Warm Visions’ Top 50 Albums of 2023

Greetings, dear readers of Warm Visions, and welcome to my favorite albums of 2023 post. Every year it becomes more apparent that ranking art is a bad thing, but let’s make that only apply to conglomerates of many writers, that are pooling their thoughts and are more widely beloved. We are all unique in our desires and pleasures – there’s no way to clump all of us together and objectively say what music is the best or not.

That is, until my “Warm Visions”™® come into play. I am one person, but I have stalked the internet high and low to find only the best records available, and have thusly presented them to you here. No reason to debate me when perfection is already achieved: this list is the premier collection of ranked music of 2023 available, and my choices are 100% correct. In seriousness though, I did enjoy a good chunk of records this year, and here are 50 of my favorites.

Like previous years, I’ve selected ten honorable mentions and then written blurbs + “Warm Visions descriptions” for the following 50 records, which are arranged from #50 to #1. This is a snapshot of how I’m feeling now, but everyone knows this will shift around A TON even by January. Heck I’m changing the order of this thing the day it got posted. I’m being for real! I’ll get more into my thoughts on music as a whole in 2023 in my Retrospective post coming at the top of 2024, so I won’t bore you with too many more of my opinions right now. In the meantime, check out my list below, listen to some records you hadn’t given time to before and support some artists to make spirits bright (Bandcamp streams below + album art linked with their pages as well). No EPs list this year, but Songs + Concerts coming soon. Happy Best of 2023 season!

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

A.S.O. – a.s.o.
BLUE LAKE – Sun Arcs
DADÁ JOÃOZINHO – tds bem global
FOANS – Selected Classics
M. SAGE & ZANDER RAYMOND – Parayellowgram
NEWJEANS – Get Up EP
OVERMONO – Good Lies
PAUL ST. HILAIRE – Tikiman Vol. 1
TINARIWEN – Amatssou
VIRGINIA ASTLEY – The Singing Places

50. MAYBEL
Gloam [Idée Fixe]

The smell of wet, enriched soil in the morning after a night of pouring rain.
—
An essential country-folk record from blog-favorite Montreal group Maybel, who won me over on their 2020 debut, and return here with an evolution on all fronts: production, arrangements, performances – it’s all enhanced, but it’s still the stacked-harmony, peaceful, cozy tunes that I loved back at the start of the pandemic. This is music for clear mornings, with the sun making the dewey grass look like fields of diamonds.

49. SALAMI ROSE JOE LOUIS
Akousmatikous [Brainfeeder]

A miniature civilization exists on a chunk of floating space debris, warped by passerby galactic radiation, and one growing microbial entity yearns for a different life beyond the stars.
—
Earlier this year I described listening to this album as “putting your brain on puzzle mode”. Akousmatikous is an album enshrouded in the galactic fog made of millions of stars, but in this hazy expanse exists knottily-wound microcosms of jazz and groove. There will be the most wicked keyboard line with the craziest chord changes performed like it’s a feather dusting. Drum performances are ultra-tight and crisp, but they’re compacted down into freeze-dried space-ready packets. It’s an antithesis of the laid-back lounge vibe music that lacks substance: it’s an album that demands closer listening to pick up all its intricacies, like picking out different constellations in the night sky.

48. ANDRÉ 3000
New Blue Sun [Epic]

An ocean grotto garden, tucked behind twisting cavern walls, teems with flora and fauna; the salty ocean breeze offering nutrients to the soil, the sun poking in from strategic natural portholes in the cave’s ceiling. A dedicated follower studies here for their 200th year.
—
“Well I didn’t have THAT on my 2023 bingo card! duh-hyuck!” Well yeah, that’s the beauty of all this. You never know when one of the greatest artists of our time will pivot and release a flute album with “Warning: No Bars”. Teaming up with a cadre of L.A.’s finest zen peddlers like Carlos Niño and Nate Mercereau, 3000 made an album that feels like a genuine artistic statement, an exploration into a zone he’d been recently exploring and wanted to dabble in. It’s a spine-melting listen that you can leave on in the background, or lay back and let wash over you – either way, it’s a plot of tender grace that we’ve been given permission to graze upon.

47. DEVENDRA BANHART
Flying Wig [Mexican Summer]

Shivering cold in your nicest outfit, soaked by passing rain, huddled in a phone booth, waiting out the deluge, your warm breath casting a foggy circle that censors your face.
—
Devendra Banhart’s return to “pop” music after a few ambient records finds the idiosyncratic musician embracing a new realm of sonics, trading in woodsy folk for sleek, glistening synth-and-slowed-sophistipop. The album is dramatic and romantic in a way that takes place AFTER a great trauma or event, the shellshocked afters that render a human numb, vulnerable to normally benign stimuli. The slightest movement yields a tremor, a slight breeze is an impassible gust. But yet, the spirit keeps moving. Plush synths cushion blows, Banhart’s smooth voice soothes, delicate horns (a Cate Le Bon production signature special) obtusely honk in the distance, stretched-out slide guitar yawns, drum machine pads keep time, fretless bass keeps things loose. In the face of a great sadness, you can find immense beauty.

46. 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.
—
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.

45. NATALIE ROSE LABRECHT
Holy Prana Open Game [American Dreams]

If you leave your front door open on the night of a special meteor shower, a cosmic light will filter into your house, cleansing all negative earthly energies that had been accumulating for centuries.
—
With its long-arcing song lengths and slow-developing movements, Natalie Rose Labrecht’s Holy Prana Open Game is a meditative experience to say the least. Gorgeous, sweeping synth textures mixed with various winds, skittering drums and more to create expansive soundstages that allow the mind to wander in psychedelic wonderlands. It is a blissful, complex listen that I hope you take the time to listen to.

44. BLONDE REDHEAD
Sit Down For Dinner [section1]

An incredibly strong, floral fragrance knocks you unconscious for a moment, your resulting dreams populated with visions of navigating down endless white marble passageways lined with vases of ornate flower arrangements.
—
Blonde Redhead are pillars in the dream pop and more people have got to start putting some more respect on their name, especially after Sit Down For Dinner, their first album in almost ten years. Dinner contains some of the dreamiest and catchiest sequences in music I’ve heard this year, whether it be the delirious and funky “Melody Experiment”, the sweeping grandiosity of “Snowman”, the vulnerability of “Rest Of Her Life”, the swirling, mysterious energy of “Before”, and my personal favorite duo of the album, the two-part title track, which expertly builds atmosphere in the first half, and pays it off in the second. Compared to years previous, I feel like there wasn’t a lot of modern dream pop in 2023 that struck me like Sit Down For Dinner did, showing the OGs still have a lot to show in this rapidly popularizing and youthful genre.

43. KARA JACKSON
Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? [September]

On the corner outside of a small town pawnshop, a wanderer tells passerby their tales, as storm clouds gather the deeper the stories get.
—
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.

42. DUSK
Glass Pastures [Don Giovanni]

Entering a random bar in some town in the midwest and getting absolutely blown away by the unassuming house band, and harnessing that energy to power a local electrical grid.
—
Warm Visions has been a staunch Dusk supporter since their 2018 self-titled debut, and I’ve been waiting patiently for the follow-up. Glass Pastures does not disappoint, further cementing Dusk as one of the tightest country rock groups in the country. They’ve upped their production and instrumentation game while keeping their songwriting ability tight, with songs still sounding like tracks I’d love to blast out my car windows while driving in the summer. If you can’t get through “Don’t Let Them Tell You” without feeling need to shout along, buddy, you’re lost. They kick the heck out of these jams, I tell you what.

41. NOURISHED BY TIME
Erotic Probiotic 2 [Scenic Route]

Finding a photo album of basement dance parties from 1994, its pages untouched since that time, cologne patches and cognac stains freshly unstick from each consecutive page.
—
Channeling a very specific time period of late 80s / 90s pop and “contemporary/urban R&B”, Nourished By Time’s debut is auspicious as they come, with nearly every song having a catchy, memory-imprinting vocal melody or perfectly-sculpted retro groove. These are songs that can make you dance, songs that’ll make you get in your feelings, songs that’ll motivate you (“to shed that fear!”), songs to bliss out too. It’s a wonderfully arranged and varied record that skates through tons of different moods but fully maintains being undoubtedly Nourished By Time, even though this guy is totally new. He’s made his mark already.

40. TISAKOREAN
Let Me Update My Status [Jazzzy]

Texting your friends in T9 at light speed as your computer bursts into flames from the amount of viruses you’ve downloaded, but you’ve got every Pharrell and Soulja Boy bootleg that’s ever existed blasting.
—
WHY AM I SO SILLY? SILLY BAN-DANA. SILLY! THROW UP YOUR WHITE TEE. THROW UP YOUR WHITE TEE. THROW UP YOUR WHITE TEE. HELICOPTER SWAG. OK SHE GOT SWAG / OK SHE GOT BAGS / OK SHE GOT CLASS / OK SHE GOT ASS. HOW YOU GON’ DO THAT? YUH! UHHHhhhhh. STUNNA SHADES / YUH! SHE KEEP ON TEXTIN MY PHONE / STOP TEXTIN. CAN I CRANK IT UP? YUH. MOTORCYCLE WE CRANKIN WE CRANKIN THAT BIH. FINNA BE A FOOLIE AHH WEEK. I CAN’T SEE A THING INSIDE THE CLUB JUST LIKE I’M STEVIE WONDER. I’MA FUCK THAT PH BALANCE UP. MIDDLE FINGAS UP. MIDDLE FINGAS UP. PUT YA MIDDLE FINGAS UP. YEEAAHHH. I’MA BE SILLY FOR A LONG TIME.

39. LAUREL HALO
Atlas [Awe]

Engulfed in a thick fog on an overcast morning at the park, listening for people going about their days in the impenetrable haze just beyond your sight line, occasionally breaking your routine to observe that some of the people might be watching you.
—
Enter the world of Atlas, Laurel Halo’s newest LP, and instantly immerse yourself in deep layers of fog, distorting everything that attempts to come into view. Accompanied by an ensemble of Lucy Railton, James Underwood, Coby Sey and Bendik Giske, Halo crafts a hazy, dreamlike environment that abandons structure and embraces exploration, always striving to look for something in an obscured world. There will still be flickers of familiarity, whether it be patches of strings shining through like filtered beams of sunlight, or cushioned washes of piano that provide some immediate comfort. Everything else you must traverse on your own. Faded memories playing back in reverse, disembodied voices calling out from beyond the silk curtain, hanging smoke catching every particle of light from every angle. It’s not an easy listening experience, but one I’ve returned to often this year.

38. NORTH AMERICANS
Long Cool World [Third Man]

A peaceful town was built around a large fallen log that emits a continual plume of steam, threading itself into a gauzy web of clouds above.
—
This year it was hard for me to say no to any dreamy, psychedelic acoustic guitar-centric albums. North Americans have been solid in making some of the best of this style over the last five years, and Long Cool World is likely their best work yet. The songs are slower, the sounds stretch out for longer, the peace elongated. It’s cosmic American music in the sense that these are frequencies found in the deepest depths of space, found echoing amongst the stars and distant galaxies, medicinal in ways that are NOT approved by the FDA, but still just as effective.

37. MUNYA
Jardin [Luminelle]

Drop a special pellet into your full bathtub, return to it three hours later to find a temporary beach getaway has sprouted in your bathroom, complete with swaying palm trees, coconut drinks, natural sunshine and more.
—
Infectious, disco-inflected dream pop with mixed English + French lyrics, and even a New Order cover. Breezy and lightweight, the songs on Jardin are instant teleports to warm weather, crystal clear waters and pleasing fragrances wafting nearby. It’s an easy pleasure-center target zone, where sharp bass lines and brushes of French touch (especially on “Un Deux Trois”) share the stage with shimmering guitar and feathery vocals. I’m a sucker for records like this, and MUNYA definitely doesn’t disappoint.

36. CLEO SOL
Gold [Forever Living Originals]

A walk at sunrise, observing the beautiful light and shadows cast in ways you aren’t used to seeing.
—
Cleo Sol has one of the best voices in modern music today. Let’s be real for one second and get that out of the way. Anytime she’s featured on any SAULT or Little Simz release is immediately a highlight. Her 2020 album Mother feels like a modern soul classic, albeit one that could benefit from some song length trimming. This year she returned with two records, Heaven and Gold, my preference being the latter. Heaven definitely has its moments and is more pop-produced, with more beats and instrumentation, but felt messier than Gold, which instead showcases Sol’s understated, silky-smooth delivery, showing off shades of Marvin Gaye or D’Angelo. The vibes are good on this record. From the reggae groove of “Reason”, to the striking ballad run starting at “Things Will Get Better” to “Please Don’t End It All”. Sol is a true talent – I cannot wait for an album that really blows that door wide open for her.

35. JAIMIE BRANCH
Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)) [International Anthem]

Large fissures suddenly crack through our planet, the voices of millions screaming for change amplified by fiery, ancient earth walls.
—
The late trumpet player Jaimie Branch’s final album is a radical war-cry against the bullshit we’re forced to deal with on a constant basis, utilizing her brash timbre and wild, swirling arrangements to stir up fervor with listeners. It’s joyful protest music, taking delight in revolution by not really putting an emphasis on crisp performances, but rather pure passion. It feels like a whole community affair just putting out feeling to latch onto. The space she leaves behind is large, but the rallying force behind her definitely has the juice to keep carrying her torch.

34. MARY LATTIMORE
Goodbye, Hotel Arkada [Ghostly International]

Every window in your house looks out to your immediate surroundings except for one, which happens to look out into the most beautiful galaxy of distant cosmos. You keep this secret from everyone, only peering at the void through spaces left on the bookshelf you pushed in front of it.
—
Harpist Mary Lattimore enlisted a fleet of wonderful guest stars on Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, all staying at her dreamy inn in the form of this album. We have frequent Lattimore collaborator Meg Baird laying down a gauzy sheet of vocals to “And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me” (a song about meeting Big Bird as a child). There’s former Cure member Lol Tolhurst providing synths on “Arrivederci”. There’s longtime psych guitar wizard Roy Montgomery adding sonic chaos to “Blender In A Blender” (a very apt song name for the last bit of the track). And finally there’s Slowdive singer Rachel Goswell and violinist Samara Lubelski adding discordant shredding to the background that eventually ends up sounding like birdcalls. This all-star group helps Lattimore deliver an album that almost sounds sci-fi, like this hotel they’re all staying at is floating in deep space, gravity be damned. Shimmer like the stars.

33. JOANNA STERNBERG
I’ve Got Me [Fat Possum]

Getting pushed down a hill by your crush, getting up and giving a big shrug and sigh to the camera.
—
This record snuck up on me this year, and may be the latest addition to this Top 50 list. I hadn’t listened to Sternberg’s music before, but had known friends really into their 2019 album Then I Try Some More. I saw a lot of attention around I’ve Got Me, and added it to my list of things to check out before I publish this list. I listened to a lot of records in this “in-between” time, and folks, this was the only one to make it in here. Sternberg is a great songwriting talent, writing simple songs about mental health, love, self-toxicity and negativity from those we’re close with, laying all these hard topics out in straightforward, highly relatable ways. They’re folk songs that feel universally relevant, engaging the human spirit and all of its unbreakable knots.

32. 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.
—
While I was looking forward to more bangers akin to her beloved 2017 album Take Me Apart, a new Kelela will always be appreciated regardless. On Raven, her first album in six years, she navigates a hazy, initially formless landscape with mostly her voice and subtle electronic instrumentals, occasionally dipping into darker, clubbier territories. As the album progresses, she erects monuments and 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.

31. BEING DEAD
When Horses Would Run [Bayonet]

A person that’s been a psychedelic journey in the American southwest for the last two decades shows up at a Texan gas station one day and eats every piece of candy in stock.
—
When making a debut album, why not let it all hang out? Being Dead are clearly weirdos and they let people know about it on their awesome first splash, When Horses Would Run, which not only establishes their eccentric songwriting stylings, but also their desire to have fun and not take things so seriously. They get freaky pretty quickly, with the western-touched opener “The Great American Picnic” and into “Last Living Buffalo”, a rollicking rodeo that devolves into what sounds like the spirits of ancient North America haunting greedy capitalist hunters who killed the last buffalo for eternity. There’s some serious psychedelic shredding on “Come On”, and disorienting assaults on “Treeland”, made for waking people out of their comatose naps. There’s a song called “We Are Being Dead” in the middle of the record, in case that wasn’t abundantly clear after the first eight songs, with a super cool guitar solo, and a reassuring “we’re having a good time, we hope you’re having a good time too”. I dunno about y’all, but I’m definitely having a good time. Being Dead have fun, they shake things up, they check back in, show heart, and it’s hard to dislike anything about them for that.

30. TINY RUINS
Ceremony [Ba Da Bing!]

A swing hangs from the oldest tree on a small town’s coast line, its history carved into lovers’ messages left over generations.
—
The ever-reliable Tiny Ruins have been a staple of my domestic listening for almost a decade now, as my partner is a massive fan and plays them every chance she gets. This is not to discount my own fandom of the group, as with the last two records, the NZ band has made stellar rock-leaning folk tracks that effortlessly stand out in a pack of soundalikes. I’m going to plagiarize something real quick, but I couldn’t not omit this awesome comparison user “edappere” left on this album’s Bandcamp page, saying it’s like a combination of Nick Drake and Belle & Sebastian. The jangles of B+S are definitely there, and the vocal timbre of lead songwriter + singer Hollie Fullbrook carries similarities to Nick Drake. Comparisons aside, Ceremony is a well-crafted, jangly record with plenty of little sonic layers to comb through, whether it be added strings, an interesting guitar tone or hand percussion, there will be something for you to discover and appreciate.

29. TRUTH CLUB
Running From The Chase [Double Double Whammy]

A medieval torturer that clocks into a deep dungeon that adventurers explore in everyday daydreams of achieving their lifelong dream of becoming a world-renowned soap shoe stunt performer.
—
North Carolina group Truth Club won me over earlier this year with an electric show at SXSW, instantly hooking me on their intensity and their great control over dynamics. One of the first singles off this new album, “Exit Cycle”, is one of my favorite songs of the year, utilizing the verses to build momentum into the chorus rather than letting them simmer. What results in the end is a multi-layered release at the end that doesn’t even need to get loud or bring the intensity, but still feels as cathartic as some of the more destructive songs on the record. And speaking of the louder tracks at hand; man. They know how to shred. The guitars fly on this record, and the drums will pummel you – I’m talking about tracks like “Blue Eternal” and “Siphon”, pulling off sonic similarities to some of the most essential 2010s releases from the Exploding In Sound label. Let’s be real though – this is Truth Club. This is 2023. We are not talking about 2014. Truth Club is here right now, and Running From The Chase kicks ass.

28. 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.
—
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.

27. COLIN STETSON
When we were that what wept for the sea [52hz]

A small dinghy cast out into the open ocean, its ferocious waves rocking the vessel without abandon.
—
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).

26. 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.
—
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.

25. AMAARAE
Fountain Baby [Golden Angel / Interscope]

Going to a different penthouse apartment party each week like it’s your job. Not going to mix drinks, not going to clean up, not going to DJ – your job is to be lascivious and be the person everyone wants to know.
—
What if every major pop album had the same care and attention that was put into amaarae’s Fountain Baby? My thought is that the world would look like that utopian city meme. The finesse of the production of Fountain Baby is what instantly stuck out to me on first listen. Not only is it varied across the course of the LP, but each track is stocked with little details that enhance a regular “trap R&B beat” or whatever. There’s a song that sounds like Timbaland made it. There are many “worldly” flavors of instrumentation throughout, from South Asian drums, to Japanese plucked strings, to plenty of West African influence, flexing some fantastic afrobeats chops with ease. This thing slaps. It’s a blast of a listen, and again, a high watermark that other mainstream pop albums should wish to achieve.

24. GIA MARGARET
Romantic Piano [Jagjaguwar]

The dust blown off a book you’ve been meaning to read, pirouetting in a morning sunbeam.
—
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 of discount shirts. There are field recordings woven into the pieces, 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.

23. TITANIC
Vidrio [Unheard of Hope]

A spy that travels into a mirrored world poses as a first chair cellist in the mirror world national orchestra, but must find out where the portals that connect their two planes of existence connect before things get out of hand.
—
Titanic is the collaboration between i la Católica (aka Hector Tosta) and Mabe Fratti, who you may remember from my Best Albums of 2022 list with their brilliant album Se Ve Desde Aquí. On their first collaborative album, they weave a dramatic, multi-layered odyssey full of heavy stabs of piano, cello, percussion, horns and more, to deconstruct tropes of jazz, pop, classical and more. It’s a knotted, thorny listen that shows its beauty in unassuming moments, but revels in chaos in others. Moments of gorgeous harmony slowly become askew. Horns will wail into the listener’s face as once austere piano crumples into striking flashes. It’s an awesome record, one that I always find something new on each succeeding listen.

22. YEULE
softscars [Ninja Tune]

A protagonist from a late-era Playstation 1 game fights for autonomy and a place in the real world. They write and sing songs from atop a spire in a futuristic city reborn years after atomic destruction.
—
Another sonic pivot, the self-proclaimed glitch princess yeule steers into alt rock territory on softscars, a record that successfully captures a y2k-era aesthetic while also staying securely put in the future where their music has shot for in the past, with its various electronic affects layered over nu-metal buzzsaw guitars and early 00s production quirks. Just looking ahead at the rest of my list, softscars is one of my favorite, if not THE top favorite rock album of mine from this year. We love to see an evolution here at Warm Visions, and yeule is on another level right now.

21. JULIE BYRNE
The Greater Wings [Ghostly International]

The light from a sunrise reflects off a picture frame and onto the floor where you’ve been laying for the past few hours, the warmth heating you up as if someone is holding you.
—
Although I wasn’t as into The Greater Wings upon its landing, there’s no way I can keep a Julie Byrne album down for long. Although the record is clouded by the immeasurable grief of losing her partner midway through recording, it takes stock of all of all the gratitude and appreciation that they brought to her life, and with that angle, the sun breaks through in all the right moments. Not to say sadness cannot exist in the sunshine. The particularly balming “Summer’s End” arrives after single “Summer Glass”, the latter of which is a gorgeous, slow-motion synth pop ballad complete with harp and shimmering synthesizer. “Summer’s End” transitions most of those same textures into an ambient instrumental piece, where the washes of synth ebb and flow, pirouetting in the air, leaving smoke trails to make the light cast different shades. Chimes and harp return. The warmth is there, reaching out amongst the chilling numbness. It’s just one beautiful moment on a record absolutely bursting with them.

20. DANIEL BACHMAN
When The Roses Come Again [Three Lobed]

Decaying film of pastoral American landscapes is projected against a crumbling cement wall, a last remnant of our natural world long gone.
—
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it many more times: Daniel Bachman is one of North America’s most important living artists. His dedication to American folk music and his own deconstruction of it has yielded nothing but incredibly inspiring and frankly doomed music over the last few years. On When The Roses Come Again, Bachman doesn’t take the overt approach to spear climate change like his last album Almanac Behind, but this feels like its spiritual sequel, a record where the world’s resources have been exhausted, and all that’s left are fragments of evidence of life before it all went downhill, along with the machinery that was powered by the greed of a few blinded executives. Nearly every recording here, usually just simple banjo or guitar picking, is distorted in some way. It could be some slight digital distortion, like some ghostly wind-harmonics blowing through the trees, or they’re obscured by rumbling construction equipment or other man-made sonic interference, or it sounds like it was recorded on a camcorder and played back through a busted VCR, or the sounds themselves have been stretched out beyond recognition, countlessly layered on top of one another. It’s an album that flows nearly seamlessly from start to end, brutally laying out what we have to look forward to when there’s nowhere left to go.

19. BART
Some Kind Of Way [Idée Fixe]

An anti-drug cartoon produced in the 1950s actually makes children excited to try psychedelics.
—
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.

18. 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.
—
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.

17. PJ HARVEY
I Inside The Old Year Dying [Partisan]

A small town exists seemingly at the edge of the world, where the sky threatens snow each day, even in the throes of a humid summer. Stacks of wood are piled every day but never burned.
—
PJ Harvey contemplated abandoning music altogether before making this album. I’m very glad she did not give up music. I Inside The Old Year Dying is one of Harvey’s more challenging records, but it’s also incredibly enriching, with wonderful storytelling pulled from the universe of her 2022 book Orlam, and instrumentation also diving back into old world English folk, mixed with a modern edge. It’s a dark and mysterious album, like traversing through the woods at winter’s dusk. Cold gusts run hot on windswept skin. Oh and it still rocks too. The rock people gotta come back to this one.

16. 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.
—
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.

15. 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.
—
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 a cave underneath a futuristic city.

14. TINASHE
BB/ANG3L [Nice Life]

Watching your partner or crush from across the room through a full champagne flute; the bubbling liquid dancing around their figure and casting them in a golden aura.
—
Sincerely didn’t expect to like this Tinashe record as much as I did, but here we are. I was pretty ambivalent about her music before, but once I saw that Machinedrum and Nosaj Thing had some production credits here, I was instantly intrigued. Sure enough, the electronic backdrop for these pop R&B tracks are elite, and allow Tinashe’s acrobatic voice and wordplay ample space to perform scintillating tricks across the album’s trim seven-song length. Whether it be the afterdark beat switch of “Talk To Me Nice”, or the raunchy pop trap of “Needs”, or the ultra sultry slow jam of “Uh Huh” (my personal favorite), or the high-speed chase of “Tightrope” (featuring a classic Machinedrum beat), Tinashe shines no matter what. Easily my favorite pop release of the year.

13. TIRZAH
trip9love… ??? [Domino]

Windows open and curtains billowing inside a silent apartment, two imprints shaped like sleeping humans on a mattress face each other and echo with the death knells of their relationship.
—
Tirzah and producer Mica Levi pull off what could be considered a creative exercise in making an album using an extremely limited sonic palette: literally reusing the same drum track and piano timbre for every song. Even through this, the two have made another gem of a record. Thankfully the drum track goes hard and will start to rattle your brain after the first few listens. The way they manipulate the sound of the piano is also pretty awesome too, many times making it sound nothing like how it appears on the majority of the record. And I mean, her voice is still butter. Smooth as hell, hitting great runs totally nonchalant-like. What can I say? I’ve been a massive Tirzah fan for ten years now. There was no way I’d dislike this one.

12. POWERS / PULICE / ROLIN
Prism [Cached Media]

The late morning sun shining through a tree full of orange and yellow leaves, so bright you have to squint even with sunglasses on. Making peace with the passing of time and its tremendous changes the world goes through each and every day.
—
Simply sublime. Prism is a collaboration between Jen Powers (dulcimer), Cole Pulice (saxophone) and Matthew Rolin (guitar), who meld together into one cosmic entity and carve out a damn near masterpiece in the canon of American psychedelic music. Powers and Rolin provide rich backdrops for Pulice’s winds to roam in, casting free-floating melodies across a vast plain. Not one word is spoken throughout this release, but all the emotion is there. Pulice can pivot from acrobatic, quick bursts of saxophone, to longer passages with wide vibrato, to burly, bright and commanding howls, regularly shocking me to goosebumps. Powers & Rolin aren’t slouches though, as their undulating “rhythm section” of sorts always makes things interesting in the background. It’s a terrifically hypnotic listen, and I’m so glad I gave it a chance, especially well-timed for the fall.

11. MEERNAA
So Far So Good [Keeled Scales]

Navigating a to-scale model of the house you grew up in, except everything is cast in golden-tinted glass like old 60s drinking cups. Your fingers brush up against all the smooth surfaces, the curved glass walls and fixtures bend the light in hypnotizing ways.
—
A criminally overlooked record from this year, Meernaa’s sophomore release So Far So Good is a sublime melange of groovy lounge pop and homespun, slightly psychedelic folk rock. When it gets groovy, it nails the vibe immediately, from the killer bassline on “On My Line”, the undeniable chorus of “I Believe In You”, or the mellotron stabs and wicked solo in album closer “Love Is Good”. Meernaa also enchants in the quieter, free-floating moments like “Black Eyed Susan” with its woodblock percussion or the windswept “Bhuta Kala”. These two worlds can meet in one song as well, an example being the lovely “As Many Birds Flying”, which I compared to something like The Blue Nile and Talk Talk late-era coming together, with dramatic string backing, and a hypnotic slide guitar setting the mood. Hopefully I make enough of a case for this album here to get you to listen, because I have a feeling you’re going to want to be clued into whatever Meernaa has coming up next.

10. 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.
—
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.

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.
—
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. ARMAND HAMMER
We Buy Diabetic Test Strips [Fat Possum]

In a not-so-distance future, phone numbers are abolished so you have to find who you’re trying to call in a vast landscape of fellow callers, being privy to real conversations happening across the world, acting as an audience to people’s traumatic experiences.
—
Over the last year or two, I’ve talked at length about the monster run that rapper billy woods has been on. This praise hasn’t fully taken into account the tear that the duo Armand Hammer have been on concurrently as well, as woods and ELUCID have consistently made mind-bending, hard-hitting records for a decade now. Until now, their full projects hadn’t clicked with me like woods’ solo records had. We Buy Diabetic Test Strips finally broke through the mold. This is a dark record, ruminating on how hostile the world has become (in terms of our everyday interactions with others, relations with family and trauma, and of course how corporations have invaded all aspects) in this era of late-stage capitalism and constant surveillance, along the other harsh realities that plague our lives on the regular in 2023. They say it much more eloquently, and clever than I laid it out right there, of course. The production is insane, with El-P, JPEGMAFIA, DJ Haram bringing truly ludicrous beats to the table. Thanks to that, it’s an entertaining enough listen if you don’t feel like diving deep into the lyrics. But you know these two – you’re going to want to dive in.

7. WESTERMAN
An Inbuilt Fault [Partisan]

Walking through a crowd of people on a sunny day but only thinking of one person.
—
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 take 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.

6. PEARL AND 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.
—
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 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.

5. 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.
—
woods continues his 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.

4. CHUQUIMAMANI-CONDORI
DJ E [Self-Released]

20 million DJs all spinning a person’s favorite tunes at once during their funeral as their effigy is lifted into the sky by hundreds of paper lanterns.
—
Chuquimamani-Condori, aka E Crampton Chuquimia, has been making revolutionary, confrontational music for the better part of a decade, always shifting in their approach, and always incorporating indigenous Andean music and further Latine themes into dystopian, futuristic compositions. Their new unmixed, unmastered, un-streamable album, DJ E, E sculpts a goliath out of these latam musical cues into an overwhelming, celebratory vision. Songs like “Eat My Cum” flex and menace at the listener, as booming percussion and brick walls of discordant synths all blast as once, while hyena-like laughter bubbles up from the cracks in its foundations to put you on edge. Repeated DJ tags (the simple, godlike, “E”), along with samples of cars zooming by and screeching to a halt, buried panflute and choir, hint at a true cataclysmic event unfolding before your eyes. It’s a maximalist collage to the highest power.

Meanwhile, songs like “Breathing”, “Know” or “Until I See You Again” are so warm, so unironically inviting, feeling like you’re at a festival celebrating a family member or dear friend. You’re surrounded on all sides, flooded by stimuli. On “Until I See You Again”, there’s accordion, violin, along with a harpsichord-textured keyboard taking us all home. It’s a vision of the present, acknowledging the struggles of the past and inevitably of the future, but ultimately carrying hope that there will be a better tomorrow, together.

3. ML BUCH
Suntub [15 love]

A key appears on your bedside table one morning, which unlocks a door you’ve seen in your dreams more and more often. The next morning, the key is gone, bug you’re not certain if you’re awake or still sleeping in the reality that existed behind the door.
—
This record seemed to spread like wildfire amongst a certain group of online music obsessives at the end of this year, myself obviously included in this camp. I had never heard of ML Buch before this, but the minimalist, digitally-fried album cover, along with the fervor I’d been seeing from friends, I knew I had to check it out before the end of the year. I’m certainly glad I did, since Suntub quickly ascended to becoming one of my clear favorite records of 2023 in wholly unexpected ways. It’s all about the tone and arrangement. Buch employs certain quirks about her guitar timbre on this record that sounds so familiar, but so new at the same time. It’s a deep jangle, reminiscent of 80s indie, usually only accompanied by a drum machine or the occasional synthetic texture, and her cool, unaffected vocal delivery. Similarly, the way her songs are put together, as webs of intricately layered guitar passages, or as loosely wound meditations. The whole record is ambiguous, dreamy, uncanny, whatever you want to call it. I haven’t been able to escape it for the last month and a half of this year.

2. 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.
—
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.

1. SOFIA KOURTESIS
Madres [Ninja Tune]

Linking the past, present and future of a cityscape with one unique heartbeat, felt pulsing through those attuned to a distinct frequency.
—
With respect to every other record that came out this year, no other album has the heart that Madres does. It’s a record that sounds great on its own, but its real human feel, its heartbeat, its drive, its tenderness, is what sets it far past any other record from 2023.

The album starts off as strong as any project could with “Madres”, a track that’s both a thumping club psalm and a sobering, open-skied panorama of optimism, with rubbery, pinball synth patterns, warped vocal samples and Kourtesis’ own tender vocals, liquid piano, all held together by a sturdy beat. The result is hypnotic and beautifully intoxicating, with each micro-detail threaded into the song’s composition breathing human life into the song. It’s not often that a house track, complete with samples, beats, electronics, you know the drill etc, sounds like it could be pulled from the earth, or culled from the sky, or sourced from a river. One organism, breathing, moving.

This feeling of a universal heartbeat carries throughout the first half of the record, as the carbonated, always-surging shuffle of “Si Te Portas Bonito” arrives next, which aims to lyrically stimulate a lover both mentally and physically, but also motivates the listener with masterfully arranged dynamics between the lyrics and chorus, always keeping the plot moving and pointing to something bigger. Next are the twinkling electronics, triumphant horns and mantras of “I just wanna live” of “Vajcokzy”, named after the neurosurgeon that operated on Kourtesis’ mother, a direct example of the motivating theme that runs throughout this album: to seize life and purely enjoy while you can. Following that is the cooing and “woo!”-ing vocals which open up into nervy, satin-lined acid leaks of “How Music Makes You Feel Better”, a song that feels like a euphoric revelation one has on the dancefloor midway through a night of clubbing, as if the slabs of bass vibrated loose a long-buried mental puzzle piece. Hell, I listened to this song one night at around 2am sitting on my couch and I felt like I was having a breakthrough. This magical run is capped at “Habla Con Ella”, an elastic, buoyant banger that samples some joyous YouTubers (with the prerequisite “and don’t forget to like, share and subscribe!”), and honestly features more samples of talking and laughing rather than them singing (I’m assuming the vocal samples at the beginning are them singing). Just another example of Kourtesis pulling feeling out of everything she touches, all while making a record that’s still very easy to dance to.

From there, the album starts to open up a bit on the spacey “Funkhaus”, a song that sounds like you’re hurtling down a strobing tunnel at 200mph. Anchored only by a rumbling bass and stereo-mixed drums at the start, other sonic elements of the song like flickering electronics and fragmented vocal snippets start to filter in, ultimately crystallizing into one cohesive throb united behind a chant of “heart-break”. It’s a kaleidoscopic track that feels like a dream, perfect for replaying on subway rides, as the locked-in groove keeps you in place as your surroundings dematerialize around you. Emerging from the underground we find the beatless solace of “Moving Houses”, a song that harkens back to early 00s “melancholy glitch”, a la Dntel or Lali Puna, as stretched-out and reversed piano and variably-pitched vocals provide a surreal backdrop and a break in the exhilaration. Occasionally I find it to be a bit of a momentum killer, but I’m glad a moment like this exists on this record. It shows Kourtesis’ versatility and deeper thought around the listening experience as a whole – she’s not JUST a dance producer and Madres is not JUST a dance record, despite it being a tremendous one. “Moving Houses” is a contemplative moment during a sunshower; the storm has passed and sunlight is reflecting off puddles and into your eyes.

From there the album opens back up into jubilation, with the Manu Chao-featuring “Estación Esperanza”, complete with bright chimes, surging horns, birdsong, and is bookended by group vocal samples, emphasizing a parade-like atmosphere around the whole song. Although I wasn’t crazy about this song as an early single, it fits perfectly into the theme of the album. “Cecilia” keeps the momentum churning, with haunting vocal samples and morphed strings encased behind a shiny layer of piano, clattering percussion and a steady beat, as if the sun is finally starting to set on the record. And sure enough, with the final track “El Carmen”, dramatic chords tell a story alongside stabs digital horns and accompanied by woodblock percussion, disembodied vocals and samples, the house beat locking in a little more than a minute into the track. It’s as if the sun has set, and the celebrations have gathered around a large bonfire, the disembodied and faraway voices echoing throughout the track acting as spirits from beyond connecting with us during this album-long ritual.

And with that, the album is complete. It’s a dance record that instead of providing a worn wallpaper for you to “vibe” to, it invites you in, shows off more personality than any other record from this year. It’s almost like you’re establishing a friendship and enhancing the world around you with one listen. Over the last decade, I’ve found myself gravitating towards electronic/dance records that make me feel like I’m experiencing an artist’s wider vision, a project that tells a bigger story than just “hey, dance to this”. You can look back on my blog to figure out who else holds this distinction, but just know that Sofia Kourtesis and Madres are in elite company.

Thanks for reading!

FULL LIST:

Sofia Kourtesis – Madres
Fever Ray – Radical Romantics
ML Buch – Suntub
Chuquimamani-Condori – DJ E
billy woods & Kenny Segal – Maps
Pearl & The Oysters – Coast 2 Coast
Westerman – An Inbuilt Fault
Armand Hammer – We Buy Diabetic Test Strips
En Attendant Ana – Principia
Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World
Meernaa – So Far So Good
Powers / Pulice / Rolin – Prism
Tirzah – trip9love…???
Tinashe – BB/ANG3L
Andrea – Due In Color
Scree – Jasmine On A Night In July
PJ Harvey – I Inside The Old Year Dying
Nabihah Iqbal – DREAMER
Bart – Some Kind Of Way
Daniel Bachman – When The Roses Come Again
Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings
yeule – softscars
Titanic – Vidrio
Gia Margaret – Romantic Piano
amaarae – Fountain Baby
Hayden Pedigo – The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored
Colin Stetson – When we were that what wept for the sea
Mega Bog – End of Everything
Truth Club – Running From The Chase
Tiny Ruins – Ceremony
Being Dead – When Horses Would Run
Kelela – Raven
Joanna Sternberg – I’ve Got Me
Mary Lattimore – Goodbye, Hotel Arkada
Jaimie Branch – Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War))
Cleo Sol – Gold
MUNYA – Jardin
North Americans – Long Cool World
Laurel Halo – Atlas
TisaKorean – Let Me Update My Status
Nourished By Time – Erotic Probiotic 2
Dusk – Glass Pastures
Kara Jackson – Why Does the Earth Give Us People To Love?
Blonde Redhead – Sit Down For Dinner
Natalie Rose Labrecht – Holy Prana Open Game
Andrew Osterhoudt – Out Together
Devendra Banhart – Flying Wig
André 3000 – New Blue Sun
Salami Rose Joe Louis – Akousmatikous
Maybel – Gloam