heard it called a Miyazaki highlights reel, but if it is, well, of course! It’s transparently a reflection on everything he’s made, whether it did any good and whether he’s left it in secure hands. It’s a phenomenal coda on an iconic career — assuming it is, in fact, his last film, which knowing him and how many times he’s tried to quit this business already, I recognize it almost certainly isn’t.

13. Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos exists at a confluence of “obviously extraordinarily gifted” and “not really my thing” that makes his movies difficult to position on lists like this. That’s probably never been truer than it is with Poor Things, a movie I have no problem calling an all-time masterpiece even though it weirded me all the way out. Honestly, I’m prepared to argue it’s Lanthimos’s best work — the most fully inhabited, the prettiest, the most purposeful, the best constructed. Certainly Emma Stone’s is the best performance to have happened under his supervision, which is saying a lot. Also his funniest movie, by a pretty significant margin: I’d have been fine with Poor Things if it had been nothing but Bella slowly driving Mark Ruffalo insane. And it is certainly more than that. Fifty-fifty chance I never watch this again, zero chance I’m not still thinking about it on my deathbed.

12. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Even as a tiny microbudget indie, the existence of How to Blow Up a Pipeline is outright shocking to me. I kept waiting for it to pull a punch, hedge its bets, dial it back toward something a little more comfortable for the political mainstream. It never did. It’s certainly the boldest thing to happen on the big screen this year. I think what makes it feel so radical is that it avoids the politics altogether. It isn’t trying to have a dialogue about the problem and how best to respond to it. It simply throws you into the mix with these characters, brings you into their world, and then trusts you to follow them through the paces of what is otherwise a normal heist movie/slow burn thriller — a very good one, but still, normal. Treating the subject like it’s no big deal somehow makes it the biggest deal of all. How to Blow Up a Pipeline was one of the year’s earliest releases, and it has loomed large in my mind ever since.

11. The Iron Claw
One of the best screenplays of the year, with one of the strongest senses of character. There’s nothing outwardly unusual about it, but I can’t recall seeing its subject — the world of professional wrestling — brought to life in quite this way before. The balance between what’s real and what’s fake in this thing that’s half sport, half theater is very tricky to navigate, and probably uniquely toxic for someone with a competitive spirit. Sean Durkin’s prior experience capturing cult dynamics in film fits the material uniquely well. Strong performances, strong filmmaking, genuinely insightful in its approach to its real-life characters, one of those all-around good movies for adults that we don’t get enough of anymore.

10. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
The most I can remember liking a Mission: Impossible movie right out of the gate — and I don’t think that’s just a matter of circumstance. Dead Reckoning, of course, delivers everything we’re starting to take for granted from this franchise — the tactile, hard-hitting action, and the mind-blowing stunt work. But I also think it’s a major step forward on a story level. For starters, it’s the first time these movies have ever felt like they’re putting their central ethos — never leave a man behind — to a serious test; Dead Reckoning is intense in a way I don’t remember the majority of its predecessors being. Additionally, the new villain, despite being a literal algorithm, is genuinely threatening and even kind of scary in the brief moment where it brings its full power to bear. It’s super fun to watch, but also strangely compelling. With Dead Reckoning, I can say something I’ve never said about a Mission: Impossible movie before: I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

9. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Honestly, what do I even say? This movie doesn’t need anyone else to lavish praise upon it. It’s all true, everything you’ve heard. The animation is now operating on levels that feel physically impossible. The writing is razor-sharp. There are no other superhero movies on the market working with characters this deeply felt. Somehow, all of this is happening despite the plot being a twenty-car pileup of characters and storylines. Yeah, it is, for the moment, only half a movie, but if Beyond the Spider-Verse even comes close to matching it, it’s half one of the greatest movies ever made.

8. The Zone of Interest
Impossible to talk about. Harrowing. A knife in your gut, twisted slowly. Sandra Hüller is terrifying. It could only have happened like this. It always happens like this. It’s happening like this right now. When it happens again, it will happen like this — not because we’re good at ignoring the cruelty, but because some part of us wants it. Can’t envision paradise without it. To a lot of us, Heaven is not Heaven if Hell is not below it.

7. The Starling Girl
Every year, I adopt and make a cause out of at least one movie barely anyone saw and that missed most critics’ year-end retrospectives. The Starling Girl is 2023’s. As usual, it’s my own experiences informing that — there’s so much about this movie, its circumstances, its characters, the little things they say and do and why and how, that rang instantly true for me. There’s a scene where its main character breaks down because she’s so happy she’s certain that means the thing she’s happy about is something God wants her to give up, and it made me wonder: would anyone who hasn’t experienced that even recognize what was going on in that scene? I don’t know, but believe me, it’s worth trying. Even as much as it’s personal for me, The Starling Girl is a just-plain-great movie on every relevant level. Check it out; it’s a real good cry.

6. The Holdovers
Alexander Payne’s best in a while — and ever is on the table. His talents as a filmmaker are plenty, but I think what I love most about him is that he’s one of the last directors making really good movies about normal, average people who have normal, average problems. People who don’t look like Sears fall collection models, who have weird hangups, who have lazy eyes and smell like fish and sometimes are awful for no reason. I’ve never understood the criticisms of Payne’s work as misanthropic — he’s clear-eyed about his characters and their flaws, but his movies always having them realizing that solace is in one another. I don’t think he’s ever told that story as beautifully as he does here. The Holdovers is sweet and sad and funny and anchored on a trio of the year’s best performances.

5. Anatomy of a Fall
I think it’s likely the best courtroom dramas aren’t really about the proceedings themselves, and so it goes with Anatomy of a Fall, a movie where the plot itself feels like an act of misdirection — the possible murder, the trial, that’s just a framing device used to probe the shadows of a failing marriage and a mother and son struggling to put themselves back together. It’s in the execution thereof that I think Anatomy of a Fall sets itself apart from its contemporaries in the genre — how it reverse engineers a sort of flashback structure despite, ultimately, containing only one actual flashback (which is so loaded with meaning it almost serves as an entire film unto itself). It’s tough to make a movie where the protagonist keeps secrets from the audience, and that’s how Anatomy of a Fall gets away with it. Guilt or innocence matter less than what brought us to this point. The fall is simply the final consequence. I think I’ve detected the faintest hint of a backlash to this one, so let this stand as a firm declaration that I am not a part of it. Fully deserving of all its accolades.

4. Godzilla Minus One
ha ha ha you can’t stop me — but also, why would you want to? Yeah, I think these last few years have fully ruined me on American blockbusters. My message to the public, at this point, is that if you won’t even read the sparse, simple subtitles of a foreign genre flick, you have no idea what you’re missing. Godzilla Minus One is, at the very least, the best Godzilla movie of my lifetime, and the only reason I won’t go farther back than that is that I haven’t actually seen any of those. I would also contend it’s one of the best movies of its kind more generally. A disaster movie where you actually care about the characters? What a concept! Minus One is also possibly the best Godzilla has ever been as social commentary — it’s deeply weird to say that a movie whose primary appeal is a digital monster knocking over digital buildings is ultimately sort of life-affirming, but Godzilla Minus One contains multitudes. It delivered everything I want from a kaiju movie, and also unexpectedly made me feel better about this beautiful, catastrophic thing we call humanity. I’ve wanted to love a Godzilla movie my whole life, and I can’t tell you how it feels to finally get to. If I do not get a U.S. Blu Ray of this, I will become dangerous.

3. Killers of the Flower Moon
I don’t really have favorite filmmakers. I’m not sure whether that’s unusual for a movie nerd. It’s more like a long list of directors who consistently do really good work that I’ll always check out on the big screen if at all possible. But if you asked me to step outside myself and decide who I think is the best filmmaker of all time, I’m pretty sure my answer would be Martin Scorsese. And I can’t think of stronger evidence in my favor than the run he’s been on since The Wolf of Wall Street — to Silence to The Irishman to, well, this. Those four films would be the envy of any artist, so I can’t think of any better testament to Scorsese than that I think a lot of his fans, maybe even most of them, would not consider this his golden era. This is all just par for the course at this point. I think that makes it easy to take him for granted, so consider Killers of the Flower Moon’s positioning on this list my way of ensuring that I don’t. It’s lesser Scorsese, which makes it just about any other director’s crowning achievement. Absolutely stunning.

2. Oppenheimer
At this point, I think what I like most about Christopher Nolan is that I get the impression with him, more than any other filmmaker, that he’s doggedly determined to grow with each new project he takes on. The sense I get from him is that if he’s not taking a step forward, if he’s not innovating something, he thinks the whole thing is a waste of time. Each new movie has to be his pinnacle as a director. Anyway, I hope failing that test isn’t too frustrating for him, because it is very difficult to imagine him spending the rest of his career outdoing Oppenheimer. It’s so masterful on a craft level that it’s sometimes astonishing to remember it’s from the same guy we chewed out for putting the camera too close to the action during a couple of Batman movies over a decade ago. It really feels like his whole career has been building to this grim opera of a biopic — breathless and insistent, convinced sound and fury can signify something, and damn you for thinking otherwise. After a particularly successful second viewing, I’m actually starting to wonder if maybe it’s my actual favorite movie this year and I’m just holding out because I don’t want to admit the Oscars got it right twice consecutively. Stay tuned on that, I guess.

  1. Past Lives
    I saw this in September, and it has held onto the top slot ever since. I’ve already alluded to it in an earlier entry on this list, but there’s little that impresses me more than the ability to tell a real story about real people and still have it feel as though it has never been told before. That’s especially true of a movie like Past Lives, which on paper fits pretty snugly into a whole subgenre of semi-love stories about regret and what might have been. Another thing I’ve already alluded to: movies about that have my number in a big way, and Past Lives basically broke me in half — you know, in a good way. Its cultural specifics are so beautifully woven into the structure of it. The central theme feels potentially iconic, the way it instantly and permanently resonates throughout the whole story. I’m consistently struck by how flawlessly directed it is — the gentle sort of flow of it, the way Celine Song meters things out and lets them bleed together. I was stunned to learn that her work in the industry before this was as sparse as it is — for any artist to arrive this fully formed feels like a miracle. The subtleties of it, its hypnotic rhythm, the absolutely gutting performances, its composure and grace, the way every viewing peels back a new layer — Past Lives is exquisite, and I think more than worthy to wear 2023’s crown.
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2024 Oscar predictions

My silly annual tradition returns! Follow along as I, too, correctly predict that Oppenheimer is going to win a bunch of awards!

This year, I managed to see all of these except for two of the animated shorts, Our Uniform and War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko. That’s really neither here nor there; I just wanted you to know how fancy I am.

To continue putting my money where my mouth is, my score last year was 13-10, which is…much worse than I remembered? Sheesh, 2023 Matt, were you OK?

Anyway, the predictions!

Best Picture: American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things, The Holdovers, The Zone of Interest
Prediction: Oppenheimer

Best Actor: Bradley Cooper, Maestro; Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer; Colman Domingo, Rustin; Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction; Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Prediction: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

Best Actress: Annette Bening, Nyad; Carey Mulligan, Maestro; Emma Stone, Poor Things; Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon; Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
Prediction: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things; Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon; Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer; Ryan Gosling, Barbie; Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Prediction: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer

Best Supporting Actress: America Ferrera, Barbie; Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers; Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple; Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer; Jodie Foster, Nyad
Prediction: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer; Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest; Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall; Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon; Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Prediction: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

Best Original Screenplay: Anatomy of a Fall, Maestro, May December, Past Lives, The Holdovers
Prediction: Anatomy of a Fall

Best Adapted Screenplay: American Fiction, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, The Zone of Interest
Prediction: American Fiction

Best Cinematography: El Conde, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Poor Things
Prediction: Oppenheimer

Best Film Editing: Anatomy of a Fall, Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, The Holdovers
Prediction: Oppenheimer

Best Production Design: Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, Oppenheimer, Poor Things
Prediction: Poor Things

Best Costume Design: Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, Oppenheimer, Poor Things
Prediction: Barbie

Best Sound: Maestro, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Oppenheimer, The Creator, The Zone of Interest
Prediction: Oppenheimer

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Golda, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Society of the Snow
Prediction: Poor Things

Best Original Score: American Fiction, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, Poor Things
Prediction: Oppenheimer

Best Original Song: “It Never Goes Away” by Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson, American Symphony; “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, Barbie; “I’m Just Ken” by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, Barbie; “The Fire Inside” by Diane Warren, Flamin’ Hot; “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” by Scott George, Killers of the Flower Moon
Prediction: “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, Barbie

Best Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Napoleon, The Creator
Prediction: Godzilla Minus One

Best Documentary Feature: 20 Days in Mariupol, Bobi Wine: The People’s President, Four Daughters, The Eternal Memory, To Kill a Tiger
Prediction: 20 Days in Mariupol

Best Animated Feature: Elemental, Nimona, Robot Dreams, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Boy and the Heron
Prediction: The Boy and the Heron

Best Animated Short: Letter to a Pig, Ninety-Five Senses, Our Uniform, Pachyderme, War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Prediction: War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

Best Live-Action Short: Invincible; Knight of Fortune; Red, White and Blue; The After; The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Prediction: Red, White and Blue

Best Documentary Short: Island in Between, Nai Nai & Wài Pó, The ABCs of Book Banning, The Barber of Little Rock, The Last Repair Shop
Prediction: Nai Nai & Wài Pó

Best International Feature: Io Capitano, Perfect Days, Society of the Snow, The Teachers’ Lounge, The Zone of Interest
Prediction: The Zone of Interest

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2023: Top 10 Albums

Year-end lists! It is time to do them again! Yay!

This is normally the part where I’d do some kind of retrospective on the year in music — whether it was a good one, a bad one, something in between. But I find the more I explore music, the more I think that there is no such thing. Years are just years. If you’re only listening to a core group of favorite artists, there can be good years and bad years, depending on who releases new albums and how much you enjoy them. But more and more, I’m finding that if it feels like a bad year, you just need to dig deeper until it turns into a good one. This is, after all, one of the most democratized art forms. You have to be able to leverage some resources to make a movie, but we’re at a point where anyone with the talent and a laptop can record a song every bit as good as what the pros are doing.

I say that because 2023 was that kind of year for me. A lot of the old favorites let me down. The National released two albums this year, neither of them are on this list, and I can’t tell you how strange that feels to me. For a while, I would’ve said this was a bad year. But eventually, I got bored enough to do a deeper dive, and as always, I came out with more than enough new stuff to make up the difference. It’s not the first time something like that has happened to me, and I can’t help but conclude that if something as ubiquitous as music is feeling dead to you, it’s only because you aren’t looking hard enough. There’s always something out there, if you’re willing to commit yourself to the search.

Here’s some of what I liked in 2023.

10. Squid, “O Monolith”
I’m surprised how much I enjoyed this one for a couple reasons: firstly, because it seems most everyone else prefers the first album, and I’m not so sure I feel the same way; and secondly, because on paper I probably should be less fond of it. The main draw of Squid, for me, was pretty simple: listening to vocalist Ollie Judge scream like a cartoon character. And that’s almost entirely gone here; “O Monolith” favors more of a spoken-word type of thing, very rarely with a singsong quality to it. And yet, I like it quite a bit. Actually, this album is sort of functioning as a key for me — the piece that helps me better understand what the artist has been going for all along. Much as I liked “Bright Green Field,” there were bits and pieces I struggled to understand. “O Monolith” finds the band a little closer to my comfort zone, which makes it easier for me to draw a line from what they’re doing here to what they were doing there, and suddenly it all makes sense. I like “Bright Green Field” even more because of “O Monolith.” What’s more, despite only being about ten minutes shorter, something about “O Monolith” feels better measured to me, more compact. There’s nothing here that really outstays its welcome, which I can’t quite say about their debut. So where others might see “O Monolith” as a step backward, I think it’s at worst a lateral move, and one that throws enough new stuff in the mix to suggest that Squid still has a lot more to show us. And I’m more excited than ever to found out what that might be.

9. Robert Finley, “Black Bayou”
This man was just plain put on this Earth to sing the blues. Some people reinvent the wheel, others just make the best damn wheel you’ve ever seen in your life, “Black Bayou” is firmly in the latter category, and I am one hundred percent fine with that. Finley’s great, a singer with a lifetime’s worth of stories in his voice; I love his whole vibe, particularly his corkscrew sense of humor, which nicely balances out the inherent melodrama of blues. I feel like he’s as much a rock star as a soul man, too; sometimes I think this album is at its best when he’s cutting loose and having fun a little. His voice defies logic to me — having this kind of grit in your tone usually comes with some firm limitations, so it catches me off-guard every time he leaps up into that keen falsetto. He doesn’t seem like a guy who ought to have a “Miss Kitty” (my favorite track) in his repertoire, but somehow he soars through it. “Black Bayou” rates a lot higher on this list without the lyrical deficiencies that emerge here and there.

8. PJ Harvey, “I Inside the Old Year Dying”
This will be one of the shorter entries on here. It’s tough to describe what does and doesn’t work about an album that feels so alien — the alienness of it is the point, it’s the appeal, it’s the long and short of it. “I Inside the Old Year Dying” defies description — at once modern and absolutely ancient, lyrical and obtuse. It has very little precedent, and that’s both the reason I love it and why I can’t really rank it any higher than this. It’s not the sort of music I can listen to at any time, but in the moments when it hits the spot, it surely does. PJ Harvey is chasing a weird muse these days, but so far, I see no reason to tell her to stop.

7. Ratboys, “The Window”
Super basic, but I love this kind of thing. I generally find that I like shoegaze, but I love artists who were influenced by it. Something about that juxtaposition of those sweet, delicate voices with that music that’s way too loud for them always gets me. “The Window” isn’t much more than a well-executed version of that, but that ain’t nothing — there isn’t a single track here I dislike, and most of them I feel like I could hear a hundred times without getting bored. The Ratboys were on my radar before this, but “The Window” is the moment I feel like they arrived, became the fully matured verison of themselves. Ever since I found out what it was about, I have been unable to listen to the title track without getting all misty-eyed. Wins the Band I Would’ve Been Way Into in High School Award for 2023.

6. Young Fathers, “Heavy Heavy”
This album was a grower. It was 2023’s opening salvo, and even then, it felt a little minor to me. I liked it, didn’t love it. But it really hung in there. And toward the end of the year, as I was listening to my preliminary top ten over and over again, trying to finalize it, I found myself pushing “Heavy Heavy” up a slot each time I cycled through. It took a while to click, but it eventually did, and I’m back to being as enthusiastic about this band as I was when “Cocoa Sugar” first brought them to my attention. I feel like I have a vested interest in them: I’m a huge trip hop fan, and Young Fathers strike me as the most promising heirs to the tradition right now. They still haven’t gotten around to their “Mezzanine”-level masterpiece — right now, I think they’re a group that records really good individual songs but struggles to make them feel like a cohesive journey as an album — but I do think they have one in them. At the very least, “Heavy Heavy” continues paving that road for them.

5. Ashnikko, “WEEDKILLER”
It took a minute, but I think the emerging consensus is that putting this one on here, much less all the way at number five, is, as the kids say, “cringe.” To that I say, when have I ever pretended not to be a giant loser? I have carefully cultivated this brand! And look, even an old stick-in-the-mud like me is capable of enjoying some Gen Z noise now and then, and “WEEDKILLER” presents some very finely crafted Gen Z noise. I actually didn’t like Ashnikko at all the first couple times I heard these songs…but there was just something about ‘em, something that had me coming back day after day to re-experience them and find some kind of context to put them in. I was fully self-aware throughout that process that every time music has that effect on me — EVERY time — I ultimately end up liking it, and unsurprisingly, that’s what happened here. “WEEDKILLER” is actually a useful case study for me — I now know exactly how good the music has to be for me to tolerate lyrics that rhyme the word “gusher” with, well, that. And I do love the music here: pop/rap raging its way almost into metal territory, great beats, great production. It helps fill the Grimes-shaped hole in my heart . Ashnikko said they were going for “if Hans Zimmer made a rap album,” and I think that was more than achieved. You can’t not bob your head to this stuff, even at its absolute stupidest. “Dying Star” is one of my favorite songs of the year.

4. Mitski, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We”
I’ve been aware of Mitski for a few years now, generally liked what songs I’d heard, and had been meaning to eventually dig into her work. I frantically rushed to do exactly that this year after she somehow landed herself on the charts so I could sneak in under the wire and be able to claim “liked her before she was cool” honors. Anyway, I am not surprised to find that the artist who made a couple songs I really enjoy also makes albums I really enjoy. “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” is the kind of album where the big hit isn’t even the best song on it, and that almost always means you’re in for something consistently great. (Actually, I would be interested in finding out exactly how “My Love Mine All Mine” became a hit in the first place — it’s so slow, low-key, and moody, not at all the kind of thing you expect to break a staple indie artist onto the charts.) If anything, I find I want more from this album — Mitski’s the sort of musician who brings you into things slowly, wields a heavy atmosphere that sinks into rather than grabs you, so the short run-time here mutes the impact a tiny bit for me. I wanted to love all of these tracks for one minute longer than they allowed me to. All that said, “I’m Your Man” is Song of the Year for me, and that isn’t something I need to think particularly hard about. Let’s get that one on Billboard next.

3. Wilco, “Cousin”
I’ve been a tiny bit worried about Wilco/Jeff Tweedy the last two years or so. They didn’t release anything I actively disliked, but “Ode to Joy” and especially “Cruel Country” were largely impactless for me. I’m more positive about “Love Is the King,” but even that rates as somewhat minor Jeff Tweedy for me. It’s felt like they were going in a somewhat more accessible direction — and have been since “Star Wars” and “Schmilco,” both of which I like a lot. And I was concerned that the well was starting to run dry. “Cousin” is a big relief. It finds the band sliding back into slightly more experimental fare, and it represents a return to form for the Wilco I know and love, a band able to wring surprisingly catchy tunes out of minimalist, off-kilter rock ’n roll that seems to live to defy good musical sense. I liked this one a lot.

2. boygenius, “the record”
I feel like kind of a mark here. This is a supergroup where all three members, Phoebe Bridgers especially, have already gotten me in their corner, so of course I’m going to buy the album and of course I’m going to love it and of course I’m going to listen to it a ton and of course it’s going to hover near the top slot on my list for most of the year. This year, I heard someone say the reason The National is working with Taylor Swift these days is that it turns out sad teenage girls and sad middle-aged men like the same music, and I felt super seen by that! This album fires its arrow right down the middle of those two demographics, so the fact that I’m into it is not the least bit interesting. It’d be far stranger if I wasn’t. But yes, let the record (hey, a pun!) show that these are all very well crafted songs backed up by strong writing and a trio of voices that go very well together. As similar as these three are on their own, you would expect their joint project to go even further down the usual path, but that’s not at all what happens — this actually feels poppier than their individual work. Looser, more accessible. Not in a bad way, or at least mostly not in a bad way. What really strikes me here is how much I’d like it if boygenius backed off the heartfelt acoustic stuff and did a full-on rock ’n roll album — “$20” and “Satanist” are my favorite tracks here by far. It’s all good, though, and it really did hang onto that top slot for a long time — until literally just a few weeks ago.

That was when something else happened.

  1. Lankum, “False Lankum”
    I almost hesitate to do this. Lankum is a very recent discovery. This time last month, that name would have meant nothing to me. I was checking out a bunch of critics’ top ten lists — which is how I usually discover new stuff at the end of a year that felt otherwise underwhelming (also making an impression: “Rat Saw God” by Wednesday, which at least marks them as a band I’m interested in hearing more from) — when I encountered this one and looked it up. Given that “False Lankum” is also quite a lengthy album, that means I have had occasion to listen to it in its entirety only three or four times as of this writing. Time and repeat listens often change music for me. It’s hard for me to award something the top position when I have so little familiarity with it. And yet, every time I thought about sliding “False Lankum” below anything else on this list, my brain immediately rejected the possibility as categorically absurd. This is one of the best-produced albums I have ever heard. Some bands make albums that sound like you’re at one of their shows. “False Lankum” feels more like I’m sitting on the stage, right in the middle of the band. The mileage these songs can get out of a single pluck of a string is astonishing. An album comprising mostly traditional Irish folk songs — which I already have a huge weakness for — is going to carry a sense of history, but something about the airy echo enveloping “False Lankum” makes it feel as old as time itself. I have never heard musicianship this precise, where every little sound you hear feels vital to experience — takes old songs and presents them in a way you’ve never heard before. Of course “False Lankum” is number one — where in the world else would I put it? I loved it from the minute I first heard it. It feels major — not just the best of the year, but a candidate for the all-time list. There is some real magic at work here. It was released in March, so a lot of people started their year with this. Personally, I’m glad I found it when I did — because what a way to close out the year. And what a way to close out this year’s roundup.

Next time: Top 20 movies! Date: Some point after folks out in the boondocks are given the opportunity to legally watch stuff like The Zone of Interest! I dunno.