We’re at the halfway point of 2023 and I’m going to spare you the fanfare: below you’ll find my 25 favorite albums of the year so far (ranked), along with a list of 40 songs (alphabetized). It’s been a solid year for new tunes, but I have to say – nothing has been sticking out to me in a major way. I clearly have enough favorite albums to populate a list of 25, but am I head-over-heels / over the moon / feeling a special way about an AOTY contender? Not yet. Hoping time will reveal those feelings.
Regardless, keep scrolling for my favorites of 2023 so far. Maybe you’ll find something that unlocks a deep passion within your psyche. Or you’ll find something to listen to for a few days after reading. Either way, my job here is done.
TOP 25 LPs of 2023 SO FAR::
25. Hayden Pedigo – The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored [Mexican Summer]
Reading a memoir of a passed famous person you didn’t know before starting the book, but slowly recognizing the parallels between your life and theirs, giving you closure on stray anxieties.
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Meditative and enriching instrumental guitar music that weaves narratives and moods purely with dynamics, melodies and the occasional alley-oop of floating slide guitar. Will transport you to a picturesque field, or at least to a location where you can stare off longingly into a sea of wheat.
24. John Carroll Kirby – Blowout [Stones Throw]
Riding your bike on the outskirts of a stadium at dusk on a humid summer evening, feeling the wind fill up the back of your shirt like a sail, the massive cheers from the stadium egg you on, the massive lights casting dramatic shadows from afar.
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Inspired by a trip to Costa Rica + playing with local bar musicians, Blowout flexes both euphoric highs where it feels like absolutely nothing can touch you, plush with dramatic synths and dancing flutes, to bruised, paranoid synth passages that evoke more dystopian grooves than that of a blissful day at a jungle-lined beach. Regardless – some of Carroll Kirby’s nastiest grooves pop up here: a high compliment. Big unbuttoned short-sleeve shirt on the beach energy.
23. Y La Bamba – Lucha [Tender Loving Empire]
A desert oasis wavers in the heat on the horizon, the faint and ghostly sounds of whiny trumpets can be heard like buzzing flies just outside your view. The thought of swaying palms cools your brain.
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Glistening, wavering, shimmering pop that exists like it’s a desert oasis on the horizon line. It’s not even that you’re in the oasis yet, but your brain is so fixated on reaching it that you’ve already started to hallucinate the swaying palms overhead. The tropical birds making pit stops. A small spring gurgling. Album after album, Y La Bamba has succeeded in making highly hypnotic, Latin-touched indie pop tunes that are all their own, sounding like they’re being beamed in from another dimension. The romantically wilting Hank Williams cover in the middle of the album, the signature warbling guitar, and holographic falsetto heightens this quality to new peaks.
22. Kara Jackson – Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? [September Recordings]
On the corner outside of a small town pawnshop, a wanderer tells passerby their tales, as storm clouds gather the deeper the stories get.
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A lyrical talent laying waste to those who are silly enough to doubt her with the flick of a pen, but also doesn’t hold back when laying waste to herself, spiraling in disappointment, rejection, and all-around dick-headedness. Another interesting note: I was played a random song in isolation from this album and didn’t care for it. I decided to check the full album out and formed a totally different opinion. Listen to the full project. It’s one that will reward a careful listen.
21. Andrew Osterhoudt – Out Together [Geographic North]
Following a piece of micro plastic from its chaotic inception, to its eventual commercial use, to its long, global journey into the open ocean and assimilating into the world’s mass consciousness.
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A record that breathes, gurgles, bellows and mellows, plush with field recordings, digitally-stretched tones and the live contributions of flautists John Also Bennett and Ka Baird, who bring their unique energies and different perspectives to the glistening stream of sound found here.
20. Jam City – Jam City Presents EFM [Mad Decent]
A sea of really attractive people star in a commercial for an elite gym membership. Lights pulsate, muscles flex, sweat drips. The camera zooms out, and the gym is located on the spire of a super-tall skyscraper.
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Blissful, body-moving, blood-pumping electronic-led pop jams featuring blog favorites Wet & Empress Of, among others. Feels like a record I’d have enjoyed in 2013 or 2014, but totally brought into the present. No nostalgia here, just a return to form in the enthralling electronic pop sphere.
19. Andrea – Due In Color [Ilian Tape]
Sunshine cutting through the dense haze of an uncontrolled urban sprawl, shining into slivers of windows exposed to the sky and into the grates above bustling, subterranean marketplaces.
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A percussion-driven electronic record where high energy drum & bass flirts with slower moments of ambient and techno, while slipping in a bit of live jazz drumming influence in as well. A lush, highly-textural listening experience, like a rainforest growing in an underground cave.
18. Kelela – Raven [Warp]
Each night you dream of washing up onto an island populated by memories from your past relationships, and you have to decide which ones are real and which are stunted by time and perception.
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While I was looking forward to more bangers, new Kelela will always be appreciated regardless. On her first album in six years, she navigates a hazy, initially formless landscape with mostly her voice and subtle electronic instrumentals, occasionally dipping into clubbier, darker territories. As the album progresses, she erects monuments or erodes away soil to reveal hidden artifacts, filling the originally empty map the album started on with landmarks. An album that you let wash over and discover new things, but still able to get you out of your seat and moving in fluid, ambiguous ways.
17. Sweeping Promises – Good Living Is Coming For You [Feel It / Sub Pop]
Throwing a drink in someone’s face with the power of Inspector Gadget-like spring-loaded arms.
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An album of frayed and fuzzy post punk that reinvigorates my enthusiasm around the sound thanks to its dynamic vocals, discordant instrumentals and highly hooky structures. Gives me feelings of Omni’s terrific 2016 debut on a sonic fidelity level, as well as its own thing entirely in terms of an energy level. A vibe, if you will. Vibes are good here. A good-vibe post punk record I didn’t fall asleep to. Who would have thought another would come around? I surely didn’t. I almost didn’t listen to this. If you’re like me and tired of post punk, give this a try.
16. Gia Margaret – Romantic Piano [Jagjaguwar]
The dust blown off a book you’ve been meaning to read, pirouetting in a morning sunbeam.
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A mostly-instrumental piano record, how quaint. But actually though, Gia Margaret has some sort of alchemical sonic wizardry thing going on, where she has the power to turn the simplest of piano compositions into spine-melting, anxiety-quelling gold. To be clear, this isn’t something you’d hear from a mall piano player filtered across the racks. There are field recordings woven into the works, with further added instrumentation like saxophone, guitar, laid-back digital percussion & bass, giving it not only humanity (which many piano instrumental records are lacking), but also a vibrant instrumental palette. It was my most-listened to album of June for a reason – I’m just saying.
15. Nabihah Iqbal – DREAMER [Ninja Tune]
A sharp winter sunset descends over a humming cyberpunk city skyline, as observed by a pair of friends from a grassy, nature-reclaimed bunker on the outskirts of town.
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Slick synergies of shoegaze and modern electronic sounds make for a doubly blissful and melancholic experience on Nabihah Iqbal’s first album in six years, where you’ll find bending guitars and swaying synthesizer patterns both crashing into one another and washing ashore in unison. While still referential to the dream pop greats that came before, DREAMER brings a fresh perspective to a sound that has desperately needed a wake-up call.
14. Overmono – Good Lies [XL Recordings]
A billowing human being blown up into a net-like grid, its blood vessels and nervous system delicately flowing conjoined in an orderly pattern, light from street lamps casting waffled shadows.
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Meteorically rising Welsh electronic duo Overmono capitalize on the hype with a debut album that flexes their strengths: utilizing quality vocal samples to make for dance music with euphoric highs and an air of mystery or melancholy swirling within. Speaking of vocal samples, this record samples both Smerz and Tirzah. I mean come on now – that seems like it was crafted in a lab just for me.
13. Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy [Ninja Tune]
A dance hall filled with deliriously happy revelers harnesses enough energy to warp into space, into another dimension.
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In a world where music is going through more genre-blurring than ever, Young Fathers can be at peace knowing they been doing that. They’ve been making electrifying cataclysms of hip hop, soul, r&b, experimental electronic, rock, noise and so much more for years now, and Heavy Heavy keeps up the tradition with their most exuberant work yet. It feels like a celebration in the middle of an earthquake, the speakers shaking the ground more than the tectonic plates.
12. Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good! [PMR / EMI]
Sweating prosecco and getting chased around the club by ravenous dancers that missed the open bar.
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After her fabulous 2020 album What’s Your Pleasure? saw Jessie Ware indulging in more disco-centric instrumentals and song structures, That! Feels Good! keeps the disco ball spinning, with Ware further dipping into luscious, big room scorchers that harken back to the best the style of dance music had to offer in its heyday, while still maintaining a modern edge. Awesome use of orchestras and brass bands on a few tracks to go along with the predominantly synthetic instrumentals. Another high watermark of delectable pop throwback.
11. Colin Stetson – When we were that what wept for the sea [Self-Released]
A small dinghy cast out into the open ocean, its ferocious waves rocking the vessel without abandon.
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The virtuosic saxophonist & composer returns with an unsurprisingly intense album that acts as a dedication to his late father. A work that embraces many dualities through Stetson’s signature blistering saxophone passages that both burn bright and smolder low. His control over his instrument, whether it be the circular breath control, the dextrous fingers that methodically maintain the keys & valves, or the added melodic humming he adds atop the labyrinthian saxophone lines, illustrate all the range of emotion you need to know about this project. No lyrics required (I say this despite the two features from Iarla Ó Lionáird, whose presence almost brings the superhuman churning back to earth in their respective moments).
10. Tinariwen – Amatssou [Wedge]
Sitting atop a small mountain in the desert, watching cyclones of sand carve intricate patterns into pristine the dunes below.
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Another fabulous entry into the long-standing canon of North African desert blues, this time diversified by the addition of North American folk and country musicians adding a dynamic layer of banjo, fiddle, slide guitar and more to African scales and rhythms. The banjo has its roots in Africa, so it’s only right this crossover happened with this style of music. To me, I don’t know how anyone can deny the raw, hypnotic qualities Tuareg desert blues hold. Like I mentioned – another vital entry to a bountiful history.
9. En Attendant Ana – Principia [Trouble In Mind]
A romantic thief steals jewels and flowers from the richest moguls in the city and hands them out to their flash-in-the-pan flings they meet while prowling in the shadows of the city.
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French band En Attendant Ana nail the recipe of addictive, breezy indie pop on their new album: a cup of killer melodies, a half cup of excellent production (to bring out each individual instrumental voice in the final product), half cup of great performances (love the vocals, bass lines and keyboards especially), a pinch of intrigue in studio tricks, dashes of brass + winds, and making sure it’s not too lengthy. This is an LP you’ll listen to twice all the way through and not realize it. This is the kind of music that excites me most these days.
8. Bart – Some Kind of Way [Idée Fixe]
An anti-drug cartoon produced in the 1950s actually makes children excited to try psychedelics.
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Sun-baked rock with funk thoroughly infecting each and every strand of DNA it could get its hands on. Even attempts at a straight forward “modern post punk banger” like “Turncoat” + “Forced Perspective” hold a swing to them. Bart’s rhythm section shines across the LP, with slinky guitar lines, full-bodied saxophone solos, crashing percussion, acrobatic bass and slick flute providing a rich instrumental palette that not only adds dynamics, but also offers credibility that these are some seriously skilled musicians. The feel is a cadre of musicians camping out in the studio, leaning into each other to make a referential-but-not-biting, wholly psychedelic work.
7. Mega Bog – End of Everything [Mexican Summer]
Making your way through the final chapter of a book you’re reading and as the remaining page count shrinks, so too does your grip on the certainty that only this alternate reality you’ve temporarily lived in is ending, along with your own as well, once you finish the book.
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Mega Bog compacts years of climate anxiety and existential grief into eight dramatic tracks on her new album, foiling the expansive, 14-track exploration that was her 2021 album Life, And Another. While the first half is an explosive, pop masterwork, the back half explores some of the darker themes in a spacious, prog rock-referencing melange of black clouds, burning flesh, and a ticking clock. The dualities that we find ourselves in these days: comforted by familiar and close-knit loves, with universal threats of extinction and violence lurking in the edges.
6. Scree – Jasmine On A Night In July [Ruination Record Co.]
Sitting out on a city balcony at dusk on a warm summer night, watching people take in the night air and street lamps flicker alive. The neighborhood on the verge of a peaceful evening.
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Romantic, instrumental mini-odysseys that touch upon jazz, country, lounge, “exotica”, western and ambient, crafting a cinematic world. Each individual song carries its own story that feeds into the overarching mood of the record, one that sounds like the title draws up. Recalls floating pains and anxieties while still holding tight the optimism for a brighter tomorrow. A full, vibrant world.
5. Westerman – An Inbuilt Fault [Partisan]
Walking through a crowd of people on a sunny day but only thinking of one person.
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A graceful, idiosyncratic pop album that doesn’t sound quite like anything else being made right now. An album that magnifies internal battles and thoughts and blows them up to epic proportions, but only inside your own head. Everyday tasks, sights and sounds taking on a heightened sense of meaning, along with your own sense of being in the community around you. Only on the last two songs of the record the album’s protagonist seems to spread their wings and jet off from this nested world they’d created in isolation. It’s a record that will grow on you with time. Put it on in headphones while walking.
4. Pearl & The Oysters – Coast 2 Coast [Stones Throw]
A tourism commercial for the most idyllic paradise ever captured on film, only the perceived bending of time and space, assumed created by an old CRT screen in the commercial, actually exist on location and distort the landscape.
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A technicolor postcard, as seen in a mini-game shop area in a Japan-only Playstation game that’s set in a paradisiacal, seaside town where every day is like the last. That’s what it’s like to listen to Coast 2 Coast. A friend described them as a “Hosono-ass band”, which I deem a compliment of the highest caliber. Not everyone can: #1. Cite Haruomi Hosono as a reference point and #2. Pull off a convincing, brain-pleasing record that harkens back to the famed Pacific album by all-stars Haruomi Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki and Tatsuro Yamashita, while also channeling Stereolab (and even featuring their singer Laetitia Sadier). A dream-like environment where balmy grooves flow freely alongside space-age sound effects. Effortlessly easy to listen to over and over to help transport you into another world, a world of which I have spent countless hours inside in 2023.
3. Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World [Matador]
Instead of going to bed early to rest yourself before a morning flight, you decide to stay up and wear yourself down by practicing hobbies, scrolling the internet, and getting inside your own head about what you’ve read on the news and what your friends are going through.
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America’s greatest living band strikes again, capturing the raw weight of their live shows with plenty of noisy hair-scorchers to go along with the more meditative, introspective pieces similar to what they’ve populated their last few records with. Much like the cover, it feels like the songs here are shrouded in the fog of night: nothing unnatural obscuring your vision, but just the natural passage of time that makes it hard to comprehend what’s coming for you. At the end of the day, This Stupid World again proves something we’ve already known for a while: Yo La Tengo know how to make a damn good rock record.
2. billy woods & Kenny Segal – Maps [Backwoodz Studioz]
The fourth hour of a six hour flight, sleeping pills have worn off, finished your book, and all the text messages you sent before you took off have yet to be replied to.
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woods continues his frankly incredible run from 2022 with Maps, his third album since 2022’s Aethiopes and Church (not to mention his work in Armand Hammer, which gave us 2021’s Haram and 2020’s Shrines). Returning with producer Kenny Segal (previously teaming on 2019’s Hiding Places), and a host of guests like Danny Brown, E L U C I D, Quelle Chris & more, woods takes us through the mental and physical drain of touring, chronicling hurdles of constantly moving, lack of sleep, fraying connections with loved ones, isolation and more, since there’s always more to woods’ words. Segal’s production provides a great runway for woods + guests to take off from, laying down subtle enough skeletons of beats but adding in certain sounds and production quirks that make observant listeners arch an eyebrow or two. woods is one of our greatest current lyricists, so if you’re not on him yet you’re already behind.
1. Fever Ray – Radical Romantics [Mute]
An unearthly amount of built up horniness combined with innate social awkwardness mixes like napalm within the psyche of an individual, giving them superhero-like powers they use for comic mischief.
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Karin Dreijer is back as Fever Ray, and potentially made their best album yet. Coming together with the mystery and darkness of their 2009 debut and the bombast of their 2017 follow-up, Radical Romantics hits every button I look for in a Fever Ray or The Knife-related project. It’s got freaky moments but doesn’t get lost in them, continuing to plow forward in melody or drama. Electronics, synths and production stay fresh upon repeated listens, and the varied palette between more hair-raising tracks like “Carbon Dioxide”, smoother slides like “Kandy”, quietly urgent odes like “Tapping Fingers”, and all-out barbarism like “Even It Out”, this album has so much more to offer than pretty much anything else this year.
40 FAVORITE SONGS OF 2023 SO FAR::
Lastly, here are 40 of my favorite songs of 2023 so far, listed alphabetically. Unlike last year, I do not have an outright winner for “favorite song” at the year’s halfway point (If you’re curious, my favorite song of 2022 for nearly its entirety was Braxe + Falcon’s “Step by Step (feat. Panda Bear)”). If I have to pick a favorite to shout out though, I’m gonna go with Pearl & The Oysters’ “Pacific Ave”, since that’s my most listened-to track of the year so far.
Check out my full playlist of 2023 favorites via Spotify HERE.
- ANDREA – “Remote Working”
- ANNA B SAVAGE – “Pavlov’s Dog”
- BART – “Rose Quartz”
- BILLY WOODS & KENNY SEGAL – “NYC Tapwater”
- CRUSHED – “waterlily”
- EN ATTENDANT ANA – “Wonder”
- ESTHER ROSE – “Spider”
- EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL – “Nothing Left To Lose”
- FEEBLE LITTLE HORSE – “Sweet”
- FEVER RAY – “Carbon Dioxide”
- GIA MARGARET – “City Song”
- HAYDEN PEDIGO – “The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored”
- INDIGO DE SOUZA – “Parking Lot”
- JACQUES GREENE – “Believe”
- JESSIE WARE – “Freak Me Now”
- JOHN CARROLL KIRBY – “Mates”
- KALI UCHIS – “Moonlight”
- KARA JACKSON – “rat”
- KATE NV – “mi (we)”
- KELELA – “Happy Ending”
- M83 – “Oceans Niagara”
- MEERNAA – “On My Line”
- MEGA BOG – “The Clown”
- MUI ZYU – “Rotten Bun”
- NOURISHED BY TIME – “Daddy”
- OVERMONO – “Is U”
- PEARL & THE OYSTERS – “Pacific Ave”
- SALAMI ROSE JOE LOUIS – “Akousmatikous (feat. Soccer96)”
- SCREE – “Questions For The Moon”
- SHAME – “Burning By Design”
- SLUICE – “Mill”
- TENSNAKE – “Keep It Secret (feat. Jessy Lanza)”
- TINY RUINS – “Earthly Things”
- TISAKOREAN – “SiLlY MoAn.mP3”
- UH HUH – “Redemption Pause”
- WEDNESDAY – “Bull Believer”
- WESTERMAN – “Idol; RE-run”
- Y LA BAMBA – “Collapse”
- YO LA TENGO – “Aselestine”
- YUNÈ PINKU – “Night Light”
Warm Visions 