Like a Grandma With a Peppermint: The Best Albums of 2023 (#40-1)
On god Lana Del Rey just missed the top 82
The other Olivia: Liv.e
40. Gel, Only Constant
I hope to hear more in Zulu someday than a few stodgy blasts between fascinating, Afrocentric samples, and at this point there’s a litany of hardcore it-bands getting theirs for reasons beyond my ken (Drain, Initiate, Jesus Piece) but I eventually loved Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems enough to not completely blame myself. Or maybe I just prefer it homegrown. These Jerseypunks punch me in the TØRSÖ with riffs of medium complexity and sometimes tempo for 14 minutes divided around an interlude that vindicates their beatmaking skills more than their scene gripes. If they keep taking their title literally, they’re good for one of these every two years.
39. A. Savage, Several Songs About Fire
You never know what music’s gonna finally click in the car. It’s obvious in retrospect that W. Toledo’s lengthy beginning-middle-and-enders are made for road trips, but you can file this with F. Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters for the bell-clear production that never distorts no matter how loud you turn up. Occasionally Savage’s singsong tendencies can annoy within the flatness of his range (i.e. “My My, My Dear”), but for the most part, they help what sounds like a true solo debut (i.e. hope Parquet Courts don’t split now that he’s wandering Paris) groove as a pleasant surprise: A Stereolab album with lyrics worth absorbing. Credit the violin, sax, various brushy textures, Cate Le Bon’s vocal sweetening, and wordfeasts like “Thanksgiving Prayer,” from the bohemian successor to maybe not Lou Reed’s NYC but Leonard Cohen’s: “I got people who allow themselves to love me and are insane enough to be loved.”
38. Megan Moroney, Lucky
Nashville’s periphery of women has gotten so smart that it’s improving the assembly line. I connected with the soaring, deeply silly “Tennessee Orange” so hard that I had to distance myself from the parent album for too long to not hear the rest as ordinaire. You could blame titles like “Kansas Anymore,” “God Plays a Gibson,” or, lol, “Traitor Joe.” Or maybe the hit sells its absurd first-world dilemma with such star-crossed spectacle that I couldn’t adjust to how well-adjusted the rest are. This especially includes the slut-shaming punchline delivered so plainly it’s levelheaded and the broken bard giving a love song the old college try (“I guess it's probably time I say something 'bout those eyes”). If the opening “I’m Not Pretty” is any indication by not showing its hand until the full “Keep on telling yourself I’m not pretty,” these tunes should be judged by anything but the title.
37. Earl Sweatshirt and the Alchemist, Voir Dire
I’m tired of trying to read along with this mumblecore maniac whose allegedly legendary verses I’ve never been able to follow along with out loud, even on his good-to-great work (2015’s I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside somehow impressing me most in a year that wasn’t exactly hurting for great hip-hop). billy woods, Mach-Hommy, Ka eventually, MIKE, one astounding Navy Blue album, two if you count Wiki’s Half God, even Roc Marciano’s Mt. Marci, and even Freddie Gibbs’ Alfredo all took less effort to excavate replayable musical pleasures. With its beats letting a few beams of light in, especially the futurist’s “2080,” last year’s Sick! met me halfway, no more no less. This awesomely titled surprise? Less. At first. Give it more plays than seems necessary and both Sweatshirt (did he say “Tempurpedic with the reaper”) and especially Alchemist (take your pick: Luther Vandross synths on “All the Small Things,” bright organ on “Mac Deuce,” even twinklier glockenspiel on “Sirius Blac”) give up more hooks than you can recall on any release bearing either of their names. And soul.
36. Kelsea Ballerini, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat [EP]
Carly Pearce’s 29 wasn’t exactly Lemonade but spill-it-girl has always been high-priority for divorcée tropes, and I’m glad the EP format is catching on in Nashville. And I’m down with chilly keyboards and drumless arrangements catching on because the scene produces formidable singers to fill the space and stories that benefit from fewer distractions than whatever Caroline Polachek is on about. Or maybe this long-running New Swift is just playing catchup with the billionaire she’s finally writing better than: “Tired of asking when I’ll see you next,” “It hurts putting shit in a box,” “Were you blindsided or were you just blind,” et cetera, et cetera. As for that other billionaire, imagine the Beyhive singing along with “The truth is kind of nuanced.”
35. The Tubs, Dead Meat
Until I scrounged Google for details, I didn’t even realize Owen “O” Williams, the guitarist behind Joanna Gruesome, my fave twee band of 2015, possessed the Richard Thompson-esque burr that earmarks my fave twee album of 2023. And once you’re past its longest and least accessible track that opens (which would still fit on the Chills’ Soft Bomb), the Tubs’ debut slams several home in succession, mostly at half the size: “I Don’t Know How It Works,” “Dead Meat,” “Round the Bend,” and the whomping swagger of “Sniveller,” which bends those shrill high-end riffs towards almost glammy shapes. It shines brightest whenever Joanna Gruesome’s Lan McArdle takes the mic, which plainly isn’t as often as when Williams does. :(
34. DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ, Destiny
I recognize the third-longest-in-show “Dance Now” off two listens and once year-end season is out of the way there will be others (what up “I’ll Always Be There”). So pick an hour, any hour, and you’ll get what you paid for (really, 3xCD on Bandcamp plus shipping for $22 is less than I routinely pay for one billy woods disc). I view it as a rebuke to the functional playlist era as much as its stated purpose as a balm for the COVID-isolated, but it would also function as dandy end-credits music for the world. Anyone who gets to side four in one go is dumber than Lou Reed, which makes them his superior and may forever put emojis on his grave.
33. Sexyy Red, Hood Hottest Princess
Yes, her bootyhole brown. So’s mine and presumably yours. But if she’d really just left “Pound Town,” it would probably be different colors. So even though the hit is the one that most resembles the three-note piano trap that leaves me cold, I finally succumbed to her wickedly inflected “downnnn” and the three cheap little anthems leading into it are too good not to help it up. Janae Wherry’s strained little voice propelling the onomatopoeic “SkeeYee” hook makes her bedroom Three 6 (in every sense) so charming. So let’s say she crosses Gangsta Boo and Kreayshawn, the latter of whom haunts a line like “How you sleeping on me you ain’t even got a bed” even though she’d rather be “Female Gucci Mane.” She’s got beats up her sleeve, too, like the squealing ballpark organ blurts of “Nachos.” Her Trumpian Trump-troll confirms this is the dumbest rap album I’ve dug since The DeAndre Way and about 12 times as horny.
32. Nia Archives, Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall [EP]
This brilliant DJ sings over tracks several bpm faster than TikTok’s breakout d’n’b stars or their K-Pop sistren, which is how you know she’s not storming the Hot 100 anytime soon, and she’s got no plans to release a full-length, which is how you know she might not flake on d’n’b. But she could if she wanted; both Remi Wolf and Chappell Roan would kill for a melody as insidious as “So Tell Me….” Pop stardom isn’t out of the question, but it takes a beats-first gyal to let it come to her.
31. Janelle Monáe, The Age of Pleasure
I don’t know how to explain Monáe’s most pl**s*r*ble record to those who were hoping for more “Mushrooms & Roses” or robot shit. It’s true, everyone else I know who loves it is over 30 and not a straight dude. I also listen to a lot more pre-dancehall reggae than the haters. But don’t get it twisted, preferring Jessie Ware’s hollower mimicry is a you problem. My post-Renaissance path of choice doesn’t disguise Monáe’s celebratory horniness but augments it with regal Egypt 80 horns, South African beats, yet another Grace Jones interlude, and better singing than anyone’s acknowledged. There’s “give me head if you wanna” and the excellent shibari mic-drop. But even more than pleasure what they sound like is free. Free to be unfashionably pussy-hungry on main. Free from having to cloak their sexuality in metaphor. You could even argue free from the unofficial burden of carrying Prince into the 2020s.
30. billy woods & Kenny Segal, Maps
Eventually Maps kicked in for me, mostly thanks to its numerous, Action Bronson-esque namechecks of delicious food (brown butter skate wing, conch fritters, deep-fried pork belly with fresh mint and Thai basil, lemongrass oxtail, chili oil — and I’m not counting the obligatory NY rap namedrop “Kennedy Fried” or the 5’3 expat who’s “thick as congee”) and a second half that’s more like it (the queasy, Hiding Places-esque “Hangman,” Danny Brown-augmented “Year Zero,” the staggered Aesop Rock boom-bap “Waiting Around”). Ultimately the accessibility I initially scoffed at seemed to humanize a half-impenetrable artist for everyone else and localized his overactive brain. So while 2022’s “Remorseless” gave my post-Trump/COVID/Roe depression a dead-inside solidarity hug (“There’s a freedom in realizing it’s not going to get better”), maybe “I will not be at soundcheck” (in favor of “the local greasy spoon or Sichuan establishment”) was an uplifting, mildest-ever-YOLO that more people needed in the wake of experiencing those same traumas. And why shouldn’t an artist behind maybe eight albums I love in just five years enjoy himself on one of those victory lap thingies?
29. Be Your Own Pet, Mommy
Jemina Pearl’s voice has deepened and she declines to all-out shriek, Jonas Stein trades sneaky guitar lines for thick slabs of crowd-pleasing garage progressions, and Nathan Vasquez and John Eatherly buoy the thickened mix doing things the band couldn’t have envisioned at 21; try Vasquez’s descending bass runs in “Goodtime!” or Eatherly going Phil Rudd on the glam-stomped AC/DC punch of “Pleasure Seeker,” the most surprising (and fun) thing here. Since Be Your Own Pet has an all-time frontwoman, they could really do anything they want, including this professed “punk album about motherhood.” It’s not impossible on this evidence for them to become the best band in the world again. In fact, they probably never stopped.
28. Ken Carson, A Great Chaos
Rage rap is too unfocused to live up to whatever it’s supposed to be, with Playboi Carti’s especially wayward Whole Lotta Red as the movement’s 808s and Heartbreak trickling down extra-dull Drakes like Yeat, and a rare talent like Bktherula’s stan hive insufficiently sizable (couldn’t have anything to do with how Carti’s overripe base treats women). But a dutiful listen to this Auto-Tuneful knucklehead sprinted to an indispensable six-track finish at the end that prompted me to let the rest do their thing. For once the gelatinous game beats will mesmerize you away from whatever dumb shit he’s saying about women. Hook from one special favorite: “The way she move / The way she move / The way she move.”
27. Robert Forster, The Candle and the Flame
I love the economy of this record, designed to hold your attention closely with just the important stuff. Nine songs in 36 minutes, performed by Forster, his cancer-striken wife/muse Karin Bãumler, son Louis Forster of my beloved Goon Sax, daughter Loretta, and ex-bandmate Adele Pickvance. Familiar, friendly chord progressions, only two with drums. Lyrics fairly breathtaking; the opening and closing mantras are “she’s a fighter” and “there’s a reason to live.” In between we get the dumbfounding “It’s Only Poison,” about the damned-if-you-do ravages of chemo because “it’s all they have.” Lots of “can’t live without her” and “I’ve been thinking ‘bout you always,” this family affair extracts the tenderness from the fear. Even rocks twice.
26. Bully, Lucky for You
With the exquisite bite of her crinkle-cut voice, Alicia Bognanno’s been in the top-10 percentile of ‘90s revivalists since 2015’s explosive “Trying” — you could trust her with the entire Yellowjackets S3 soundtrack. She’s also a producer extraordinaire, helming 2022’s Bleed Out, the best Mountain Goats product in years. All her full-lengths are solid, but they also didn’t have another “Trying.” On Bognanno’s fourth and best album, excavating great, memorable songs with blockbuster choruses is no longer a problem, especially the great lost Hole hit “Change Your Mind” and the sassy Soccer Mommy duet “Lose You.” A one-woman Buzz Bin who deserves more than 120 minutes of fame.
25. NewJeans, Get Up [EP]
The perfected PinkPantheress model is so slight that the ‘Jeans didn’t have to add even ten minutes to “Super Shy” to come up with the best K-Pop “mini-album” I’ve ever heard in my life, though “ETA” deploys baile funk and “ASAP” would’ve fit dandy on Thank U, Next. PinkPantheress, fresh off a bloated 34-minute indulgence, should take note.
24. Buck 65, Super Dope!
Having all but disappeared after the divorce album Neverlove and its inspired, vicious EDM send-up “Super Pretty Naughty,” Richard Terfry reemerged last year with King of Drums, which may have been the first back-to-basics hip-hop move to actually work. Literally all beats and free association (but especially beats, as the title claimed), and namechecking “your Discogs wantlist” (on which it remains, thanks sold-out limited Bandcamp pressing), the once vaguely Beck-and-Tom-Waits-analogous troubadour with the gruff affect reverted back to his nerdier cadence with doo-doo rhymes to match, and there’s no reason to miss his shed persona. For an encore he repeats himself, though not exactly; there’s more James Brown and horns (and well-scratched squawking chickens) and bass so deep it’s profound. Proclaiming himself an alfalfa male and advising Eminem to take it easy on the Just for Men, he’ll probably rub a CEO Trayle fan “the wrong way like pretty latex,” and I doubt he’s cleared every if any sample. But this groove-first messaging would’ve fit right between Paul’s Boutique and Done by the Forces of Nature in 1989’s release schedule.
23. Militarie Gun, Life Under the Gun
I’m down with an alt-rock revival rebranded as graduation from hardcore; whatever gets it done. But Ian Shelton’s got particularly entertaining nostalgia in mind, like tambourines straight outta Dizzy Up the Girl, and he can claim the audacity of being the first to marry punk-style shouting and “Strawberry Fields”-style Mellotron. This isn’t a collection of singalongs like that Turnstile thing a couple years ago, but I’ll take close-miked Bob Mould jangle over Grand Canyon reverb and 311 riffs. Since the Gun has even fewer riffs altogether, they’d better keep it up in songwriting school, as they do on the guns-blazing “Do It Faster” and future emo-night classic “Never Fucked Up Once.” But this is a delight of one man’s selectively remembered vision and its attendant sound effects nonetheless.
22. Olivia Rodrigo, Guts: The Secret Tracks [EP]
It’s impossible to not blame St. Vincent for the departure of Janet Weiss when the drummer candidly says Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein told her she was no longer an equal in Sleater-Kinney. Those events are just inextricably linked; their patchiest album and most obtrusive outside collaborator. But here our reigning pop genius taps the only bona fide producer of a classic riot-grrrl band in her orbit for “Obsessed,” which rocks so hard it would’ve made Guts even better. Arguments can be made for the other three tunes on this Black Friday vinyl exclusive (which somehow the label that counts Be Your Own Pet, Sheer Mag, and the Raincoats’ bassist among their roster was permitted to release). But perhaps not all of them.
21. Lori McKenna, 1988
Maybe I only think it’s her most gorgeous album yet because she “really wanted it to sound like I made a rock record in the ‘90s” only then she remembered she did, trouncing Gin Blossoms and Joan Osbourne alike. So at 54 she keys the thing to starting over “knowing what [she] knows now” and sounds genuinely admonishing when at least two songs demand happiness or else (one’s called “Happy Children” and co-written by same). I guess the idea is to make sure the younger self she’s addressing is having fun, so the older self she addresses from the start can grow up to become “peace in a house dress.” That’s why she named it after the year she got hitched. But her singing, melodies, and production open astoundingly beautiful new doors even when she’s “Letting People Down.” Misses so rarely these days she’s even nostalgic for that.
20. Danny Brown, Quaranta
Not gonna be able to top Tris McCall’s “A pirate looks at forty.”
19. Bombino, Sahel
Now occasioning the “World’s Best Guitarist” (Noisey) and “Sultan of Shred” (NYT) tags, my preferred axeman surnamed Moctar drops his first studio album in half a decade and his best since 2011’s Agadez, whoops, I mean ever. Does that make this the world’s best guitar album? “Alwane,” “Altma,” and the amazingly ska “Si Chilan” mark at least three spots where it’ll cross your mind.
18. Victoria Monét, Jaguar II
Like the homophonic Mx. Monáe, this apparent Ariana Grande whisperer (credits all over the great Thank U, Next) queered 2023 R&B by bringing regal horns to the forefront and an interesting sense of time. The explosive closer “Good Bye” would’ve been the best thing on the Silk Sonic album just like it’s the best thing here, dallying with luxurious ‘80s sparkle just as “How Does It Make You Feel” conjures Quiet Storm. Except the hit is starkly contemporary (if extraordinarily layered like the rest) and the guests plummet through all kinds of time and genre warps: Kaytranada, Buju Banton, Earth, Wind & Fire. Fresh nostalgia, there’s nothing like it even when the falsehoods of memory tell us there is.
17. Speedy Ortiz, Rabbit Rabbit
Their densest album since Major Arcana, so I prematurely dismissed it as too chewy. I’ve now replayed this for pleasure as much as Guts and chewed long enough to hear why “Emergency & Me” was titled to be a Dismemberment Plan homage (it’s the lead guitar, which is also the answer to virtually any other question about this amazing record). Even as I work out the innumerable layers and harmonic details of the middle tunes, I should’ve noticed the ascendant minor-key tricks of opener “Kim Cattrall” and headbanging closer “Ghostwriter” off the bat. The overall affect is a thick, allusive attack of words and guitar as forebears Sleater-Kinney once tagged their product, and there’s just so much more here to taste and parse than virtually any other 2023 album loaded with same except for Wednesday, who let up for simpler and quieter tunes often. Maybe any other Speedy Ortiz album.
16. Gloss Up, Before the Gloss Up
As someone who finds Ice Spice’s appeal beat-driven and hopes Sexyy Red gets a lot funnier, I’m relieved that GloRilla’s tough-talking bestfrenn knows how to put together a capital-A album from typical cheap and hard trap materials. Less common are the groaning violin that augments the bright block piano chords of “Gymnastics” and the strange Clipse-cum-Burial water-thing on “Lemon Peppa.” Varied with the tried-and-true melodicism of “Hold Me Down” and Three 6 sample on “Don’t Worry Bout It,” you’ve got quite the facsimile of a strong major-label rap debut from a bygone era.
15. Tyler Childers, Rustin’ in the Rain
Who was the last country-singing male whose voice I loved this much? Gosh, Willie? Roy Orbison? Garth’s larynx is more an augmentation to his showboating and Rhett Miller, if we’re even counting him, is a human complement to the cleverness of his words and economy of his melodies. Hayes Carll has a more expressive mushmouth than Todd Snider but…well, you get where I’m going. The fire and brimstone in this suspendered man are matched on these 28 locked-and-loaded minutes by the farming songs, the bible song, and yes, the two enormous love songs that finish — one hitwise and one, well, encompassing all of “Space and Time.” And death. It’s about that too, and he wails like it.
14. Lil Uzi Vert, Pink Tape
I’m sure there’s plenty to overthink here, like why rap’s reigning ambassador of pink (sorry Nicki) clinched Pride Month with an opus that begins and occasionally returns to deflecting gay rumors (because they “fuck eight bitches a day,” natch). So let’s not. When a rapper you’ve always admired more than enjoyed drops 1.5 hours of majestic, blippy, even beautiful beats, pilots them like Wayne’s spaciest, karaokes “Chop Suey!” (in one of the worst), hums like half a bar of Gotye (in one of the best), plucks Justice’s most jagged beat (in one of the many), and makes you wonder if you’ve been missing out on Bring Me the Horizon — not to mention reminding you to play Babymetal — you may, in a particularly bereft year for blockbusters, let it shoot its shot. Don’t take my word for it, though. After seven straight (ha) bangers, I actively feared the next 20. Then it only became stronger as we rounded the halfway point. Then Jersey-club juggernaut “Just Wanna Rock” signaled the freakiness to follow, which is thrilling and distracting enough but primarily serves to make you hungry for more Autotuned rapping, something I never thought I’d write. And before you know it, you’re left with the question of whether it really has to end. Neither Drake nor Future has ever been this tuneful for 80 minutes, much less 87.
13. L'Orchestre National Mauritanien, Ahl Nana
Retroactively anointing Pet Sounds or What’s Going On the best album of all-time is not how you stick it to boomer canon. Teleporting this astonishing folk-rock tour de force back to 1971 (er, I mean reissuing) to kick Zeppelin IV’s fucking ass is how.
12. André 3000, New Blue Sun
I don’t listen to enough new jazz to tell you whether or not this descended from the descendants of Alice Coltrane’s ashram. But I do listen to enough Jon Hassell to praise the widescreen, spacious environment one of the all-time greatest rappers has pivoted to creating here. The digital wind instrument of André’s choice is less flutelike than reported, approaching the particularly bent, otherworldly tones of Hassell’s treated trumpet on “That Night in Hawaii When I Turned Into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn't Control.” And the 12-minute Hot 100 hit opener is indeed catchy.
11. Water From Your Eyes, Everyone’s Crushed
This duo’s purported uncategorizability isn’t due to any particular thing you haven’t heard before. They’re just my kind of experimental pop, where songform rules but sonically, anything goes. Nate Amos augments the deadpan Rachel Brown with the familiar (“Mary, Mary” beat with shaker, pizzicato chamber ballad) and the indescribable, usually detuned guitar loops with no discernible origin. Like the Beefheartian interjections of off-time, line-in distortion that carve up the title tune into vintage BiRd-BrAiNs, or in the climax of the frenetic “Buy My Product,” leads that could’ve been peeled off a Bombino or Basseyou Kouyate record. Having spent more than half my life glued to FL Studio, I can attest how few albums illustrate the pleasure of not striking gold when two discrete loops rub together perfectly but what accidental worlds open up when they don’t. Lick their decals off, baby.
10. Dan Ex Machina, Ex’s Sexts
“My abusers and victims are one and the same / Nobody learns when the focus is blame / No one reflects, no one admits the shame / It’s always the same.”
9. Ashley McBryde, The Devil I Know
McBryde’s fourthish outing (after 2022’s one-of-a-kind classic Lindeville) awards her the year’s best country album twice in a row in part because the shamelessly Bobby Pinson-aping title tune, the stomping-swamping “Blackout Betty,” and best of all, the opening “Made for This” thrash harder than not just early mentor Eric Church but (watch your back) anything our lord and savior Miranda Lambert’s ever done. Reportedly recorded simultaneously with Lindeville, the brickwalled guitars and drums of the loud ones only make the delicate ones prettier and more empathetic, like how “Single at the Same Time” imparts conscience to the previous anomaly’s full-blown circus of slapstick affairs. Having expertly divided her most fruitful songwriting period into “fictional” and “less fictional,” her irresistible, rapper-like urge to play both sides of the “real” storytelling divide bubbles to the surface when she opens one highlight with “What happens up in Vegas don't always stay in Vegas / No, sometimes it looks you up and calls your house.” But that doesn’t mean she’s actually “Learned to Lie.”
8. Yo La Tengo, This Stupid World
Hype turns in cycles, so when you’re as old as Yo La Tengo, you go through a few, especially when you’ve been around long enough for people to play the best-since game. And sure, the hosannahs greeting my favorite working band’s 17th album has at least something to do with the surprise that quiet masters in their late 60s still use their fuzz pedals. Being my favorite working band, their 2010s output (Fade, Stuff Like That There, There’s a Riot Going On and especially 2020’s warmly consuming drone We Have Amnesia Sometimes) deserves more than to be casualties of a best-since game. But the tensely motorik basslines here adorned with noises like barbed-wire tinsel and uncommonly delicate, Georgia-sung ballads adrift like ice floes earn it. A reminder that great songwriters can swallow you with sound, too.
7. Liv.e, Girl in the Half Pearl
R&B auteurs get ADHD, too, I’m delighted to report, and this jungle-paced journey through Olivia Williams’ skittering mind and musical palette is the most engrossing since Dawn Richard’s psychedelic undersea rave Blackheart. She cherrypicks the Odd Future alums’ diminished chords (“Lake Psilocybin”), Esperanza Spalding’s melted modals (“Clowns”), and Navy Blue’s drumless, daybreaking instrumentals (“Find Out”) to warp something like “There’s more than 50 ways to leave your lover” into a feel-good story or take a bite out of her non-girlfriend’s ass over the dial-tone trip-hop of “A Slumber Party‽” My favorite sequence is the gorgeous synth ripple of “Snowing!” escaping into the detuned, electronically tickled ivories of “Wild Animals” and “Reset!” just when you can’t take any more music theory. The mellower Couldn’t Wait to Tell You similarly felt bursting with ideas until I went back so maybe the next Liv.e will blow this away too. She ain’t sitting any stiller.
6. Noname, Sundial
Any lifelong rap lover knows the score: Mind-blowing rhymes and addictively masterful beats forever wrapped around knuckleheaded provocations like an inoperable hernia. Except it would’ve been all too easy for “Balloons” to jettison a Jay Electronica all too happy to cosplay Professor Griff instead of, you know, getting a job. Still, like the execrable Kodak Black on Doechii’s Top 40-rounding “What It Is (Block Boy),” I’m not even necessarily sure I want it gone. Maybe I’m too befallen with Stockholm syndrome from too many favorite problematic classics — before he disavowed Kanye’s anti-Semitism, Pusha T boasted his crack “cools to a tight wad, the Pyrex is Jewish.” Or maybe including the ugly and stinky as part of the rhetorical overrun just feels inherent to the most fascinating genre of music for 50 years running, as abstractly thrilling as dozens of stray darts flung on Fatima Warner’s deadliest and best album, from “cat piss on popcorn” to taking Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and pop’s richest power couple down with her. On the other hand, she welcomes a fired-up Common to $ilkmoney and Billy Woods’ resistance. A new problematic classic to ponder its contradictions from countless angles, including stoned. I’ve always preferred Fear of a Black Planet to Nation of Millions myself.
5. Olivia Rodrigo, Guts
I complained at first. She’s unconvincing as an “All-American Bitch” and the more archetypal stuff pointed up the secondhand feeling of punchlines nevertheless better than T. Swift’s while also retreating into herself somewhat; the abused classmate detailed in “Hope Ur Ok” staved off potential narcissism. As you probably guessed, I’m dumb. She’s 20. Two major pop-rock albums (this one about three times as pop-rock as Sour) in two years hopefully jolts the Hot 100 out of its turgid Drake era, which has gone on longer than a Drake album. Happy to cede other crowns to Taylor, Beyoncé, etc. until she’s old enough to be world-weary, she settles for being our greatest rock‘n’roller, choosing more pressing battles like challenging the Veronicas on “Love Is Embarrassing” and vying to replace Adam Yauch on “Get Him Back!” not a moment too soon. It’s nice for a change to hear everyone else agreeing to prefer a teenpop goddess’ rapping to her ballads, though I’ll even take the Orwell-in-lipgloss “Logical” over anything Lana Del Rey’s proffered in a decade anyway, which I hope inspires Ms. Grant to start rapping again. And making pop songs.
4. JPEGMAFIA/Danny Brown, Scaring the Hoes
The most innovative hip-hop album of the year has its moments of wordsmithing — I’m partial to Danny’s “eat your ass like I’m Canibus.” But in a world where most rap is selling me a person(ality) rather than music-as-music, this is a proud production-first tour de force thanks to Peggy; not many people exist who can make Danny Brown weirder. An unpredictable fun house of noise-rap, drum’n’bass, FlyLo-ready jazz on the same song as Auto-Tune, samples ranging from G-d-tier gospel to “Milkshake” (a deliberate troll move after Kelis rebuked Beyoncé) and titles like “Garbage Pale Kids” and “Jack Harlow Combo Meal.” The best kind of mess, which would’ve languished as a cult item if year-end compendia didn’t come around to it one-by-one because there was just so little competition.
3. 100 gecs, 10,000 gecs
“Doritos & Fritos” is their statement because few pop auteurs understand that snacks are their holy mission. Imagine if two dickwads who came up in the time of free AOL CDs conceived Dial-a-Song instead of They Might Be Giants, treating their ADHD with homemade Reel Big Fish, Limp Bizkit, and Blink-182 trifles instead of Elvis Costello and…I don’t know, Camper Van Beethoven. I wouldn’t say the gecs’ aural-trash dominion is as boundless as the awestruck claim; where’s their fake Garth Brooks ballad and “Cotton Eye Joe” sample? But they’ve damn near perfected the half-hour Saturday morning cartoon as music, equally a kidlike rush worth remembering and a now worth being alive to experience. There’s a supply-chain shortage of the latter.
2. Emperor X, Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor [EP]
Chad Matheny’s always had something to say, and he’s gotten better at saying it. Because in a post-Trump/COVID world he’s desperate for clearer communication as we all should be and partly because every other citizen’s so stupid now that satire is dangerous (not that he won’t indulge in a “Sad React” from time to time). As you’d imagine from the title(s), which defy Windows character limits, this wondrous, completely unreviewed EP laid down via four-track after early 2023 gigs breaks new ground in directness. A legally blind musician dependent on touring income needs public transportation to be efficient, simple as that. What isn’t simple is why it can’t be, which is where these six unforgettable tunes and their sledgehammer hooks come out swinging, including the spoken-word one: “Funding was not available,” “It was a cash grab,” “How you gonna pay for it?” That’s just the punctuation of these astonishingly detailed exhortations though, from suspiciously underattended zoning meetings to overwhelmed drainage grates and quietly singing Shape Notes in between. Matheny can’t bring himself in good conscience to charge for this. Direct action is tipping him handsomely.
1. Wednesday, Rat Saw God
As any record geek who reveres Wussy knows, the only rock recipe more potent than a stew of grunge, pedal steel, and shoegaze is A-level lyricism bringing it over the top. So without further adieu, Karly Hartzman, everybody: “I used to drink 'til I threw up on weeknights at my parents' house / My friends all took Benadryl ‘til they could see shit crawlin' up the walls.” “There's a sex shop off the highway with a biblical name / Nana crashed the carpool on the way to my mom's birthday.” “Bird flies into the window every day at the same time / It'll never learn, but it also wouldn't die.” “On the way home, play Drive-By Truckеrs songs real loud / You'll be my baby 'til my body's in the ground.” And as every outlet still covering rock in 2023 will tell you, there’s more.