2023: The Good Stuff (Music)
My Top 30 albums of the year
Season’s greetings! List season, that is! As the calendar threatens to flip over into yet again, it’s high time to take stock of the art I’ve used to decorate the last 12 months. I’ve made lists of my favorite albums each year since I was 15. Though the results rarely hold up even months later, I enjoy the exercise of cataloging my feelings. The last few years, following my departure from Invisible Oranges and the comprehensive life-reorganizing demanded by the early 2020s, I’ve had a tougher time keeping up with new releases and thus haven’t been to compile a list that lived up to my own standards. Well, in 2023 I finally caught up. To close off this year, I’d like to offer you my list of the 30 best albums of the year.
Because many of these albums will already be familiar to anyone who’s followed along with my Listening Diary this year, I’m going to give brief descriptions and suggestions for the best listening experience in lieu of traditional blurbs. Don’t agree with my picks? Glaring omissions? Correct me in the comments!
The Top 30 Albums of 2023 (For Now)1
30. One Day by Fucked Up
What is it: Aging punks mellow out and sing some hooks without losing their edge.
How to listen: At a moderate volume while cooking a plant based dinner, you may crack open either one (1) good beer or two (2) cheap beers after three songs.
29. Vanta by BEAR
What is it: Impersonal, mechanical European metalcore with surprisingly sharp songwriting and just enough melody to keep it from burning out but not so much that you start worrying about their haircuts.
How to listen: During push day at a gym where all the weights are represented in irrational numbers.
28. Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)) by jaimie branch
What is it: Posthumous release from the jazz trumpeter and New York City artist-about-town.
How to listen: While writing a letter to a friend you’ve been meaning to reach out to for a while now, or while dancing so hard that you disrupt traffic.
27. Maps by billy woods
What is it: Standoffish underground rap from half of Armand Hammer about the drudgery of touring life.
How to listen: No sooner than 45 minutes after driving out of one city and no later than 45 minutes away from arriving at the next. Whoever’s DJ-ing in the car is encouraged to pause so band & crew members can chime in with their own thoughts about life on the road, unless this would annoy the driver.
26. Void by KEN Mode
What is it: Winnipeg’s meanest noise rock band gets creative with their new bandmate behind the keys and saxophone.
How to listen: While gripping your steering wheel so hard that your knuckles turn white, waiting for traffic or for anything to improve by just one inch.
25. Blight Year by Anti-God Hand
What is it: Technical and harmonically rich American black metal, featuring super-drummer Greg Fox.
How to listen: Play in between chunks of continental philosophy, if something doesn’t make sense in either the text or the music, try again from the start until it clicks.
24. The Path Narrows by Baring Teeth
What is it: Texas death metal trio find new ways to tickle the darker crevices of your brain without relying on any of the tricks in the book that have been smudged with overuse.
How to listen: With a bucket nearby in case the see-sawing tempos and ungrounded dissonances make you seasick.
23. Objects Without Pain by Great Falls
What is it: You see that KEN Mode album a few spots back? It’s like that but even more fucked up.
How to listen: From a safe distance.
22. Dance You Monster to My Soft Song! by Victory Over the Sun
What is it: One exhibit among many in the case proving that trans women are making the most interesting heavy music on the planet right now. All due respect, but we all should have seen that coming right? Zero concern for subgenres or song structures, endlessly inventive.
How to listen: While getting freakishly good at a new niche hobby you’ve picked up, like horticulture or painting Warhammer miniatures.
21. Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? by Lana Del Rey
What is it: The latest leisurely stroll through the shadowy corners of Americana glamor bolstered by Lana Del Rey’s witty barbs and reverence for classic songwriting.
How to listen: With an edible and a bottle of wine at sundown, don’t overthink this. Consider powerlifting the morning before, though.
20. Desde Bajo Tierra by Vórtize
What is it: One guy from Chile writing the best Iron Maiden songs in decades, overdubbing a miniature choir of backing vocalists, and whistling his way through solo sections.
How to listen: Clench your fist in righteous determination, point at the horizon, nod solemnly, and solider on. Don’t worry too much about the pitchy vocals, the rawness is the charm.
19. Zango by Witch
What is it: “Reunion” record from the surviving members of the legendary Zamrock act, ready to groove in the name of unity.
How to listen: Outside when it’s almost too hot but not quite, in the sun, with good food on the grill and friends on the way.
18. Coronet Juniper by Gridlink
What is it: International grindcore speedsters return with three albums worth of notes crammed into the space of a sitcom.
How to listen: In the background while you try to beat the next boss in Armored Core.
17. Love in Exile by Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily
What is it: Lengthy ambient meditation from three artists drawing from a wealth of different improvised traditions.
How to listen: During a soft rain storm with your electronic devices turned off.
16. Everyone’s Crushed by Water From Your Eyes
What is it: Idiosyncratic art pop that, judging by its awesome cover, is too cool for any category as worn out as “slacker rock”.
How to listen: Build a lego structure whose design and scope will perplex and delight your roommates or significant other.
15. The Enduring Spirit by Tomb Mold
What is it: Canadian death metal up-and-commers emerge from the cave of nostalgia to observe the glittering sun of PROG.
How to listen: Put this on when you debut that Blue-Black control deck you’ve been building to shock the rest of your Magic: The Gathering buddies into submission.
14. The King by Anjimile
What is it: A meticulously detailed record of lyric-forward art pop, wracked with enough emotion to make Shinji Ikari blush.
How to listen: Right before or right after you visit your family for the holidays, depending on how badly you want that to go.
13. BB/ANG3L by Tinashe
What is it: Underdog pop star finally finds the right production to reach the potential her early work promised.
How to listen: Hit play 30 minutes before you hit the town in a new outfit that you’re real excited about.
12. SPELLLING & the Mystery School Band by SPELLLING
What is it: Baroque art pop singer teams up with a backing band to re-record old tunes live, accentuating the theatrical verve of the material.
How to listen: While obscured by a veil of fog.
11. Swatta by Chepang
What is it: Nepalese grindcore made with plenty of help from the north east coast metal and noise scene that pushes the genre’s speed and intensity into psychedelic extremes.
How to listen: At dawn on the last day of a long, long hiking trip.
10. Ontological Mysterium by Horrendous
What is it: Philly’s best death metal band avert their gaze from the glittering sun of PROG and find joy in the simple pleasures of classic heavy metal.
How is it: While riding a motorcycle made of alien technology on the astral plane through HELL.
9. My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross by Anohni and the Johnsons
What is it: Classic rock from a better world, one that we should try to deserve living in.
How to listen: I don’t know man, when that voice comes on all other activity stops.
8. Legacy of Frailty by Woe
What is it: One man Brooklyn-based black metal band and Ampwall founder returns after six years with a bone to pick with everyone.
How to listen: On a solitary walk through an urban park on a cold day, contemplating dead leaves and dead ends.
7. A New Tomorrow by Zulu
What is it: Vicious modern hardcore interwoven with samples and soundbites to create a tapestry of furious hope.
How to listen: On the way to your nearest anti-war protest.
6. Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? by Kara Jackson
What is it: An extremely impressive debut album of folk songs backed by the always superb Sooper crew that earns comparisons to a young Joni Mitchell with both its style and raw quality.
How to listen: Early morning, with something warm to drink, before the world wakes up but after the pain has settled into a dull ache.
5. Shook by Algiers
What is it: The singular industrial soul act from Atlanta overturn the melting pot of American music and let the heat burn down everything in their path.
How to listen: On your way back from the anti-war protest, when your stamina is low and the sense of futility is starting to set in.
4. 93696 by Liturgy
What is it: Fellow Substacker Haela Ravenna Hunt Hendrix stretches Liturgy’s high-minded approach to black metal to symphonic lengths, aiming for religious ecstacy for a faith yet invented.
How to listen: In a church of your own design, with the sheet music in front of you.
3. 72 Seasons (Ian’s Version) by Metallica
What is it: Metallica’s latest (last?) studio album, with careful edits to the track order so as to not bury the best Metallica songs of the Trujillo era under some of the worst. With the excess tracks removed, 72 Seasons is the best Metallica album since The Black Album, in which the band return to their earliest influences and reflect on the lessons they’ve learned in the years since.
How to listen: Soberly, while taking stock of how long Metallica have been in your life, how much you’ve grown since 2003 and miraculously how much they’ve grown since then as well, reconnect with the parts of your inner teenager worth saving, keep a tissue handy for the harmonized leads in the last two tracks.
2. Agriculture by Agriculture
What is it: The latest salvo in California’s attempt to win the American black metal mantle once and for all, synthesizing the last decade’s academic and populist takes on the genre into a single invigorating bolt across the night sky.
How to listen: While irrigating a field.
1. 10,000 gecs by 100 gecs
What is it: The voice of and scapegoat for all things Gen Z follow up their obnoxious but electrifying debut with the most creative take on the capabilities of mainstream rock in years.
How to listen: Loudly, with friends, laughing and yelling frequently enough to annoy everyone else around you. Drink an energy drink. Tell croaks at the party. Punch a referee. For god’s sake just have fun.
Up next: Images (movies) and Words (books)!
I’ve elected to omit any albums from friends and collaborators because it feels gross to rank them against each other, let alone alongside records that I have more critical distance from. So Colony Drop, Fust, Gabby’s World, Stuck, Dreamwheel, Vines, Shalom, Another Heaven, Michael Cormier-O’Leary, Another Michael, and all the rest of my talented friends, don’t fret if you don’t find your name below. If you’re a stranger and you don’t see your album listed its because I’ve harbored a secret grudge against you for years and specifically left you off to spite you, hope that clears it up.