Speedy Ortiz returned this year with their first album in five years, Rabbit Rabbit, and they’ve got some shows before the year comes to a close, including NYC’s Bowery Ballroom on Saturday (12/16) and New Year’s Eve in Philly. Given the season, band leader Sadie Dupuis has made us a list of her favorite albums of 2023.
Last time I wrote a BV year-end list I enlisted the help of a randomizer to choose ten albums since I was too indecisive to winnow down my much-longer list of faves. That time and the time before that I included a bunch of qualifiers excluding any artists I’m BFF with, work with, cohabit with, or have toured alongside. In 2022 I gave up on the whole practice of numerical lists and instead wrote a song pillorying the concept of ranking albums at the end of a year (especially when a streaming service helps you wrap it up). It’s 2023, I’m older, slightly less wise, and it’s time to return to the caveat-less superlatives biz. Here are ten of the records I sang and/or air drummed along to a lot in the last twelve months.
poolblood – mole
“Oops” is the first word we hear from Maryam Said on poolblood’s LP debut, an un-self-conscious mutter before cassette hiss gives way to graceful guitar arpeggios, post-chromatic vocal hums, and resonant piano. Tape machines shut off and rewind with noisy rebellion throughout this record, a showing-of-seams that lends stunning immediacy to a living document that recalls the Microphones, or even Jeff Buckley’s rawer demos. Horns, strings, and Maryam’s laid-back harmonies bring occasional sunniness to a heartbreaking sound, perfect in its “flaws.”
Sweeping Promises – Good Living Is Coming For You
Sweeping Promises’ latest is a balancing act of expertly-paired contrasts: cavernous reverb documents precise rhythms, improvisations give way to mirrored grooves, classical vocal vibrato swells into sneers and screams. The Kansas duo write spacious post-punk with snug hooks, speaking to consumerism and gentrification and other ills of our world. “This interior’s designed to make you nervous,” wails bassist Lira Mondal on the album’s bonafide hit of a title track, an unsettling earworm that shines new light on the call coming from inside the house.
Yves Tumor – Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
If Yves Tumor has put out an album in the calendar year it winds up my favorite album of that year! Praise a Lord is no exception there, but it’s exceptional in every other sense, fabricating monstrous pop out of sticky goth guitars, explosively crunchy drums, and hallucinogenic hooks. The truest rock star of this decade, melting all sonic worlds together with shimmer and brimstone.
Yaeji – With A Hammer
Smashing, crashing, pumping, Yaeji unearths suppressed memories with philosophical yearning and electronic wizardry. Flute runs, buzzing synth pads, dissonant guitar pull-offs, and ever-shuffling downbeats make her meditations unpredictable even as they mesmerize. Live, Yaeji’s playful choreography, vibrant video backdrops, and fully consuming blasts of sound made her one of the best shows I saw this year—it was just as encompassing as the record. (Also props to my mom for loving With A Hammer more than anything else I played her in the car this year.)
Brainiac – Predator Nominate
Squiggling arps, crushed-up shrieks, maudlin guitar stabs, drum machines detuning like a plummeting yelp—Predator Nominate’s dense demos are a tantalizing preview of the never-finished fourth Brainiac album, filled with a preternatural familiarity as fascinating as it is mournful. I’m grateful the surviving members allowed us to get another little peek into the band’s genius, and beyond glad I got to see them perform some of these “new” songs (“Smothered Inside,” “Come With Me”) alongside the rest of their discography at an Ohio show earlier this year.
Shana Cleveland – Manzanita
Plainspoken yet baroque, Shana Cleveland’s witchy ode to her California coast and its sprawling landscape uses psychedelic ornamentation to punctuate gorgeously fingerpicked songs. Manzanita glows with the ambient melodies of Cleveland’s surroundings—forests, fires, ghosts, bugs, oceans—while also channeling the mystic love that came with surviving cancer and the magic of giving birth. A gorgeous gift from a versatile composer, who promises on this record to “write a thousand songs before [she’s] done”—thank goodness!
Marina Fages – El mundo pequeño
Marina Fages goes full roquera here, her charmingly clarion vocals giving in to salty shredding—see “Más Vino”—and perfectly showcasing the guitar riffage that snagged her an opening slot for Metallica last year. Not that she’s abandoned the left-of-center instrumentation and harmonic impulses that made her synthier last album so compelling. Spectral ”El Cielo Amanece”’s carnivalesque intro moves into a propulsive indie shuffle before dropping out into ambient layers of clarinet and spaciously echoing piano. And “El Limite,” which scuttles and boogies like a long lost Morphine single, stands among her finest hooks—no small feat in a discography as contagiously fun and inventive as Marina’s.
Snõõper – Super Snõõper
Quippy, snotty, post-garage played back at a too-fast RPM, guitars heaving-and-hoeing over fast-paced musings. Snõõper rips into the ridiculousness of the day-to-day with an arty flair that could only come from DIY, tongue-in-cheek samples and fidelity variances interleaving songs like distant radio poking through a growling amp. Simply put Super Snõõper sounds like the best show ever, sweaty and vibrant and unforgettable.
Man On Man – Provincetown
Man On Man is a duo made up of Faith No More and Imperial Teen’s Roddy Bottum and his partner Joey Holman, and Provincetown is their concept record about contemporary queer life showcased through the lens and setting of P-Town. Ironic turns give way to earnest revelations, just as disco beats and glossy synths puncture the blistering guitar runs—including a last-track solo turn from sometime-Cape Codder J. Mascis. “Piggy” satirizes hookup apps, “Take It From Me” laments straight appropriation of gay culture, while “Kids” implores the necessity of learning from queer youth (“Take a minute to get with the pronouns,” goes one chorus.) Thoughtful, wry, essential rock.
GracieHorse – L.A. Shit
Formerly of Boston basement heroes Fat Creeps, Gracie Jackson trades punk jangle for banjo and slide with her current project GracieHorse. The riveting and hilarious songs on L.A. Shit came together over the course of a decade, while Gracie was working as a traveling nurse and jotting down observational sketches across the country. This skewed alt-country gem is filled with unforgettable characters—escapism-enabling genies, honky tonk creeps, wardrobe-challenged rageaholics, a motel crew eating chicken wings in a hazmat suit. But Gracie’s narrative voice is the most unforgettable character, a straight shooter with a rhinestone pistol.
And fuck it! Some other things I loved this year! Lists aren’t real.
Lackthereof, Foyer Red, yeule, Danny Brown, Jorma Whittaker, Miss Grit, Lil Yachty, The C.I.A., Black Belt Eagle Scout, Tunic, Nicole Yun, Radiator Hospital, Terry, Washer, Mitski, mui zyu, Nappy Nina, Diners, Ratboys, Shamir, underscores, Maria BC, Billy Woods & Kenny Segal, Suzie True, Kara Jackson, Palehound, Hurry, Paramore, Pile, Kelela, Yo La Tengo, 100 gecs, Wednesday, ML Buch, I’m sure I’m forgetting some things, but not SZA, because unlike the rest of you slackers I managed to get that one on my best of list last year.
**
Speedy Ortiz tour dates here.
Top photo by Em Grey from Industry City in 2019. More here.
