Stay Inside spent 2023 beginning to roll out their anticipated new album Ferried Away, which arrives February 28 (pre-order), and now they’ve made us a list of their 10 favorite albums of the year. It ranges from recent tourmates awakebutstillinbed to fellow NY emo band Good Looking Friends (whose Shelley Washington joined Stay Inside on stage at the NYC stop of the awakebutstillinbed tour) to Lil Yachty‘s psych-rock album to ecstatic black metallers Agriculture to indie lifers The National and beyond. They also provided lots of cool commentary on each pick, and you can check out what they had to say below.
Stay Inside open for Pianos Become the Teeth and City of Caterpillar at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus TONIGHT (12/7). If you’re going, don’t miss them.
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Stay Inside’s 10 Favorite Albums of 2023
In no particular order:
Chartreuse – Morning Ritual
We found this incredible English band’s fantastic EP “Is It Autumn Already?” earlier this year and really fell in love with their jazzy, somber crooning songs and hotly anticipated their debut album. Morning Ritual did not disappoint. Like some starcrossed collaboration between Carissa’s Wierd and Black Country, New Road, Chartreuse is the perfect soundtrack for the winter.
awakebutstillinbed – chaos takes the wheel and i am a passenger
After 5 years, absib returns with supreme confidence in songwriting, clarity in production, and biting emotional lyrics. This is a big long record with 8 minute winding jams, that take you on a treacherous and exhilarating journey. One of the most interesting, sprawling albums that anyone’s ever called “emo”.
Greg Mendez – Greg Mendez
Thank the Lord Greg Mendez is finally popping. Per usual, every song on this record is perfect. Greg has a somberness and nonchalance I wish I could fake my voice into sounding like. Check out all of his songs.
Good Looking Friends – Wasted Now
Our dearest, and oldest friends came together this year to put out their best album. Wasted Now is a delicately written meditation on the overwhelming horrors of American life in the 2020s. Developing their penchant for post rock inspired crescendos into orchestral anthems with the addition of saxophone and strings, GLF reaches new emotional heights.
Lil Yachty – Let’s Start Here.
When Yachty said in January of ‘22 that his next album would be a “psychedelic alt” album, no one believed him. We were certainly going to get either another rap album with some weird beats, or some kind of horrible experiment. What we got was a shockingly impressive, reverb soaked psychedelic funk and R&B odyssey that is as fun, catchy, and moody as it is experimental. While Yachty’s lyrics can sometimes feel in tension with the fascinating and slick production, it’s also what makes it so exciting and replayable.
Spencer Krug – I Just Drew This Knife
The prolific Canadian Wolf Parade alum, previously known as Sunset Rubdown has quietly been putting out records under his real name since ‘21 on his own record label, and this year hit a new vein. This Knife is a post-punky, R&B inspired gothy record full of funky bass grooves and some of the hookiest and fleshed out songs Krug and co have written since ‘09’s Dragonslayer. An incredible peak in an already beautiful oeuvre.
Agriculture – Agriculture
I’ve sort of hit a point with music where embracing the inverse of “everything but rap and country” seems like the move. Losing digits and limbs in the minefield that led me to this threshold, though, I managed to discover Agriculture. It’s black metal, so let me get a trolley and you can set down your baggage. It’s ECSTATIC black metal. It is apparently oceanic in inspiration and at the same time evocative of the great plains or perhaps the entirety of the sky, or maybe just ‘the sublime.’ Maybe a better way to think about it is in the imagery it does not conjure as one listens through: there are no people – anywhere. There is no built environment. YOU are not there. There are lots of blurbs about it, a handful of reviews and interviews begging for answers with which the band is not stingy. Hold on though, before conscripting your entire Broca’s area (look it up, it’s not my job to educate you) and potentially undermining the essence of this band. Put it on headphones and close your eyes. Or listen to it on a plane. Do NOT fucking drive. Don’t walk to the bodega, please. Do not engage with anyone. Take this time to be with yourself because by the end of it you will, momentarily, have ceased to exist
Colin Stetson – When we were that what wept for the sea
After spending most of the last 6 years scoring blockbuster films, Stetson returns to telling his own story. A 70+ minute solo saxophone piece, with sparse piano and spoken word passages by Iarla Ó Lionáird recorded spontaneously as a dedication to his late father, the record regales a journey of grief and adventure through the storming ocean. A simply gorgeous album.
Wata Igarashi – Agartha
Wata igarishi’s productions have a sci-fi quality that takes you to a certain place. His tracks are hypnotic, psychedelic, and always stand out in mixes and DJ sets. This record is a joy to listen to and a distillation of this sound and energy. It fuses techno built for the dancefloor with ambient and prog rock influences that make it perfect for listening during long drives or zonked out on a couch. Electronic albums can often feel like a collection of songs and it’s always a pleasure to hear a record that flows properly, especially when it’s weaving in so many different sounds.
The National – First 2 Pages of Frankenstein/Laugh Track
At this point, if you don’t already like the National, I’m certainly not going to convince you. But the quintessential Millennial band had a huge year in ‘23 and dropped, functionally, a double album of some of their best material since ‘13’s Trouble Will Find Me. Returning to basics, writing searing observational lyrics on topics somehow both mundane and tragic (getting coffee with your wife in Manhattan just before 9/11), over technical and intricate indie chamber pop, The National once again became the conduit to the exact emotions I wanted to simmer in this year.
