Music

The Top 3 Records Of 2023

The best of the best in a very crowded field

At this time last year, I wondered if 2023 would prove as good of a year for music as 2022 had. This past week, I wondered if I could pare my Best Of list down to a manageable length.

The Taylor Swift juggernaut might rival the GDP of a small nation, but the reality is that the variety — and quality — of music this year has rivaled any year in recent history. By any metric, 2023 has been a bonanza for artists and listeners alike — there truly was something for everyone.

That sort of fragmentation can make consensus an elusive goal, but it’s also a testament to the enduring power of talent and creativity.

In a year that saw many things go sideways, we were repeatedly reminded of the importance — necessity, even — of music in our lives.

Below are my top 3 albums of 2023. There were any number of records this year that burned bright & burned fast or drifted in and out of my heavy rotation. These three showed up, planted their flag, and never really left.

#3: Sweeping Promises ‘Good Living Is Coming For You’

Depending on how you look at it, Good Living Is Coming For You sounds like the sort of slogan you’d see on Soviet agitprop posters or hear Peggy Olson come up with in a strategy session for Tupperware.

The record’s press release hedges its bets and says it’s…both:

“For more than a half century, underground music revolutionaries have taken a whack at the mundane mainstream like a piñata. England punks spat “NO FUTURE’’ at germ-free adolescents. Ohio new wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard-carrying riot grrrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. In 2020, Sweeping Promises read our pandemic minds with Hunger for a Way Out. In 2023, they return with a new message: Good Living Is Coming For You. At first glance, this nouveau wave slogan offers hope wrapped around relief. At first listen, we realize this may actually be a warning. Darker still, a threat.

Their first record, 2020’s Hungry For a Way Out, felt constrained- literally (it was recorded in a basement) and figuratively (done during the pandemic). Good Living Is Coming For You was created in a Kansas art studio with lofty ceilings, and Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug have traded architectural constraints for artistic ones.

Listening to the record, you can hear the opposing forces battle it out in real time. In one corner are the post-punk angular guitar riffs. In the other is a more experimental, free-form sound, and it’s all the duo can do to keep them corralled. Mondal was previously a pastry chef, and it’s not a great leap to imagine her adding a beep here or a squonk there the way she might to a recipe. These little touches go a long way toward adding depth to the record’s sound.

Walk In Place is the song Romeo Void never got a chance to make. You Shatter could easily be from a Blondie record.

Mondal’s vocals vary from snarling one minute to operatic the next, while Schnug keeps the engines running and keeps up with her, shifting from punk to new wave to synth pop and back again.

Look, on paper, this record shouldn’t work. There are too many moving parts and too many opposing forces. But it does. And I fully expect it to be on all kinds of year-end Best Of lists.

Bottom Line: Someone described this band as “The B-52s if they never saw the Sun.” I’m not sure I can say it any better than that.

For your playlist: Walk In Place, You Shatter, Can’t Hide it

#2: Yo La Tengo ‘This Stupid World’

There are two sides to Yo La Tengo. Both are very good sides.

The first is quiet, contemplative Yo La Tengo. That’s the one we’ve seen the most of in recent years. Sometimes haunting and/or listless, other times endearing. Occasionally, like on tracks like Looney Tunes, a sonic lazy river that seemingly stretches forever.

The second is rocking Yo la Tengo. Sometimes, it’s vaguely menacing, as with tracks like Shaker. The sound is locomotive. I’ll include their poppier side and impeccable taste in picking covers here.

Either way, they’re giving us straight rippers with Kaplan barely in control, playing like one of those inflatable wavy guys you see at low-rent used car lots.

Instead of a specific direction, they just chose ’em all

Messy. Precise. Jarring. Soothing. Over the last forty(ish) years, Yo La Tengo have consistently been an exercise in contradiction. And yet, somehow, it all fits together nicely, as it’s supposed to.

This is one of those bands that always sound like themselves, no matter what boundary they’re pushing or which norm they’re winging out a third-story window.

It’s always a YLT record, ya know?

On their latest release, “This Stupid World,” they’ve kept all of that going.

Sidebar: Yo La Tengo can be a band that makes you work before you get it. The full listening experience requires intention. There’s friction. The effort is always worth it, though, with something new revealing itself with every spin. And while they have some songs that could broadly be classified as singles, this band’s work is best heard from A1 to the closer.

So I have to say that for as much hype as there was leading up to the release of This Stupid World, I’m grateful that they only released a couple of tracks ahead of time. Hearing the record unfold for the first time is a joy.

The record opens strong with Sinatra Drive Breakdown. Look, I know “motorik” is fast becoming the most overused adjective in my arsenal, right up there with “awesome” and “fantastic.” but for this track, it fits. Just trust me here.

Drummer Georgia Hubley and bassist James “new guy since ‘92” Mcnew lay down a killer groove that promptly chugs on for 7+ minutes — so much for radio-friendly.

Another rule proudly ignored.

Next up is Fallout, easily their most pure pop offering since perhaps Ohm off of Fade, or Electr-O-Pura’s Tom Courtenay. With an easy rhythm and quasi-call-and-response-like chorus of:

Wanna fall out, fall out of time Wanna fall out, fall out of time Wanna fall out, fall out of time Wanna fall out, fall out of time

Don’t be surprised if you get caught singing this at a red light. I’m not saying this has happened to me, but I’m not not saying it, either.

This band is famously introverted, with Hubley sometimes giving the impression that she’s using the drum kit as a shield. But perhaps more than anyone else, she has come more into her own with each release.

On Aselestine, her vocals are unguarded & lovely, even as she’s singing Where are you/The drugs don’t do/What you said they do.

On closer Miles Away, they’re endearing as she laments those she’s lost along the way.

You feel alone Friends are all gone Keep wiping the dust from your eyes So many signs I must be blind How few of them I see

But to get there, we get to get through a few more tracks. Kaplan’s usual knack for squishing an entire backstory into a paragraph is on display throughout the record, but perhaps no more so than on Apology Letter, where he sings:

It’s so clear What I’m trying to say, but right on cue It doesn’t ever come that easily ’Cause the words Derail on the way from me to you It seems to happen with some frequency Depressingly

Brain Capers is expansive and rides a thick groove. It’s relentless — and it’s my favorite song on the record. Kaplan is in full, glorious, wavy inflatable guy mode here.

The title track is a steely shoegaze monster. A weighted blanket of the band’s distortion and feedback, with Kaplan telling us, “This stupid world, it’s all we have.”

They know the only way out is through, and this is their way of telling us that if it’s not gonna end well, we can at least have a good time on the way down.

Bottom Line: Yo La Tengo has never been a band that fits nicely in a box, and 2023’s no time to start. They’ve gone from critics darling to your favorite band’s favorite band to indie rock elder statesmen.

And all of that from a band that feels more like neighbors you’d ask to watch your house while on vacation.

With seventeen records and a bunch of EPs and singles, this would’ve been a fine capstone to a storied discography. Instead, it feels like a band hitting its stride with the best yet to come.

#1: The New Pornographers ‘Continue As Guest’

I expect a New Pornographers record to be packed to the gills with catchy hooks and nuanced lyrics. It would be easy for band leader Carl Newman to crank out boilerplate power pop, but then it wouldn’t be one of their records.

Continue As Guest exceeds those expectations. If there’s a prototypical song for the band, the opening track, Really Really Light, is it. The harmonies are airtight, and the hook is addictive. It’s the sort of song that sets up shop in your mind and hangs out for a bit — the kind of song they do so well. Don’t be surprised to find yourself quietly singing it days later.

Cat And Mouse With The Light is something like a torch song. Spare and plaintive, only Neko Case could sing a line like You’re the last of my first mistakes left/And you can take that as a compliment and have it come across as endearing.

If the title wasn’t a tell, the record is informed by the COVID-era it was written in. The pent-up frustration we all felt at being cooped up and suddenly becoming very online people are reflected here.

The title track’s chorus is:

I’ll find a place out on the plains With some space to fall apart With a long fade out Continue as a guest, yeah, continue as a guest

And it’s relatable.

Bottle Episodes does it one better and locks you into a loop of the same melody through the entire song. Marie and the Undersea is dreamy and escapist — a siren song for the lockdown age. Angelcover is disco-ish, riding on a vaguely menacing synth riff.

Closer Wish Automatic Suite stretches out past the five-minute mark- odd for a band known for being compact- but brings us back with a song that starts as the sort of straight-ahead, driven songs that have always been the band’s hallmark before downshifting with Newman and case repeating the “Meet me in the mirror maze / Tell me when you find the floor” refrain and then slowly fading out.

Bottom Line: New Pornographers excel at composing complex sounds and words without making you overthink. For listeners used to anthemic and outsized hooks, Continue As Guest will take a listen or two before it clicks. But the band will win you over, as they invariably do.

For Your Playlist: Really Really Light, Cat and Mouse with The Light, Marie and The Undersea

Were any of these on your list this year? Do you have any thoughts/opinions/hot takes on these or 2023 releases in general? Let me know in the comments!

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