glass beach are finally ready to release their anticipated sophomore album plastic death on January 19 via Run For Cover (pre-order), and two great songs from it are out now, “rare animal” and “the CIA.” They’ll also be supporting the album on a 2024 spring headlining tour.
While we wait for that, glass beach have collectively made us a list of their 15 favorite albums of 2023, plus 12 honorable mentions, with personal, in-depth commentary on each pick. It’s very much worth a read, and here’s what they had to say…
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glass beach’s Favorite Albums of 2023
we don’t believe music is a competition and wouldn’t be able to agree on a ranking anyway so our top ten list will be listed in alphabetical order. sorry if that’s no fun. also there are fifteen albums in our top ten. feel free to attack us with hammers for this blunder.
100 gecs – 10000 gecs
i don’t really keep up with music reviews these days so i honest to god have no idea what the reception to these record has been but with the ways this record diverges from their previous work and the band having maybe become too big to be totally cool cool to many indie fuckheads such as myself, i feel a real obligation to vouch for this album. first of all, i’m not sure this even is hyperpop. there is a much heavier emphasis on live instruments, including tons of Tom Morello-esque guitar riffing, the vocals are significantly less processed, and the happy hardcore influence that was all over 1000 gecs is nearly gone. but then again, their first album was also lightyears away from early pioneers of the genre like AG Cook and Sophie. this is a very interesting next step for their weird take on the genre. if there’s any one reason i love this album, it’s that breakdown on billy knows jamie. stretching a crabcore breakdown into near harsh noise is one of the most inspired musical ideas i’ve heard this year and reminds me why 100 gecs remains one of the bands i’m most excited about.
AJJ – Disposable Everything
this album will always have a special place in my heart as the soundtrack of our final days in LA, packing everything in our home to be sent up the coast. i think i looped this album three times following my first listen– i was immediately hooked by the opener and the tracks to come were no less impactful. “The Baby Panda” is a standout track to me, which, like many of AJJ’s best songs, threatens to put me in a dark place as i mourn what our world has lost and is losing. but somehow, as he’s wont to do, Sean Bonnette weaves a melancholy hopetimism into the grim and leaves me wanting to fight for a better ending, not wallowing in the one we’ve got.
André 3000 – New Blue Sun
i am always here for left field experimental records from artists who’ve generally stayed within the pop sphere. i honestly don’t think this is totally out of nowhere however, André 3000 was always pushing the boundaries of rap with Outkast, and by The Love Below he didn’t seem to be committed to the genre at all anymore. but to come out of a period of near complete silence save for a couple features here and there (including a great deep cut from Frank Ocean’s Blonde and the full version of “Do Ya Thing” – the best Gorillaz song) and drop an instrumental ambient flute album is almost as wild as the fact that this album is one of the best ambient albums i’ve ever heard. ambient music definitely gets stereotyped by some as being boring and background noise at best but this record kept me fully engaged for the entirety of its hour and a half runtime. every track introduces new synth timbres twisting through rich jazz harmony, the glacial dynamic shifts are executed with incredible precision, and there’s some gorgeous “outside” lines that feel like something Coltrane would’ve played in his late era. i love it! i am here for it!
Anjimile – The King
the title might as well serve as the description of Anjimile’s status in creating mood drenched soundscapes that seem to tie in with the centerpiece of his vocals. The first track “The King” builds from a soft smooth vocal choir that they guide with their voice into some of the most satisfying, punchy, and plucky note flurries I’ve ever heard. “Mother” has a haze of sounds grooving over Anjimile’s pondering in his melodies. it feels like an answer of those ponderings in the track “Anybody” to some degree, the guitar playing feels a bit like a revelation and the reverberating choir highlights the words being spoken at any given moment. the vocals and keys in “Genesis” feel like a close personal conversation in a dreamlike space of echoing words and backing instrumentation, until a distorted lead melody demands your attention from that same distant grouping of sounds. the pulsing beat of “Animal” is in your face, and it feels true to the sentiment of the song, especially the laid bare message by the end of the song. “Father” has most of its lyrics as a question, and the guitar feels as inquisitive as the vocals. lonely and distant is how everything feels compared to the vocals in “Harley”, and the solemness is great, I especially love the irony of the backing vocal entrance on the word “nobody”. mechanical and industrial percussion surrounding the unison vocals and bass give a really dark energy to “Black Hole” that begins to feel more haunted as the guitar and backing vocals come in (especially with the prominent panned reverb at the end). draining away everything besides guitar and vocals in the folky start of “I Pray” gives some real weight to those elements fading away as the choir steadily grows and the resonant sounds of the bridge ring like the titular phrase of the song. “The Right” feels angelically unsettling with the shifting harmonies, the bubbling metallic sounds underneath Anjimile’s request of “pray for me” and uncertain last inquiry of the album, “haven’t i earned the right?” this album deserves every bit of praise it will receive, and more, in my opinion.
awakebutstillinbed – Chaos Takes the Wheel and I Am a Passenger
this album starts with such an earnest and uncertain feeling in the vocals that sells the lyrical content as confessions rather than just singing. it really sets the tone for the album in my opinion and gets better as it goes on. this record has some grit and rawness throughout that i appreciate, and there’s a consistent palette of sounds that pulls things together (which I think is in part due the chemistry of the band playing together in the tracking of the album). just the sheer range between the tracks “Enough” and “Redlight” is a great highlight of what this group is capable of. sincerity and craft are the words that come to mind overall, and I find myself enjoying similar things that I did about Polar Bear Club’s “Sometimes Things Just Disappear” but in an obviously new and different light. the doubled screaming of “Scramble Suit”, the upbeat “the pillows”-esque verses and harmonious choruses of “Airport”, the synchopated, pace-shifting beats pairing with the clustered vocal phrasing of “Adapt”, i love it!
Blue Hours – Blue Hours EP
this is my comfort record. i love Derek Ted and juliet sunflower independently so them together is a no-brainer. stunning unison/harmonies and instrumentation, hard panned, filling my ears to the brim with this soft, sweet acoustic sound. true melancholy with crystal clear, lofi at times production. this record must have been so pleasant to sing. bouncy lyrics and melodies from heavy folk and country influences with that nice, indie singer-songwriter vibe that feels like laying on the floor listening to your best friends show you a lovely song they wrote together realizing they have the most captivating voices and when they sing together it’s shockingly cathartic.
boygenius – The Record
i know. this doesn’t need to be represented here, but i did particularly love this record and it may be my favorite from the year. i was a little underwhelmed by their EP boygenius. not that i thought it was bad, i just wasn’t taken by it. i loved Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus so much as individual artists and was so stoked to have them come together, but ended up liking each of their solo music more than this project. now that The Record is out, that might still be true, but i did fucking love this. they’re having fun, being vulnerable, supporting each other, experimenting a little more with genre than they do on their own, the harmonies are wonderful, and they obviously have more time and money to devote to this in a way that i do believe adds to it. it’s great!
Carol – More Than A Goodbye
just play the first song, “Other Room”. complex harmony, jumping unconventional melodies blending verse with pre-chorus with chorus in a nearly “through-composed” kind of way. with a beautiful warm presence, the production is intimate, soft, and thoughtful. carol’s voice and lyrics are genuinely too much for me to bare sometimes. “MTAG” feels like a personal look at the sadness, the melancholy- the joy of a person’s story and the hope they have in the world before them, though it has hurt them and others again and again. this artist epitomizes valuing every single moment of one’s life to appreciate who you are and what you’ve been through, how you’ve affected those around you and how you can do better by them and yourself. i pretty seriously can’t listen to this record without crying. i’m tearing up as i write this, even. “Cartwheel” could be a stand-out, but it would pain me to have anyone miss the rest of this record just to listen to my one recommendation so ignore that i said that.
Chris Farren – Doom Singer
with a persona as drenched in irony and satire as Chris Farren’s it’s easy to assume his music is impersonal, or isn’t taken nearly as seriously as it is. maybe that’s the kind of anti-intimate nature someone would need to feel comfortable with the vulnerability of something like “Doom Singer” or really any of his discography. Chris has always had a knack for packaging emotional desperation into blisteringly catchy pop ballads and this record is no different. i can’t think of an artist i am more simultaneously jealous of, and completely resistant to being like. anyone else doing what he does would probably come off as genuinely egotistical and unfunny, but he’s just so fucking good at this. Chris basically fucking challenges you to not approach his music on a deeper level, which is especially present in his live performance where he literally plays a “boat fails” video over the entirety of one of his songs. yet, that amount of effort for a fun, non-stop live show, a constantly engaging and lore-building presence online, and clear thoughtfulness on his part for presentation (whether it truly is just for getting attention and eyes on his work or not) can only further drag you into his emotional core where he is on full display in songs so earnest you’d think they were written by somebody else. “Doom Singer” is poppy, guitar-driven and drum forward where previous records relied more on synths and drum machine (shout-out to newly added drummer, Frankie), and is a special record for Chris and a wonderful place to start if you’ve never heard of him before. long live the ghoul.
Home Is Where – The Whaler
if you listen to Home Is Where for anything let it be the lyrics. their dynamic control is admirable too through long drawn-out sections of this album intentionally presented like huge songs split into parts. peaks of this record lull you into a folky, country-music style sense of peace with slide guitar, piano, singing saw, harmonica, organ, etc. before slamming your head against the wall with Brandon’s harsh vocals and the more hardcore/emo tendencies the band is known for. in a way, the scrappiness from their previous record “I Became Birds” appears lacking, but is only disguised instead in experimenting with the production process with reversing tracks, subtle ambience, foley tracks of breaking light bulbs (i think), linking song to song to song with single instrument tempo transitions, and more. i don’t know if they’d appreciate the comparison but parts of this feel like when The Beatles were just trying shit in the studio and piecing everything together as they went. it goes hard when it needs to, it’s deceptively catchy, and i can’t stress this enough, the lyrics are fucking incredible. home is where forever.
John-Allison Weiss – The Long Way
Johnny swings in emotional as ever, taking time with their opening track lamenting singing their “old songs” and playing to the crowd the way most artists can probably relate, especially in a time now with tik tok, spotify, and social media making music as accessible as ever while pushing artists to become more and more like one-hit wonders pandering to as broad an audience as possible to sneak out just one little career-maker. this desire to maintain artistry while needing to live and eat and continue pursuing art and music is on full display here. squeaky clean production, catchy hooks, and heart-on-your-sleeve style lyricism makes this record feel like those i’d latched onto in high school. maybe, in an attempt to move past the old songs everyone has been stuck to, Johnny inadvertently rewrote and updated them for where their life is now. hopefully they connect with y’all the way they have with me.
McKinley Dixon – Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?
at this point i feel like it can’t keep surprising me that McKinley’s lyrics and instrumentation are as good as they are, but knowing how a lot of the previous record, “For My Mama…” was recorded and produced I can’t believe this shit. it’s impossibly good. any band, especially “glass beach”, strives to produce compositions as intricate, experimental, and technically proficient as this. horn sections, strings, wood-winds, gorgeous orchestration, jazz influence with full-blown bass, keys, and drum-comping over hooky catchy choruses and unrelenting verse flows, and ridiculous sampling (sometimes in ways you think couldn’t possibly work, but absolutely do like the blown-out overly compressed loop on “Mezzanine Tippin’”). this is an easy favorite album like every other McKinley record I hear. unfaltering, political, personal, celebratory, and overflowing with beautiful features (including Anjimile from here on our list for “Dedicated to Tar Feather”). the album starts with a reading of Toni Morrison from spoken word poet Hanif. it’s a perfect opening, but not exactly a “song”, though “Sun, I Rise” immediately follows and sets up for the rest of the record. at least get that far.
Origami Angel – The Brightest Days
if you like Origami Angel, you’ll LOVE this record. that seems like a silly thing to say, but i truly believe this is the duo at their best and has thrown me heartily into the band’s discography yet again. the opening title track serves as the theme song for a 22-minute pop-punk peregrination, with all the riffs and chunks and brilliantly affecting melodies you could want. fans of the band will not be shocked to hear that the musical chops on display are deeply impressive and severely goddamn good. if you’ve never heard a Gami album before, this is as good a starting point as any, especially if you tend towards more polished production than might be heard in earlier (incredible) works. i can’t pick any tracks to highlight, my best recommendation is to listen to this album on loop until you feel a break coming, and then follow your heart to Somewhere City, and so on. Gami Gang.
Rosie Tucker – Tiny Songs Volume 1
it’s what it sounds like. with the concept of how short these songs and albums are Rosie gets to experiment and be as non-commital to form and texture as they want. there’s certainly an over-arching “sound”, though. it all “sounds like” Rosie Tucker: spacey, tight, somewhat mathy, lyrically profound and at times deceptively straight-forward, strong production, clarity, and just fucking brilliant vocals. this project is definitely stark, funny, abrupt- ideas abandoned as quickly as they’re established. they literally start laughing in the middle of a vocal take which really only makes me wonder if that was just a happy accident or a deliberate decision. stuff like that all over the place on this thing. it’s got a real lack of preciousness. i can’t tell you how many times i’ve written a riff or a groove and just “had” to make it into a full song because it was “so good”. this, however, is a testament to the greatness found in projects small enough to actually finish.
Sprain – The Lamb As Effigy
the sectional stress of the week that this album released in my personal life caused it to really catch my ear. “Sectional stress” as a phrase lends itself to the description of this album, but there are also cinematic sounding vignettes, blaring noisy breakdowns, and some really pulled back dissonant grooves that fill a void of a sound I’ve been craving to hear. you’ll find a lot of dynamics in the album that really gives some powerful contrast in a lot of the right moments. The vocals might be less conventionally interesting to some, but the energy of the performance on display is the focal point for me rather than precision of pitch, and it’s sick. soundscapes on this album vary a lot and honestly have inspired me a ton as of late, shaky woodwinds giving way to a bright strum of strings in “Privilege of Being” ,a small string section ratcheting tension until it releases to a simple but clashing drum-bass-guitar groove in “Man Proposes, God Disposes”, oscillating organ that builds on itself with various instrument swells underneath some haunting vocals in “Margin for Error”, it’s all really awesome. There’s some lengthy tracks on here, but i do love me an album that wants you to lose yourself in it.
Honorable Mentions
Bella White – Among Other Things
The Callous Daoboys – God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys
UnityTX – FERALITY
Jeff Rosenstock – Hellmode
Magazine Beach – Constant Springtime
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway – City of Gold
MSPAINT – Post-American
Pinkshift – Suraksha (EP)
Proper. – Part-Timer
Soulkeeper – Holy Design
Underscores – Wallsocket
Windchimes – Frantically Grasping at Intangible Hands
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Catch glass beach on tour in 2024, including NYC’s Gramercy Theatre on April 6. All dates:
Fri March 22 – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theatre
Tues March 26 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theatre
Thurs March 28 – Burnsville, MN – The Garage
Sat March 30 – Grand Rapids, MI – Pyramid Scheme
Sun March 31 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall
Tues April 2 – Lakewood, OH – Mahalls
Weds April 3 – Pittsburgh, PA – Spirit Hall
Fri April 5 – Boston, MA – Crystal Ballroom
Sat April 6 – New York, NY – Gramercy Theatre
Sun April 7 – Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church
Tues April 9 – Washington, DC – Union Stage
Weds April 10 – Richmond, VA – Canal Club
Fri April 12 – Nashville, TN – Exit/In
Sat April 13 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade (Hell)
Mon April 15 – Dallas, TX – Ferris Wheelers
Tues April 16 – Austin, TX – Far Out
Thurs April 18 – Phoenix, AZ – Rebel Lounge
Fri April 19 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
Sun April 21 – San Francisco, CA – The Independent
