10 Albums for 2023 (so far)
I listened to about 150 new albums this year. These 10 have made a lasting impression.
My partner co-hosts a podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect called Endless Scroll. Ever heard of it? If you’re here, you probably have.
The fearsome foursome of Endless Scroll just revealed their top ten favorite releases of 2023 so far. Ranking episodes are always fun! We can debate the merits of ranking things (I tend to think that, after a top 10, it’s somewhat pointless), we can force ourselves to think critically about why some releases hit just a little harder than others, or we can just consume the content. I like to consume the content.
Honorable mentions include any project from a Philly artist I spend time with regularly, like ther’s a horrid whisper echoes in a palace of endless joy, Swim Camp’s Steel Country, or Greg Mendez’s self-titled LP. Philly is a special city where I have been wildly lucky to meet talented musicians who push feverishly for a stronger music community.
Onto the goods:
10. Indigo de Souza - All of This Will End (Saddle Creek, 4/28)
The follow-up to de Souza’s Saddle Creek breakout record, Any Shape You Take, April’s All of This Will End excited me from its first announcement. Critically, the lead single “Younger and Dumber” was a home run (and remains my favorite, due to crying a lot), but between my friends, it was a splitter: it’s a more restrained, park-and-bark ballad. While it has a brilliant climax, it’s one of de Souza’s more understated songs, one with a clear message, one that sets the stage for a record that is vulnerable, sometimes downright therapeutic, without succumbing to the tragedies of manufactured vulnerability. It’s clear that de Souza has been through it. And she finds novel forms of expression: dance pop, post-doom, and, of course, indie rock. While she careens between styles, she never foregoes what makes her unique: that voice, that delivery, that directness. It’s immediately appealing. Whether this is as strong as Any Shape You Take is, for some, an unsettled question, one that doesn’t literally matter, but is fun to ponder. The artist who de Souza is growing into has grace, power, and an incandescence like no other. And, seeing her play this one live really lodged it in my head.
9. Fever Ray - Radical Romantics (Mute, 3/10)
The pop musings of Radical Romantics are easily upsetting, even for an album so nakedly dedicated to diverse forms of love. While The Knife was always left-of-center, Karin Dreijer’s increasingly queer solo work as Fever Ray really goes for it. As soon as the first single dropped, this was destined to be the alt-pop album of the season, one where critics and my quirky gay oomfs could find common ground. Once “Kandy” dropped, I was hooked: the hypnotic synths, percussion, and vocals bounced around my head for days straight, becoming one of my preferred daily listens. “Shiver” is just as freakishly alluring, and “Even It Out” is the parenting anthem I didn’t know I wanted. Radical Romantics is abrasive and expressive. It’s pop, but it’s ready for the drippy atmosphere of the clubs. At some times sexy, other times quirky, and at all times subversive, it simply fucks me up every time.
8. Debby Friday - GOOD LUCK (Sub Pop, 3/24)
When “So Hard to Tell,” the lead single off GOOD LUCK dropped, I had no idea who Debby Friday was. The Canadian DJ-cum-producer was outside of my purview, but she shot right into it with this song, itself a departure from her usual stylings, because her voice was as beguiling as a siren. “So Hard to Tell” definitely fits on GOOD LUCK, but the rest of Friday’s must is more on the club-ready pop end of the spectrum. While the rat race of Toronto nightlife threatened to derail her, Friday knows that it gave her the chops and taste she has, and she puts those to work on the album. I once saw “I Got It” described as “pussyslay,” and you can really feel it. “What A Man,” with its angular (yes, angular) guitars, has the punk charm that plays beautifully against spots of rap, industrial, and dance. It’s sweaty music, tailor made for the evenings out. I would give anything to hear this record live.
7. feeble little horse - Girl With Fish (Saddle Creek, 6/9)
Listening to feeble little horse is a lot of fun. This was true from the beginning, with feeble little horse’s self-released EP, modern tourism. Karly Hartzman told me about feeble little horse shortly after the band dropped Hayday, the collection of terrifying earworms featuring Lydia Slocum’s nonchalant lyrics, dozens of layers of processing, and samples. It was a defining new release out of Julia’s War, the tape label that Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting A Body Of Water manages that continues to overwhelm with noisy, sometimes downright bombastic collections. While not a Philly band, feeble little horse, a quartet of exceedingly young but well-versed musicians, has become a key figure in defining the Philadelphia sound. While obscurity, art rock, and occlusion are part and parcel of the current sound, sometimes called “Philly shoegaze,” it’s also often hook-laden, bringing the best of slacker rock and pop into the world of noise. Girl with Fish is an album confirming that this band is the real deal. Pop hits like “Pocket” and “Paces” are just as earworm-y as “Chores” and “Termites,” and novel ventures like “Tin Man” and “Healing” showcase the band’s versatility. With a co-sign from Saddle Creek and placements on arguably normie Spotify playlists like Lorem, feeble little horse has been on an aggressively quick ascent, having successfully tapped a sound and a mission (put pop music into pretentious people’s ears) that makes for a good story. The band is taking some much-needed rest.
6. Mandy, Indiana: I’ve seen a way (Fire Talk, 5/19)
When indie label Fire Talk announced that the first official Mandy, Indiana LP was on the way, I didn’t actually pay it much mind. I was obsessed with the song “Alien 3” when it dropped in 2021 in advance of their … EP, so I knew I’d like the album. I wasn’t prepared to love it. From the eerie pop opener, “Love Theme (4K VHS),” to the dance-ready “Drag [Crashed]” and “Peach Fuzz,” I have trouble finding fault in this album. Genealogically, the band is closer to British noise rock bands like Gilla Band than to harsh noise acts, but their command of abrasive sounds paired with Valentine Caulfield’s politically charged French language lyrics is immediately arresting. Each song is an experience in and of itself, tapping into a distinct sensory palette. And they didn’t record drums in a cave for the bit, or for the press: they did it because they’re dangerously curious about how they can make their sound just a little different. This is another album where the hype around it is to be believed: this is Mandy, Indiana at their most supercharged. If you liked …, you will love this album.
5. @ - Mind Palace Music (Carpark, 2/17)
I didn’t know whether I should include this in my 2023 list because, to me, this is a 2021 album. Lead single “Letters” reached my ears in January 2021, immediately grabbing my ears with the gorgeous vocal harmonies between Victoria Rose and herself + Victoria Rose and her collaborator in @, Stone Filipczak. And yes, she’s the Victoria Rose of Brittle Brian fame (and if you liked Verisune in th bedroom pop days, you’ll like 2022’s Biodiesel). 9733, the Connecticut tape label & social network run by members of waveform*, pressed the freak folk album onto a hot pink tape. Between “Letters,” “My Garden,” “Star Game,” and, even more lately, “Friendship Is Frequency,” I had to have that tape. I do have it. And now, thanks to Carpark’s deal to sign the duo, I have it in olive green vinyl. @ is a miracle find for me; they make a kind of music I would have never sought after myself. As I revisit the album, I find baroque moments like “Boxwood Lane” even more endearing than I did in 2021. I know this album crossed way more critics’ ears this time around (Ian Cohen, I saw your tweets, and Nina Corcoran, I read your review), so I figured I had to celebrate this album this year. It made my top 20 in 2021; it just might do that again in 2023. I’m willing to let that happen.
4. Midwife / Vyva Melinkolya - Orbweaving (The Flenser, 5/12)
Midwife (Madeline Johnston) is quickly ascending my list of all-time favorite artists. She is the best artist out there when it comes to portraying grief and despondence, emotions that are inescapable. Midwife’s distant vocals, which sound as if they emanate from the aging PA system of a dollar store, suggest heavenliness. Her collaborative friendship with Vyva Melinkolya (Angel Diaz), the shoegazer and Ethel Cain collaborator, makes complete sense. Midwife’s devastating project has been informed by doom, slowcore, shoegaze, and more; Melinkolya is the onetime moderator of one of Facebook’s largest shoegaze and dream pop meme pages with a rich back catalog (and, rumor has it, more cooking). They know how to weaponize distortion to produce tears. Lead single “NMP” is 8 minutes of weighty bargaining, increasingly desperate, growing more and more hypnotic by the phrase. “Hounds of Heaven,” for a shoegaze track, is an earworm; there’s something of a hook in this track, it’s so repeatable. While some (ELI ENIS) think that the title track, a 12-minute atmospheric ambient composition, is a boring letdown, I see it more as a devastating anticlimax, a study in vastness after four tracks devoted to the desert-inspired devastation Midwife & Melinkolya portray expertfully. Everything that they can say about the emotions they want to express has been said in those first four tracks, so on “Orbweaving,” they let abstraction do the talking. It’s like listening to Apollo Vermouth or Tim Hecker after an exorcism. Orbweaving is a cry listen for me; I think it will be for years to come.
3. Khanate - To Be Cruel (Sacred Bones, 5/19)
This spring, in a surprise that shocked the alternative metal community (objective freaks), Khanate dropped a three-track collection, an hour of music, entitled To Be Cruel. The extreme doom supergroup hadn’t released an album in 14 years; they indicated at no time their intent to come together once again. Their reign of terror was thought to be a relic of the 2000s. It’s not over. To Be Cruel is exactly the kind of thing a freak like me loves: continuous guitar feedback, glacial tempo, and harsh screeches that unfold into intelligible language over excruciating minutes. My personal favorite is “It Wants To Fly,” a gruesome, terrorizing number as Alan Dubin states: “It starts with a wince / You can look away / But I think you should see / Under the skin / That crawls.” I’ve been really drawn to this variety of music lately: extremely slow, extremely heavy, extremely expressive doom metal. Khanate are masters of feedback. Durbin’s lyrical delivery is the kind of cathartic that goes beyond individual emotions and more towards transcending senses of anxiety. There is no better release.
2. Wednesday - Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans, 4/7)
Wednesday is a band that I was wrong about. I didn’t really get them at first listen. I tried I Was Trying To Describe You to Someone, their 2020 Orindal Records debut, and I thought it was a bit much. But, I believed in the inherent correctness of Orindal Records and in Slumber Mag, one of their earliest champions, and nervously embraced their 2021 breakout album, Twin Plagues, upon its announcement. When the first singles for Twin Plagues came out, I found myself really into them; during the album rollout, I waited for the other shoe to drop, something that would, again, perturb me just too much. At the same time, my friends and critics started singing their praises in unison, including one Lizzie Manno, my Cleveland showgoing buddy, who used her platform at Paste to sound the alarm that this band was onto something. I fell in love with Twin Plagues upon its release, allowing myself to be hypnotized by Karly Hartzman’s unique voice on songs like “Cody’s Only” and really loving their propulsive brand of shoegaze exemplified on “Three Sisters.” Xandy Chelmis’s work on the steel and their dancing with aesthetics endemic to their North Carolina upbringing added a folksy charm that, on Rat Saw God, the band leaned into entirely. Rat Saw God is the expertful welding of shoegaze and country in a form that feels true to the band’s vantage point. Hartzman’s vivid lyrics are the real star. It makes sense for a track like “Chosen To Deserve” to be the lead single; it’s undeniably country but still slams like a shoegaze track, with Hartzman portraying the sacred ritual of confessing your past sins to a new connection. It’s a task I’ve attempted before. It’s intimidating to give an account of oneself, their regrets, their chequers without scaring them off. But it’s got to be done. Hartzman makes it sound beautiful. “Bull Believer” often leaves me in tears; I want to yell like that. “Bath County” is stupid catchy. Even tracks that felt understated, like “TV in the Gas Pump,” have become stars to me. I was fortunate enough to receive the advance of this upon announcement; my partner Eric did, too. We listened that night and, from our respective bedrooms, texted each other song titles in all capitals, often preceded by “WOW” or “HOLY SHIT,” just because each song blew us away. I still get that sensation. I hope never to lose it.
Nicole Dollangager - Married in Mount Airy (s/r, 1/6)
It’s hard to believe that the album that would become my favorite of the year would come so early. In this case, Nicole Bell, who plays as Nicole Dollanganger, released Marred in Mount Airy quietly and independently on January 6th, 2023.She’d been teasing a new album for, at that point, over two years. With her primary collaborator, Matthew Tomasi, Bell composed a macabre, fully-formed exercise in mangled Americana; southern gothic pop with midcentury roots, exploring shame, desolation, freedom, love, and lust with exhilarating, pensive production. As she released singles, I fell in love with them each differently: “Whispering Glades” caught my attention for but a moment before fading out of my glance; “Gold Satin Dreamer” took hold like talons deep into my skin; “Runnin’ Free” sounded nice but I didn’t get hooked. In context, though, every single song is a standout. The album cuts are, also, undeniable heaters: “Dogwood” is poised to be my most listened-to after the spellbinding opener “Married in Mount Airy” and my original favorite, “Bad Man,” a frequent cry-listen for me in the wintertime. Much like how Preacher’s Daughter won me over with drudging tempos and ghastly narratives, Marred in Mount Airy overflows with portraits of lives gone awry, love overtopping, and the underbelly of girlhood and romance. The record is best listened to multiple times in a row, as “I’ll Wait For Your Call” loops back into “Married in Mount Airy.” As disquieting as the emotional landscapes are on the album, you’ll want to stay in them for at least a few hours for the full effect; it’s hard to just go back to reality after hearing Bell’s unique voice guide you through the horrors and wonders she needs you to see. Over her decade-long career, which started with independent releases popularized on Tumblr, Bell’s output has stayed true to form, always the perfect soundtrack for a soft grunge blog, but her focal points have evolved with her own curiosities. Once a Run For Cover act during their era of scooping up bedroom pop starlets, now Bell appears at her most comfortable writing, recording, producing, and releasing her work on her own schedule, free from the obligations of a label, a publicist, a manager. Her fans remain as devoted as ever. What appeals to me, the most, about Dollanganger’s production, her vocals, and her narratives are the emotions she manages to excavate with each listen. I don’t know how she does it. But, I often find myself scared, desperate, and longing for a few things by the time I’m done with a Nicole Dollanganger record. Whether that’s some kind of love or freedom from its grasp, Married in Mount Airy leaves me wanting, needing. It makes going back for another listening so, so satisfying.