Tag: End of year

Albums

Best albums of 2023: Albums #10 through #6

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date December 5, 2023
16 Comments on Best albums of 2023: Albums #10 through #6

Good morning, good morning! And happy Tuesday!

To be honest, Tuesday mornings are not something I typically get too excited about but today, I’m starting in on the countdown of my top ten favourite albums of the year. Music has always been a trusty crutch and a source of joy and in recent years, has even been more so. And the albums that I’ll be focusing on as we close out the year are my favourites that the last eleven plus months have offered us.

As in years past, there’s been lots of great music in 2023. It’s true that I’ve had to be more selective in vinyl collecting, continuing a trend from last year, what with the rising costs of everything. But rest assured, I’ve been listening to lots more than the handful of new records I’ve procured, streaming hours of music through my trusty Apple Music service.

I’ve discovered plenty of great new artists over the course of this year’s music journey and I’ve also reacquainted myself with many old friends. Indeed, a good number of my top albums have come from bands that I’ve been a fan of for years and despite high expectations, have put out some fantastic new pieces of work. Some of these were represented in the post I shared on Friday of five exceptional albums that didn’t quite make the cut but were worth your attentions nonetheless. Some are these are yet to come – today, and in the weeks ahead.

As I mentioned earlier, this post marks the start of my top ten countdown in earnest, starting with albums #10 through #6. Then, I plan to share my favourite five over the next few weeks, hopefully, getting them all in by the end of the year.

With all the excellent releases, I am sure I missed out on one or two so as we go through my own ten favourite albums, I welcome your comments and thoughts and perhaps even your own top ten favourites in the comments spaces provided.

Let’s do this.

#10 Bodywash “I held the shape while I could”

Bodywash is a shoegaze duo that was formed in Montreal in 2014 by Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter, apparently after musically bonding over another Canadian indie, dream pop group: Alvvays. I only came upon the group a few weeks after the release of this, their sophomore record, but I was so enthused that I immediately went back to explore their previous debut EP and LP and was sad to hear that I had just missed their swing through town on their tour. “I held the shape while I could” was mostly self-produced but recorded with Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes) and is notably darker and muscular than its predecessor but shares its penchant for shimmering guitars and airy vocals from both its singers. It is by times haunting and fleeting and explosive.

#9 Boygenius “The record”

Just over five years ago, three of the most exciting young solo singer/songwriters in indie rock banded together and put out a six song, self-titled EP. This particular music fan could and should be forgiven for assuming that that one fine release would be it for the humorously named Boygenius. As great as it was, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus were all very successful and busy in their own careers, had put out their own excellent albums in the interim and toured quite a bit. The announcement of “The record” was met with a lot of excitement and just as much hype and the album of course lived up to meet both face to face. The songs are all finely crafted but what’s more impressive is how you can almost feel the joy with which these three musicians perform together while listening and you just can’t do so passively at all.

#8 Depeche Mode “Momento mori”

Depeche Mode is probably the band that I’ve been following the longest of those that I consider amongst my favourites and they’ve made quite a few appearances on this blog’s pages already. The new wave and synth pop icons have been making music for more than four decades and the time that passed between records had never been more than four years before. “Memento mori”, though, comes six years after 2017’s “Spirit” and after news came of Andrew Fletcher’s passing last year, reducing the one-time quartet down to a duo, I was actually surprised we saw the 15th album come out at all. But what was even more surprising to me was how much I loved this album. It’s like a return to form without feeling like a retread and chock full of bangers.

#7 The Clientele “I am not there anymore”

The Clientele has also already appeared on these pages a number of times*. I can’t really believe that I’ve been following the indie pop group from London for a couple of decades but the dates on all those timeless albums on my record shelves don’t lie. Indeed, their sun-kissed and lazy sunday psycheledelic dream pop has been one of my mainstays and every album an event. However, it had been almost six years since we’d last heard from them and then, when news came of a new album but that it would be a departure, I was hesitant to check it out. Luckily for me, those words of experimenting with jazz and electronic music were a bit overstated. They have indeed expanded their sound, freshening it up and seemingly invigorating its players in the process, but it’s still beautiful Clientele music.

#6 Eyelids “A colossal waste of light”

Eyelids are a power pop, indie rock band from Portland, Oregon. As far as I can tell, they’ve been active since some time around 2012, which blows me away because I only just learned about them this year. The announcement of the impending release of their sixth studio album, “A colossal waste of light”, came up on my Instagram feed care of The Decemberists’ account. As it turns out, the latter band’s drummer, John Moen has had this side thing going with a good friend of his, Chris Slusarenko (ex-Guided By Voices), for quite some time and they are quite excellent. Their latest features their new bassist Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker) and is produced by good friend Peter Buck (R.E.M.). With all this music pedigree, you can bet that the tunes are tight and slick, jangly power pop that gets stuck in your head for days and will cause no complaints while it’s there.

*They had songs on my Best Tunes lists for 2000 and 2003 and made my Best Albums lists for 2007 and 2017.

Stay tuned for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

Albums

Best albums of 2023: Five honourable mentions

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date December 1, 2023
3 Comments on Best albums of 2023: Five honourable mentions

Happy Friday! And happy first day of December!

It’s now officially the last month of the year and you know what that means… the start of the infamous end of the year extravaganza.

I’ve been doing this thing, counting down my favourite albums of the year for every year that this blog has been in existence. Indeed, I’ve even been doing it for longer if you count the years that I was ranking my favourite annual releases on my old blog, Music Insanity.

This additional post I’ve allowed myself, though, kicking things off and sharing some additional great albums that didn’t quite make the top ten is something I started last year and have decided to carry it forward into this year. As you might’ve guessed by now, I do enjoy making lists but sometimes I find my own rules constricting and worry that they result in some excellent releases not getting their due on these pages.

So… these five albums are just some of the great ones that deserve some honourable mention, ones that if you haven’t listened to them yet, I highly recommend you do. They are not ranked but listed alphabetically. The ranking will start with the next post.

Emma Anderson “Pearlies”: Emma Anderson was a founding member and principal songwriter of 90s shoegaze icons Lush and then, one half of indie pop duo Sing Sing in the 2000s, and here in 2023, we’re finally getting her debut solo album and it’s just as fantastic as you’d suspect.
Check out: “The presence”

Nation of Language “Strange disciple”: The third album by the Brooklyn-based indie pop trio sees the group building upon their OMD-influenced sound, moving in slightly different directions, but just enough to keep their tight, synth pop tunes fresh.
Check out: “Weak in your light”

The National “First two pages of Frankenstein”: It’s been four years since their last record and members of The National had themselves admitted to finding the well a bit dry. However, 2023 has seen them release two new albums*, though in my opinion, “First two pages of Frankenstein” is the more compelling of the two.
Check out: “New Order T-shirt”

Postdata “Run wild”: Wintersleep frontman Paul Murphy started Postdata as a side project in 2010 and “Run wild” is the fourth in a string of very excellent introspective and atmospheric albums that he has released since.
Check out: “Try”

The Rural Alberta Advantage “The rise & the fall”: To put together their first full-length album since 2017, the Toronto-based indie folk rock trio added an additional seven tracks to the six already released as an EP last year and the results are more of the frenetically told tales of Canadian minutiae that we know and love.
Check out: “Real life”

*The other is “Laugh track”, released in mid-September.

I’ll be back very soon with albums #10 through #6 for my Best albums of 2023 list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

Tags 2020s, 2023, Alternative, Alternative Rock, Best of 2023, Canadian indie, Dream Pop, Emma Anderson, End of year, Indie, Indie folk, Indie Pop, Indie rock, Nation Of Language, POSTDATA, Singer/Songwriter, Synthpop, The National, The Rural Alberta Advantage

Albums

Best albums of 2022: #1 Spiritualized “Everything was beautiful”

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date December 30, 2022
3 Comments on Best albums of 2022: #1 Spiritualized “Everything was beautiful”

In 2018, Jason Pierce released his eighth studio album as Spiritualized, “And nothing hurt”. I remember hearing in advance of its release of how great it was, how it was a return to the sound and scope of their masterpiece, 1997’s “Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space”, and how it might very well be his last album. I was so excited I jumped on it right away, downloading the digital version that was granted me with the pre-order of it on vinyl. Of course, I fell in love with it and it ended up landing at number four on my end of year list for that year, but what struck me the most was how different the album sounded when I dropped the needle to the disc on my turntable.

When “Everything was beautiful” was announced, I was first of all relieved that the fear of Pierce packing it in was unwarranted and secondly, I was determined to wait for my pre-ordered physical copy to arrive before giving any of it a listen. And so I held off on release day, even as I heard once again that this album was the man’s best work since that aforementioned masterpiece, and I was duly rewarded to brilliance and beauty when I gave it a spin the very night the record arrived. It was like a perfect synergy between my ears and my earphones, music and emotion and (forgive me here) spirituality.

Billed by Pierce as a companion album to its predecessor, the two titles taken together form a quote from the Kurt Vonnegut novel, “Slaughterhouse five”, apt considering the songs from both albums were all written and demoed around the same time. This second album, however, has had more time to steep and has the experience of many other lifetimes, these felt even more deeply with all that we have collectively been through in the interim. As great as “And nothing hurts” was and as much as was put into it*, “Everything was beautiful” feels just more complete, more a sum of all of Pierce’s ideas and work, like you can hear pieces of all his career on this album. But this is more a revisit than a rehash, retracing his footsteps in a different set of shoes.

At surface, one might surmise that this album was a throwaway, given that it’s only seven tracks in length. However, it uses every millimeter of space on the record, filling out the forty-five minutes and colouring in the skies in a mass of sound, his sound, space rock. If you’ve never heard Spiritualized’s particular brew of psychedelic noise, gospel, and free jazz, “Everything was beautiful” is just as great a starting point as any of his works. And yes, I would say this is definitely the best Spiritualized record in more than two decades.

The best way to listen to “Everything was beautiful” is end-to-end, all the way through on vinyl but I’m willing here to offer up three picks to lead you by the nose to the prize.

“The mainline song“: When I first saw the title of this track, I immediately thought back to Spiritualized’s second record, “Pure phase”, and the instrumental track that picked up on a theme that coursed through that whole album. This one is different though, more about trains than heroin, and though about half of the track’s six minutes is purely instrumental, we do get into some words. “Sweet heart, sweet light. Oh babe, it’s a beautiful night, and I wanted to know if you wanted to go tell the city tonight.” It’s a track inspired by lockdowns and protests about lockdowns and about finally getting things right. Setting things right.

“Let it bleed (For Iggy)”: “Laboured over these words too long / And nothing to behold / Wanted it to be special for you / But it’s just a song.” Pierce’s ode to his hero Iggy Pop certainly starts off mellow and ventures into delicate balladry, but in his hands, a song is never just a song. The choirs sing and horns call and guitars vibrate. It is about putting everything into it and having faith, perhaps blind fatih, that the efforts will be appreciated. This is about Jason Pierce as much as it is Iggy Pop.

“Always together with you”: Echoes of the title track of “Ladies and gentlemen”, the first track of the album opens with a female breathing the title of the album over space echoes but this time the voice is provided by his daughter, Poppy, instead of his ex-lover, Kate Radley. The similarities don’t end there, indeed, this feels like a sequel, a revisit, but the object is the future and not the past. It is just as epic and beautiful and heartrending. It is six and a half minutes of hope and love, strings and choirs and horns and angels. “If you want a silver moon, I would be a silver moon for you. If you want a unicorn, I would be a unicorn for you. If you want a satellite, I would be a satellite for you. If you want a universe, I would be a universe for you.” The universe would be pleased.