Hello, everybody! I hope you’re all doing well as we wind down towards the end of the year. 2022 was, in some respects, a breather—COVID isn’t over, but it’s as over as it’s likely going to be for the foreseeable future. The music industry acted accordingly: touring is back in full swing, bands sitting on material were mostly able to get it out, and I had greater clarity of mind to consume it attentively. A record amount of the stuff, in fact—I heard over 300 current releases for the first time in my decade of writing these top 50 album rundowns. That came with some drawbacks as well—I revisited albums less often if at all, and going forward I’d like to try to find a better balance between getting my ears on as much material as possible but also appreciating that material more deeply than under the pretext of background noise.
Still, though I had over 300 releases to choose from, my favorites made themselves apparent fast. If any of the writing that follows was hard, it’s only because my “audience” is of two minds: about half of you are contemporary music junkies yourselves, likely aware of most of these artists already. The other half of you have probably never heard of the majority of them. In trying to satisfy both crowds, I’ve discussed what the music means to me, while also trying to contextualize it on the timelines of the artists’ careers and their genres’ evolutions. Some blurbs will lean more towards one or the other based on what I can attest to, but regardless, they all get a firm recommendation from me.
The suggested tracks accompanying each blurb aren’t necessarily my favorite song on each album, but they do summarize their respective sounds accurately. Due to the sheer volume of stuff that graced my ears in 2022, I’m also doing away with write-ups for honorable mentions, though to compensate I’ll be listing more of them at the outset here. These groupings have been reduced to umbrella terms, and any key genres I excluded (electronic and classical are the two most glaring examples) I simply didn’t hear enough of to meaningfully commentate—that doesn’t mean there isn’t good stuff still out there! As always, taste is subjective and I’ve got plenty of biases; these are simply my favorite albums of the past 12 months, the ones that best defined my year. First things first, though: here are some valiant contenders that barely missed the cut.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
POP
Beyoncé – Renaissance
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, CA – July 29 – Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records
Listen to: “CUFF IT”
The Weeknd – Dawn FM
🇨🇦 Toronto, ON – January 7 – XO Records/Republic Records
Listen to: “Out of Time”
Weyes Blood – And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, CA – November 18 – Sub Pop Records
Listen to: “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody”
HIP-HOP
Billy Woods x Messiah Musik – Church
🇺🇸 New York, NY & Baltimore, MD – September 30 – Backwoodz Studios
Listen to: “Pollo Rico”
JID – The Forever Story
🇺🇸 Atlanta, GA – August 26 – Dreamville Records/Interscope Records
Listen to: “Money”
Kenny Beats – LOUIE
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, CA – August 31 – XL Recordings
Listen to: “Really Really”
JAZZ
Ezra Collective – Where I’m Meant To Be
🇬🇧 London, England – November 4 – Partisan Records
Listen to: “Life Goes On”
The Comet Is Coming – Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam
🇬🇧 London, England – September 23 – Impulse!
Listen to: “TECHNICOLOUR”
We Used to Cut the Grass – We Used to Cut the Grass #1
🇺🇸 Asbury Park, NJ – February 11 – WKRM The Cream
Listen to: “Lay Down Scully”
COUNTRY
Honey Harper – Honey Harper & The Infinite Sky
🇬🇧 London, England – October 28 – ATO Records
Listen to: “Hard to Make a Living”
Pinegrove – 11:11
🇺🇸 Montclair, NJ – January 28 – Rough Trade Records
Listen to: “Habitat”
Wilco – Cruel Country
🇺🇸 Chicago, IL – May 27 – dBpm Records
Listen to: “A Lifetime to Find”
ROCK
Fleshwater – We’re Not Here To Be Loved
🇺🇸 Georgetown, MA – November 4 – Closed Casket Activities
Listen to: “The Razor’s Apple”
Gospel – The Loser
🇺🇸 New York, NY – May 13 – Dog Knights Productions
Listen to: “SRO”
The Mountain Goats – Bleed Out
🇺🇸 Durham, NC – August 19 – Merge Records
Listen to: “Training Montage”
PUNK
Gatherers – ( mutilator. )
🇺🇸 Bayonne, NJ – November 18 – No Sleep Records
Listen to: “black marigold”
Otoboke Beaver – Super Champon
🇯🇵 Kyoto, Japan – May 6 – Damnably
Listen to: “I don’t want to die alone”
Yard Act – The Overload
🇬🇧 Leeds, England – January 21 – Island Records
Listen to: “The Overload”
METAL
Cult of Luna – The Long Road North
🇸🇪 Umeå, Sweden – February 11 – Metal Blade Records
Listen to: “Cold Burn”
Hath – All That Was Promised
🇺🇸 Riverside, NJ – March 4 – Willowtip Records
Listen to: “Kenosis”
Norma Jean – Deathrattle Sing For Me
🇺🇸 Douglasville, GA – August 12 – Solid State Records
Listen to: “A Killing Word”
FOLK
Daniel Rossen – You Belong There
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, CA – April 8 – Warp Records
Listen to: “Shadow In The Frame”
Haavard – Haavard
🇳🇴 Oslo, Norway – November 11 – Auerbach Tonträger
Listen to: “Printemps”
Skullcrusher – Quiet The Room
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, CA – October 14 – Secretly Canadian
Listen to: “Whatever Fits Together”
EXPERIMENTAL / MISCELLANEOUS
Congotronics International – Where’s The One?
🇨🇩 🇺🇸 🇦🇷 🇧🇪 🇸🇪 All over the place – April 29 – Crammed Discs
Listen to: “Where’s The One?”
Kensuke Ushio – The Heike Story Original Soundtrack Requiem Phases+
🇯🇵 Tokyo, Japan – January 5 – Pony Canyon Inc.
Listen to: “requiem phrases”
Rachika Nayar – Heaven Come Crashing
🇺🇸 New York, NY – August 26 – NNA Tapes
Listen to: “Heaven Come Crashing”
EPs
††† (Crosses) – PERMANENT.RADIANT
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, CA – December 9 – Warner Records
Listen to: “Sensation”
Foreign Hands – Bleed The Dream
🇺🇸 Wilmington, DE – February 18 – Daze
Listen to: “Separation Souvenir”
Stay Inside – Blight
🇺🇸 New York, NY – June 3 – No Sleep Records
Listen to: “Fracture”
EP of the Year – Jambinai – Apparition
🇰🇷 Seoul, South Korea – November 11 – Bella Union
Clocking in at nearly 27 minutes, it almost feels like cheating to name Apparition my EP of the Year; I’ve heard LPs this year shorter and less holistic than it. Jambinai are deserving of the nod, though. The Korean ensemble first landed on my radar with 2019’s ONDA, a tantalizing mix of murky metal and somber classical music using East Asian folk instruments such as the haegeum, geomungo, and piri. The result was distinctly foreign, but it employed the dynamic contrasts and smoldering builds I’ve long appreciated in post-rock, endearing me to their dramatic musings.
The band doesn’t alter their approach on Apparition, but its four tracks form a bite-sized distillation of everything I find enticing about their formula. The first two cuts are essentially appetizers, while “until my wings turn to ashes” steals the show and “candlelight in colossal darkness” winds the project to a hypnotic close. The EP’s art is a perfect match; this is music for high altitudes, obscured views, moonlit nights and so on, environments tinged with fantasy and mystique, the instruments’ whines and whirs puncturing the eerie calm with supernatural timbres. I beg the Koreans’ pardon if that reeks a bit too much of exotica, but that’s the appeal of Jambinai’s trademark fusion to my ears, and this is the most replayable batch of tracks they’ve doled out so far.
Listen to: “from the place been erased”
#50 – PUP – The Unraveling of PUPTheBand
🇨🇦 Toronto, ON – April 1 – Rise Records/Little Dipper
They say to write what you know. If PUP’s prior catalogue is to indicate anything, the band mainly knows the center of the Venn diagram between snot-nosed loserdom and self-deprecating empowerment. Despite their token genre’s pathetically low bars, the pop punk Canucks haven’t really dropped a dud record yet—and that’s good, but their shtick had also begun to deliver diminishing returns. The emotions they pride themselves on aren’t the prettiest anyway, but at a certain point, fixating on not growing up is easier to pity than relate to. The angst was feeling safe and stale. They needed to shake things up.
They do on The Unraveling of PUPTheBand, but in the opposite direction I’d initially wanted, leaning into their tropes to the point of flippancy. Segued by skits about label pressures and half-imaginary infighting, the quartet prattle on with their usual themes plus a few surprises (an AI’s auto-translation butchering the idioms of love songs, a tune from the perspective of a neglected guitar, a therapy session from hell, etc.) louder and messier than ever before. Unraveling’s mix is egregiously overblown, layered guitars, trumpets, and keys mushing together and compounding the facetious tone. None of this should land. Resorting to a punk rock opera about writing the album is close to a creative last gasp—but I can worry about that during their next release cycle. In the meantime, these songs go as dummy hard as anything else PUP’s put their name to—if not harder. They get my seal of approval.
Listen to: “Totally Fine”
#49 – CMAT – If My Wife New I’d Be Dead
🇮🇪 Dublin, Ireland – February 25 – CMATBABY
The long-awaited debut full-length from country daydreamer CMAT, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead [sic], tries to give newcomers some hints about how seriously it takes itself. The first of many winks comes through its word salad title and a disastrous wedding scene on the art sleeve. Put it on, though, and the opener, “Nashville,” is about suicidal ideation. That’s just Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s style; the Irishwoman makes no apologies about her distinctly foreign character cosplaying a long-standing American tradition, but she’s rightfully quick to remind people her interest in the genre is more earnest than irreverent. Raised with an admiration for Cash and Parton, her songwriting is coated with a modern sheen but echoes the genre’s heart better than most of her radio-inclined pop-crossover contemporaries.
Wielding embarrassment and shame as humorous tools while embodying the voices of rotten ex-lovers and co-dependent disaster people, Thompson’s tales often lead back to punchlines, but they don’t stretch for one if it’s uncalled for. The saying goes “the best medicine is laughter”—I’d contend the second best is overbearingly sad twang, and while I’d normally advise against freely mixing uppers and downers, “CMAT” sounds like a prescription in and of itself. If you went through some shit in 2022 and can tolerate laughing at your luck by proxy, she might just be what the doctor ordered.
Listen to: “Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)”
#48 – Denzel Curry – Melt My Eyez See Your Future
🇺🇸 Carol City, FL – March 25 – Loma Vista Recordings/PH Recordings LLC
Although it’s self-tabbed as Denzel Curry’s most mature record to date, Melt My Eyez See Your Future doesn’t muster the resolve to upend the South Florida rapper’s dynamism in its entirety. Curry remains at his most enthralling on unbridled bangers, whether those be the pocket-sized explosions of recent projects Zuu and UNLOCKED or the Rage Against The Machine cover that sent him viral a few years back—and some of that intensity is duplicated wholesale on Melt, abundant in the breakbeat acid trip of “Zatoichi” or feature-heavy round table “Ain’t No Way.”
Yet I agree—and it’s plenty obvious with even one listen—that Denzel was keen on displaying vulnerabilities he hadn’t shown before, if not from a storytelling perspective, then at least in overarching tone. The record’s opening stretch, “Melt Session #1” through “Mental,” is a moody masterclass, accomplishing Zel’s prioritization of transparency to the beats of rousing R&B samples and dotted with apocalyptic imagery. Some lines read poorly on paper, but the clarity of vision with which they’re enunciated goes a long way. Whatever your thoughts on his conclusions, Curry is clutch at selling a delivery—his braggadocio compensates for the sillier loose change in the album’s second half, elevating the auto-tuned choruses of “Troubles” and “X-Wing” into unrepentant ear-worms. Melt isn’t the man’s opus—it’s too scattershot to truly contend for that crown—but at every juncture he cements his strengths and forges new trails. He’s clearly got even greater within him. That’s a future anyone can see.
Listen to: “Walkin”
#47 – Wormrot – Hiss
🇸🇬 Singapore – July 8 – Earache Records
It had been six years since Voices gave Wormrot a minor moment of buzz. In that time, writer’s block, injuries, and the obvious global disaster delayed Hiss to the point of fracture: vocalist Arif Suhaimi, now a father and nursing damaged vocal cords, left the band in conjunction with its release, further complicating the remaining members’ ability to keep the wheels in motion.
But what a statement to go out on! Junkies of extreme music can be resistant to cross-contamination—Wormrot said “fuck ‘em.” They needn’t fear anyway; the trio’s trusty grindcore remains the primary genre on display (and I realize there may be some baffled elder readers among you. Think a gritty, incomprehensibly quick fusion of thrash metal and hardcore punk), along with its characteristically cursory track lengths and muddy production. They don’t stop there, though, throwing in discordant strings, doomy riffs, unnerving ambient passages, black metal blast beats, and abrupt mid-song digressions. Hiss is a ménage à trois for the least inviting viscera of niche heavy music, and it exists to defy any sub-categorization you can throw at it. The intense whiplash and its consequences speak for themselves.
Listen to: “Voiceless Choir”
#46 – Spiritualized – Everything Was Beautiful
🇬🇧 London, England – April 22 – Fat Possum Records
For 25 years, pill whisperer Jason Pierce has lived in the shadow of his own creation. Spiritualized’s certified classic Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space brought his entrancing solution of psychedelic rock, gospel, blues, and new wave theatrics to their apex, and the formula since then hasn’t really changed—shifted direction, perhaps, brought certain disparate elements into clearer focus, I suppose—but the form and function of his music since has been slim on surprises and lacking that little something extra.
It’s twice as shocking then that he and the band’s latest, Everything Was Beautiful, was molded in the same sessions as 2018’s And Nothing Hurt, which at the time made no indication of any substantial fine-tuning on the way. Maybe a few years of sitting on the songs helped. The album’s construction of seven jam-centric earworms certainly did. Whatever the impetus, Everything… is the first time in a long time that Ladies and Gentlemen’s soul envelops a new vessel almost as wholly as its hazy-minded predecessor. The approach was never inherently misguided, the songs themselves just weren’t adhesive enough. Whatever got tweaked, this is what was laying dormant within Spiritualized the whole time. Need to unwind? Put it on and veg out to its interstellar transmissions.
Listen to: “Always Together With You”
#45 – Spoon – Lucifer on the Sofa
🇺🇸 Austin, TX – February 11 – Matador Records
Like so many records here, Lucifer on the Sofa was intended to come out pre-pandemic and under decidedly different circumstances. Unlike 2014’s They Want My Soul and 2017’s Hot Thoughts, two spacey, effects-heavy efforts produced by Dave Fridmann in the middle of nowhere, Lucifer… was intended to be tracked live and recorded in a bustling city where opportunities could regularly present new ideas. Some material remains from those early sessions, but frontman Britt Daniel conceived a handful more at home while the world shut down.
The result is a project of split hemispheres: it spotlights Spoon’s tight chemistry, especially in the first half, which holds truer to their rock ‘n’ roll ethos than the second, the point at which the dreamier shadows of their most recent work get cast over the initial framework. The common thread? It’s all great material. Spoon have been at this for 30 years. Lucifer on the Sofa is record number ten, featuring enough founding members to retain the band’s character, but enough change (this is the first release for previous touring multi-instrumentalist Gerardo Larios and bassist Ben Trokan) to spice up the shadows of their arrangements. Whether or not it fully lived up to the return-to-roots mission is irrelevant; what we got is versatile, heartfelt, and relentlessly hooky—classic Spoon, really.
Listen to: “My Babe”
#44 – White Ward – False Light
🇺🇦 Odesa, Ukraine – June 17 – Debemur Morti Productions
With a few rare exceptions, albums take a longer time to write, produce, and distribute than most people realize. It’d be easy but anachronistic to assume Ukrainian metal act White Ward had this year’s invasion of their home country on their minds while crafting False Light. The reality, as they’ve put it in relative safety despite the ensuing war, is that such an environment has been a centuries-old historical reality for their countrymen. Folk legends, literature, and psychology were the inspiration wells of False Light, not the concurrent ambitions of Vladimir Putin.
Still, the overlap is uncanny and only adds authentication to their point, as do the brutality and despair of their arrangements. The war may have shone a greater international spotlight on White Ward, but in underground metal communities long before it, they were hailed as innovators, blending brutal black metal with mournful, noir-tinged jazz. That’s still the formula of False Light, and to a less novel degree than prior record Love Exchange Failure, but circumstances being what they are, the emotional throughline of any Ukrainian saga was sure to resonate with sympathetic audiences this year; that a band as bold as White Ward happened to time it right is a small victory, hopefully preceding more peaceful global headlines to come.
Listen to: “Leviathan”
#43 – Static Dress – Rouge Carpet Disaster
🇬🇧 Leeds, England – May 18 – Venn Records
Vocalist Olli Appleyard insists Static Dress isn’t a revival band. I don’t fully buy it—their glammy brand of post-hardcore was everywhere in the mid-00s, and they simply missed out on the zeitgeist. To the dismay of anyone who loved those meshes of emo and metalcore, the sound isn’t as common these days. Rather than deny the influences, which they bleed more often than they supersede, Static Dress should indulge in the comparisons. Few new acts are writing this sort of material as refreshingly as these guys.
They sound seasoned enough that I didn’t realize Rouge Carpet Disaster was their debut LP until several listens in. The band had been kicking around for a few years, utilizing Appleyard’s trade as a videographer to dress up and perform a string of standalone singles with cryptic music videos, each containing clues about the nature of future releases and the founding layer of a storyline set to evolve over their run. Its plot details are open-ended—maybe the only thing preventing this project from landing with even more oomph—but Rouge… is something between a hotel affair and a murder mystery, adding extra value to the sickly sweet cleans and scathing screams of the bands which Static Dress trace their lineage from. And it’s only the start! That it doesn’t sound like a throwback so much as the ancestor itself is impressive—and even if it didn’t, I’m a sucker for anything that draws to mind my adolescent tastes. This does so commendably.
Listen to: “sweet.”
#42 – Wang Wen – Painful Clown & Ninja Tiger
🇨🇳 Dalian, China – December 9 – Pelagic Records
The COVIDtimes have been rough the world over, but few populations have faced restrictions and threats as dire as the mainland Chinese. These last three years, the PRC’s government has, in some order, threatened its leading doctors, shut down whole cities, and embarked on a “zero COVID” policy that Xi Jinping only just eased this month.
Perfect timing, too—the nation’s leading post-rock band and one of its few acts to grace international stages, Wang Wen, just returned with an album directly inspired by the tumult of the last few years. Toeing the line between the tenser Godspeed You!s and the breezier Explosions In The Skies of the genre, they arrive at a versatile middle ground on Painful Clown & Ninja Tiger. The album’s seven medium-length tunes share characteristics: they’re new wavey blankets of sadness and longing, draped delicately over patient builds of instrumentation, but the details beyond that differ. Some tracks feature gruff Mandarin vocals, a relatively new and welcome addition to Wang Wen’s sound, while others bristle and burst through the momentum of the scaffolding alone. No gimmicks or galaxy-brained genre fusions here; Painful Clown… is just the post-rock formula done well, but rarely did anything the canon produced this year feel as vital as this, at once a resurgence of conviction and a lullaby to doze the grim recent past to peaceful rest.
Listen to: “Painful Clown”
#41 – Nas – King’s Disease III
🇺🇸 New York, NY – November 11 – Mass Appeal
Most elder statesmen would kill for the prolific output Nas has achieved lately. Four albums in just over two years (three of them forming a trilogy, and each produced by trusted collaborator Hit-Boy) is nothing to sneeze at, but it can’t helped: King’s Disease is contagious.
What this third installment lacks in novelty—as with its immediate predecessors—it makes up for with remarkable consistency and accessibility. Still, III has elements that set it apart, especially compared with last year’s feature-stuffed II. In comparison, this year’s effort contains no guests, just the dynamic duo and whatever sampled material they pull from. It’s more boom-bap than trap, more nostalgic than boundary-pushing, but comfortable and confident in that skin, an effortless marriage between measured storytelling and hooky beats. None of this will be a surprise to anyone who was there for Nas during his most groundbreaking era, but his late-career second wind is impressive. While a dud track or two snuck into the list this time (looking at you, “WTF SMH”), King’s Disease III is yet another worthy example of a legend refusing to rest on his laurels….or like, at all.
Listen to: “Michael & Quincy”
#40 – Elder – Innate Passage
🇩🇪 Berlin, Germany – November 25 – Armageddon Shop/Stickman Records
Though they’ve since relocated to the other side of the planet, Elder originally hailed just a river away from where I presently call home. “Local fave” isn’t the only thing they’ve redefined, either—the quartet’s origins as a stoner rock act are well behind them now, taking only the genre’s sweeping song lengths and riffy foundations forward as they’ve evolved into one of the most consistent progressive rock/metal hybrids of their generation.
Every release sees them refine their groovy hypnosis. Their sixth and latest full-length, Innate Passage, is no outlier, lightly dialing back the dynamics of 2020’s unduly overlooked Omens. It’s arguably the droniest Elder have been since that style came to a head on their breakthrough Dead Roots Stirring, the slightest of deviations resurfacing with the fresher, more diverse palettes coloring their most recent work. In other words, the band aren’t reinventing the wheel, just road-tripping to whatever distant horizon they see fit. That philosophy hasn’t failed their spacey, head-bobbing jams yet, and it certainly doesn’t here either.
Listen to: “Catastasis”
#39 – Greyhaven – This Bright and Beautiful World
🇺🇸 Louisville, KY – April 15 – Equal Vision Records
Constituting one of the year’s best misnomers, This Bright and Beautiful World stars one defined by anything but those pleasant descriptors. Frenetic, angular riffs whoosh by in tandem with lung-piercing yelps. Sustained dissonant notes ring out closer to funeral organs than guitars. When things do calm down a bit—see misleadingly melodic single “All Candy” or the pensive builds in “Fed to the Lights” and “Ornaments From The Well”—the mood isn’t actually alleviated at all, just sickly posed like a doll into more photogenic angles. Greyhaven are light-sapping beasts on this record.
And that’s despite it being one of the more accessible metalcore releases on this list. I’m not short for comparisons—their songwriting is more The Formula™️ done admirably than an original model—but with pioneering titans Every Time I Die unceremoniously disbanding last winter, someone had to fill their void, and Greyhaven leave no stone un-turned brandishing their similarities. The riffing has personality (crunchy and scrumptious, yum), the drumming is powerful and adept, and the production highlights the band’s dynamic range. Ultimately it’s Brent Mills and his flexible vocals running the show, though: capable of roaring like a lion and sneaking a suave Southern drawl into clean phrases, he milks his bandmates’ chaos and pasteurizes the result with runs reminiscent of 00s radio rock. This Bright and Beautiful World narrates menace, but it does so with a sly ear for equilibrium. The changing of the guard looks like it’ll go on without a hitch.
Listen to: “Foreign Anchor”
#38 – Ghais Guevara – There Will Be No Super-Slave
🇺🇸 Philadelphia, PA – July 16 – Self-released
No point in hiding it: Jaja Gha’is Robinson, hereby known as Ghais Guevara, is a filthy commie. If socialist rap with Islamic and black nationalist sentiments sounds like too much for you, or just not relatable enough to invest your time and energy in, skip this blurb. Ghais won’t wait for you to catch up.
Now, if you can empathize with perspectives other than your own (especially since this fella is like, barely an adult and still has that goading, youthful arrogance about him), There Will Be No Super-Slave is one of the loudest surprises in underground hip-hop this year. Ghais’ flows are spry and academically vindicated, rooted in the brushed-over histories of African-American oppression and traumas faced by people he knows. He’s quick to dismiss the whole “internet rapper” tag—Super-Slave is showy, but it ain’t for laughs. The disconnect probably comes from the beats, most of which integrate sped-up soul samples that effectively make chipmunk music out of R&B hooks. Wherever they appear—and they appear often; a handful of these tracks contain wild switch-ups halfway through—they offset Ghais’ motor-mouthed diatribes with cartoony glibness. Just when you think you can pigeonhole him, though, surprises appear; “Rayman Legends” is a love song as smooth as it is nerdy (very), “Face/Off” casts the samples in a nightmarish light, and the chanting in “Luminescence Peers Thru Their Confinement” is some of the most unsettling stuff I’ve heard all year. For all his wit, Ghais’ production wizardry is even more captivating, sort of like a JPEGMAFIA whose thematic vision also lives up to his ingenuity. Keep an eye out for this guy.
Listen to: “C.R.B”
#37 – AURORA – The Gods We Can Touch
🇳🇴 Bergen, Norway – January 21 – Decca Records/Glassnote Records
I don’t listen to a hell of a lot of pop music—it’s more concerned with singles, and I’m clearly an album type of guy—but when something shatters that barrier with minimal filler, I can psych myself up to get pulled into its orbit. Case in point: this new AURORA record is splendid front to back. Europeans may roll their eyes, but here in the States, Aurora Aksnes somehow hasn’t broken through to commercial or critical fanfare. I get why; The Gods We Can Touch toys with Nordic folk, electro-pop, and the weirder side of the singer-songwriter mainstream, none of which are in vogue right now on the charts this side of the Atlantic.
But it should be receiving attention here, boasting a smooth yet multifaceted disposition; in addition to the more straightforward bops, some songs are like cybernetically enhanced hymns, others adopting the get-up of what I can only call “jester court music.” With refracted lyrics evoking conversations with and about mythological figures’ inner humanity, The Gods We Can Touch not only blurs the division between the divine and the ephemeral, it also refuses to let a melody passively float by. AURORA’s nasal vocal intonation is memorable in and of itself—it’ll probably be the first aspect you hone in on—but subsequent spins should prove the record one of the year’s most delightfully well-rounded pop projects. Give in to its love.
Listen to: “Giving In To The Love”
#36 – Destrage – So Much. Too Much.
🇮🇹 Milan, Italy – September 16 – 3DOT Recordings
So Much. Too Much couldn’t be a more accurate title. I’ve been known to enjoy my prog metal (and just about any media) with a side of cheese, but this record swaps proportions and makes that its entrée. Destrage hustle on borderline parody, mocking the stereotypes of their compatriots, metalcore songwriting tropes, first world problems, and presenting the gaudy mess on a silver platter. Every time I spin it, I find myself laughing at something new, in part because Paolo Colavolpe’s accent is so thick it renders lyric sheets a necessity, but mostly because said lyrics are batshit lunacy—you’ll never unhear them once you know what he’s going on about.
I’ll leave the digging to y’all—it’ll be funnier if I don’t spoil any lines—but all the sarcasm would be for naught if the music didn’t slap, and you’d better believe it does. So Much… tightrope walks between djenty, syncopated chugging, electro-hardcore (The Armed, anyone?), and the perkiness of pop punk, a profoundly cursed hydra so proficient at its rudiments it has nowhere left to go but demolishing any semblance of lingering self-seriousness. This record is stupid. Really fucking stupid. I can’t listen to it without grinning like a doofus, and the world could always use more of that. We take these. Grazie, raggazi.
Listen to: “Italian Boi”
#35 – Richard Dawson – The Ruby Cord
🇬🇧 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England – November 18 – Weird World / Domino Recording Co.
Richard Dawson writes some of the strangest songs to ever make me cry. Painted in hip circles as England’s most eccentric bard, the avant-folk artist routinely employs awkward syllable phrasing, huge interval jumps between his chest and head voice, and musical arrangements as complex as the loquacious ramblings guiding them along. On 2017’s Peasant, these narratives sank their teeth into the xenophobia of a medieval, caste-structured distant past. On 2019’s 2020—one of my top five records of that year—Dawson did much the same with the present, expanding his already cluttered musical palette with prog rock in the process.
The Ruby Cord—set 500 years ahead of now and seeking to thematically complete the trifecta—dials back the eclecticism of 2020, but offers a universe unconstrained by preconceived social bonds. Dawson’s vision of the far future is a bleak one—world populations decimated, people living in seclusion, the glories of humanity’s peak confined to archives. Depressing stuff, but his storytelling—and more precisely, his refusal to trim fat—sucks you in, spelling anachronistic surrealism through 90% of the lines only to drive a stake through your heart with the remaining ten. I wouldn’t recommend people enter Dawson’s world with The Ruby Cord; it demands extreme patience (the opener “The Hermit” itself lasts 41 minutes and the first quarter of that is faint, inconsequential warm-up noise. When you finish, there are still six lengthy songs to go) but it’s hard to envision a more comprehensive or fulfilling endpoint to this arc of his career, lugging its arcane gloom around and buckling upon receiving kindness.
Listen to: “Horse and Rider”
#34 –Cave In – Heavy Pendulum
🇺🇸 Boston, MA – May 20 – Relapse Records
When Cave In’s bassist Caleb Scofield passed in a grisly automobile crash in 2018, the band’s future, on the brink of resuscitation after a lengthy hiatus, was once again cast into question. The remaining members piecemealed together Final Transmission in 2019 by exclusively fleshing out riffs Scofield had been able to record beforehand. Puny in length but spewing a discharged dam of emotion, the makeshift album gave their fans, collaborators, and families a reason to bond together in celebration of a friend gone way too soon.
Final Transmission was more a precursor of things to come than it was closure—after the immediate grief dulled, Converge’s Nate Newton stepped up to fill Scofield’s shoes, naturally seizing the chemistry the two Bay State heavyweights had shared for decades. Losing their buddy also reinforced their determination to go big or go home; Heavy Pendulum clocks in at 14 thunderous tracks and 70 minutes, leaving no riff in their arsenal unheard. Sludge and spaciness had been the band’s calling cards for years, but here they feel fully refreshed, chiming, trebley leads and mammoth gait rhythms constantly parrying. They’re wearing their influences as children—90s space rock, grunge, alt-metal—on their sleeves, reconnecting with the music that first inspired them, and in some cases usurping it to an extravagant degree. It’s amazing what that spark of motivation will do, realizing any output may be your last. Heavy Pendulum will tide fans over for a long time, and if their rekindled drive has anything to say about it, it won’t be Cave In’s swan song yet.
Listen to: “New Reality”
#33 – Lupe Fiasco – DRILL MUSIC IN ZION
🇺🇸 Chicago, IL – June 24 – 1st & 15th Entertainment/Thirty Tigers
Wasalu Jaco, better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco, is an artist I’d long intended to check out, though the macro-scale of his conceptual, socially conscious hip-hop was a double-edged sword. His latest, DRILL MUSIC IN ZION, is the first LP in his catalog to total well under an hour in length. It was recorded in just three days, barely enough time to flesh out a scant handful of songs, and certainly not enough to warrant any extravagance or second-guessing. It’d either be incredibly focused, or it’d flop.
You don’t need me to tell you which outcome came to be. With the exception of single “AUTOBOTO,” a straightforward trap banger, most of the record is defined by mesmerizing jazz samples, soulful guest melodies, and crisply enunciated worldplay. Jaco’s resigned diatribes primarily dissect generational violence and materialism, forming a concise and cohesive experience and masking plenty of subtle hooks and clever zingers. They all culminate in “ON FAUX NEM,” one of the year’s most poignant closers, led off by the dejected lyric “Rappers die too much. That’s it, that’s the verse.” Lupe collects plenty of thoughts before and after, but moments like that, coupled with the deliberate minimalism of DRILL MUSIC IN ZION, shows less can mean more. Whatever the case, it’s probably the most digestible crevice with which to enter his rabbit hole, and I look forward to tumbling down more of it in the near future.
Listen to: “DRILL MUSIC IN ZION”
#32 – King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Omnium Gatherum
🇦🇺 Melbourne, Australia – April 22 – KGLW
I challenge any artist to rival King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s productivity. It can’t be done. 23 studio albums in 11 years, almost all of them worth at least one go-around. 2022 is the second time they’ve put out five records in one year, and this time, three of those came in October alone. The psych rock collective is a song factory, treading wherever their scatterbrained thoughts wander next, prone to one-off adventures connected by song structure or sub-genre, and all wrapped together with enough internal lore to make Tolkien jealous.
Go figure then that Omnium Gatherum, their first double album and the longest in their whole discography, is simultaneously one of the best entryways to all things King Gizz. It’s effectively scraps left on the cutting room floor of prior releases, spit-shined and savvied to form a sample platter of all the ground they’ve covered, ranging from garage rock to prog epics to thrash metal to Beastie Boys-ass hip-hop to lounge jazz to synth-pop. It should be a dizzying myriad of detours, and yet the track sequence cuts smoother than butter. For Gizz diehards, Omnium Gatherum is a splendid one-size-fits-all, the perfect thing to throw on if, from their sheer prolific volume, you don’t know which of their records you’re in the mood for. As for newcomers, you really couldn’t ask for a more comprehensive place to start. Take notes on what does and doesn’t work for you, and the the band’s loyal legion will happily point you towards other albums in the Gizzverse likely to scratch your itch.
Listen to: “Kepler-22b”
#31 – Makaya McCraven – In These Times
🇺🇸 Chicago, IL – September 23 – Nonesuch Records/International Anthem Recording Co.
As evidenced by its relative absence on this list, I don’t have my ear to the ground for what’s hot in jazz these days, nor is it a genre I often go out of my way to dig through. That’s not born from any prejudice against the form, but look; I write, and it’s challenging (for me, anyway) to wax poetic about abstraction. The most nebulous stuff in the genre eludes my attention span, while slick grooves speak to my soul beyond narrative. Jamming is foundational, primal. You either feel it with your whole being or you don’t.
All that said, I apologize that my unfamiliarity leads me to solely shill In These Times, oblivious to much of what else graced the genre this year, but I’ll also stand by the plug. Makaya McCraven doesn’t take on the role of bandleader here so much as studio tinkerer, quilting snippets from dozens of he and his fellows’ live performances to maximize these songs’ hypnotic pockets. McCraven’s a drummer by trade, and rest assured some of the polyrhythmic work flexed on In These Times is mind-bending, though it never wrests the spotlight away from the sum of the sound, completed by an ensemble of light-footed strings, keys, reeds, and horns. Simultaneously wistful and buoyant, it’s a lovely piece of work—even I could recognize as much from the get-go.
Listen to: “Dream Another”
#30 – Saidan – Onryō II: Her Spirit Eternal
🇺🇸 Nashville, TN – April 15 – Jems Label
Saidan is a two-man bedroom black metal project and it sounds like one: the recording quality is unpolished, it could use more bass presence, and the lyrics err on the side of cringe at multiple points. The duo’s whole costumed aesthetic, inspired by spooky folklore (mostly of Japanese origin) is undoubtedly campy. However—and I do not say this lightly—it’s so fun.
That fun surfaces in two ways: it’s cool in part because they meld the lineages of their influences into a distinctly cross-cultural mythology—references to Japanese horror flicks like The Ring and Girl Hell are obvious, but the Bell Witch legend of the band’s home state plays a pivotal role to Onryō II as well. That’s just half the equation, though (and you won’t understand most of the throat-searing lines anyway)—Saidan’s music is mainly fun because it never quite feels designed to intimidate. Its expressed purpose doesn’t match its effective tone. The songs read as deplorations but roar like parties. Grim progressions resolve on happier chords. The tremolo leads, lifted more from J-rock than black metal purism, are about as melodic as you’ll find in this sub-genre. Onryō II doesn’t take itself too seriously, but its songwriting traverses a competent spectrum of jubilation and dinginess. The minds behind it seem to be having a blast, and that hoopla is inviting, regardless of the window dressing.
Listen to: “Kissed by Lunar’s Silvery Gleam”
#29 – WAKE – Thought Form Descent
🇨🇦 Calgary, AB – July 22 – Metal Blade Records
If you prefer your metal with a tad more stoicism, look no further: WAKE have come a long way since their origins as a grind band and the Albertan five-piece now churn out a seasoned fusion of various extreme metal fields, most prominently death and black metal, but with forays into shoegazey ambience and remnants of their fast-paced early carnage still squeaking through.
Their evolution came to a head on 2020’s Devouring Ruin, and for better or worse Thought Form Descent follows suit with a second serving of the same pounding volleys. Of note, Josh Bueckert’s drumming is some of the wildest I’ve heard on any record this year, but the band’s complete chemistry is the real draw, feverishly rammed onward with each track and peaking on the stunning “Bleeding Eyes of the Watcher,” the arguable culmination of WAKE’s restless quest for refinement. Each record has been more enticing than the last, so I don’t want to write off the possibility too early, but Thought Form Descent might be one of the guideposts for jack-of-all-trades metal records to come. Even if they don’t top their previous work next time around, their ascension to a high this scrupulous has been a pleasure to witness.
Listen to: “Swallow The Light”
#28 – Proper. – The Great American Novel
🇺🇸 New York, NY – March 25 – Father-Daughter Records/Big Scary Monsters
Though I’m inclined to tamper my fanfare on behalf of its occasionally awkward production and timid vocal performances, The Great American Novel is a unique and important pop punk record, helmed by a trio of queer black musicians who pull no punches on their outlook of contemporary American life. Like the contents of any so-called “Great American Novel” before their own, Proper wrestle with the evergreen divide between the country’s mythos and its realities. Frontman Erik Garlington recounts stories of dead, imprisoned friends, reflects on his ethnicity with little closure, and combats stereotypes about sexuality—none of which are like the whitewashed entitlement you’d see by the band’s musical peers, should they even dare to scratch the surface of these topics.
The band instrumentally match the insight’s bite, too—their emo roots threaten serrated edges now, best displayed by the single “Red, White, and Blue” or the metal diss track “McConnell.” The impetus behind their anger is never in question, but the record dramatically benefits by Garlington never positing an un-actionable solution, as much as he (and any decent person) can wish for one—it’s the rigidity of the bigotry they face that’s the most damning, after all. Unfurling the knots and arriving at a loss, the lyricism here is as wise as you could ask a still very young, righteously fired up band. While some amateur recording choices prevent The Great American Novel from landing any higher, it’s still unquestionably a must-listen and the best thing this promising act has shown us yet.
Listen to: “Red, White, & Blue”
#27 – Nick Mulvey – New Mythology
🇬🇧 London, England – June 10 – Fiction Records
Citing a desire to craft an album of refuge—not escapism, but safe harbor, space for healing—Nick Mulvey returned from a 5-year dry spell this spring with New Mythology. In accordance with that goal, it’s not the London-based singer-songwriter’s most daring work; you could even lambast a good chunk of it coffee shop indie folk, if you want to be mean about it.
But I do not. I do not because it found a regular spot in my rotation despite—or maybe because—it feels completely disarming, absent of pretense. The album mostly features Mulvey’s reflective, universal lyricism ruminating on mending relationships, brainstorming happy endings, and paying respect to the interconnected world of which we’re all a part. His musings flutter over gorgeous fingerstyle acoustics, voice and playing hushed as if to not arouse the ire of resting spirits. There are niftier experiments, too—“Mecca,” for instance, is led by a warbling bass synth and drum brushes, while “Shores of Mona” is adrift in ambience and veers closer to an ancient chronicle than a contemporary folk song. Whether he plays to his strengths as a one-man oracle or dips his feet in studio trickery, Mulvey’s only real misstep with New Mythology comes by way of a few unnecessary reprises at record’s end. Even then, the hummable motifs and homely calm it glows render it a soothing treasure.
Listen to: “Mecca”
#26 – Lorna Shore – Pain Remains
🇺🇸 Phillipsburg, NJ – October 14 – Century Media Records
In my estimation, deathcore gets a bad rap; nothing is inherently tacky about stitching together metalcore’s abrupt breakdowns and death metal’s shredded technicality. It’s still contentious among most communities of metalheads, perceived as gimmicky and lowbrow, but a generation removed from its unholy spawning, Lorna Shore’s unlikely TikTok-ification of the blueprint landed them on the map. After a few lineup shifts, new vocalist Will Ramos added thrust to their direction, and their 2021 EP And I Return to Nothingness sounded absolutely rejuvenated.
On its heels, Pain Remains is a crowning tour de force, not just for the band’s discography but the niche as a whole. Decked with grandiose, symphonic arrangements, mythic choirs, and a narrative about omnipotent lucid dreaming, it’s as majestic as aural brutality can possibly manage to sound. The kick drums are akin to assault rifle fire. Ramos’ vocals are beyond inhuman, the sort of guttural, wheezing you need only try once to be able to appreciate as a bizarre talent. Whether or not you can stomach him for the entire hour will make or break your interest in Pain Remains and possibly discourage further familiarity with deathcore as a whole, but hey, I thought I’d jump ship too, and yet here it is, safely among my favorite albums of the year. Mad lads, the lot of them.
Listen to: “Sun//Eater”
#25 – Perfume Genius – Ugly Season
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, CA – June 17 – Matador Records
The “experimental dance accompaniment to studio album” pipeline isn’t a well-trodden path, and its successes are even fewer in number. Ideally, the visual elements of the former medium complete the music it’s set to—removing half the equation would leave listeners at a contextual loss.
That’s the case for Ugly Season too—I haven’t seen the 2019 dance piece the album was constructed for, nor the short film released in the interim that also featured some of its tunes—but I’m pretty sure I don’t need to. Ugly Season’s for-ears-only release subtracts context, yes, but the music itself is otherworldly, the sort of expansive ecosystem other stimuli would only distract from. Even for Mike Hadreas, the singer-songwriter behind Perfume Genius, the styles presented here are a jarring heel turn; the man’s penned some of the most fragile indie ballads and stirring maximalist pop of the last decade, none of which prepared for me this album’s amorphous, avant-garde anarchy. It’s nominally “pop music,” but only through abstraction; you’re almost better off considering it a haunted house.
The instrumental array—woodwinds and brass, dismembered reggae, Tim Hecker-ish ambient, each excursion swept along by meandering, uneasy piano or Hadreas’ quivering falsetto—exists in a realm where bloodlines between genres don’t matter. Ugly Season is a black hole where the malformed and the sublime bleed into one another. It’s spellbinding—undoubtedly some of the most insular, seductive, and alien music I’ve heard this year.
Listen to: “Eye in the Wall”
#24 – Bob Vylan – Bob Vylan Presents The Price of Life
🇬🇧 London, England – April 22 – Ghost Theatre Records
Between the Queen dying and ongoing parliamentary zugzwang, England’s had a rough year. Bob Vylan don’t feel sorry for it.
Honestly, neither do I. My country’s imperial power is in-your-face—at least you’ll know where an American stands. The British way is more insidious and just as patronizing. MC Bobby Vylan (his DJ is Bobbie Vylan, don’t get them mixed up) doesn’t care for phony civility, so his message was bound to upset some pearl-clutching nans. “No liberal lefty cunt,” he snarls on “Pretty Songs,” “is gonna tell me punching Nazis ain’t the way!” Terse, to the point, propelled by a Jamaican accent and the most clipped punk riffs this side of an 80s basement tape, the duo presents the price of life as it currently feels: gouged.
Admittedly, the riffs are simple. The Price of Life is not a dexterous showcase of musicianship. The bars are also simple—wry, thankfully, but you’ll still likely see where Bobby’s going from one rhyme to the next. The secret sauce isn’t an ingredient so much as their process: bashing the shit out of the issue at hand (be it police raids, systemic poverty, radio censorship, Big Fast Food etc.) until you’re as heated as they are. Short songs and strong sloganeering is the name of the game. Not to take away from their energy, the duo’s mash-ups of old school punk rock and modern grime are genuinely synergistic. Even if The Price of Life’s manifesto doesn’t land for you, the seamless bluster of its banger propaganda works a mad double shift as an exercise playlist. Bless my wee little white boy heart—I am not immune to it.
Listen to: “GDP”
#23 – Everything Everything – RAW DATA FEEL
🇬🇧 Manchester, England – May 20 – Infinity Industries
Everything Everything had been one step ahead of the curve for a while; when the band launched at the start of the 2010s with a skittering fusion of math rock and indie pop, the British press hailed them as an innovators. Their doomsday preaching took a partisan angle in conjunction with refined hook-writing, a double whammy that allowed 2015’s Get to Heaven to land on wider radars. But since then they’ve almost seemed to coast, rehashing prior ideas with a greater reliance on Radiohead-isms and fewer thought-provoking ways to commentate hysteria.
They finally turn back the clock with RAW DATA FEEL, the most unabashedly “pop” record by the four-piece to date, but they had a little help. The band made no secret this material was written with AI in mind—in some cases, even by computer programming or through samples of hardware jingles. And yet it all bleeds a human heart—if a linear narrative weaves through the record, its details elude me, but its fantasies evoke a half-conscious dream state, like its web of narrators are caught between what’s left of their organic matter and a sterilized, comatose future. One-liners range from mischievously tasteless (that “Obama in the streets/Osama in the sheets” one is…something) to genuinely touching, but they’re rarer in number than ever before, a genuine “less is more” evolution from the verbal diarrhea and restless pitch syndrome Jon Higgs exhibited in the band’s wackier days.
Most importantly, RAW DATA FEEL redirects the band’s increasingly electronic focus with a narrower cohesion, and they make good on it with the most blissful-sounding tunes they’ve ever written, be they masking darkness within or playing sincerity straight. I never would’ve guessed a diet of binary code could go down the hatch this smoothly.
Listen to: “I Want A Love Like This”
#22 – Danger Mouse & Black Thought – Cheat Codes
🇺🇸 Los Angeles, CA & Philadelphia, PA – August 12 – BMG Rights Management
Older hip hop heads ought to recognize Black Thought as lead MC of The Roots, a classic act in their own right before arguably surrendering their cause for the role of Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show band. Danger Mouse, on the other hand, stayed independent. Carrying one of the most storied careers of any producer still kicking, he gained his big break from a Beatles/Jay-Z mashup project that catapulted him to work with artists like CeeLo Green, Gorillaz, The Black Keys, Beck, and so on. Circumnavigating similar spaces (even if Danger Mouse hadn’t produced a full hip-hop record in almost 20 years) and knowing each other such a long time, it’s shocking this pair of icons never put together a heftier joint effort.
Until now, that is. Cheat Codes has been stewing a while and you can tell: Mouse’s beats conjure up a shuffling, ghostly take on turn-of-century boom-bap, providing what at first glance feels like a throwback to the sounds The Roots would’ve toyed with in their heyday. The feature list both reinforces and pushes against this notion of nostalgia—some legends appear in the form of Raekwon, Run The Jewels, and a chilling posthumous verse from MF Doom, while newer stars like A$AP Rocky, Conway The Machine, and Joey Bada$$ get moments of limelight too.
Tying together the guest spots (none of which I’d consider letdowns, amazingly) are Black Thought’s grizzled, hard-hitting cadences, warmed up and wily coming off three solo albums of his own. The talent going into this project is obvious—so much so they didn’t feel any need to hide it behind a moniker—and we got out of it precisely the cool and composed platonic ideal you’d come to expect from two masters of their craft operating in close synchronicity.
Listen to: “Aquamarine”
#21 – Vein.fm – This World Is Going To Ruin You
🇺🇸 Boston, MA – March 4 – Closed Casket Activities
Vein.fm’s Anthony DiDio would rather not tell you what This World Is Going To Ruin You is about. In all fairness, it’s not difficult to read between the lines: abusive homes and self-harm slinky into frame at multiple points. Their music vids include shadowy figures, blades, and spilled blood. There is no safety in this record, no reprieve. Vein.fm were already one of the most haywire bands in their scene, molding a ceaseless barrage of metalcore, nu-metal, and hardcore punk with two bites for every bark.
This World Is Going To Ruin You is only their second album, and it sets their legacy in stone mighty early. It is one of the most nightmarish things I’ve ever heard. I did not return to it with any regularity, and when I did, I quickly remembered why. It’s one thing to flail your limbs in the pit to this, risking bruise and battery in the process, swept up in the raw anger they saddle. It’s another for each spat word to sizzle in your ears, the unforgiving dissonance amplified to eleven one too many times over. There’s variety too, if you make it far enough in—Thursday’s Geoff Rickly is everywhere these days, including a cameo on “Fear In Non-Fiction.” “Wavery” mimics the atmospheric chunkiness of Deftones. “Funeral Sound…,” well, on second thought, why spoil that surprise?
The point is this: if you want a taste of unhinged punk music made by (deceptively) adequately hinged people, look no further. If you don’t? You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Don’t lose it.
Listen to: “The Killing Womb”
#20 – The Callous Daoboys – Celebrity Therapist
🇺🇸 Atlanta, GA – September 2 – MNRK Heavy
Take the most high-octane, adrenaline-pumping eccentricities of metalcore and hack ‘em to bits and what do you get? Mathcore 1.0! The Callous Daoboys’ debut record, Die On Mars, showed a ton of promise in that vein, suggesting the collective could, if they so desired, ride the coattails of their forefathers to cult popularity. Worst case scenario, they’d become a watered down version of those trailblazers—The Dillinger Escape Plan, Botch, you name ‘em. Best case? They take swings with similar recklessness and land as reputably as the ones who pioneered the sound before them.
The Daoboys had crazier plans.
They weren’t mutually exclusive ones—much of Celebrity Therapist is, to some degree, defined by pissed-off abandon, abrupt breakdowns, and ferocious, breakneck screaming. Just as much of it is a zany off-road adventure, throwing caution and song structure to the wind. It’s mathcore 2.0, all the hallmarks assuredly contained within, but thrown off by odd, clashing flavors, including but not limited to spaghetti western licks, ska brass, and the ghosts of Tool Yet to Come. Don’t like the update’s aftertaste? Good news, it’s just like the weather. Wait all of ten seconds and it’ll change back…and forth…and back again. There’s no formula; the record is an unpredictable, vitriolic tornado. Celebrity Therapist has “songs” in metadata only: they’re suites of intentional disregard strung together to provoke confusion. The only path this act treads now is their own. The Callous Daoboys have become ungovernable. I’ve got nothing but respect for Tmerica’s Aeam.
Listen to: “What Is Delicious? Who Swarms?”
#19 – Willi Carlisle – Peculiar, Missouri
🇺🇸 Fayetteville, AR – July 15 – Free Dirt Records
Willi Carlisle is no stranger to Peculiar, Missouri—the small interstate-straddled demi-suburb of Kansas City is “a certifiable USDA small town anywhere, Everywhere USA,” in his words; “You’ve been there, even if you haven’t been.” By the same token, you probably know a Willi Carlisle in spirit, if not by name—banjo and guitar in hand, self-described as an over-educated folk singer, the roamer does his darnedest to see the light in everyone and everything and bring people together.
Keeping himself together would suffice, though. Peculiar, Missouri isn’t set in its titular location for long—just enough for a fatigued spoken-word episode of kleptomania at a Walmart—but in six minutes, the narration runs the gamut from a cheeky travelogue to a cosmic epiphany, a panic attack that exhales stunned relief almost as quickly as it starts.
Though the title track is the most freeform “song” here by a large margin, it’s a thematic microcosm of Carlisle’s strengths. It hints at the hootin’ and hollerin’ inclusivity of “Your Heart’s a Big Tent” and the existential dread of “I Won’t Be Afraid” and “The Grand Design.” The dichotomy wears economic lenses on “Tulsa’s Last Magician” and flirts with old-timey blue collar work ethic on “The Down and Back.” For a boost of comic relief, see “Vanlife,” while a trio of obscure covers pad out the remainder of the runtime. Carlisle wrangles a surprising breadth of subjects and tones on Peculiar…, despite virtually every moment on it using a combination of frank storytelling and even franker arrangements to get its empathy across. If you find its form hokey, the phrasing may still make you reconsider—you’d be hard-pressed to find a more emotional, personable, and purposefully topsy-turvy Americana release in 2022.
Listen to: “Tulsa’s Last Magician”
#18 – Moon Tooth – Phototroph
🇺🇸 New York, NY – May 13 – Pure Noise Records
It’s uncanny when things come full circle. In comparison to the purged negative energy of Crux, Moon Tooth’s previous record, the Long Island-based hard rock outfit wanted their next effort to reach for the light. That’s not a tricky request to fulfill—absolution is everywhere in their technical, blisteringly fast, and contagiously fun playing. These guys ooze chemistry from first listen, and Phototroph is yet another showcase of it, this time constrainedly but joyously within the confines of a beefy, proggy, melodic strain of heavy metal.
Rollout went fine—good reception and pleasant shows, both to be expected. Suddenly, the rest of the year went out the window: Nick Lee collapsed at a rehearsal and slipped into a coma for weeks. The diagnosis was limbic encephalitis, an acute brain inflammation that left the virtuoso guitarist with a groggy memory and a rigorous rehabilitation regimen ahead. Some months later, he’s miraculously persevering and in relatively good spirits—as good as you could expect of anyone learning how to live again.
Cynical minds would say Lee’s crisis is irrelevant to Phototroph’s merits or failures, but the album doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I was having plenty of fun with it beforehand—every musician goes dummy hard and Nick Castone’s vocal lines are addicting as crack (or so I’ve been told) to belt out—but it transformed from a mere good time to a rallying cry as fans watched and waited for the riffmaster responsible for its zest to heal. You might find trickier and thornier metal in 2022, but Moon Tooth flaunted the genre’s triumphant capabilities in spades on Phototroph.
Listen to: “Nymphaeaceae”
#17 – Ibibio Sound Machine – Electricity
🇬🇧 London, England – March 25 – Merge Records
Upon discovery, Ibibio Sound Machine immediately became one of my favorite band names. There’s nothing misleading about it, either: the ensemble operates like a global jukebox, incorporating elements of electronic dance music, R&B, and disco with Sub-Saharan traditions like afrobeat and highlife. Frontwoman Eno Williams’ bilingual lexicon (Ibibio is one of many official languages of Nigeria) seals the deal: her adaptable presence can snake around the band’s infectious pulses or pirouette above them with a figure skater’s elegance.
Until now, this band had been an arm’s length curiosity for me, but Electricity sees them advance their accessibility with the production wonders of UK dance collective Hot Chip, lending a bouncier variety of tones to their synth work and injecting every rhythm here with funky bravado. From the percussive parade of chants and horns in the superb opener “Protection From Evil” to the lullaby mantra of “Afo Ken Doko Mien” or the Afro-futirist “17 18 19,” no two tracks here build off the same schematic.
Despite bridging oceanic divides and pulling from decades of distinct cultures, all the elements coalesce with so much precision they almost undersell the group’s interdisciplinary inspirations. Electricity is at once the zenith of Ibibio Sound Machine’s fluidity and a celebration of music’s innate ability to get bodies moving. Consider this record your invitation to join the party.
Listen to: “Protection From Evil”
#16 – Alexisonfire – Otherness
🇨🇦 St. Catharines, ON – June 24 – Dine Alone Records
I’ve gotta say, it’s awkward being gung-ho about the comeback record of a band I hadn’t actually listened to beforehand. For whatever reason, even though Alexisonfire’s brand of post-hardcore was adjacent to a lot of the acts I grew up loving, they’d slithered by my radar. The Canadian quintet always left the door open for a reunion, and that occurred just a few years after the initial breakup, but aside from a few one-off singles and gigs, a substantial collection of new music didn’t seem to be in the works.
And then suddenly, it was, and it’s a stranger (if tamer) beast than anything the band had released before now. Thirteen years is more than enough time for listening habits to change—the post-hardcore they built their foundation on only shows up in slivers of Otherness’ pacier cuts like “Reverse the Curse” and “Conditional Love.” Controversially, I think that’s a good thing. A plurality of the material is an amalgam of what the members have been up to since—Dallas Green’s side project City & Colour let the man croon to the blues, while others channeled sludgy stoner rock.
The two prospects mingle harmoniously throughout Otherness, not only living up to the title, but establishing a new precedent from which they can further sculpt and grow. A few minor gripes about the DIY production aside (at a certain point, bad distortion is inseparable from good distortion. Why dwell on it?), Otherness is a fresh, addictive, and cathartic listen—and I’m not even a diehard Alexisonfire fan. I can only imagine what having these guys back means to them.
Listen to: “Sweet Dreams of Otherness”
#15 – Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
🇺🇸 New York, NY – February 11 – 4AD Records
Big Thief have been a critical darling in the indie-sphere since their formation. I hadn’t understood why. I still don’t, really, if we’re talking about any release before Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, but I’m living proof that even the staunchest of naysayers can have their minds changed. At 80 minutes and 20 tracks, Dragon… at first seems too imposing to have that effect. It should be a slog, especially for an act I’ve struggled to see the appeal of until now.
But it’s not. To my amazement, Big Thief finally got weird and refined the basics in equal measure. Some tracks here really are as simple as they sound, anchored by sparse arrangements, Adrianne Lenker’s fluttery vocals, and plain sentiments. After all, Big Thief are a folk band (by way of alt-country by way of indie rock yadda yadda yadda)—a few chords and the truth are in their DNA. And yet the songwriting is just stickier, cozier, less reliant on depth of narrative and instead grounded by their campfire-bound, sing-along jolliness. Even better, the other face of Dragon’s coin, interspersed with the less adventurous stuff, is a whirlwind of experimentation, utilizing tools from warbling drum machines, congas, jaw harp, and “icicles” (what?) to guitar work with coins stuffed between the strings and fretboard (see “Time Escaping” for that one, it’s bonkers).
The resulting sounds are enchanting, imbuing nearly every track with a wonder previously unrevealed not just in Big Thief’s discography, but from all their contemporaries of similar stature. I don’t know if this was a fluke or if I should count on them having more of this magic down the pipeline. Whatever the case, thanks to an assortment this abundant, it’ll be a while before any of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You loses its charm.
Listen to: “Red Moon”
#14 – The Afghan Whigs – How Do You Burn?
🇺🇸 Cincinnati, OH – September 9 – BMG Rights Management
Surviving just shy of a dozen lineup changes, druggy misadventures, and a decade on hiatus, The Afghan Whigs returned with a bang to stamp their status as perennial alternative rock giants. How Do You Burn? is their third record since reuniting in 2011, and their most adventurous in that span as well. While songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Greg Dulli and bassist John Curley are the only two founders left, their creative teamwork hasn’t suffered at all from the Whigs’ revolving door membership.
If anything, the more, the merrier! A few tracks here were productions handled solely by Dulli—the heart-aching piano ballad “Please, Baby, Please” and harmonic psychedelia “A Line of Shots” prove he’s still got it in isolation—but How Do You Burn? is at its best when overlaid by its packed roster of collaborators. On “Jyja” and “Take Me There,” the late Mark Lanegan deforms Dulli’s bluesy romps with a devilish character. Marcy Mays reprises her role from the band’s 1993 song “My Curse” for “Domino and Jimmy,” resulting in my favorite duet of the year. “Catch a Colt” and “The Getaway” are two standouts accented by vibrant string arrangements.
The individual praises could go on and on; How Do You Burn? is a “the sum is greater” sort of project, every track, in its own way, flexing the mastery of form you can’t help but expect from veterans of their field. Touching all their emotional hallmarks—beleaguered, droll, sexy somehow—it’s an Afghan Whigs record through and through. They’ve been through a lot. Nothing’s gonna slow them down now.
Listen to: “The Getaway”
#13 – Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
🇺🇸 Compton, CA – May 13 – pgLang/Top Dawg Entertainment/Interscope Records
By design, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is messy. That it’s Kendrick Lamar’s first double album feels wrong. To Pimp a Butterfly is actually longer, and good kid, m.A.A.d city isn’t far behind, but both those records, pivotal moments that transformed the Compton rapper from a rising star to a generational talent, were perfectionist affairs when it came to scope and storytelling. Continuing to reflect on hood crime and the black experience in America, 2017’s DAMN. proved that the packaging was partially responsible for his success. An album of miscellaneous bangers without a continuous narrative isn’t necessarily what Kendrick fans fancied.
I’d say that’s selling DAMN. short, and I’d go one step further to argue you can’t have it both ways. In essence, Mr. Morale… is the inverse of its predecessor, a record so finely attuned to concepts of personal growth, moral comeuppance, and generational trauma that it sometimes forgets to, you know, be exciting music. Still, I reckon that’s somewhat intentional—Mr. Morale… contains the leanest and most subtle beats Lamar has ever waxed to, capable of eviscerating nasty emotions through the emptiness of their instrumentation as much as the pinpoint precision of the rapper’s monologues.
And that’s not even considering the curveballs; “We Cry Together” is a full-blown domestic dispute stranded between acting class and jazz rap; “Auntie Diaries” sees Kendrick defend a trans relative, while at the same time repeating a slur and incorrectly gendering him. The album features Kodak Black on multiple tracks, an individual whose past is so checkered it makes no logical move to associate with him. Mr. Morale doesn’t paint Kendrick’s choices in absolutes or black and whites. The album seeps grey at its best—a dingy, dusty sepia in its grainier moments. Despite it all, its artistic creativity dazzles: see “United In Grief,” “Father Time,” “Mother | Sober,” and more for proof he hasn’t forgotten how to transfix within the constraints of a song. “Best” isn’t the most exemplary word, but Kendrick’s latest is unquestionably the most fascinated I’ve been by a hip-hop album this year. Its big picture is absolutely worth the bumps in the road.
Listen to: “Rich Spirit”
#12 – Little Simz – NO THANK YOU
🇬🇧 London, England – December 12 – Forever Living Originals
Coming off last year’s grand Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, Little Simz shouldn’t have been overlooked any further. The album netted her a BRIT Award nom and even won the Mercury Prize, institutional validation at long last of the rapper/entrepreneur’s independent ascension. In its wake, however, came a falling out. She and a manager—presumably someone related to Age 101 Records, who had exclusively released her music to this point—have parted ways with spite.
Most of NO THANK YOU uses this event as a launchpad to dive even further into Simz’ sadly familiar struggle with proper appreciation and compensation. Money plays a pivotal role here; as determined by a slew of call-out bars and the album’s total lack of advance press, she felt too many people were trying to run off with the credit and cash her creative expression was owed. In some ways, NO THANK YOU feels like a do-over—she prefaces that she just “had some stuff she needed to get off her chest,” but thanks to the intact team of producer Inflo, who supplied the regal orchestrations of Introvert, and their mutual SAULT collaborator Cleo Sol, whose backing vocals anchor several of both records’ hooks, the trio operate at a caliber no less complex and complementary than on Simz’s predecessor.
Some will call this an epilogue. A director’s cut might be the more accurate description, casting Introvert’s interlude fluff to the wayside. NO THANK YOU sees the unit performing at the top of their game, and all they needed was a bit of tweaking and a clearer enemy to direct the frustration at. Considering I’ve had less than a week to digest it—in the middle of writing all this, no less—I hesitate to place it in my top 10 of the year, but it’s handily the best hip-hop I’ve heard in 2022. If any of you are still sleeping on her, you’re overdue to check out the genre’s modern day de facto queen.
Listen to: “Angel”
#11 – Caracara – New Preoccupations
🇺🇸 Philadelphia, PA – March 25 – Memory Music
As it was for most artists reliant on touring to fund their continued operations, Caracara saw no sense in releasing New Preoccupations until the logistics were back in their favor. It gave the indie rock quartet extra time to adjust parts, and about half the record was reborn or altered in their studio extension with busybody producer Will Yip.
As for which parts, well, that’s a real chicken or egg conundrum. Did Caracara set out to write a record obsessed with transitory periods and liminal spaces, or was that just a consequence of being held back by one? Either way, the band evoke such moments of out-of-body pining through crystalline lenses, whether they revolve around drug withdrawals, breakups, or the lurking unease of the last few years striking with profundity at odd hours of the day.
I won’t lie and suggest anything here is instrumentally mind-blowing or averse to tradition. New Preoccupations is but a transition record that capitalizes on its moment in time punctually, shying away from the group’s post-rock tendencies and transplanting their shimmering, spacious songcraft onto a resolutely poppier ethos. The migratory state of their execution—sometimes cold and desolate (like the electronic pulses of “Useful Machine”or the brimming slow-burn “Nocturnalia,”) at other points intimate and radiant (the singles)—pairs well with the adrift subject matter. Their flow is impeccable, too, kicking off with a bang, receding to a quieter center, and then slowly rebuilding to the explosive closer “Monoculture.” New Preoccupations is simply a gorgeous soundtrack for introspection and self-examination. The massive replay value of its highlights (I’m convinced if this had come out 15 years ago it would’ve spawned at least one massive alt rock radio hit) is icing on the cake.
Listen to: “Strange Interactions in the Night”
#10 – The Dear Hunter – Antimai
🇺🇸 Port Angeles, WA – July 1 – Cave & Canary Goods
The Dear Hunter don’t backpedal potential. This is a band which has, to date, released a five-album progressive rock story arc, a 36-song box set collection inspired by colors, and expeditions into orchestral scores. With all those loose ends essentially wrapped up but plenty of creative gas left in the tank, last year’s The Indigo Child EP marked the start of a new chapter for the group’s imaginative output. Goodbye, archaic steampunk revenge fable, hello, …whatever the hell exactly Antimai has just begun.
Upon release I described the album as “The essence of The Dear Hunter filtered through the Star Wars cantina band.” I stand by that. The pitch is simple enough: in a far-flung space dystopia, a rigid caste system keeps the born-rich elite, their panderers doing well enough to get by, and misfits cast to the periphery of society. Each track on the album represents one “ring” of the world, starting with its most oppressed inhabitants and working its way with an increasingly sinister bent towards its most powerful.
The parallels with reality are hard to miss—this is fiction via details, not mechanics—but withhold your eye-rolling until after you’ve heard the tunes. The Dear Hunter and audacious prog-pop wizardry were already synonymous. We’re gonna need to invent new adjectives to convey how unrestrained Antimai is in comparison to their other universes, full of wild funk grooves, synth swells, and tracks that [checks notes] kick off with Dr. Seuss-ass villain speeches and [re-checks notes] end with VHS-era exercise tape grunts. It’s silly as shit and it bops hard and (this is where new listeners come in) it’s the start of a totally fresh saga, unbound to any of their prior lore. These chances don’t come around often. Take the Casey Crescenzo pill and I’ll show you how deep the TDH hole goes.
Listen to: “Ring 7 – Industry”
#9 – Birds in Row – Gris Klein
🇫🇷 Laval, France – October 14 – Red Creek Recordings
Leading up to the launch of Gris Klein, Birds in Row posted a studio session of the tracks “Noah” and “Cathedrals.” As the core of the new record, these two consecutive songs show off the band’s range; “Noah” rises like ashes from a grungy, repetitive riff and cliff-walks towards the misty horizon. As the track winds back on a refrain of “you should have taken the money, you fool,” the tension momentarily slips and next thing you know, “Cathedrals” crashes in with the more commonplace of Birds in Row’s tactics: utter mayhem. Walls ricochet their gang shouts and clamoring guitars in every direction. “I’m drooling, I’m swearing, I’m pissing, I’m shitting,” Bart Hirigoyen howls in bestial panic. The track is such a purge it nearly concludes with digital collapse. It’s not alone, either.
If “Noah” and the tracks that follow its lead—“Trompe L’œil” and “Secession” namely—are like trawling through a damp, labyrinthine cave, “Cathedrals” is like surfacing above ground only to find the world at war. The guys explain the record title as a personification of depression, of living without seeing color or purpose, and for all the noise they manufacture, that sense of despondence isn’t far out of frame either. Everyone’s experience with mental illness, directly or otherwise, is bound to differ, but these tunes get mine, where the frustration of not being able to snap myself out of a funk is often more destructive than whatever caused the doldrums to begin with. It’s worse if you’ve positioned yourself as someone trying to help others without being able to help yourself; “Grisaille” speaks to this on a personal level, while “Daltonians” approaches it from a social justice standpoint. Somewhere in between, “Confettis” ties the two into one hell of a knot.
All this despite the fact Hirigoyen doesn’t employ his native tongue here—all the lyrics are in heavily-accented English and most of them are exorcised with such force you’d need the written words in front of you to make heads or tails of their eloquence. Gris Klein is still a must-listen for fans of screamo regardless of verbiage: Birds in Row rarely let off the gas, and the tones they violently steer (key highlight: the stuttering pedal work of “Rodin,” like, uh, holy shit) are easily worth the semi-minced grammar. Time will tell if the album only remains a yearly highlight or if it will grow into an all-timer; like an onion, it’s got layers I’ve yet to fully peel off. Also like an onion, cutting into them makes me weep.
Listen to: “Noah”/”Cathedrals”
#8 – 40 Watt Sun – Perfect Light
🇬🇧 Totnes, England – January 21 – Cappio Records/Svart Records
It’s almost incongruous to think Patrick Walker, the musician behind 40 Watt Sun, once belonged to a metal scene. You wouldn’t assume it if, like it was mine, Perfect Light is your introduction to the reclusive singer-songwriter. Its eight slowcore ballads call to mind the patience-testing rumble of doom metal, I suppose, but the similarities begin and end at superficialities. His origins matter not for the sake of Perfect Light’s impact, but let that background inform your expectations in structure—these songs are thoroughly glacial in tempo, meditation prioritized over engagement. You’ll get your payoffs, but not before you forget they might come at all.
There are less than ideal environments for music like this. Avoiding noisy settings is a must, as 40 Watt Sun amount to little more than Walker’s worn out vocals and gentle acoustic plucking for several minutes at a time. On that note, 67 of them don’t necessarily make a marathon, but at over an hour, Perfect Light requests a substantial block of any listener’s schedule. Meet those criteria, though, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed; these songs are non-denominational prayers of sorts, marked by lots of “let us”-es and talk of luminescence, culminating in a communal and yet dearly personal reflection on life’s sweeping mysteries and most intimate treasures.
Walker’s arrangements likewise keep their eyes and ears open for answers and guidance, finding accompaniment in tender strings, E-bowed guitars, airy pianos, and the most hushed of percussive elements. His poetry swells and sloops at geologic intervals, always pristinely produced and rarely eliciting anything other than relieved, comforted breathing rhythms. Whether you’re compelled to nod off to it or it’s precisely what you need to keep pressing on, Perfect Light’s slab of solace overrode any melancholy I could throw at it. Hopefully it can provide a similar present to you.
Listen to: “Reveal”
#7 – Vansire – The Modern Western World
🇺🇸 Rochester, MN – May 12 – Self-released
On The Modern Western World, Vansire at once don the wardrobe of navel-gazing townies and globetrotters who’ve lost count of the miles they’ve traveled. The duo, consisting of recent college grads Josh Augustin and Sam Winemiller, have the whole bedroom project thing down pat. Their 2018 LP Angel Youth enlisted the help of several collaborators, diversifying their chilled-out, dreamy pop blueprint to wider extremes than their competition. Levitated by feel-good lyrics and a humble, no-stakes air of inclusiveness, the band attained modest underground success while plugging away at their studies.
As their first release outside of a dorm, and facing a weirder web of life in general than the last time they dropped a record, The Modern Western World nonetheless arrives at equivalent takes with the same formula. The lads blend vaporwave, hip-hop, disco, jazz, jangle pop, and even bluegrass into a smoothie high in nutrients and in need of no chaser. To some extent, that idea’s a recycled one—Angel Youth used it too—but when I say The Modern Western World is the better of the two albums, I really mean it’s the better album; its track transitions are flawless in mood and melody alike, as if turning the radio dial generated not static in between stations, but a glittery gradient. As for the guests, American underground rappers, a Quebecois songstress, a Japanese DJ, and a Korean electro-popper pepper the landscape with multilingual seasoning, easing in and out of Augustin & Winemiller’s starry vision with poise.
The summation of its interlude-abundant, short and sweet scattering of tracks is simply the brightest, twee-est bullshit I’ve indulged all year, but I love every second of it. Generations on from the uproar of rock and roll stealing the hearts and minds of escapist youth, the fabric of those fantasies has changed. It’s no longer defined by big hair, leather jackets, motorbikes, or sticking it to the man—the zoomers, and by extension, their late millennial cousins, have spoken, and the Born to Runs of the 2020s are masterminded by mild-mannered Midwesterners with too much free time and an internet connection that renders borders and language barriers arbitrary. The Modern Western World pulls off Vansire’s vision by finding love in the figurative road—the sky, the electricity, and the love that connects us all.
Listen to: “The Modern Western World”
#6 – Chat Pile – God’s Country
🇺🇸 Oklahoma City, OK – July 29 – The Flenser
God’s Country is the most harrowing record on this list, and it isn’t even close. With two EPs to their name in the last three years, Chat Pile whetted the appetite of noise rock and industrial fans via taxidermy of the genres’ landmark acts, posing their skeletal frame with Godflesh’s electronic drums, The Jesus Lizard’s lumbering riffage, and Daughters’ psychotic soliloquies. They committed to the bit, too; promo material included music videos of people drenched in blood lugging giant crosses around Oklahoma suburbs. Randy “Raygun Busch” Heyer’s lurching trachea sounds like a demon possessing the Cookie Monster. It’s viscerally disturbing to listen to. This stuff shouldn’t exactly be your hipster’s cup of coffee.
So how God’s Country, the band’s first full LP, somehow became a crossover hit with the indie mainstream (an oxymoron, yes, but you know what I’m getting at) is something of a head-scratcher. Heyer’s talking points undoubtedly play a role: “Why?”—one of the best tracks here, full stop—is an anti-homelessness screed, condemning those who subject vulnerable populations to the harsh elements while blocks of houses stand vacant. His voice brews profound indignation, the band churning like an ungreased contraption to the distorted wail of tornado sirens. “Slaughterhouse” tackles the meat industry with similar disgust, “Anywhere” the nation’s gun violence, “Wicked Puppet Dance” heroin addiction, all of them treating their protagonists like rotisserie-skewered fodder. Chat Pile are a horror band, that much is obvious, but only one song on God’s Country is directly inspired by fiction. The rest, be they about serial killers or lethal hallucinations starring McDonalds mascots, are everyday homegrown terrors—“real American Horror Stories,” Heyer calls them.
With just as few exceptions, their script isn’t didactic either, and I think that’s the key. In order to truly unnerve, Chat Pile procure an impressionist’s brush, primarily painting scenes of shock, blunt force trauma, and regret from the perspective of the suffering. Bassist Stin explained God’s Country as “an attempt to capture the anxiety and fear of seeing the world fall apart.” They succeeded—the formatting of it all is so grotesquely heavy, so over the top, it almost begets caricature. Jump scares and black comedy become one and the same by the end its torture. On first encounter you can’t know if at any given moment you’ll chuckle at the audacity of a one-liner or look over your shoulder, terrified by the skin-crawling textures the band choke out of their gear. Like a small child seeing a slasher flick a few years too early, it’s impossible to forget this record—remaining nonchalant about its depravity may actually be the more worrying reaction.
Listen to: “Why?”
#5 – Black Midi – Hellfire
🇬🇧 London, England – July 15 – Rough Trade Records
“The hack becomes a master / The crass becomes divine,” Geordie Greep croons on Hellfire’s unhinged centerpiece. The line belongs to a story of its own, revolving around a drug-addled horse race, but it might as well apply to Black Midi themselves; the experimental outfit fashioned bizarro post-punk on their 2019 debut Schlagenheim, and that was only the beginning of their highfalutin madness. Last year’s follow-up, Cavalcade, was brainier yet, pushing listeners down a slippery slope of theatrical progressive rock that could’ve been conceived as the illicit lovechild of cabaret show tunes and King Crimson. Expanding their technical prowess while otherwise behaving like aloof savants, press seemed divided as to whether or not Black Midi were getting too full of themselves or if their feigned genius was itself a masquerade.
Hellfire answers the question by doubling down on wit, and to their critics’ disdain, the band’s response is “what’s the difference?” They’ve got a point—they have a ludicrously meticulous ear for arrangements, and they throw every color at the canvas this time around; Latin claves, Primus-esque funk-metal, foggy-headed country music, 32nd-note hammer-ons so rapid you could set your fingers ablaze trying to replicate them—if you thought Black Midi’s sandbox was a smorgasbord before now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Greep’s smarmy vocal mannerisms have never felt more smug and at home as they do on this collection, and his storytelling benefits from a consistent through-line as well; if the Black Midi way is one of disorder and mischief, why not lasso together their protagonists’ destination too?
Everyone on Hellfire is going to see the flames: workaholics who let life pass them by, discharged army privates with gambling problems, assassins of wrestlers, pawns for supposed mobsters. Even the priests of its freakish circus are all doomed for the incendiary party seven layers deep. Black Midi aren’t the only band here to pose damnation as a thematic tool, but they are the only one primarily seeking to exhilarate with it, not frighten. The overriding tone of Hellfire is mania—the music refracts Greep’s long-winded prose through anxious, angular guitar licks, throbbing bass, Morgan Simpson’s prodigious drum chops, and a cacophony of orchestral flourishes. It’s varied enough that any of its songs could be someone’s favorite, but closer “27 Questions,” in the album’s last stanza, superlatively directs the apocalypse outward with a wink: “we all just laughed at the sad, old oaf / laughed all the way home.” Hellfire is comic delirium. I chuckled too, and you’d better believe I’ll be in the front row for Black Midi after our bells have each tolled.
Listen to: “Welcome To Hell”
#4 – Asunojokei – Island
🇯🇵 Tokyo, Japan – July 27 – Self-released
Let’s get the elephant out of the room immediately: I know that art up there suggests Island is anything but a metal album. It is, though. You wouldn’t understand a word of it even if its lyrics were in English, which they aren’t. Asunojokei play a form of what’s been termed “blackgaze,” a melodic strain of black metal with some of its edges dulled by the washed-out guitars of shoegaze music. Overdriven, atmospheric chords dominate the mix, powered forward by swift, pummeling rhythms and off-kilter, hissed vocals. To the average ear, even the most commercially viable blackgaze—Deafheaven the prime example, Alcest too—takes some getting used to.
Mine have taken that plunge already, so I can confirm Island is one of the grandest gateways to the sound I’ve come across yet. What’s more, allow me to walk back the imposition of the previous paragraph; even at Island’s most punishing moments, its musical character screams hope and uplift, like a bridge between the major chord punk and post-rock fervor of fellow countrymen Envy and the genre’s brutalist batting average. As much as I can get behind gloomy, miserable noise obsessed with man’s mortal coil, the best art tends to be multifaceted. Prisms know any medium is more interesting after it emits a visible spectrum.
To get less flowery about it, I generally just prefer my music with nuance and hooks, and while Daiki Nuno’s vocals come up short on range, his bandmates admirably take the melodic reins. I’ve been humming Kei Toriki’s guitar lines for months. The shuffles of “Diva Under the Blue Sky” and “Chimera” (a bonus track for their last LP turned single for this one) compound the band’s knack for unexpected pop framing, while the sheer drops of opener “Heavenward,” “Footprints,” and the monstrous “Beautiful Name” are enough to make even the trve kvlt-est of metalheads raise a stoic brow. It’s a little front-loaded—the record finds a stable groove through its second half, albeit at the expense of individual highlights—but even then, that needn’t be a backhanded compliment. The band sure aren’t lacking for flow, in any case. Asunojokei really stepped up on this one. Island is simultaneously summery and sinister, portentous yet playful, and it’s remained a constant in my rotation since its release.
Listen to: “Chimera”
#3 – Peregrine – the awful things we’ve done
🇺🇸 Worcester, MA – March 18 – Self-released
Dilapidated buildings overgrown by nature have become an album art cliché. Especially in circles that celebrate emo, post-hardcore, or whatever term is currently fashionable for heart-on-sleeve late-stage punk, examples of this specific aesthetic choice are a dime a dozen. In that regard, the house adorning the awful things we’ve done’s cover undersells what an instant classic it harbors. At the same time, the abandoned property feels like a justified metaphor for Peregrine: the pandemic took a nasty toll on this upstart local act, and through this album’s recording sessions, several members left. They released it with little in the way of lead-up; no music videos, no tour dates, few interviews. It doesn’t help matters when there exist or existed half a dozen other acts that share their name. If Peregrine initially wanted people to hear these tunes, they sure haven’t gone out of their way to promote them.
We all make mistakes. Thank God we’re not beholden to them. It wouldn’t make sense if we were. That’s a quote from a song here, but I’d prefer to kill the punctuation and treat is as a universal truth, because it should be. However unsuspecting, however hidden, however hard to pin down, the awful things we’ve done is the best emo album I’ve heard this side of my 2014 AOTY, The Hotelier’s Home, Like NoPlace Is There. Coincidentally, that record also effaces itself with an empty house. Less coincidentally, the band’s singer and fellow Central Mass native, Christian Holden, appears here on backing vocals. If Peregrine were taking pointers, they listened well: on this outing the downsized trio shapeshift between the dynamite psychedelia of peak At The Drive-In, the polluting embers of a blackened hardcore band, and the Americana-indebted licks of Brand New’s Vin Accardi. Nate MacKinnon, Peregrine’s vocalist, recalls the most profitable emo of yesteryear, the era where the stuff earned its radio play and its singers could actually, you know, hold a goddamn note. Dude’s got pipes. The gang vocals on here are wicked fucking potent.
Look, I understand the optics of plugging a band from my home county with less than a thousand listeners as the creators of one of the best albums of the year. Peregrine have earned it, though. The structure they assemble with those inspirations can rival the best of them. Save for the ambient interlude “breathe:subsist,” placed pointlessly between the opener and the rest of the record, the awful things exhibits masterful sequencing, exploding right out of the gate, simmering down through its mid-stages, and gradually ramping up with a second half that’ll leave your jaw agape. The doomy stomach plummet of “exorcism USA” kicks off this stretch, with the multi-suite rager “backpack” forming its apex, “january 24th” riding the tension, and “the awful things” going out with a bang to constitute one of the most stunning closing runs I’ve ever heard. MacKinnon bemoans near its final seconds: “no one’s listening anyway.” For nine months I’ve been trying to change that. If any of the buzzwords above stroke your interest, you owe it to yourself to check out the awful things we’ve done. If you let it pass you by…well, I’ll properly quote ‘em this time: “we all make mistakes.”
Listen to: “backpack”
#2 – Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up There
🇬🇧 London, England – February 4 – Ninja Tune
From one of the most obscure nominations on this list to one of the most agreeable, Black Country, New Road’s Ants From Up There had all the makings of a legendary effort before it even came out. Fresh off last year’s debut For The First Time, the British collective spent lockdown composing their most ambitious batch of songs to date, threading the wide-eyed chamber pop bliss of early Arcade Fire together with the stirring magnificence of post-rock icons. In concurrence with the record’s release, the band’s poet/vocalist, Isaac Wood, announced his amicable departure from the lineup, citing mental health issues. Out of respect for his inextricable presence on its songs, the rest of the group decided to not perform the bulk of Ants… on their subsequent tours, rendering their monumental effort a spectral gift.
As if the music’s cinematic splendor wasn’t enough of a sell, terminally online fans around the globe rushed to corroborate its merits in the art rock continuum. Compared to the self-serious lit student baritone Wood frolicked about with on the band’s first LP, his cadences take on a more vulnerable, sadder, and sometimes cornier tone throughout Ants. It’s ostensibly a breakup album—longing, listlessness, and the other stages of grief resound through its frail lulls and sudden bursts of activity—but the linearity of its narrative doesn’t translate as easily as its emotional undercurrent. Its frequent talk of space travel, stranded vessels, and name-dropped crushes exist in a half-fantastical limbo. Wood’s character adopts the plight of a sad-sack, codependent poser, and like the Pinkertons and Aeroplanes of the canon before him, his narrations teeter on the verge of surrealist self-parody. In turn, like Rivers Cuomo or Jeff Mangum, something clearly needs recalibration in his precious little brain. Without doubting his authenticity at all, a sabbatical or career change removed from the stage is a wise move. If he stayed, I’m not sure he’d contain the lightning in a bottle a second time anyway.
If any of that sounds counterproductive as a sales pitch, it’s only because the mythos behind Ants From Up There unfortunately overshadows how fully-enveloping its music is. I am but a terminally online music fan myself—that Ants… struck a chord with me should not come as a shock. That said, I also didn’t particularly enjoy For The First Time, so half my praise is reserved for how the band transformed from an intentionally abstruse sideshow to a gleaming diamond so quickly. The evidence of their evolution is obvious in not only every track’s reserved then celestial amplitude, but the album’s overall ebb and flow—the way “Chaos Space Marine” and “Good Will Hunting” dangle quirky prog gambits like bait only to call audibles into the calmer “Concorde” and “Haldern.” How “Bread Song” and “Mark’s Theme” unravel with the tender mystique of a noir piece and a eulogy, respectively. How the percussive avalanche of “Snow Globes” mimics whiteout visibility. How “The Place…” and the megalithic closer “Basketball Shoes” holler to the stars on scales unmatched by any other cult classic—or popular hit—this year. These are its victories; for the hour Ants From Up There plays, everything else is irrelevant. It just wraps you up in its mental stranglehold, caught perilously between bipolar nodes of self-pity and courage. It’s achingly, earnestly, sometimes luridly human, and it moves me despite every impulse warning me it should do the opposite. It forms the drone—we sing the rest.
Listen to: “Concorde”
#1 – Gang of Youths – angel in realtime.
🇬🇧 London, England – February 25 – Mosy Recordings/Warner Records
If the Billboard and RateYourMusic charts can agree on anything, it’s that rock anthems are a relic of the past. I find that a shame. I was raised on the stuff: as a toddler, Springsteen and U2 enamored me to music as a mode of performance in its own right (thanks, Dad) and every year I keep an eye out for the heirs of their legacy, of the belief rock ‘n’ roll can be as soul-affirming as church. Look around trying to find reasons to doubt its sway—the “business” side of the music business, the grandfathered-in one-hit wonders of yore, generations above ours saying “they just don’t make ‘em like they used to”—and you’ll find them as sure as the sun rises. I’d like to believe you’ll still find what you’re looking for if you set out in search of angels—not faultless people, per se, but those who restore your faith in humanity and encourage you to generously push on in pursuit of goodness and truth.
In recent years, Gang of Youths has been one such beacon for me; their 2015 debut The Positions and 2017 opus Go Farther In Lightness ushered the mostly Australian group to domestic superstardom, the next of kin for arena rock’s larger-than-life hubris. Their songs believed and questioned in its credibility, expressed extreme suffering and joy, all while commanding what seemed like effortless swagger. Lead singer and guitarist Dave Le’aupepe has ironically admitted he struggles with impostor syndrome, one minute totally engulfed by the passion of his verses, the next ridiculing himself as an exaggerator, a tryhard. It’s been a battle of baby steps and deflections, but lately you can start to see the band realizing performance and power are often one and the same—our heroes don’t have to be perfect, they just ought to make us strive for the notion of perfection, or at the very least, betterment. Life is too unpredictable to hold yourself up to an impossible standard.
It also comes at you fast. Since Lightness’ release and Gang of Youths’ ascension to the world stage, Le’aupepe’s father Teleso passed away, and it hasn’t left Dave’s mind, though Angel in Realtime isn’t your standard “bereaving the loss of a loved one” album, either. Teleso was tight-lipped about his earlier life, and upon his death, Dave unearthed secrets such as his birth in Samoa, some of the racism he faced as a Polynesian in mid-20th century New Zealand and Australia, and the fact he fathered children to other women before his final marriage. As quickly as the younger Le’aupepe lost a rock in his life, he soon had new family to meet, somewhat filling the void and making him appreciate his passed-on patriarch even more. Angel in Realtime traces that journey of discovery in the midst of Dave’s own trajectories, including moving the band from Sydney to London to escape the public eye, marrying the love of his life, and needing to tour for rent money while just wishing for some time alone to process everything.
The whirlwind of mourning and celebration would be enough to wear down anyone, and to an extent, Angel in Realtime delineates a shift in Gang of Youths’ temperament—they still hide chest-pumping bangers up their sleeve, but they now read like conversations instead of vignettes, lending more weight to space than the up-tempo orchestral histrionics of their past hits. Angel’s songs rise and recede like ocean waves, often interwoven with anthropological field recordings of Oceanian chants, rhythms, and orations. Le’aupepe’s curt, self-effacing daggers like “I was the loser at your funeral,” “I’m still the asshole down here, I guess,” and so on stand alongside the most reverent praises he’s ever penned. “Tend the garden” is an extended metaphor for his father’s desire to cultivate a family, “the angel of 8th ave” and “unison” love letters to new homesteads and flames kept burning. Their chiming, new wave guitars and sing-along oohs and ahs also line the margins of standout “in the wake of your leave,” while new recruit Tom Hobden fleshes out the likes of “you in everything,” “forbearance,” and “returner” with violins in bloom. “The kingdom is within you” is the album’s most daring political statement, a historical fiction narrative about a victim of the Dawn Raids. It’s also one of the band’s best songs, period.
Other tracks see Le’aupepe questioning his ethnic ties and capabilities as a maybe-soon-to-be father himself, while “brothers,” the most stripped-back cut here by far, expresses the singer’s gratitude for his newfound half-siblings. Angel in Realtime’s title drop is also its final spoken phrase, coming in the closing seconds of the diptych “hand of god” / “goal of the century,” the latter of which permits one final crescendo before hushing to a pause in the tide like a delayed beat taking its dear time to reach shore. Le’aupepe’s at home, mentally snapshotting all the events continuing to unfold despite his father’s departure, and at last sighs “in a way, it’ll feel like you were an angel in realtime.” The whole album leads up to this, and it’s worth every second countless spins over.
Gang of Youths had no problem paying tribute to a conceptual sort of rock heroism before now, but their repertoire is forever emboldened by the realization that mortality, fame, and family hold greater multitudes than we realize in our day to day lives. Angel in Realtime harnesses its peaks and valleys with the kindred grace that reassures me rock’s lust for life isn’t going anywhere soon. It hasn’t stopped moving me since I first heard it back in February, and if that disproportionately long essay didn’t make it obvious, it’s unquestionably my favorite album of 2022. Can I get an amen?
Listen to: “in the wake of your leave”
Thanks for reading. See y’all next year.
Inside The Heist Revenge 