Can it be?? Warm Visions posting something other than a list? It’s true, folks. After a long absence of individual posts, I have struck inspiration with this amazing Aashid Himons track, “The Gods & I”, off his 1984 album Kosmik Gypsy. If you’re looking for an ultimate groove to kick off your 2023, look no further.
Ope – one more 2022 post for ya. December Recommended Albums posts always feel so redundant and uncool, despite there being legitimately good music coming out during the month. So don’t shy away, friends and listen to some bomb tunes. One of these records even made my Top 50 of the year, and a song from another made my Top 100 songs! See, there’s always a good reason to listen back to things.
For the eighth year running, I’ve kept track of the songs that impacted my year as it happened, building a playlist from January to December and keeping it at 100 songs. If I was obsessed with a certain song that week, I made sure to add it into the playlist. If it was a new discovery that I was enamored with, it went in the playlist. If it was a weird track that got stuck in my head, or something that I was enjoying with my partner a lot, or something that will clearly remind me of that time in my life in the future, I plopped it into the playlist. A scrapbook of memories attached to songs. I’m sure in even two or three years I can flip back through some of these and remember exactly what was happening in my life based on the song. I know that will be the case because I’ve been doing it for this long already, and it works baby! You can check out a list of the past Retrospectives HERE.
This is my final wrap-up post for 2022 lists, so I want to thank all the readers that have kept up with Warm Visions in its 12th year. I broke my view count record again, which is a great sign, especially since I really slacked off in the summer and fall and didn’t do my due diligence with keeping up with new music at that time. I’m going to try and stay consistent and add new layers to the blog for 2023. Fingers crossed. Either way, thanks for reading, and to any musicians that I feature on here that happen to be reading, thanks again for your wonderful art. I’d be nowhere without it.
Check out the playlist of songs that soundtracked my year as it happened below, as well as my listening stats for 2022 as well. Think of this post as my Spotify Wrapped instead of those garish graphics. Gimme the raw numbers, baby! Beyond that is a tiny snapshot of other media I consumed this year (spoiler alert: not a lot) and a little wrap-up on my thoughts for the year + music as a whole. Thanks! Happy New Year!
I returned to live music in a big way in 2022. I witnessed 109 different performances by 105 different artists, as opposed to last year where I saw 44 performances by 43 artists (granted shows really didn’t start back up until July). Seeing a favorite musician or group perform live is still one of my biggest inspirations: the feeling you get when you hear a song you’ve obsessed over on your own for days, weeks, months or years live for the first time is unmatched.
There were shows here that I had tickets to see back in 2020. There are artists here who I’d been trying to see since 2009. There were both brand new and old artists performing their first-ever NYC shows. There was a surplus of overwhelming magical moments, moments where I would breathe in deeply to somehow capture all the special energy whirling around me. The miraculous part was that I only caught covid for the first time later in the year, and it’s debatable that I even caught it at a show. I did happen to get sick two other times this year, definitely putting a damper on a few of my plans, but nevertheless – some good numbers after essentially taking a forced hiatus from shows since 2019.
If you’re reading this and you’re a fan of the blog, I want to hear about your favorite live moments of 2022. Artists toured like crazy this year, so I know there had to have been more magical moments around NYC and outside of it. I love a gig, y’all! And also with that sentiment, if any touring artists happen to check this post out, I really want to say thank you for putting up some with utter BS this year from the music industry and world at large – you made a ton of people just like me very happy, and I can’t wait to see you live again.
Moving further through my favorite music of 2022, here we feature my Top 100 favorite songs of the year. Like previous years, I’ve picked out 90 I loved and organized them alphabetically, and then ranked my top 10 favorites at the bottom, each with little descriptors. There’s no way I can rank 100 songs. That’s bananas.
Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older, or becoming out of touch with the general “indie music consensus” or what have you, but it felt like the songs that the major music media chose as their favorite songs of the year. Obviously I have some of them in here (Beyoncé, Braxe + Falcon), but I wasn’t really vibing with a lot of the obvious single picks. I hope that’s my way of saying, well, I hope you enjoy some ‘alternative’ selections from the underground this year. I had a lot of fun writing the blurbs for my ten favorite songs and I hope it comes off that way. I had some great moments with songs this year, and I hope you enjoy going through my playlist + finding some new favorites for yourself.
Whew! Folks, it’s been quite the year of music. In 2022, we were given some pretty incredible pieces of music from artists all across the world in all different styles. This is a fact every year, but uh, this is how I’ve decided to open my Top Albums of 2022 list.
What do we have below? We’ve got three Brazilian records. We’ve got three different Daniel-made albums. We’ve got three Spanish-language records. But mostly, we’ve got a ton of lovely, semi-underground tunes for you to close your year out with. I’m going to keep this little intro blurb short since this post is going up LATE and I put many more words below. There will be more 2022 reflection coming later in my 2022 Retrospective post at the top of next year. For now, check out my picks below and support the artists I’ve featured here by clicking the album art + check out some purchasing options. I got you! Enjoy!
Ah, the EP. I always try and wax poetic about the EP every year around this time. Probably because it’s always the first little thing I happen to get up to start my “Best of YEAR” list season, since EPs are usually pretty easy to rank, unless you’re somehow inundating yourself with the stuff (no judgement if you are, just like, where are they all coming from?). But the question stands: how can you make EPs epic enough to kick off such an awesome, spellbinding, world-capturing, Earth-shaking phenomenon known as Warm Visions’ Best Of season? You can’t. But we push on regardless.
In 2022, I had a few EPs that I really, really loved, and a few more that kept me entertained while waiting for new full offerings from that specific artist. We got wild, unexpected returns (two of them featured here!). We got some newcomers putting a bold stamp on the scene at large with big statement debuts. We’ve got Warm Visions eternal favorites coming back around with solid showings. All in all, it’s a great little collection of appetizers for you to catch up on. Check them out below!
Not that there should be honorable mentions for EPs, here are a few more from this year I enjoyed:
Packing it all in for the final Recommended Albums posted in 2022. I will still highlight December, but that comes in January. In short, there were some lovely releases that made my job of crystallizing my Top 50 Albums of 2022 very hard. So much so that I had to break the 10-album limit and throw in another extra. Just for you. Why not.
Also – I still need to listen through all the SAULT records. There’s no way I was going to be able to get to all of them while still checking out other artists. 11 was pretty good though!
Holy smokes, a Recommended Albums that’s actually on time?? Well folks, this month’s post can definitely be considered a “COVID isolation activity”. I finally got the dang thing, breaking my legendary streak on my birthday of all days, and essentially shut me down to just listen to music that came out last month (although at a point early on I was so sick that even Grouper’s Ruins on the lowest volume hurt my feverish brain). All that to say, I got sick which helped me prioritize writing this post. The quality of the albums I’m featuring helped as well.
I listened to a lot of albums from October 2022. Around 40-45 I think, which is still meager to some music writers, but still. This seemed like a lot to me, especially since there seemed to be so many “high-profile” records out, both in the major and indie worlds. Most of my listening revolved around checking out September 2022 albums (I binged Shygirl’s Nymph a TON), continuing to absolutely blast The Sea and Cake at every chance I get, checking out a few new-to-me records (like Kruder & Dorfmeister’s K&D Sessions, Shuggie Otis’ Wings of Love, refreshing my memory of artists I saw live that month (caroline, Jessie Ware) and revisiting old favorites since I traveled a lot last month.
Not to mention, I also had a lot of fun listening to music that actually came out in October. My favorite of the bunch is definitely from Lucrecia Dalt, who I’ve been following now for what seems like a decade. I couldn’t be happier to see all the new attention she’s been getting on this album – super deserved! I had high expectations going into the Palm album and was a bit scared to listen to it, but the album not only met my stupid aspirations, it’s continuing to reveal weird new secrets upon each subsequent listen. And I would be remiss without mentioning the Canadian poets Shabason & Krgovich, whose album I’ve been loving for some time now, and applaud them for making such an awesome companion and stepping stone up from their similar collaborative album from 2020, Philadelphia.
There’s a lot more to October than just those three albums I mentioned. There’s actually even more than the full ten albums I have featured below. I’ve picked a few songs a bit further down which will give you hints at other records I enjoyed from the month, as well as a few loose treasures to adorn your ceremonial chalices with.
It’s much delayed, but I gotta hand it to September 2022. Some damn fine music arrived and solidly inserted itself into my Best Albums of 2022. By this point you’re probably already neck-deep in October jams, so here’s a rosy look back at some of the best September had to offer.
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