your mom called, i told her, [the major pub lists are] f*cking up BIG time.
the annual newsletter AOTY list, 2023 edition.
Got the “Post too long for email” disclaimer, so make sure you click at the bottom to read the full list if it cuts off!
In case you don’t make it to the bottom of this: Free Palestine, please continue amplifying their message through the holiday season. Consider donating eSIMs to those in the region, because what shuts people up or makes them lose interest is when everything goes silent there. Have empathy for people who deserve to live. It’s that fucking simple. Happy holidays.
Anyway, onto the list! Is this coming at the actual end of the year, right before Christmas, because I have strong feelings about when EOY lists come out and I’m trying to make a point? Or is it because I’ve been busy (and then lazy when I’m not busy) and not writing blurbs for this when everyone else was writing theirs? With love and respect, I think you can guess! The fact that I finished this at all is a miracle so, as Oprah said while high-fiving Lindsey Lohan, let’s celebrate that!! The list is here, your work is hopefully winding down and you have time to go through this, so let’s make it happen.
(And really quickly, because I have to get the sappy stuff out of the way: thank you for reading any of my posts on this thing this year. It’s truly just my little outlet to write about shit in the way I want to write about it that no one else cares about, and it is a source of much of my consternation, but also so much joy and a real sense of accomplishment sometimes. The fact that some of you actually enjoy reading my rambling is just a fun bonus. Big virtual kiss — or big real kiss if I see you in person soon-ish — and appreciate you a lot.)
If you don’t know the rules here: I usually pick ten personal favorites, and then fifty-ish other favorites I want to pick out. This year, I’ve chosen 11 for my “top ten” because it’s my list and I fucking say so. I write blurbs of varying lengths about each one.
Some other notes: please note that Lana was used for the title because I love “A&W” as well as several songs from its parent album, but said parent album will not be featured here. We’ll maybe get into that another time, because I do believe that my magnum opus will be about Lana’s career and subversion of pop stardom (for better and worse), but for now? I wanted to clear up that I am AWARE of the clickbait I’ve just performed.
None of the “band from Freaky Friday revival” artists are here. None of the “this is post-punk but actually fun” artists that give me “d*d*s r*ck” energy are here. I’m not getting involved in the shoegaze argument — I am simply Mariah saying “I don’t know her,” and to quote Meaghan Garvey on a recent episode of a Certain podcast that I enjoy: “It’s dream pop if I like it, and shoegaze if I don’t.”
To copy-and-paste from last year: So, just for reference, everything is alphabetical. Each entry will have the release date, record label (if applicable) and genre labels I took from a music aggregator site that I hate — so don’t yell at me if you think they’re wrong, I’m just looking for uniformity for people reading this who do not obsessively seek out and review new music like some of us do.
So! Let’s get this show on the road, friends.
Elise’s Asterisked (is that how you’d spell it?) Top Eleven (formerly ten):
*ANOHNI and the Johnsons - My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
(July 7 on Rough Trade/Secretly Canadian - Singer-Songwriter/Pop Soul)
I thought I had lost the tweet I wanted to use to kick this off until just now, so here it is: “I have so much respect for the Anohni album’s willingness to use every tool at its disposal to hurt the listener and I love that the opening track of the album is her explaining why she’s doing that.”
I got to write a little bit about how “Scapegoat,” this album’s emotional core, is a contender for my song of the year, but “Go Ahead” holds a similar kind of weight to me — serving as a sharp drop from the open arms of “It Must Change” and submerging you in whining, screaming oblivion that does not have any interest coddling you. It finally resolves a bit at the end, and it’s like someone just poured cold water down your throat after not letting you drink for days.
Of course, there’s the desire to acknowledge how daring work like this is while also acknowledging that you wish work about these particular things — transphobia, bigotry, all of that awful shit — didn’t have to exist. It’s not my place to say whether it’s truly radical, or whether it “helps” anything, but as I said in my summer listening newsletter, I can assert that it feels like an album that has always been in my life and comforts me in a time where I really just have no clue where to turn most days.
It makes me think about what I wrote about Homogenic earlier in the year too: it inflicts what it knows to be ugly upon you because it doesn’t know how to carry the weight on its own, and by shedding at least a layer of that shit, she takes a step towards experiencing complete….I don’t know? Ecstasy, in a creative sense? Wholeness? I’m not her, so I can’t confirm that. But it’s a mode of expression that aims to empty you out in the best possible way. I’ve written about my dear, dear love for Anohni here before, and I know her work has certainly had that effect on me. She’s very important to me, and I hope she’s achieved that same feeling of satisfying, creative emptiness by creating this masterpiece.
*Greg Mendez - Greg Mendez
(May 5 on Forged Artifacts - Singer-Songwriter/Indie Folk)
One time, when talking to an Instagram mutual who has long since gone inactive, they responded to one of my posts with something like, “Oh, you like Elliott Smith? Can you give me recommendations for anything similar to that?”
And you know what I did? I gave him some bullshit answer about sending him a playlist of other unrelated stuff I listen to, simply because I can’t give him Elliott-esque recommendations. We say it often here, but I really mean it this time: Those men have nothing to do with me. When Keke Palmer completely changed my life by uttering the words “Sorry to this man,” she did it so I could say it about men who’ve gotten record deals in the last 20 years with acoustic guitars singing about their feelings. Mac DeMarco has a few cute songs! Okay! But mostly none of my business (and also he has terrible energy, it’s sinister)! Alex G has a few excellent songs! That does not mean I want to see him live or talk to the most annoying transplants I’ve ever met in my life about him! He’s very talented, but I simply do not need him! So why have I always loved Elliott? Why is he one of the most important artists in my life still?
I’ve done a lot of thinking about how I believe Elliott has one of the angriest discographies in popular music — not even “saddest,” that’s not the right word. “Quiet for the early stretch of his career” doesn’t mean “devoid of anger.” I hear spite or frustration that nothing can be in any type of order and no agonizing life question can have one direct answer and every day you are in a body that brings with it another trial to ache through as the day goes on. There’s glorious color bleeding from the crush of that anger though, and a lot of his music is really beautiful too. There’s that element of self-loathing that I think people shy away from when they say they can’t handle him, but there’s his desire to rectify everything he’d destroyed too — to care for the people he loved and show them he meant it by creating something eternal with his writing.
The other day I was listening to “Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud” and got to the line “If I call to keep it together like you say you know I can do…” and I thought about how I’ve never really been able to tell whether he’s saying “can” or “can’t” there. The lyric sheet on my vinyl copy and my old CD copy can tell me one thing, but I can never trust it. It shifts with the day I’m listening, and that feels pertinent to me. Does it change the meaning of the song? Is this other person’s opinion the whole point? Is the “you” us? How do we take that looking back? Is it a challenge? Is it a plea? My bartender at Double Down Saloon the other night had a sweatshirt on that said, “YOU’RE A CRISIS YOU’RE AN ICICLE” and, like a compulsive reaction, my brain had to finish “you’reatonguelesstalkeryoudon’tcarewhatyousayyou’rea jay. walk. er. andyoujust, justwalkawayyyy, and that’s all you do,” to myself. Elliott was none of those things he spat that venom at. His tongue was precise and acidic and he meant it. Mac DeMarco has never fucking loved Elliott Smith. He’s running adjacent to the crosswalk looking for a fucking point.
My “sorry to this man” is now a sorry to Greg Mendez — who has gotten more than his fair share of Elliott comparisons since this album came out — for talking more about Elliott instead of just talking about him. It’s actually kind of funny that the Elliott album it lines up best with is the self-titled album, but tonally, instrumentally, melodically, vocally at certain points……he had to expect those comparisons were coming. I don’t think this album is necessarily “angry,” but in one of my favorite Elliott interviews while he was promoting Either/Or, he talks about how he prefers to say his songs are about “dependents” rather than “addicts” specifically. That extremely-human need to depend on other things or people is often the source of his anger, and I think that need and its collateral damage is what is most clearly mirrored in Greg’s music.
It reads more as a collection of memories that all relate back to this theme of dependence and learning from what happened at his most dependent — self-aware without being too self-conscious, while also being wry and honest in its depiction of each scenario, both qualities which attract me to it.
Maybe more a more succinct, Elliott-free description, from his Stereogum interview: “I feel like lately a lot of things are very cut and dry. Like, oh, this is good and this is toxic. And I just feel like in my experience everything is — I mean, a lot of times one is significantly more one thing than the other. But even in there, if you look further, it’s all in everything to varying degrees.”
*Kara Jackson - Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?
(April 14 on September - Singer-Songwriter/Contemporary Folk/Chamber Folk)
I already wrote extensively about my connection to this album — easily my singular, official Album Of The Year (trademark symbol), if I had to pick one — in a different newsletter post, alongside some thoughts about other music I’d been stewing on and my own personal experiences in the past year or so of my life. So, I think I should maybe leave it at that. You just need to know that nothing else I’ve heard this year has topped this for me. I will add that I was on a rare walk in Prospect Park somewhat recently, and “Free” came on and I felt like I was in a trance while circling the bandshell (where I’d seen her live over the summer!) and doubling back up the path for its seven minute duration. It was like ascending to a place where I do not need to worry about any of the bullshit that makes me want to peel a whole layer of my skin off every day — a pretty major feat for any individual song to pull off. It renders you weightless.
We are so lucky to have Kara and her brilliant work. Number one album of the year. Minimal competition. Go tell it on the fucking mountain. Whatever.
*Kelela - Raven
(February 10 on Warp - Alternative R&B/Electronic)
I keep typing and then deleting what I’m going to write about THEEEE Kelela here, because every time I think I can fully wrap my head around what she’s doing, I second-guess myself. This is something I’ve done with her for seven years now, and you’d think I’d be used to it. But even for its immediacy as a hypnotic slow-burn, it demands your patience when you return and try to reignite that same spark you thought you’d felt the first time, if that makes sense. It reveals itself to you only if you stick with it. It’s still kind of wild to me that “Washed Away” was the first single for this, but the second I’m listening to it again, I’m picking up on a little vocal run I’d forgotten about and the song shifts into a different kind of focus for me. You have to give it your full attention in order to operate at the pace it sets. Even once you’ve sat through that listen where it clicks, you look back through the track list and have no idea how the fuck she did it.
To me, the title track going into “Bruises” is the key pairing here. “Raven” cracks like a glow stick the second it morphs from meditative drone into breakbeat banger, and then picks up again when it transitions into the following track. There, the dynamism of the production is so key, pulling its levers to push you forward and back in your seat until you’re positioned how she wants you, feeling the hum of the bass in the floor when you’re supposed to, willing your feet into movement, and then back down into your seat when she dictates it. It makes me think about people who say “emotional truth” isn’t possible in electronic music, or dance music broadly. LSDXOXO is behind a lot of these tracks, which is hardly surprising, because he’s one of the first names that comes to mind when you’re thinking of people working right now who symbolize that communion of the dance floor and depth of feeling.
I was talking to someone about how I feel like no one, at least around the time of the album’s release, was talking about it, and then realized that it might be because my main Twitter follower base was 30-something white men who love things that 30-something white men typically love. And that’s not to say they can’t enjoy this! It’s just that I was pretty much yelling into a hole at the time. My following has shifted slightly since then, so I get more of a response in these matters now.
*L’Rain - I Killed Your Dog
(October 13 on Mexican Summer - Neo-Psychedelia)
This will sound very esoteric and eye-roll-worthy and “girl, get the sage” of me, but I’ve been trying to land on what key descriptors I want to attach to this album, and one of my first thoughts is “mutable” — not in terms of literal sound, but in the astrological sense. Like, as a synonym for “adaptable.” We’re remolding wet clay, we’re letting ourselves slip out of any grip that tries to keep us in one place. I think “surrender” is an idea I keep coming back to as well. It’s gooey psychedelia, referential to the indie rock dudes but also completely eclipsing them by a wide margin. Every single blew my mind, and I say this as someone who has listened to the prior two L’Rain projects obsessively over the past few years.
I don’t know if Taja has talked about this as much in the press for the album, but as much as it’s her so-called “anti-breakup” album, it feels apocalyptic on a global scale, not just a personal one. Maybe “Our Funeral” kicking things off is what takes my mind here, but the vaguely upsetting, chaotic build of the title track just sounds like……acceptance after a horrifying act. The peace before you get caught, maybe. An obviously dark undercurrent to this swirling, ineffable work. I love the album artwork, but the “Pet Rock” single artwork is how the whole thing makes me feel. “Eating all the walruses, keeping all the tusks / You didn’t think this would come out of me,” followed by that incredible spoken second half in “5 to 8 Hours a Day”? Jesus H.
A fun fact we’ve gotten from this press cycle is Taja loves my personal favorite dive bar — mentioned in several newsletters on this Substack! We also appreciate the Punjabi Deli shoutout, right around the corner. Can’t keep the East Village classics down.
*Lauren Auder - The Infinite Spine
(July 21 on True Panther - Art Pop/Baroque Pop)
This was kind of my wild card add here, and we’ll talk about the other albums that could’ve potentially taken its place in a hot minute. However, I first need to say this: the song “equus” is probably a top ten song of the year for me. It’s a situation where it came on for the first time — buried in the middle of the track list — and I said, “Oh, this is definitely a cover and I’m just not cool enough to have heard the original,” and I was absolutely wrong and not familiar with Miss Auder’s game, as the kids say.
Sam Goldner’s Pitchfork review of this album actually touches on most of the points I was planning on making here about it, but I will highlight a few things that I think ignited my fascination to begin with. First of all, it’s the…almost-uncool embrace of big, anthemic piano pop. My first thought was like, post-Viva La Vida Coldplay, though the review mentions Vanessa Carlton. Don’t let that scare you off, because it’s buried under gorgeous, occasionally experimental baroque pop arrangements and paired with these insanely catchy melodies that feel like they’ve fallen out of the sky and you’re positive you’ve heard them at the club before but you can’t remember who sings the version you heard. As with a lot of my favorite writing, it deals with the corporeal and the grotesque— growing an extra rib to survive, being sewn into a horse’s stomach — but musically, it seems to look for the spaces where the body isn’t, where light can pass through and fall upon us, where we can decide what judgements we make based on where and what the light hits. It cuts through flesh when it needs to, but it just so clearly sounds like searing white light to me that you can’t help but produce angelic adjectives to describe it. If L’Rain is all swirling colors, this is soft neutral tones that grow more bright and intense as the sound crescendos.
This is just a “me” thing, but this came out when I was dog sitting over the summer, so it will probably remain a warm weather listen for me. Like someone else is going to pay for my dinner and I get to lie down in the middle of the grass and get dizzy staring at a sky that’s about to open up to let torrential downpour through. Like sprawling over a too-clean bedspread in pajama shorts when I should be eating my lunch and letting the breeze in through the balcony door. All of that has nothing to do with the actual material, except maybe the sense of calm I feel by the time it’s finished. That’s its own kind of white light, maybe.
*McKinley Dixon - Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?
(June 2 on City Slang - Jazz Rap/Boom Bap)
This is one of those things where I am not — in this capacity, at least, where I am talking about my own experience and not writing for a professional profile or review — necessarily qualified to editorialize in terms of its subject matter. One obvious thing I will note is that it makes me think of home, and that surely has something to do with the fact that the passage from Jazz which opens the album is literally about the neighborhood I stay in now. I know McKinley isn’t from here specifically (the world doesn’t revolve around us as a city, I knowwwww), but I think that in the willingness to get experimental or pause mid-song and let it meld into something new, there is the spirit of any city with distinctive character and a deep connection to the group of people who carry its torch.
There are musical passages on this thing that make me feel like the floor is shifting under me and all the furniture is sliding to one side of the room as the building tilts. Don’t get me wrong, it has hooks to spare, but its sheer brilliance — just from a formal standpoint — is in the moments it breaks free from any type of expectation you had going into it, where it can melt into jazzy interlude or celebratory stadium banger. I love every sucker punch and the way he makes you hold the pose you picked for when he threw it. I love everyone featured on this (we live in the United States of Angelica Garcia, you all know this). Just a half-hour of you saying, wow, I’m so lucky to be living at the same time as an artist like this. So excellent.
*Mitski - The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We
(September 15 on Dead Oceans - Singer-Songwriter/Indie Folk/Americana)
We know her, we love her, and now everyone else loves her too, which is…..what it is. It’s good in terms of how broader music history will canonize her, seeing as she’s one of the best we have. Friend-of-the-newsletter Grace and I were talking about how she’s (fairly, understandably) gone full Fiona now in terms of showing up when she wants to show up and where she wants to show up. Her newfound shooters did Not like when I pointed out that they may be overwhelming her by putting her in such a position, and they started attacking me on Twitter! They didn’t like when she asked them not to film her whole show either! All of this makes me very glad I’ve already seen Mitski three separate times before the clock app blow-up — including when she opened for Lorde on the Melodrama tour and the people sitting behind me said she had no stage presence — so now I never have to brave the crowds she attracts to go see her again. I can just enjoy this album in the comfort of my headphones. If anyone understand that stance, it’s her.
I was re-listening to this album last night, and it just kind of affirmed that this is easily a top three record she’s ever made. It’s been so fun watching the videos her people clearly made her film in one go so they could roll them out over time about the making of the album. It was sooooo fun watching her and her producer talk about the album’s writing and production process here. Loping Patsy Cline balladry which turns sinister, skittering percussion under lush string arrangements, gorging yourself and throwing up all over the pedal steel — she just nails all of it.
Is anyone shocked that I heard “I’m Your Man” once and then had to listen to it obsessively for weeks afterward? Of course you’re not. It was really interesting to read through other people’s interpretations of it; it felt like a common one came from people who feel they’re difficult and are in relationships with great people who don’t deserve their difficulty. Not to cue the violins or bring up the whole no-one-I’ve-wanted-to-be-in-a-relationship-with-has-ever-liked-me thing (lol), but my mind didn’t go to the same place — it definitely went towards Certain familial relationships instead. Anyway, my point here is that this was a really interesting topic of conversation amongst people I know until Mitski told us it was written from the perspective of the patriarch in her head — hence the pirate singalong at the end. Buzzards scream in the night. I think all of our interpretations can still be true.
Also? “When I'm bent over, wishing it was over / Making all variety of vows I'll never keep / I try to remember the wrath of the devil / Was also given him by God”? She’s a gift.
*Model/Actriz - Dogsbody
(February 24 on True Panther - Noise Rock/Dance-Punk/Industrial Rock)
Biggest bummer of the year for me is that I was really trying to get this one publication to let me profile this band and they kept dragging their feet on it after initially claiming to love the idea, and then they ghosted me under weird circumstances (not the band’s fault — their team wasn’t involved in my beef, don’t worry). Anyway, I did get to see Model/Actriz live at Knockdown Center, and it was….I don’t want to say “scary.” It’s not like I feared for my safety or anything, but the whole point of it is that it’s confrontational. Good-scary. Cole jumped off the stage pretty early on and performed multiple songs in the audience — I have a video of him right next to me trying to get us all to jump. There was one point where he had the whole crowd crouch down and made us stay there together for a hot minute.
It was intense, but it’s what you should expect from what’s presented here on the record. I know they opened for Interpol at the Beacon, and I’d be interested to hear how their set translated with that same visceral energy in an ornate theater like that. Anyway, yeah, you can guess this band’s influences, and that’s fine, but the key here (as we’ll get into with my next pick as well) is that it’s presented in a fresh package. I highly recommend you actually pull up Lyric Genius on your third or fourth listen, because the lyrics are unexpectedly beautiful. Most importantly, you can dance to it. Sometimes, that’s all it takes for me. I generally think RateYourMusic is mostly for suckers and people who need to be told what to like, but I remember seeing someone on there saying this sounded like the diary of a serial killer set to a beat or something like that. Well, yes! That’s why we’re fans here, babes!
*Nourished By Time - Erotic Probiotic 2
(April 21 on Scenic Route - Alternative R&B)
If you don’t think I started shouting “CONNECTOR!!!” in my head at every inopportune moment after I listened to “Daddy” for the first time, you'd be wrong.
I think what made me fall so hard for this album in the first place was that it’s nothing like I expected it to be, maybe just even based on the cover alone. Very few people were discussing it, despite its Pitchfork coverage (the Bible you people live and fucking die by, I know this), so I just decided to check it out on a whim and now I know it pretty much word-for-word, note-for-note, front to back. It pulls from a disparate set of influences, yet blends them so perfectly that it feels wholly original and just birthed from the sheer love of Euro pop and new wave and R&B girl bands. It’s almost perfect to me. An extremely hopeful album, in a lot of ways. An extremely romantic album that understands societal restrictions which prevent us from spending too much of our time in love. Genuinely moving at points, but never corny. Hearing Marcus speak in the few interviews he’s done is also really inspiring, because you can tell it all really comes from that place. I would love to speak to him, and it wouldn’t necessarily have to be in a professional setting; I would just want to tell him that I get it. I’m really glad I was able to champion this album and get at least a few other people into it this year. That’s kind of the best part of all of this.
Anyway, I already wrote blurbs about this record for the end of the year, but I just wanted to flag for my New York friends that he’s playing at the Abortion Access Benefit show at Bowery Ballroom in the new year. I’m super excited to catch his set after missing the Vagabon date he played here, but I also think you should look into coming because the government thinks of people who can get pregnant as animals they can herd and kill and you should consider giving money to this cause anyway. So yeah.
*Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
(October 6 on Asthmatic Kitty - Indie Folk/Singer-Songwriter/Chamber Folk)
There is a “before” and an “after” with the story of this release, and if you’re actively reading this list, I’m assuming you at least casually follow Sufjan and you know what the news which comes between is. If not, you can read this post (which isn’t the event I’m referring to, but provides important context) and then this post afterwards. So, there’s that.
In the “before” times, I was nervous about the “return to form” threats I heard about this album, because the obvious question for me — as an Age of Adz stan until the end — is “What form?” Sufjan exists in so many different iterations, which is why he avoids the boring-white-man-with-guitar tag that we discussed earlier. Again, not similar to Elliott at all really, but if Elliott’s work is about a desperate search for something to cling to or believe in, Sufjan’s is an exploration of that which he knows he has faith in. The faith is questioned, just as his love or disdain can be, but it’s not an outright rejection. It’s a complicating embracing, if anything. I find a lot of my favorite moments in my absolute favorite Sufjan songs read as hymn-like or devotional, repeating passages and layering them in order to give what could be a simple phrase the weight of his love by making it heavier and heavier until he cuts it free, leaving us to spiral when the resulting lightness hits us square in the jaw.
My first thought when considering those moments is of “I Want to Be Well,” and the adamant repetition of “I’m not fucking around” (maybe my favorite moment in all of Sufjan’s work so far, if we’re being honest).
I think of the “We were in love, we were in love” refrain that plays “The Predatory Wasp…” out.
I think of the chorus of “In The Devil’s Territory,” a song which stops me in my fucking tracks and has me sweating like a June bride every time I hear it.
I think of the repetition of his sister’s name — “Djohariah” — until it becomes a sacred incantation of all women. On the beginning of that same project, I think of a falsetto “Oh, I love you a lot, I love you from the top of my heart” that would sound like an unconvincing attempt at subversion of an overused phrase if sung in anyone else’s voice, but which sounds like the decree of god coming out of Sufjan.
I think of the “Raise you right hand, tell me you want me in your life” in “Blue Bucket of Gold” and the knowledge that silence will follow. It’s the knowledge that you’d pick loneliness every time if you couldn’t get what you wanted, and you hear that sentiment resound in the song’s final minute-and-a-half.
Javelin — as an entire record — blends the best musical impulses Sufjan has explored before and serves as a loving and devastating tribute to a partner lost. The whole album is worth your time, but if you needed to, you could break it all down into one singular moment. Halfway through the gorgeous, unbearable emotional tumult of “Shit Talk” and a repeated round of “Hold me closely, hold me tightly lest I fall,” Sufjan sings the first of many “No, I don’t wanna fight at all”s, and he lets his voice scrape against the last word of it.
This precedes the overwhelming build of each hymnal line repeated thus far in the song, followed by an equally-devastating, wordless passage that ends the song. But everything is contained in that one “all” and the scrape up against it. I can feel my throat closing up now just typing this and thinking about it. That “all” alone makes me hope that Sufjan gets everything he could ever want as long as we have him. It makes me really hope for his physical healing and his general well-being going forward. It almost makes me want to pray to whatever he believes in.
So now that we got through our tentative top ten(-ish), let move on to……
Our Lovely Fifth Alternates (yes, this is an alyssa edwards reference): the 50-something runners-up
a.s.o. - a.s.o.
(June 2 on Low Lying - Trip Hop/Ethereal Wave)
If trip hop comes back and it’s not actually good, what’s the point? I’ve been revisiting Tricky’s 90s output recently, and I wouldn’t say this eclipses it, but at its best moments, it gives me the same buzz.
Amaarae - Fountain Baby
(June 9 on Interscope - Alternative R&B/Afrobeats)
From my summer listening newsletter: I have the sneaking suspicion that many major pop albums made over the next five years will take something from this album – Afrobeats, as a genre descriptor, is sort of already having its day in the sun, but this is what will blow it up beyond saturation point eventually. That being said, I beg you to dig beyond the singles – my favorite track on here is maybe “Sex, Violence, Suicide,” which starts out as sort of a dreamy, reverb-y track that kinda goes nowhere and then morphs into like…a bratty punk breakdown two-thirds of the way through? Incredible. There are terms we throw around willy-nilly here, and “having range” is one of them, but I think it’s apt in this scenario! “Sociopathic Dance Queen” sounds like a title I would come up with for something, so. I can’t leave her hanging.
bar italia - Tracey Denim
(May 19 on Matador - Slacker Rock)
As the W.O.P. (Winter of Pulp) soldiers on, I am duty bound to report that bar italia has yet to make a song that is as good as the song they’re named after. However, while understanding the haters’ perspective, I am generally pro-this band. I didn’t listen to the second album they put out this year enough to have a real take on it, but I kept returning to this one and having major light bulb moments with a different track each time — it has replay value, I promise you! “yes i have eaten so many lemons i am so bitte” is a certified Good Song in my book. I would start there if you’re thinking of dipping your toe in.
Being Dead - When Horses Would Run
(July 14 on Bayonet - Indie Rock/Indie Surf)
On the opposite end of the bar italia look-at-me-being-cool-and-referencing-cool-stuff spectrum (And there’s room for that! Don’t get me wrong! A lot of my favorite artists of all time are based off of that template!), I love when bands are just effortlessly weird like this. It feels like they just sprung from the ground doing this strange, beautiful 90s-does-60s stuff that never feels like pastiche. It’s out of step with the “indie moment” in the best way. I didn’t know they were from Austin until just now when I looked them up, but of course they are.
billy woods & Kenny Segal - Maps
(May 5 on Backwoodz - Abstract Hip Hop/Jazz Rap)
There’s been a lot of good writing this year about this album, so I feel kind of dumb trying to tackle it in any original way. After billy’s two great projects last year, this feels transitional both in terms of sonics and subject — it’s also very clearly a New York album to me, which will win me over every time. I think I’m going to send “NYC Tapwater” to my mom because she’s probably said “Best tap water in the world! It’s the vitamins!” more times to me than she’s said anything else. Many are saying this (and “many” is billy and Kenny).
Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
(February 14 on Sony Music/The Orchard/Perpetual Novice - Art Pop/Alt Pop/Electronic)
Longest rollout in a minute, we’ve all covered it — and I think some people are underrating it for that reason. I’m not going to name names….but your “takes” (a generous word for what they are, frankly) have been noted. Anyway, multiple songs of the year amongst the new tracks here! The Grimes/Dido collab is the only miss for me (can’t deal with Claire singing about El*n, for one thing, but it’s not anything to speak of beyond that either), but that’s still a pretty incredible hit-miss ratio.
Cleo Reed - Root Cause
(February 23 on Reeding - Neo-Soul/Alternative R&B)
So, you all need to get the fuck into this now. Ella Moore (former member of Pretty Sick) is behind this project, and I found myself returning to it as the year went on and after it got maybe like…one Bandcamp list mention and no other press (that I saw)? It’s intentionally messy, like you can hear the seams on it, but really beautifully written and performed. Not tender, but gentle, as the album bio says. Not afraid to get weird either.
The Clientele - I Am Not There Anymore
(July 28 on Merge - Chamber Pop/Indie Pop)
A pleasant surprise for me, just because I’ve never been a huge Clientele person. It’s just one of those bands I’ve never gotten the chance to get into. This is just so much more complex than a release from a band this far in their career ever has to be. It came out in the middle of summer, but I remember thinking, Oh, this is going to be a great winter album. So far, I’ve been correct.
CMAT - Crazymad, for Me
(October 13 on AWAL - Pop Rock/Alt-Country)
As newsletter readers who were around last year will know, I have made it my personal mission to spread the CMAT gospel on this side of the Atlantic. I was in contact with her team this year to hopefully get to profile her, but I couldn’t get anyone from any of the pubs they were interested in to answer my emails. So! Maybe next time around. Even compared to her last release, you can tell there’s been a huge artistic leap. This is largely more subdued, but also feels more three-dimensional, like she needs to come up for air more often in order to work through the heavier shit on full display. Just such a talent. You will all see me covered in glitter at her show when she’s here in April.
Daneshevskaya - Long Is the Tunnel
(November 10 on Winspear - Chamber Pop/Indie Rock)
After maybe your third listen-through of this (because I think it demands those replays of you), it will suddenly hit you right in the center of your forehead that this is some of the best songwriting on any album this year. So, so, so beautiful. Hit after hit.
Decisive Pink - Ticket to Fame
(June 9 on Fire - Minimal Wave/Indietronica)
Not to be a “two divas coming together to maximize their joint slay” person…but Kate NV knew it wasn’t enough to just put out ONE great album this year. They got Deradoorian on the horn and said “the people demand more” and they were right.
Decuma - let’s play pretend!
(March 20 on Waveform Alphabet - Experimental Hip Hop)
A difficult but startlingly original listen. Holy shit. Decuma also put out a much longer, even more ambitious album out in the back half of the year, and it all just makes me so excited to hear what they do next. Again, I’m so lucky to have discovered so much work this year that demands so much of the listener. We have other stuff to return to for passivity, and this release is not one of those (in the best possible way).
Dolly Valentine - The In-Between
(September 15 on AWAL - Singer-Songwriter/Alt-Country)
This was a last-minute inclusion, and I feel like the best way I can describe it is to say I got really into it around the time I saw Priscilla. The production design of that movie sounds like this album — huge manicure budget and soft, stuffy lighting (though not as suffocating as in that house). Really lovely, simple songwriting that you can get drunk off of as you huff the polish remover fumes and keeps drawing you back in.
Dorthia Cottrell - Death Folk Country
(April 21 on Relapse - Gothic Country/Psychedelic Folk)
From my summer listening newsletter: I think this was one of Bandcamp’s weekly picks when it came out, so that’s how I discovered it, and it’s been in heavy rotation ever since. The title pretty much tells you what you’re gonna get, though it’s more “atmospheric, mystical folk” than “country.” I, personally, always eat stuff like this right up. Sometimes, it’s disheartening that all music can’t sound this evil. Truly sinister – which is like the biggest compliment I can give this.
Eartheater - Powders
(September 20 on Chemical X - Art Pop/Electronic)
IIIIIII CRYYYYY!!!!! WHEN ANGELS DESERVE TO DIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! (You don’t need to know anything else.)
Elaine Malone - Pyrrhic
(September 8 on Faction/Pizza Pizza - Psychedelic Folk)
Sometimes people write and produce work that is so me-coded that I have no choice but to obnoxiously tweet “wow they made this for me” over and over again. This is what Elaine Malone has done here. Dark, slightly spacey bloodlust that relishes the echo in the room. Plenty of moments where things feel like they’re being yelled or played back to hear the boomerang of sound. While I was listening, it made me think of the really good Scout Gillett album from last year, but if you replaced all of the twang with a druggy punk-blues obsession. Again, I think the space is what I hear similarly between the two albums — this one is definitely more muscular, more antagonistic (and I mean that in the most complimentary way). Truly an exciting new entry into the canon of my favorite genre (haunted house music).
En Attendant Ana - Principia
(January 27 on Trouble in Mind - Indie Pop/Jangle Pop)
Yes, the rumors are true: sometimes I do get tired of being a vampire and cautiously step out into (checking my notes real quick to make sure I get this right) “daylight” to get my Vitamin D. This has soundtracked most of those times out. Not a single rough edge on it, but it charms you so quickly that curmudgeons like me don’t even get the chance to clock it.
Fever Ray - Radical Romantics
(March 10 on Rabid/Mute - Art Pop/Synth Pop)
Do you want to dance to a diss track about someone’s kid’s high school bully? Do you want to it be way better than it has any right being? Of course you do. Absolute international treasure Karin Dreijer has you covered.
Geese - 3D Country
(June 23 on Partisan - Indie Rock/Art Rock/Roots Rock)
Did I “enjoy” writing this down here? It’s a question with a multi-layered answer. I’ll be honest: I had the advance of this in my inbox for a few months before its release, and it just was not clicking for me. I said, “This has nothing to do with me.” And yet! Once it actually came out, I found myself swayed by its creative blend of country-rock revivalism, Jeff Buckley hero-worship vocalization and proggy arrangements. The Bushwick boy you have an unrequited crush on? This is his AOTY, and you should accept that. He could’ve picked so much worse.
Grian Chatten - Chaos For The Fly
(June 30 on Partisan - Singer-Songwriter/Chamber Pop)
“Bob’s Casino” SOTY contender! A punk-adjacent frontman going solo and more “introspective” is a recipe for disaster under most circumstances, but I knew Grian wouldn’t let me down. Some really gorgeous moments on here. Just the phrasing and delivery of “You think that you know me / You’re below me / And you don’t” earns it this spot.
H. Hawkline - Milk for Flowers
(March 10 on Heavenly - Psychedelic Pop/Progressive Pop)
Aldous Harding X Cate Le Bon delivered by the man connecting them — also known as “Catnip For Elise” (trademark symbol). Big Kinks moments in a few spots here. There is one little vocal melody at the beginning of “Plastic Man” that never repeats in the exact same way again (during “Heat so hot you think you’ll drown”) and it feels like I’m in love with someone every time I hear it.
Holy Tongue - Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare
(April 28 on Amidah - Electronic/Dub)
I’m really not sure if this is a “best” of this year, but it’s one I’ve been using as commute music a lot and it’s also made me think I need to get back into another dub phase. If you’re looking for an engaging instrumental listen that you can put on and sort of dance to while you’re working or walking or whatever, this is the one. I want to hear a bunch more of these immediately.
Hilary Woods - Acts of Light
(November 3 on Sacred Bones - Dark Ambient/Drone)
Not all drone music works for me, but Hilary always gets me together. Her experimental stuff with more vocals has always, to me, felt like the closest thing we have now to peak-harmonium-loving, Desertshore-era Nico — just energy-wise. Even when she’s doing something more “traditionally” ambient here, it still taps into that same……I don’t know what I’d call it. “Darkness” feels too easy. It doesn’t encompass enough as a single word. It’s not “sadness” either, because darkness isn’t inherently sad, it just is. Hilary Woods sounds like she knows darkness without a sense of dread. She knows the stillness of it and wants you to languish in each of its layers, more complex as they get darker. If any of that made sense.
JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown - Scaring The Hoes
(March 24 on AWAL - Experimental Hip Hop/Hardcore Hip Hop)
The upsetting truth: the worst “music guy” you know looooves this album. A less upsetting truth: I do think a lot of this is really brilliantly done — I just have to dodge the discourse, no worries.
Katie Dey - Never Falter Hero Girl
(October 27, self-released - Indietronica)
My favorite Katie project in a hot minute. I had to hold my breath through a lot of my first listen to “dance butterflies” because I didn’t want any other sound interrupting it. This is one of those where in a few years everyone’s gonna go “Oh my god, why didn’t we give this all of the flowers in the world when it first came out?” and I’m gonna be insufferable, as I am wont to do.
Katie Gately - Fawn / Brute
(March 31 on Houndstooth - Post-Industrial/Art Pop)
Honestly, a contender for my top ten. Gets complicated and abrasive when it needs to but never leans too far from its hooky core. Again! Wild that this seemed to fall off of everyone’s radar literally the second after it came out! Here to avenge!
koleżanka - Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes
(February 14 on Bar None - Progressive Pop)
Another one of those little delightful things where a little instrumental choice or musical shift between tracks will make you go “Oh!” aloud, Sabrina Brier-style (but in a good way), and then you just sit in anticipation for what beautiful little turn will follow it.
Liv.e - Girl in the Half Pearl
(February 10 on In Real Life Music/AWAL - Neo-Soul/Alternative R&B/Neo-Psychedelia)
From my summer listening newsletter: Weirdo neo-psychedelia with a neo-soul bent. Alternates between like, great, catchy, self-contained songs and experimental interludes, which lets it balance both cohesion and sprawl in a way I find super compelling. This feels fresh in a way that not a lot does to me at this stage in the game. Other people exist in her avenue, broadly but not in this specific lane, if that makes sense.
Locate S,1 - Wicked Jaw
(July 28 on Captured Tracks - Indie Pop/Art Pop)
Remember when a Tennis album came out this year? I have a foggy memory of it, but can’t swear that it actually happened. Anyway, this is the kind of shit I wish they were doing now. She just understands that pop songs need to be sticky and interesting in order for me to give a shit. Also, I feel like we’ve largely lost our way in terms of songs about social situations or “protest” music — a lot vague statements of unity that end up saying nothing and also don’t make for great songs themselves. Why the fuck do you think I spent years of my youth going all the way back to The Clash for this? If every song about the shit show of the world we live in was arranged and delivered like “Blue Meaniez,” my life would be dramatically improved.
Lucy Liyou - Dog Dreams
(May 12 on American Dreams - Electroacoustic/Ambient)
Again, just scratches that elusive ambient itch for me. Act of Light almost feels like the more appropriate title for this album — the atmosphere it builds is warm and intriguing and feels like the proverbial walk from cracking the blinds to being engulfed in heat. Just so gorgeous.
Mandy, Indiana - i’ve seen a way
(May 19 on Fire Talk - Post-Industrial)
I don’t want to feed into stereotypes or be A Horrible Woman…….but I really wish I could hear this in a club setting, because I have a sneaking suspicion that people who are big Mandy, Indiana fans are not people who love to dance with reckless abandon (this was a joke, I wasn’t at the show, I’m also a music writer so I can make fun of music writers, don’t subtweet me about me being holier than thou or something). Anyway, I’ve been dancing to it like an idiot after one (1) margarita in the kitchen instead.
Maria BC - Spike Field
(October 20 on Sacred Bones - Singer-Songwriter/Psychedelic Folk)
This is another album, not unlike Kelela’s, that I’ve had to have patience with. I mean, I liked pretty much every song immediately, but I’ve been trying to do this thing where I consciously sit with this album and let myself listen for surprises each time. I listened to “Mercury” lying on my parents’ living room floor the other day and trying to breathe with it, and it felt like a holy experience.
Marina Herlop - Nekkuja
(October 27 on PAN - Avant-Folk/Electronic)
Remember last year when I said “Marina Herlop army, stand up!!!” and you all stayed firmly seated??? Much to consider! Now is your chance to get on the train while all of the pubs continue to let it totally fly under the radar.
Mega Bog - End of Everything
(May 19 on Mexican Summer - Synth pop/New Wave/Art Pop)
When I saw Mega Bog open for Cate Le Bon last year, I think I judged them a little bit unfairly and I’ll admit that now. I just left kind of cold on them and I’m not totally sure why. However, this has proved me wrong. The best, most adventurous kind of synth pop. “Don’t Doom Me, Now” is perfect.
Midwife & Vyva Melinkolya - Orbweaving
(May 12 on The Flenser - Slowcore/Dream Pop/Shoegaze)
Every year I have a designated hangover album, and this year? Orbweaving takes the cake. No, I will not go into further detail on this.
Nation of Language - Strange Disciple
(September 15 on PIAS - Synthpop)
I mean…you know what you’re getting with this band, I’ll say that. While it’s not reinventing the wheel it spins on, it’s slingshotting hook after hook directly at your face from a point blank range and I think that’s something to celebrate! Love the opener on this one, like all of the singles, like most of the album tracks. I have acquaintances who are friends with them, but for some reason, I didn’t know what they looked like until last year when I saw them at the Rough Trade Rock Center festival. A bunch of attendees kept coming up to this group of suspiciously attractive people just hanging out, so I kept leaning over and looking at them funny, I guess, because they kept looking back at me kinda like “???”. Anyway, I’m up to speed now.
Oracle Sisters - Hydranism
(April 7 on 22TWENTY - Indie Rock/Psychedelic Pop)
See the En Attendant Ana entry re: me going outside sometimes, and copy-paste it here. The first time I listened to this, I went outside to greet our first spring-ish day of the year and had an allergy attack immediately. Listening to this after I recovered helped recreate what the outdoors might have felt like if my sinuses could’ve withstood it.
PJ Harvey - I Inside the Old Year Dying
(July 7 on Partisan - Art Rock)
You all know. You’ve read four million tweets about her from me, you read a whole edition of this newsletter about her from me. So easily one of my top five favorite musical artists of all time. I love this album, truly and sincerely. If I were to work this into the semi-objective original ranking I did for Paste like, a year-and-a-half ago, I would probably place this in a similar spot to A Woman A Man Walked By, which was ranked seventh — behind Dry but ahead of Uh Huh Her. She’s never made a bad album and I want so badly to tap into everything she is and the creative place she pulls from (most of her interviews from this album cycle have been especially helpful with that). She is everything I want to become in this life, and I don’t think that will change. You all know.
Pearla - Oh Glistening Onion, the Nighttime Is Coming
(February 10 on Spacebomb - Contemporary Folk/Chamber Pop)
Feels like an older sister album to the Dolly Valentine one. Really beautiful, complex songwriting and arrangements that cling to just the right amount of twang for me (you know I’m very touchy about what level of country music I can handle).
Rev. Kristin Michael Hayter - SAVED!
(October 20 on Perpetual Flame Ministries - Hymns/Southern Gospel)
I have written about Miss Hayter at length before, so I’m going to keep this brief. I will start by talking about other music I’ve been obsessively re-listening to as of late — namely, Gavin Bryars’ “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet,” a 25-minute orchestral piece built around a recorded sample of an unhoused man singing a version of the hymn of the same title, as produced by Brian Eno. It feels like the Reverend’s work (both as Lingua Ignota and now under her own name) is an extension of what this almost-50-year-old piece tries to accomplish: taking psalms of worship directed toward a deity and injecting them with the dizzying terror and confusion and hope we feel while we spin and wait for the unknown to engulf us. Tracking both how minuscule and how major that can feel. There is no one like her right now and we are so lucky to be witnessing her metamorphosis in real time.
Shana Cleveland - Manzanita
(March 10 on Hardly Art - Contemporary Folk/Singer-Songwriter)
Another total surprise for me this year — again, as the folky/country-adjacent picks usually are. This is what the people chasing Laurel Canyon-y shit should be cribbing from. Really gorgeous and memorable.
Snõõper - Super Snõõper
(July 14 on Third Man - Garage Punk)
From my summer listening newsletter: Quick, chaotic art-punk songs. My Twitter mutual and fellow Scorpio Anthony Fantano made a Suburban Lawns comparison, and that’s pretty much spot-on. I eat shit like that up, we all know this. I’ll probably have more to say after I see their set [Update: I ended up missing them live because I was so tired by like, 8 that day that I just went home early. Next time!], but if you want a fun, bizarre 20-minute listen to kick your month off, go for this.
Susanne Sundfør - blómi
(April 28 on Blomi/Bella Union/PIAS - Chamber Folk/Art Pop)
If you’ve found yourself loving any of the other singer-songwriter-adjacent projects I’ve put on here? You need to go do yourself the favor of listening to this, and then go back further in her discography. This is much mellower than her past work, but it feels like the correct evolution and still maintains this unpredictable, poetic quality that I like.
Sweeping Promises - Good Living Is Coming for You
(June 30 on Feel It/Sub Pop - Post-Punk/Art Punk)
From my summer listening newsletter: Another band that feels reverse-engineered for me to love them. Intentionally recorded to sound rough and primal, feels like it’s in that similar vein of Essential Logic or Pylon or maybe even ESG – but definitely with more conventional song structure than Snooper. I was unhealthily obsessed with the stand-alone single “Pain Without a Touch” they put out a few years ago, and even with all that anticipation on my end, I feel like this has only grown on me since it came out. This might actually be….my definitive album of this summer? If I had to pick one? I put it on when I’m doing stuff I find tedious at work or when I’m commuting or when I’m cleaning – it improves any activity I don’t want to do, and I feel like that’s a peak compliment.
Tinashe - BB/ANG3L
(September 8 on Nice Life - Alternative R&B/Electronic)
Ask any given Twitter pop girl stan: Tinashe should…..perhaps have the career that others have and are maybe not doing the most with! Who’s to say! They’re not entirely wrong!
Vagabon - Sorry I Haven’t Called
(September 15 on Nonesuch - Alt-Pop)
I’ve always really liked Vagabon. I love when Vagabon sounds like she’s having a fucking blast in these songs. To quote the material, she’s talking her shit! She writes effortless material that works with pretty much any group I may be in when I’m “DJing” (a generous description for what it is). Everyone making music in a similar lane right now wishes they could pull out a “Nothing to Lose.”
Wednesday - Rat Saw God
(April 7 on Dead Oceans - Indie Rock/Noise Rock)
……We’ve said enough, right? I like it, but not as much as you people do, so I’ll leave it to you. “Bath County” is easily the best song and other opinions are Wrong. XOXOXO
Xiu Xiu - Ignore Grief
(March 3 on Polyvinyl - Death Industrial/Experimental)
Another snub on many lists, which I can barely fathom or forgive! Xiu Xiu is one of those artists that usually has Music Critics Like Me (lightly derogatory) eating out of their hands, so I was actually kind of shocked by the shrug this was met with. Maybe I’m just going through it right now, but I’ll fight for this one! At some point, I will write a newsletter about My Fragrance Journey, and you can all roll your eyes and close out of the email then, but for now: I do connect one of my favorite scents I’ve found with this. It’s called Van Py Rhum, it’s made by the fragrance house Lorenzo Pazzaglia, and based on the name, this connection might be obvious. However, let me explain: it’s made with multiple types of vanilla and rum, with hints of patchouli, white flowers, oud, caramel and Tonka bean. I opened the sample expecting something sugary sweet or gourmand-ish, but I was just hit with pure rum — the lady standing next to me at Scent Bar said, “It smells like someone looking for trouble.” After that, it sort of lets all of that vanilla slowly overwhelm it, acting as a salve for that initial, almost-sterile alcoholic hit. I wouldn’t suggest that this album is as sensual as the perfume, but there’s a dissonance to it that works in a similar way. Funereal and scary and mechanical, but also comforting in a way I can’t entirely put my finger on. The kiss good night turns your stomach.
yeule - Softscars
(September 22 on Ninja Tune - Dream Pop/Indietronica)
I’m kind of excited how many people are probably going to discover them through this album, because it’s been getting way more hype than the last record (which made last year’s list!) did — definitely more accessible. The songs are stronger. Footage I’ve seen from this album tour went hard. It’s just all so thrilling to see and I have to be earnest about it!
Young Fathers - Heavy Heavy
(February 3 on Ninja Tune - Neo-Psychedelia/Art Pop)
I made the grave mistake of listening to this a few times at the beginning of the year and then sort of backing off from it for some reason. “Shoot Me Down” came into my queue at some point during November and I knew I had to double-back and right the wrong I’d committed. This is your sign to revisit and atone with me!
Yves Tumor - Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
(March 17 on Warp - Neo-Psychedelia/Post-Punk)
Listen, this was my one album review I wrote this year, and I liked this album. Do I think it’s better than the last album they put out? No. Do I think it feels like a natural progression from the last album? Yes. Do you have to love it? No. But I am being truthful and honest by telling you that I’m blasting this shit all the time. I listened to it non-stop for the month where I was trying to pull that review out of me and never once got sick of it, and I just have to ride for it now. I will take the stand against the naysayers. I am a warrior, all middle-aged podcasters fear me.
You can click that link and read more of my thoughts about it there for now, because we’re officially fucking DONE. Godspeed, my children. Free Palestine, keep talking about them as we sit here doing this frivolous bullshit for our holiday. They deserve to live and they’re asking us to amplify that right for them, so we owe them that, as people with compassion and love for our fellow humans. See you in the new year. XOXO Gossip Girl.