As much as everythingsgonegreen loves to concern itself
almost exclusively with all things retro, we’re not completely immune to celebrating
the delights of today. It’s just that there’s so damn much of it, and sorting
the wheat from the chaff often feels way too laborious. When really, we could
just listen to the perennial tried and trusted of yester-year. As much as that lazy
and unambitious default option renders this blog largely irrelevant with any
cool kids, we do know our place.
In some respects, it was a genuine lack of knowledge
about the here and now, or a lack of “currency”, which prompted me a few years
back to cease with writing year-end wraps or best-of-the-year lists for the blog.
I think the last one was in 2020, and there’s no real enthusiasm from me to
revisit 2023 either. So I asked someone else to do it. Someone with the benefit
of youth, an early-twenty-something self-described “staunch poptimist”, sometime
music blogger and friend of the blog, Sam Bell, who offers his 2023 wrap in the
form of a very welcome guest post …
1. Jessie Ware - ‘That! Feels Good!’ (Dance-Pop,
Disco)
The release of Dua Lipa’s ‘Future Nostalgia’ in March
2020 heralded the beginning of the nu-disco revival that has saturated this
decade with varying levels of success.
The Lows? Kylie
Minogue’s 2023 release ‘Tension’ and Tame Impala’s 2020 hangover cure ‘The Slow
Rush’ come to mind.
The Highs? The
emergence of Dua Lipa as a pop sensation, the re-emergence (amid
not-insignificant controversy) of Róisín Murphy as a bona fide hit-maker, and
of course the late blossoming of Jessie Ware.
When one thinks of tasteful use of saxophone in pop
music, the mind naturally wanders to the cliché heights of ‘Careless Whisper’
and ‘Baker Street’. My mind wanders to many of my favourite moments from ‘That!
Feels Good!’. Unlike the aforementioned hits, the saxophone in Ware’s music
never dominates, it is left in the background, bristling with passion and
excitement but never allowed to impose on Ware, whose rich vocal is always
front and centre.
I’ll push saxophone discourse to the side, as I don’t
want to give the impression that the music on ‘That! Feels Good!’ isn’t
imminent. It is. It / Ware demands attention.
Ware, a mother to three children, is proof that lust
(for life) never quite evaporates if you’re not willing to let it. She is
imperative in the album’s opener and title track; she floats over the silky
‘Lightning’; she’s just the right mix of sultry and sweet on ‘These Lips’; and
you simply won’t hear a more sincere expression of joy this year than you will
on ‘Beautiful People’. ‘That! Feels Good!’ is a testament to grabbing life –
and love – by the horns and never letting go. It sits atop the highest peak of
the 2020s nu-disco revival, and it sits there alone.
Key Tracks: ‘Free Yourself’; ‘Hello Love’; ‘Begin
Again’.
2. Danny Brown - ‘Quaranta’ (Conscious Hip Hop,
Experimental Hip Hop)
A decade ago Danny Brown released ‘XXX’, marking his
30th birthday. It’s a brilliantly depraved album, the kind that you feel guilty
listening to, where the music is oh so good but the subject matter (that
familiar cocktail of sex, drugs and fame) is oh so not.
And yet it probably wasn’t until Brown released
‘Atrocity Exhibition’ in 2016 that he received the widespread acclaim (if only
from music publications; the general public did not react as Danny had intended
– see here) that he has always deserved. Likewise, it probably wasn’t until
2016 that the music world at large started noticing, and being concerned by,
the subject matter of Brown’s music. Luckily, with age comes maturity, right?
A bit over 10 years after ‘XXX’, Brown has released
‘Quaranta’, or “forty” in Italian. Suffice to say, he’s trying his best to not be
the Danny Brown of old. In terms of the hip hop landscape, he is old. There are
glimmers of the terrifically zany character that Brown has cultivated
throughout his career, however the best portions of ‘Quaranta’ are where Brown
is without embellishment, sticking to his lower register to deliver insightful
raps about the gentrification of hometown Detroit, heartbreak and, well, selling
drugs (in the past tense!).
NB: Bruiser Wolf, almost impossibly, is the most
charismatic voice on a Danny Brown album. Worth a listen for his distinctive
cadence alone.
Key Tracks: ‘Y.B.P (feat. Bruiser Wolf)’; ‘Celibate
(feat. MIKE)’; ‘Hanami’.
3. Sufjan Stevens - ‘Javelin’ (Indie Folk,
Singer-Songwriter, Chamber Folk)
Sufjan Stevens releasing one of the most heartbreaking
albums of the year and waltzing his way into my year-end Top 10 list. Where
have I heard that before?? (see: 2021, 2015, 2010, 2005, 2004 etc…)
Sonically ‘Javelin’ is the entanglement of all of the
separate strands that Stevens has played with throughout his long career, often
a combination of the ethereal ambience of ‘Carrie and Lowell’, the electronica
of ‘Age of Adz’ and ‘All Delighted People’, and the chamber orchestration that
made ‘Illinois’ such a career-defining hit.
Lyrically, Stevens has always been familiar with the
concept of the “gut punch”, as highlighted by the likes of ‘Casimir Polaski
Day’ (from ‘Illinois’), ‘Futile Devices’ (from ‘Age of Adz’) and ‘Mystery of
Love’ (from the soundtrack of ‘Call Me By Your Name’). Not since 2015’s ‘Carrie
and Lowell’ has Stevens decided to give his listeners an album-length
gut-punch, at least not until now.
Stevens’ sexual affinity has long been among the music
industry’s worst-kept secret, a theme which throughout his career has only
played second-fiddle to his affinity with Christianity. While ‘Javelin’
essentially plays the part of Stevens’ coming-out party, the circumstances
surrounding its release (that being the death of his longtime partner, Evans
Richardson) do not denote cause for celebration.
‘Javelin’ is Stevens’ second album that is explicitly
about the death of a loved one; it is Stevens’ second album that is so wrapped
up in the nostalgia of life, and the warmth that life brings, that its listener
almost forgets about the subject matter until they are confronted with a line
like:
“So here we stand in the dark, my eyes traveling to
the place where you’d thrown yourself over the rocks”.
There is no need for an artist to re-invent the wheel
when the wheel is already brilliant.
Key Tracks: ‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me’; ‘So You Are
Tired’; ‘Shit Talk’.
4. JPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown - ‘Scaring the Hoes’
(Experimental Hip Hop, Hardcore Hip Hop, Glitch Hop)
In 2016 A Tribe Called Quest released their final
album, a gut-wrenching goodbye to Phife Dawg who had died 8 months prior but
had recorded his verse riddled with cancer. In many ways this was ATCQ’s most
innovative album, a jazz rap opus made bespoke for the 21st century kid.
That album’s fourth track, ‘Solid Wall of Sound’,
builds up slowly, becoming gradually more claustrophobic for the listener until
the last 20 seconds, in which all of the layers of music pile on top of one
another and the listener is confronted with, well, a solid wall of sound. While
no one might have ever asked the question: “what would it sound like if that
last 20 seconds was stretched out to 36 minutes?”, JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown
have answered it: “Scaring the Hoes”.‘Scaring the Hoes’ is not some revelation, but rather
the culmination of two of the senior voices in avant-garde hip hop honing their
craft and having a lot of fun in the meantime. Don’t be put off initially by
the brash lyricism or the song titles denoting the chronically-online nature of
both artists’ fanbases – behind every solid wall of sound is layer-upon-layer
of meticulously crafted music. This is a sampling odyssey not to be overlooked.
Key Tracks: ‘SCARING THE HOES’; ‘Burfict!’; ‘Kingdom
Hearts Key (feat. Redveil)’.
5. George Clanton - ‘Ooh Rap I Ya’ (Chillwave,
Neo-Psychedelia, Baggy)
Absolution by way of chillwave.
'Ooh Rap I Ya' is one of those albums that should,
ideally, be played so loud that the music feels almost tangible (not
recommended by the least cool 9 out of 10 audiologists). Even if you're not so
inclined to do irreparable damage to your ear drums, it is undeniable that in
any setting Clanton and his backing of reverb and synths just sound, well,
massive. Sorry, I meant MASSIVE.
In some ways, this reminds me of the Stone Roses debut
effort - not just due to the Baggy influence that is so inherent that you could
probably peel it off from the LP pressing and use it to roll a cigarette, but
also because of the fact that, whether you like it or not, this music will
ingrain itself into your brain and nestle in there until you're annoying your
flatmates by incessantly humming "AND I'VE BEEN YOUNG" while peeling
potatoes.
Key Tracks: 'Justify Your Life'; 'I
Been Young' (SOTY 2023); 'Vapor King / SubReal'.
6. Squid - ‘O Monolith’ (Experimental Rock, Art Punk,
Krautrock)
‘O Monolith’ is an enigma.
Though Squid’s debut album 'Bright Green Field' is a
bigger statement with higher peaks than what Squid have delivered in this
outing, I'd herald this work to be the bigger achievement. 'Bright Green Field’
was a whirlwind of opportunity, a bizarre entry into the British post-punk
canon that baffled and amazed listeners at every turn. It is by all accounts a
major-scale success story.
'O Monolith' is significantly less urgent than its
predecessor; don’t be fooled by the fervent opener ‘Swing (In a Dream)’. What
Squid has lost in energy and eccentricity, they gained in groove, lyricism, and
that maturity that tends to elude all but the best of young artists who’re
trying to show the world that they’re ready to make a mark.
That Squid successfully avoided a sophomore slump is a
good thing. That they were able to do so while continuing to innovate - keeping
anyone who attempts to figure out what their next move will be essentially in
the dark - is a great thing.
What was once a vibrant mix of Talking Heads x Parquet
Courts has now become an assured mix of Radiohead x Can. Britain’s windmill
scene has brought us yet another 2020s gem, and for that we should all be
thankful.
Key Tracks: ‘Swing (In a Dream)’; ‘The Blades’; ‘If
You Had Seen the Bull's Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away’.
7. Carly Rae Jepsen - ‘The Loveliest Time’ (Dance-Pop,
Nu Disco)
My way-too-early kneejerk reaction was that this is
Carly Rae Jepsen’s best output since 'Emotion (Side B)'. Yes, this supposed
B-side album is better than the Dedicated era, and better than ‘The Loneliest
Time’.
That kneejerk reaction has not been tempered by the
winds of time, but rather has been solidified by the kind of conviction that
only comes from playing intoxicating pop music incredibly loud.
The run through the middle of the album, starting with
‘Shy Boy’ and culminating with ‘Put It To Rest’ is as strong a 7-track run as
CRJ has had in her career, and aside from the obvious miss that is 'Aeroplanes'
(which is just a bit too syrupy for me, an already staunch poptimist), this
album is as consistent as anything she has ever released.
This is the kind of album that makes CRJ’s fans no fun
to be around at parties. Rather than dancing gleefully to ‘Call Me Maybe’, we
are doomed to lament what could have been if she received the exposure and
public acclaim that output like this deserves.
Key Tracks:
‘Kollage’; ‘Psychedelic Switch’; ‘Put It To Rest’.
8. HMLTD - ‘The Worm’ (Rock Opera, Progressive Rock)
An album made by theatre kids who have reached an apex
of fame, for theatre kids who aspire to do the same.
What can truly be said of a rock opera about a man who
suffers post-traumatic stress disorder, burdened with the belief that a giant
worm has taken over medieval England and wreaking havoc wherever it slithers?
If that’s not captivating enough to cause even the
least curious of people to give ‘The Worm’ even a cursory listen, then they
simply cannot be helped.
Oh and did I mention that they do a pretty good job
covering Nina Simone?
Key Tracks: ‘The End is Now’; ‘Liverpool Street’;
‘Past Life (Sinnerman’s Song)’.
9. MIKE - ‘Burning Desire’ (Abstract Hip Hop, East
Coast Hip Hop, Vaporwave)
MIKE (with the help of DJ Blackpower, MIKE's producer
alias) has created his enduring masterpiece. MIKE's career has been a story of
a rapper and producer going from strength to strength, coming out from under
the shadow of the likes of Earl Sweatshirt, Wiki, Navy Blue, Ka and others in
the world of low-fi, drumless hip hop to revel in his own vaporwave world.
'Burning Desire' plays like a soundtrack, comprising
of vignettes melding into each other rather than defined, individualistic
songs. Does that matter? When the music sounds this good, not one iota.
More nuanced, musically, then anything MIKE has
released before. An utterly triumphant album.
Key Tracks: 'African Sex Freak Fantasy' (picture Kanye
West's 'Hell of a Life', but not unlistenable ten years on); 'plz don't cut my
wings (feat. Earl Sweatshirt)'; 'What U Say U Are'.
10. Yussef Dayes - ‘Black Classical Music’ (Jazz
Fusion, Jazz-Funk)
The best of Dayes' studio albums - his 'Welcome to the
Hills' live album still sits upon the highest peaks of any jazz recording
created in the last 5-10 years. A near-perfect blend of funk, jazz, soul, and
contemporary R&B.
‘Black Classical Music’ is incredibly tight. Dayes is
one of the best jazz drummers in the world right now and, alongside Makaya
McCraven, has positioned himself in such a way that I, in 2030, would be
surprised to learn he hadn't dominated the entirety of the upcoming 2020s.
Key Tracks: 'Black Classical Music'; 'Rust (feat. Tom
Misch)'; 'Tioga Pass (featuring Rocco Palladino)'.
Honourable Mentions:
Caroline Polachek – ‘Desire, I Want to Turn Into You’
(Art Pop, Electronic, Downtempo);
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – ‘PetroDragonic
Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the
Beginning of Merciless Damnation’ (Progressive Metal, Thrash Metal);
McKinley Dixon – ‘Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?’ (Jazz
Rap, Conscious Hip Hop, Neo-Soul);
Róisín Murphy – ‘Hit Parade’ (Art Pop, Deep House,
Chicago Soul);
DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ – ‘Destiny’ (House,
Plunderphonics, Nu Disco).
Favourite Debut Releases (not otherwise listed):
Nourished by Time – ‘Erotic Probiotic 2’ (Alternative
R&B, Bedroom Pop);
Asia Menor – ‘Enola Gay’ (Indie Rock, Post Punk, Math
Rock);
London Brew – ‘Londo Brew’ (Jazz Fusion, Avant-Garde
Jazz);
Model/Actriz – ‘Dogsbody’ (Noise Rock, Dance Punk)
Maruja – ‘Knocknarea (EP)’ (Post-Rock, Art Rock)
Posthumous Praise:
Jamie Branch – ‘Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die
((World War))’ (Avant-Garde Jazz; Chamber Jazz);
Ryuichi Sakamoto – ‘12’ (Ambient, Modern Classical);
bl4ck m4rket c4rt - 'Today I Laid Down' (Slowcore,
Slacker Rock)
This last one is particularly harrowing, as the artist
was only 17 years old.
