Tag: review

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.