Records of the Year, 2023; Honorable Mentions I.
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Lee Scratch Petty & New Age Doom — Remix the Universe
Glowering Into the Center of Dub
I am a fan of dub and classic reggae. I say this with the understanding that I know next to nothing about dub and classic reggae. I hear things, I like things. When I saw that there was a Lee Scratch Perry record dropping, especially so early in the year, I figured I would give it a shot and see where it landed me. It was one that I came back to a few times throughout the year, something that provided a nice background sound to the day, a pulsing aura that really worked to mellow me out quite a bit. Every song comes from a different place and has a different approach to it as each track is approached by a different artist, including some rad ones like Daryl Palumbo and the band Quicksand. A supremely chill record from front to back.
Check Out: Step In Space — A Big Step For Bass
Che Noir — Noir or Never
Old Games
A quick 22-minute album, this is a hip-hop record that starts by telling you exactly what its influences are, or more specifically, its main influence: Nas. The beats are minimal, with just a snare and a hi-hat hustling forward at a slow and relaxed pace with a soul sample mixed in now and again to keep the sound diverse. What Che talks about once she’ll talk about many times: money, a complex struggle from youth, self-sufficiency, and intelligence. It’s nothing refreshing or new, but it’s a sound that feels like it comes from a lifetime ago. The features are strong and stay within the same vein and the same flavor, a lot of lessons that seem like they come from older rappers with minds more on the streets than the clubs. In a way, it comes across as a study of how hip-hop culture has come in phases. While the state of it today loudly exclaims about time spent in a lavish life filled with opulence, vice and a frivolous eye on the future, Che Noir comes from a place that enabled the younger set to feel this way. She and those in the game at the time paved the streets on the grind, with a heavy and difficult path that attained the ability to act far more carelessly. I think what makes this album great is a sound that speaks throughout the record instead of singular verses that stand out. Can’t say enough how much I enjoy that the record is 9 tracks, 22 minutes, and hits exactly the notes it’s meant to hit.
Check Out: Resilient
Free Throw — Lessons That We Swear to Keep
The Ol’ Pop-Punk Standards
At some point, it feels like pop-punk became something that had no roots, no grounded core. Instead, it was something emulated, mutated again and again, showing its face in other faces, its DNA roped and helixed around other helixes with no beginning and no end. It all started to sound like Pop-Punk, a movement without a face. The only way to really find an expression of quality was to find the way it blended with other genres. Or at times, it found its warmest home in how easily it was able to adapt to taking any song and fitting it in as a cover version of… whatever (hence the ever-successful Punk Goes Pop series). Decades down the line, it now feels like the bands that stuck with it, the bands that wore those influences on their sleeves are now aged and pressured into timeless diamonds. The ones that outlasted the ice age and survived in the thaw. This record (and Free Throw as a whole) is one of those special gems. One that carries this torch as more than a novelty. This record is free from irony, free from The Mall. Big fan of what they have going on here, especially the song that kicks the record off which brings along the singer from Hot Mulligan, another band that has shown victory in the war of attrition.
Check Out: A Part Is Better Than Zero
Spiritbox — The Fear of Fear EP
Expansion Pack
The biggest “”””disappointment”””” I felt about Spiritbox’s new release when I first heard it is that it ultimately sounded like it could slide directly into the track listing of their brilliant full-length that they’d dropped a couple of years ago and it felt underwhelming. But after revisiting it a few times since its launch, I realize that sometimes the release of DLC can be just as good as the full game. It’s just more. The choruses are catchy as hell and that’s what the greatest part about this band has been. There’s a lot of aggression, a lot of heavy music that you can tell they want to release first and foremost, but they haven’t forgotten just how important it is to make songs listenable, to make songs have a hook that makes you want to come back. The breakdowns are taut, often sitting on top of some slick production and interesting drum machine and synthesizer work. This band’s strongest attribute is their self-awareness. I don’t think they come to the table trying to be the heaviest band on the scene, nor do they come out trying to be a crowd killer. They’re writing quality heavy music and I think they still haven’t reached all the way into their bag yet. When you have a singer who can carry a note like Courtney LaPlante and then switch gears into something punishing, you utilize it. In 25 minutes across 6 songs, this is just a nice compact little entry into the heavy music sphere. If these guys aren’t mainstream now, they’re well on their way to being a household name in 2024.
Check Out: Jaded
END — The Sin of Human Frailty
Smearing the Ichor
There are no winding roads on this record, no intricate designs or labyrinthine passageways. This is shoveling coal into a furnace, digging trenches, and breathing smoke. It’s heavy and it wants to rearrange you. This is the kind of music that gathers in the corners of cement rooms. This is the kind of music that has no way out. It spits and claws, it ruins, it churns forward like gears and perpetual chains. There’s a very specific lever that you pull when you get to a point where you simply need a record like this, and it’s nice to know there’s still an apothecary that deals the brand. Ceaseless screams and tunneling breakdowns fill this record from front to back. When END drops a record, you know what to expect when you start it up. It’s only a matter of whether or not their manner of heft sinks in for you. This record was exactly what I was hoping for.
Check Out: Leper
Temple of Angels — Endless Pursuit
Another Time, Another Place
This is a record that feels like it was made right around the time The Cure’s Disintegration came out. The guitars are the first giveaway, as the tone and pace seem to construct the same majestic glaciers of color-changing sound, but the cocktail of sorrow and remorse that comes from a voice that’s a little difficult to place is the next part of it. It’s hopeful. It swims in big dovetails, it builds in massive tides. I find that while listening to this record, I can get a little bit lost in some of its presence, consumed by it in the same way an atmosphere simply becomes your new normal. And when I come around, like stirring from a daydream, it takes me a second to place who exactly I’m listening to. Temple of Angels lands that sense of glamour-goth in a timeless way, making something beautiful out of something dark, celebrating the shiny things that can be scratched from under some bleak exteriors. There’s another thing that sort of summons a different time as well. If Endless Pursuit recalls the late 80s in its tone of music, its vocals conjure something from a bit later, sometime in the mid-90s when there was a celebration and a rise of strong vocals from women who weren’t following the status quo. It’s big. It’s full. Powerful and proud. This album should have a real problem with me. Every time I start it up, I wonder why I remember liking it so much. It takes a few feet for me to submerge myself into it, but when I finally let my mind get wrapped within it, I’m ready to sink into its fathoms. A great record with such a specific feel about it.
Check Out: Tangled In Joy
Tim Hecker — No Highs
Ouroboros
Huge fan of Tim Hecker here, so anything I say beyond here might just feel biased. This all might just sound like the digital grinding of a sinking fleet, a galactic implosion of teeming battlestars. For me, though, this is a hypnotic chant from a band of coiled wires, conduits fuzzing and generating a tensile prayer for the pneumatic psionic pylons that sit within our microplasticed bones. This is an acquired taste, one that came from a background of nearly no electronic music and a late-to-the-game appreciation of what bands like Sigur Ros (mentioned later) can do to calm a shivering mind. This, for me, is a thing meant for a sci-fi mind, a place where you can create different landscapes from the pushing and pulling walls of the sounds themselves. I’ve got it before, so I will say, I understand: this can certainly sound like the pretentious dronings of a music snob far too entrenched in the name-dropping of an artiste than the actual enjoyment of a record. But, dude, I promise you: this is exactly the elixir of choice when the need arises.
Check Out: Anxiety
MisterWives — Nosebleeds
Jumping
This is a brilliant pop record that hits you from different sides from one track to the next. It feels like something that the band put together track by track, challenging themselves to write in a new style, in a new voice each time they sat down to perfect another tune. It’s hard to say they “draw influence” from any one particular pop icon, but from song to song you can hear a little bit of Chvrches, a little Tove Lo, a little Pvris, a little Carly Rae Jepsen… and of course, even a little of the ubiquitous Taylor Swift. The synths are thick and fuzzy, the drum loops are easy to dance to, and the vocals snap from sassy to lamenting. There’s a huge variety of styles that the band pulls from yet once you get into what the band’s direction is, you can hear a very distinct flavor that they’ve made their very own. Was surprised to realize that as I was listening to this record in full, they weren’t just a group who landed on a single and packed it in a box with other songs to fill the empty space. This is a powerful release. They are ready to tour with any band in any size venue, from small club to arena and make every room their own.
Check Out: Trigger Pull
Surprise Chef — Friendship EP
Jazz Gang
24 minutes of chill lounge and jazz songs across a half dozen tracks. It feels like a group of friends who have been getting more and more invested in their craft the more and more they release new jams. And really, that’s what these tracks feel like. Little pockets of energetic jams where they allow each other some time to flourish and shine on their own, but ultimately making a product that feels better collectively as they all uplift and enrich each others’ place in the presence of the whole. I’ve liked each of this band’s cumulatively more as they’ve released new stuff, and they even are retrospectively better when you revisit the previous release. Truly a roguelike of a discography.
Check Out: Pash Rash
