018: My favorite albums of 2023!

Excellent music you know and/or don’t yet know.

Jan 04, 2024

We all work so hard to create things that are meaningful to us and then the year comes to an end and immediately we’ve moved on to the next thing. Why not instead begin the next year by revisiting what the previous year gave us? Partly it’s because I couldn’t get this list together in time but also why should we be spending our one precious annual liminal zone on work? Even if it’s enjoyable work such as this? And anyway, I did work because that’s when I compiled the list of my favorite jazz albums of 2023, which I did manage to send out before year’s end! Thanks again to everyone for reading, following, sharing your thoughts, observations, and recommendations with me.

I will also repeat my point from last year’s list of my overall favorites that this list, as any list I create, is incomplete by nature and in chronological order because I’m fond of that old man-made construct, time. Lastly but most importantly, please buy work that moves you and support musicians directly.

❤️❤️❤️

Yo La Tengo, This Stupid World (Matador, February 10) • Listen.

To know Yo La Tengo is to love Yo La Tengo and This Stupid World did not disappoint. It’s their SEVENTEENTH studio album. 17th! It’s pretty remarkable that they are still this consistently great. 2023 also marked my first time ever seeing them live and it is so impressive that they are still just as terrific (and then some!) as everyone has been saying for years and years. As for the songs, my favorites include “Sinatra Drive Breakdown,” kraut-heavy and wonderfully titled; “Tonight’s Episode,” the great new James-sung song with lyrics referencing yo-yo tricks; and “Brain Capers,” which holds my favorite expression (on this album, anyway) of the ‘melodies interwoven with noise’ thing that epitomizes what we love about the YLT sound.

William Tyler & The Impossible Truth, Secret Stratosphere (Merge, March 31) • Listen.

I must have listened to “Area Code 601” a dozen times in a row when it caught my eye in an email from Aquarium Drunkard back in March. Jason Woodbury writes: “Crash landing somewhere between the deep fried expanses of Amon Düül II and brawny riffs of Tres Hombres, ‘Area Code 601’ presents guitarist William Tyler in a thrilling new mode: that of a feedback-drenched country prog rocker.” The album as a whole is one Southern-rock tinged cosmic jammer after another, a brilliant blend of kraut and country that rocks in a way few others do currently. My favorite part of this album besides the guitar is the absolutely fucking delightful use of chimes.

Jana Horn, The Window is the Dream (No Quarter Records, April 7) • Listen.

I didn’t see nearly enough chatter about this great album from Jana Horn. A singer-songwriter with a literary bent, she wrote all the songs and plays guitar, bass, and piano but a whole bunch of other musicians help flesh it all out. The album still has a quiet feel despite the richness of the music, which gives it an uncanny dreamy feeling that I adore. Speaking of, “The Dream” sounds like it could have been a country-inflected late-era Fugazi song from a different universe. So does “In Between,” which also has parts that sound like they might fit right in on the softer moments of Television’s Adventure.

Kara Jackson, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? (September Recordings, April 12) • Listen.

I wrote about this remarkable album in a previous issue but it’s so good that I had to include it in this list, too. I described it as heart-shattering, which is unsurprising given that Jackson is a poet. The songs hum with the power of her words, the importance of which is instantly evident from the evocative title. The music is principally folk or alt-country, easily moving between country twangs and orchestral strings, sometimes only sparse guitar but other times joined by additional instrumentation that really expands the breadth of the music. Deeply personal yet hauntingly resonant of our present times, this album is stark, emotional, sad, harsh, and quite beautiful.

Ricardo Dias Gomes, Muito Sol (Hive Mind Records, June 9) • Listen.

Ricardo Dias Gomes has been innovating within the Rio de Janeiro scene since the mid-90s but is likely best known for his work with Caetano Veloso on a trio of albums released by the Brazilian composer and singer in the late-2000s. This one is Gomes’ third solo album and it’s one of those rare gems of eclectic style in which many of the songs sound quite different from one another but the overarching feel is still very much that of a whole. It’s a brilliant experimental blend of samba, post-rock, drone, indie rock, kraut, and even more; the final song (“Coração Sulamericano,” which Google Translate tells me means “South American Heart”) goes so far as to approach metal, albeit in a Last Exit kind of way. But what makes this album so special is that nothing ever sounds even remotely out of place. I’ve described this as fantastic summer music and it is, but there’s a touch of an autumnal darkness in there, too.

Audrey Carmes, Quelque chose s'est dissipé (Métron Records, July 26) • Listen.

This is the debut album of French artist and composer Audrey Carmes and it is gorgeous. The music is experimental electronic ambient, inspired by both krautrock and the avant-garde. Her voice, which she uses sparingly, has a melancholy quality that I find utterly magnetic. This album is described as ‘for fans of Ana Roxanne, Grouper, and Éliane Radigue,’ which I think is just right. The Stereolab-esque "Une recherche" might be my favorite song but the album’s too-short final track “Printemps” is strangely playful, a little delight.

Adeline Hotel, Hot Fruit (Ruination Record Co., October 6) • Listen.

The impressionistic moods of Adeline Hotel are a really lovely spring and fall companion to the summer vibes of Scree, who released one of my favorite jazz albums of 2023 and are the backing band here. Adeline Hotel marries fingerpicked guitar with jazz-inspired improv to quite sublime effect. On this album, things get cinematic with an ensemble that includes strings, harp, and woodwinds – Jim O’Rourke meets Joanna Newsom. The harp is particularly beautiful on “Little Chili” but “Old Baldy” is my overall favorite, a spectral beginning that dissolves into a fairy tale of a song.

EXEK, The Map and The Territory (Foreign Records, October 6) • Listen.

Australian band EXEK makes my favorite music in the atmospheric dreamy post-punk zone. Their albums are consistently great and their latest is no exception. Romantic and angular, with dub, funk, and R&B influences that mesh seamlessly and imagistic lyrics that feel like poetry. I really dig the free-jazzy horn and creepy-cool synths on “Seamstress Requires Regular Breaks,” while “The Lifeboats” sounds like it should be in an ‘80s thriller about navigational tech on a boat gone awry and the dubbed out “The Glow of Good Will” is a great album closer.

Gold Dime, No More Blue Skies (No Gold, October 20) • Listen.

I’ve been riding for Gold Dime’s art-rock devastation since I saw them live in Detroit back in 2019 but this new album still managed to completely blow me away. It’s gothy and death-infused, it’s dark-kraut, it’s heavy avant-rock, it sounds how Escape From New York and The Warriors look, powered by the insistent drums and merciless voice of composer-drummer-vocalist Andrya Ambro. In my review for Uncut, I described it as late-era Fugazi meets post-punk Scott Walker circa Nite Flights amidst the sprawling pulse of all intense music. “Denise” is one of my favorite songs, a threatening meld of krautrock, post-punk and free jazz. Sometimes saxophone in this kind of music doesn’t work for me. It fucking works here!

Dorothy Carter, Wailee Wailee (Palto Flats, December 1) • Listen.

My favorite new-to-me reissue of the year by a country mile. Dorothy Carter, a folk musician and historian who played the hammered dulcimer and its lesser-known cousin the psaltery, released this perfect private press album in 1978, and then in the ‘90s co-founded an all-woman ensemble called the Mediæval Bæbes to play ancient European music in contemporary settings, really feels like someone I should have been aware of but I just wasn’t. What a fucking delight to be introduced to her now. Wailee Wailee is an incredible record that threads a lot of needles: folk, avant-garde, New Age, devotional music, traditional American folk songs, Celtic standards. It’s seamless and remarkable, otherworldly syncretic folk that sounds like it would exist in the worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. Album closer “Tree of Life” is the masterpiece here, described as “akin to a transcendental Appalachian raga or whirling cosmic folk music.” It gets no better than that.

I stick to ten albums for the main list because I consider that to be a manageable amount but as always, I’m leaving so much on the cutting room floor. Here are a few more quick hits that deserve to be mentioned:

A pair of scores by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, for the HBO docudrama Telemarketers and a documentary called Grasshopper Republic about grasshopper hunting in Uganda. I love a good score in general but I love them more when they come from musicians I admire and even more when the projects are this interesting. I do have to admit I haven’t watched either yet but they’re both on my radar and moreso now knowing that the music is this excellent. I’ve been following Lowe since I discovered his experimental drone music as Lichens and look forward to everything he releases.
Multi-disciplinary British artist Wayne Phoenix’s soaring wayne phoenix the earth and sky, a fascinating experimental electronic album that I wrote about for Maggot Brain No. 15. The first half is a mix of intimate expressions and eerie soundscapes that feel like eavesdropping or reading a private journal, while the second half is more structured yet still manages to feel meditative and unexpected.

Grails’ Anches En Maat, speaking of musicians I’ve been following for a long time! Something you might not know about me is that for a few years, I was a big fan of doom and stoner metal. But as is the case with me, only some very particular expressions of those genres. In that, the band OM loomed incredibly large. Grails is co-led by Emil Amos, who drums in OM. (To complete the OM nexus, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe was also a member for a while and I was lucky enough to see that version of the band live at least once.) Anyway, Grails’ catalog is fairly different from the heavy spiritual doom of OM but completely excellent in its own right. They began as an instrumental rock band with vague stoner associations but the music is much richer and more interesting than that implies. This latest album is midnight moods and softcore soundtracks, a blend of Echoes-era Pink Floyd with the aura of gritty LA noir and a Barry White-style orchestra.
Phew’s Our Likeness, which I also wrote about in a previous issue. A new reissue of an album of hers from 1992, this one incredibly features Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, among others. I wrote at the time that Phew does not get compared to Scott Walker enough but she easily belongs in the same class of dark romantic art genius. The title track is hypnotic avant-pop, with the entire album being weird as hell and entirely enthralling.
Psychic Temple featuring Lisa Bella Donna’s A Universe Regards Itself, another great release from cult California label Big Ego (who also put out the Alex Sadnik album I mentioned in my 2023 jazz list). Lisa Bella Donna is the undisputed queen of modern synths (if you like synth-based music and don’t know her, pick any album at random and dive in because it’s all very cool). This album combines her Moogs, Mellotrons, Arp 2600s, etc. with a large ensemble and a women’s choir. The result is one long song per side, carrying you along while drifting between jazz and rock, cosmic country in one breath and swirling New Age soundscape in the next.