Top Albums Of 2023
Every year writing this list feels like the last time I’ll be doing it, yet I still find myself sitting down sometime in the new year to talk about the art that I love. The process is usually monotonous, I mull over lines for way too long, and I question what authority I have to deem what music tops whatever list. Still, every new year it feels like the right thing to do, and I care less now about readers internalizing my thoughts on the music and more about showing appreciation for it. All of these albums taught me something valuable this year, and the least I can do is let you know about them. So until the itch dies, when the calendar rolls over you can expect me to gush about the music that defined my year.
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This is Why — Paramore
There is a distinct lack of subtlety on seasoned rock band Paramore’s latest album, which serves as a raw and jagged collection of the group’s critiques and grievances. Returning more to their hardcore rock roots after their synth-pop foray, they don’t miss a beat shredding in their home genre. While the band is no stranger to wrapping their songs in intense emotion, historically they have a poetic cleverness to their songwriting. Listeners can jump around banging their head while clutching their heart to Haley Williams soul crushing lyrics. This Is Why creates a more direct path for the band’s rage, opening on the titular track with ideas of being constantly overwhelmed by things outside the band’s control. This idea of powerlessness forms the core of the album, with the band’s tone serving as their only way to shake the feeling off, albeit temporarily. Gliding alongside driving guitar riffs and punchy drums, the band attempts to make sense of their own hermit tendencies, having less and less reason to put faith in outside sources. The album becomes an elongated answer to a question the band never asked aloud but cannot help but express: what do you do when nothing around you feels right anymore? For Paramore, the answer teeters on despair, like feeling your fingers slip on the edge of a cliff, before they pull themselves back from the brink and open the door to try again. The band doesn’t want to diminish the hole modern society can dig out in people, they feel it too, but in making music to address that feeling, they reaffirm why connection is important at all.
Soul, PRESENT — Q
Q brings a level of comfort and fun to a genre that has become defined by its dense and sentimental counterparts in the past decade. Building on the post-Disco vibes of 80’s Synth-Funk, Q’s sonic palate feels like it was plucked from a previous era, with a new conductor at the helm to define how it would evolve. The album is not defined by a feeling of longing, but rather one of embrace, as Q encourages others to find his level of self-acceptance. His album doesn’t shy away from heartbreak, but it chooses to focus on the clarity found in emotional hurdles and not the pain. Whereas you would usually expect all the charisma on a project like this to be romantically charged, Q is at his most charming when he claims his faults. The messaging doesn’t come off pretentious either, songs like ‘THE HIDE’ reveal the frantic energy and doubts the artist has put into himself as well, before realizing he was bottling up emotions that could make him happier in the long term. Q acknowledges it is an ugly process, defined by confronting parts of yourself that make you nauseous and knowing you may backslide at points. By mixing this transparency with his bombastic retro soundscape, Soul,PRESENT feels like it matures over the course of its runtime, with Q willing to accept moments he has slipped up emotionally and owning up to them by becoming a more reliable self.
V — Unknown Mortal Orchestra
There are few voices in the indie space as consistent as Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Over a decade now the band has developed its signature crunchy rhythm and guitar work with lead vocalist Ruban Nielson’s wispy voice sowing tracks together. The band thrives in its mastery of production, bringing together an analog core with splashes of spacey chords for surreal effect. Their latest album is a wild exploration of the band’s past and future, split down the middle as listeners get to experience various snapshots of UMO’s collective upbringing. It’s not all sparkles, as moody bass lines give way to snappy grooves, we hear tales of drunken fights on porches and relationships that only exist in the singer’s memory. These bits and pieces of the past clearly tug the band’s heart, but the album never wallows in regret. V feels like a private viewing to a home movie, with UMO curating both tender and torque moments that have come to define their life and sonic style. On the latter half of the album when they shift the lens forward, ‘Weekend Run’ hits like a new affirmation of the band’s mission statement: seize the moment. In it the band acknowledges the liminal spaces we often find ourselves in when trying to appreciate life. Is it worth it to look forward to that moment of love and bliss if it’s simply a distraction from something major nagging you? Ultimately I think UMO affirms that question, but not without acknowledging the bumps that forge you are just as vital as the moments you celebrate.
Lahai — Sampha
UK artist Sampha has spent his career providing poetic introspection via his ethereal voice and pianist roots. While his vocals have appeared in collaboration with many mega stars of the era like Solange and Kendrick, bringing a unique tenderness with them, his latest project heralds new musical and emotional depths for the artist. The album immediately leads into Sampha’s more chaotic side, which sonically takes the form of speedy piano passages looped over pulsing drums. The singer stays grounded in the mix, longing for the space to dream comfortably in his ever tense life. Lahai finds Sampha at the crossroads, with the artist unable to fight waves of nostalgia even as he enters a new era of fatherhood. He never comes off unappreciative of his new life, but rather paralyzed in moments on how to carry love forward. In ‘Suspended,’ backed by a stellar drop and wrapped in Samphas reverb, he remarks on literally being carried to new heights by a person’s care. This idea feels like the core of how Sampha wants to express his worldview, that we are wholly shaped by our experiences of who loves us and why. Going further, Sampha wants to remind listeners that there is a conscious energy that goes into being tender toward your fellow man, which in itself is something easy to lose sight of. It’s a somber reminder people cannot exist in vacuums, and every dynamic we involve ourselves in has a give and take that must be respected. So on tracks like ‘Can’t Go Back’, where Sampha earnestly finds himself plagued by old tendencies and desires, you can feel it causes him real discomfort to have to shake the thoughts. Alternatively, if you are changed by someone’s love, does that mean you are under their spell and less of yourself? I think Sampha fears losing himself in someone else, but would never resent them for it, which culminates in an artist asking if they really deserve the bliss they’ve carved out for themselves. Despite choir lined choruses and some of his best piano work to date, Sampha’s biggest strength remains his willingness to be bold and direct about his innermost thoughts.
Sundial — Noname
There is currently no rapper in the game who can go pound for pound with Noname’s revolutionary style. 3 albums in, the Chicago native sounds like a hardened vet, bringing forth her confidence from her second album and mixing it with the thought-provoking social critiques she has fostered in her personal life. The melding of tones is mesmerizing as smooth keyboard chord changes, glissful basslines, and crispy drums are fused with the rapper’s dense verses, sucking listeners down the drain. Noname feels like the last instrument in the house band’s makeup, weaving elaborate lyrical solos to stand in the spotlight but not hog it. The rapper’s bars are both more free and more jaded in comparison to her past work, full of loving self-affirmations while openly addressing her new radical social standing. Tracks like ‘boomboom’ find her celebrating a real earned partnership with a lover that only works because they both have divested from conventional dynamics. She carries this love with grace, and with equal ferocity promotes socialism and encourages her listeners to question locked in aspects of the status quo. In her more heated track “namesake” she bashes the NFL and Jay-Z, remarking the fame isn’t worth the bodies it took to get there, a line of thinking usually disregarded by fans of either because all that’s shown is the end result. The rapper is painfully aware of her estranged social standing, and with her genre is so intertwined with the idea of gaining capital, it’s not hard to see why. Despite this, Noname is willing to humanize herself in the same vein by admitting she still struggles with letting go of the system, but knows it will be better long term. Sundial is an album dedicated to fighting our social conditioning, handled with care because the subject matter is rage-inducing but vital.
UMA — betcover!!
From the moment the guitars kick in on the first track, it’s hard not to feel a wave of nostalgia crash into your ears, stirring you to thrash about. For Jiro Yanase, the head behind the solo project betcover!!, his tracks serve as a space for messy exploration with an ever present sense of moving forward. Exerting a strong shoegaze influence, songs are made up of wavy chords that evoke a moody ambiance through the album. The core instrumentals tend to find themselves twisted into hypnotic patterns before Yanase appears to glaze his vocals o’er top as if they were a lyrical syrup. The mixing throughout the album feels similarly spacey, adding a washed out tone that can make songs feel as though you are recalling them from a dream. This leads to stellar moments like the somber buildup through the verse on track 3, as the more abstract tones converge into a fuzzy yet powerful chorus. The project doesn’t fear hard left turns, and through its runtime will challenge the listeners sense of when songs end and when they simply shift. The project’s flow resembles a series of conversations cut off with new ideas, none of which being more important than another but all desiring to be heard in that exact moment. Yanase pours it all out every chance he gets, often leaving songs in emotional shambles before starting the process again. This means, despite its coming in at just under a half an hour, the album feels exhausted by its closing number, satiated in the knowledge that it will be rattling in the listener’s brain for days or weeks to come.
Aperture — Hannah Jadagu
Leading with a voice like glass, Hannah Jadagu’s debut album aims straight for the heart. Supported by a very DIY instrumental setup, tracks give off the illusion of simplicity before opening up their colorful shells in real time. The project focuses on the past, with songs serving as reflections of the artist’s heartaches and what she could learn from them. These revelations seldom come easy for her, as we hear on “Six Months,” dragging the artist through cycles holding out hope and getting let down. In spite of this she tends not to approach songs from a heartbreaking angle, even if the content is devastating. Rather she maintains an air of optimism, peppered with bright chords and wavy reverb, committed to never resting at her lowest point. By maintaining this precarious balance, Jadagu’s experiences feel therapeutic, and listeners get the sense she is reflecting healthily as opposed to letting her past consume her. When she weaves in and out of the people who come to her mind on songs, there’s a love and respect for them, even if they have hurt her. It doesn’t feel like she has let go of all her pain, but she writes songs with a level of acceptance of the past that implies she is in a better mental place. At her most obsessive memories, such as ‘Admit It’ where she reconfirms how committed she is to a partner who is shrinking away, the singer isn’t trying to change fate. There’s an immense emotional maturity displayed on this album, as the artist handles her reflections with grace and poise. Aperture wears the guise of somberness to lure in an aching heart, just to reassure them that they are stronger than they could imagine.
Made Of Blood — Flammy
The worst thing a modern instrumental track can do is feel incomplete. In a post Dilla and Nujabes Lo-Fi era, the standards of beat tapes have been pushed to new heights, with a focus on revamping the expression of DJing via lush sound textures. In the 20 years since, waves of artists who specialize in crafting musical worlds have been able to carve out spaces for themselves in pop culture, being made to feel less and less like background elements. This road leads us to breakout artists like Flammy, who uses a mixture of highly chopped sampling and clean live instrumentation to form his own bombastic setpieces. Made Of Blood is a gritty marvel that still maintains an air of pinpoint care and crafting. On ‘Dreamless’ we get one of the filthiest beats of the year, as an abstract wavy synth collides with a tactical groovy drumline. It feels like the track is breathing when the synth gives way to a more melodic guitar mid song, and the album carries this inhale/exhale energy beautifully. Flammy will chase wild paces with some aspects of his production, be it the drums/synth/guitar and carry it to what feels like a natural high, before moving into slower sections that may feature an old Soul sample. For the artist, an intense joy can be found in hitting that perfect middle spot of personal flair and warped sampling, such as the harmony found on “Loneliness” with highly syncopated foundation perfectly blending with the ethereal vocal melody. The project loves gifting listeners tracks that are a joy to get lost in, but have their own potent sense of direction and style, a heartfelt expression of approaching music a little more holistically.
Faith Is A Rock — MIKE/Wiki/The Alchemist
In a project that defies their ages, East Coast rappers MIKE and Wiki have struck gold. Paired with legendary producer The Alchemist, whose instrumentals carry a distinct soulful weight all on their own, the trio craft thoughtful, biting critique of an unfair world. Starting in ‘Stargate’ the rappers make sure listeners know the duo’s background, with Wiki stressing how his more destitute youth set him on a path to not trust the powers at be, similarly for MIKE as he reflects on feeling like an outsider in his own country. It establishes the two as flawed but fair off the bat, neatly clarifying when the system failed them and when they have faltered. The production rings with old vinyl soul samples and subtle strings forming the album’s core. Instrumentals are often minimal, letting the hefty verses cut clean paths through them. The rappers demonstrate a cold wisdom over the album, harping on a laundry list of broken gears they notice around them, even singling out Eric Adams on “Mayors A Cop,” questioning how much good the city’s absurd police budget is actually doing. It goes beyond a distrust of police however, acknowledging that the funds are explicitly being drained from key aspects of the city that could make a lot of people’s lives easier. Despite their obvious bitterness towards the politicians who run it, the group has a deep love for their city and the people in it trying to survive. It’s this survival instinct that not only fuels the two in their songwriting, but lets them see and advocate for the people around them. Often it can be easy for mainstream media to frame any youth’s critique of a system as naive or selfish, but MIKE and Wiki make clear a dozen times that their goal is a political shift in priorities. This adds an undeniable human element to the mix and makes it harder to misconstrue their message; these young rappers know the chips are stacked against them, and refuse to take that silently.
Bad With Names — Corto.Alto
Since 2019 I’ve been following Corto.Alto, a Glasgow based collective of young Jazz musicians collaborating for intricate and refreshing original tunes. Spearheaded by Liam Shortall, a multi-instrumentalist who’s determined to show off the best talent of his hometown. I found the group via a series of bedroom music videos they self-produced, cramming a full band and horn section into an apartment to record their songs. All the players were young but noticeably polished, playing off each other like pros and really selling their love for Jazz. It was this pure, focused attention on just crafting quality that hooked me, showing a different way to engage with a genre I love from a side of the world I seldom see. There’s a very “show don’t tell” mentality that the musicians bring to the album, really taking off at the races after the more gentle intro draws in your ears. The band locks into these tantalizing grooves, like a wavy ride found on ‘xoxoxo’, before introducing frantic solo’s that add touches of intimacy to the lush compositions. The energy on the album is moody, despite no shortage of pristine sonic moments there is a pensive undercurrent to its tone. Tracks like “Latency” feel contemplative, with its drowsy main horn line and sultry bass dragging its feet while the percussion races on. The young artists challenge each other like the best Jazz musicians should, with every song having its own system for how the players fill for space and support each other’s improvisation. Liam has stated that he never expected the group to gain the rep it has in the past few years, finding the group touring and doing live shows when at best all he wanted was a production outlet. Bad With Names bottles that surrealness and lets the group pile their hard work on top of it, resulting in a bold debut project for a group that will only grow more comfortable with time.
The Art of Forgetting — Caroline Rose
The worst breakups require a complete shift in worldview for those involved. You may have to unlearn habits, comforts, and restrictions you picked up over time with a partner, that process often taking longer to forget than it did to internalize. This conflict lies at the heart of Rose’s 5th album, a gut-wrenching saga of a person attempting to navigate the holes in their life while actively trying to patch them up. The artist leans into the emptiness that one can find themselves in post heartbreak, with “Love/Lover/Friend” it’s clear Rose still feels lost, as we find them attempting to compartmentalize their previous relationship. As sleepy guitars surround her vocals she builds to a gorgeous wall of stacked strings, all attempting to manually rewire her feelings live. The artist has a powerful way of framing songs as if the tunes themselves were growing and learning, finding more confidence as their runtime goes. Rose wants her listeners to understand, as stated on the barn-burning climax of ‘Miami’, that just like loving someone is a process with steps and pitfalls, so is letting someone go. There is also such less cultural emphasis on how to properly distance yourself from people whom you were once close to. Rose spends a decent chunk of the album trying not to blame the other person while acknowledge ways they were made to feel lesser, and manages to come off hurt yet earnest. It’s a mature framing that accounts for the other party being their own world, not demanding change but just recounting experiences. By the album’s end, Rose can admit that this split isn’t the end, but at the same time acknowledges that they still feel trapped between who they were before the relationship and who they are without it.
Voice Notes — Yazmin Lacey
Yazmin Lacey’s a natural songstress, but you wouldn’t guess that from her trajectory in the industry. Preferring to drip songs out over time as the artist worked her day job, she has amassed a small collection of EPs that masterfully blend silky production with her soothing voice and grounded lyricism. For her debut album she pulls the curtain back on her life, taking a risky plunge into vulnerability to produce her most complete sound to date. After a candid opening wherein Lacey admits to holding herself back in prior works, she takes off the gloves in ‘Bad Company’, reflecting on her more unstable relationships. Even as she explains the more shifty tenancies of the party involved, there is a levity to the situation that doesn’t let it become toxic. You get the sense the singer likes putting herself into mildly hectic situations, not for thrills but because she finds comfort there. It makes sense, the bulk of her work revolves around recounting personal experience, and when she decided to open the floodgates, the good and the messy came with it. Backing her airy vocals are smooth keyboard chords and a bouncy groove, all live instrumentation that gives tracks extra warmth. The album feels like a series of personal diary entries, written immediately after the events they describe, fresh with the full weight of the emotions they convey. She handles uncertainty and mixed tempers with an even poise and grace, as ‘Pieces’ shows the singer still standing on days when she feels like she’s been shredded apart. Lacey conveys all this by just showing us raw snapshots of her life and letting listeners judge, without a need to justify or apologize for her love of chaos. It lets the artist maintain control of her own narrative without coming off as preachy or holier than, as we get to stumble and celebrate. Voice Notes marks an immaculate debut by an artist whose style has been begging for a wider audience for years, even if the artist was content to move and create at their own healthy pace.
SCARING THE HOES — JPEGMAFIA/Danny Brown
When established rappers JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown announced a collaboration album, the reaction was a mixture of excitement and concern. Fans who knew them both expected something unhinged, but the end result is equally joyous, combining Peggy’s insane glitchy production and bars with Brown’s goofy storytelling. The two have found a new pocket for themselves, bringing out their more playful sides having found a shared wavelength of nerdy pop culture to piggyback off of. They can start a track like “Garbage Pail Kids” by building off sampled sounds of old arcade machines, before transitioning into crunchy instrumental passages without a hint of whiplash. The album is awash with slick drums that crack over fuzzy bass boosted samples, but never feels musically inconsistent with itself. Brown keeps the duo grounded with his wit and cartoonish ability to adapt to strange rhythms, while Peggy stretches their comfort zone by twisting their childhood into beats. Lyrically they revel in their perceived unmarketability as Peggy challenges rappers to actually live their truth as well as he does. The two lean into their soulful sides as the album in equal measure, giving the vibe of two drunken friends hoisting each other up on a night out. Their chemistry feels well rounded as the two push each other not just for better bars but into more intimate soundscapes. With “Kingdom Hearts Key’’ I think the two bridge an important gap between rap generations, as they enlist young up and comer redvil for the only guest verse on the album. Set to a J-Pop sampled instrumental with funky drums that never loses its euphoric vibe, it does a great job of spotlighting the potential for hip-hop not found within conventional sounds. While the persona of what makes a rapper in the mainstream has loosened a bit in the past decade or so, there is still a stifling box you are expected to stay in. Tired of waiting for standards to change and talented enough to push the envelope themselves, JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown simply carved out a new niche to spread their wings in.
Diagnosis — Sen Morimoto
For multi-instrumentalist Sen Morimoto it’s not enough to make music for people to feel good, it should actively extend a helping hand when it can. This usually means pairing his eclectic fusion of wavy indie production and Jazz chops with laser focused lyricism. He candidly states in the opening if your pov ‘s at this stage in life still don’t heavily lean toward empathy, you have lost the plot. He holds no punches in the project, taking full aim at hurtful government institutions as well as himself, on different scales but with equal weight. Morimoto approaches the album unguarded, painting a picture of self-deprecation on ‘Bad State’ that is too elaborate not to be personal. He understands the sheer weight of a brain that won’t cooperate in a hyper oppressive world, and is here to show us you can still hold conviction. What is striking is that the artist doesn’t ask people to let go of their anger, but urges them to channel that into something that could aid folks or yourself. Morimoto finds himself in a period of vast change, and uses the album as an outlet to vent just how terrifying that feels. Think of tracks like illuminated light posts connected in a snowstorm, overall he’s lost but is slowly reaffirming who he wants to be and moving toward it. Part of this is accepting how his role as an artist is more susceptible to external influence now than before, having to cater to algorithms to survive, and using that feedback loop to his benefit. As he clearly outlines on “What You Say,” the power is all in how you articulate yourself, words repeated will start to impact your being, be it for better or worse. Morimoto admits it was a challenge to actively become a bigger advocate for himself, as he ended up filtering most of his negative emotions about the world through a self-hating lens. He knows there is an immense pain in trying to pry a better you out of a situation, bumping up against your faults in the process, but implores listeners to think about the kind of human they want to be in our looming late-stage hellscape.
The Age of Pleasure — Janelle Monae
At this point in her career Janelle Monae has proven she can do it all. In the decade plus since she made her waves with her bombastic sound and slightly controversial style, the artist has defied every box that has been constructed to hold her. Every album sees her both more comfortable within her skin and willing to air her grievances, making her into one of the more understandable pop stars who still retain a large platform. Having more eyes on her than ever before, she chose to aim the lens of her next album squarely toward the beings and experiences that bring her joy. “Float” provides a crystal clear image of Monae’s mindset going into this album, explaining how tiny she used to feel in her own life, but now exudes the confidence to be herself unabashedly. Paired with this is an absolutely filthy horn section that works with the booming 808’s to provide the sonic illusion Monae levitating above her previous selves. While her work has always focused on empowerment, she was also critical of herself and her environment over the course of her career, teetering on the edge of treating herself like the accomplished artist she is. Her latest see’s her making the most of a newfound sense of freedom, bursting with the careful touches of a musician in her prime. As her prowess is long since established and cemented, Monae can now play with a side of herself that is loving and indulgent without compromising her commanding persona. “Phenomenal” sees her using that dominant energy to craft a sleek anthem of self-love, with the sly core bass line and jumpy percussion that is near impossible to start moving to. As the winds kick in for the choruses, the song builds to one of my favorite vocal passages of the year: dance cause there ain’t nobody else in this bitch like you, a shove from the artist herself to start looking in the mirror with more appreciation. It’s worth noting too that, while Monae already has a strong track record of songs transitioning into one another perfectly on her albums, her current project’s flow is seamless front to back. The album hits the ear like one continuous take, and even as songs shift in tone and style, they all feel equally important to the idea of intimacy Monae wants to convey. As raunchy as the album gets, it’s fueled by a sincerity that comes with real trust in a partner, like pillow talk out in the open, and it never feels icky or like oversharing. On slower moments like “Only Have Eyes 42” it locks in just how connected her playful nature and romantic side are, and the sexy energy radiating off the album has always been aimed toward a special someone. The Age of Pleasure is all at once a love letter to intimacy, trusting partners, and Monae herself, once again defying odds by showing the world you cannot contain something truly liberated.
