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linernotesandseasons · 1 year ago

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My 23 Favorite Albums of 2023

Well… It’s 2024! Here we are. Here are my 23 favorite albums from 2023. Here is a lot of rambly, super personal & emotional writing about why & how I love every one of these albums. 2023 was a harder year personally, so a lot of these albums (and especially my writing about them) leans heavier & sadder, but I’ll try to explain the brightness in my writing. I have been making this end of the year favorites list every year since 2012, so this is the 13th annual! Every year I fall deeper in love with music. 2023 marked my first full year working in marketing for music venues full time. 2023 also marked my first full year of being single since like 2001. So like, since when I was in my early teens! Over 20 years ago! Lots of growth and lots of change. I went to 162 live shows this year! 162! I saw over half of these artists live in 2023! These albums were all life saving & life giving to me, in ways that I am still coming to understand. Thanks to my friends for reading, and to all the artists for creating, I won’t forget any of these albums. Without further ado, in no particular order (unless you know the English alphabet) here are my 23 (or 30-I actually included one bonus album-cuz The National released two albums-and 6 bonus EPs!) favorite albums of 2023!

2023 Favorites Playlist

AMERICAN TRAPPIST / Poison Reverse

In 2023, I took countless walks through my beloved Cheesman Park here in Denver, CO. I walked at sunrise, at sunset, in summer afternoons & on winter nights. On many of those walks I cried, and on some I listened to music. Most of the albums on this list were companions on my Cheesman Park walks at some point during the year. One of my deepest companions was the new album Poison Reverse from one of my all-time favorite bands American Trappist. The songs on this album contain hard, deep, inspiring truths & they have helped me immensely on the early steps of my personal journey to believing that things can get better. I spent a lot of conversations with friends new & old talking about how fucked the world is and if we believed things could get better. That idea, both personally for myself (and big picture for the world) was at the heart of much of my brain gardening over the last year. Do I truly believe that I can get better? And do I truly believe the world can get better? I’ll come back to this idea a few times across the next 23 albums, but first, let's do a shallow deep dive into why Poison Reverse & American Trappist mean so much to me!

It feels comforting to start this list with this album. Out of the 12 years I’ve been making this list, this is the 5th (!) time I’ve written about a Joe Michelini album! Michelini fronted New Jersey folk-punk rockers River CIty Extension during the peak of the stomp clap folk revival in the early-mid aughts. At times an 8 piece mini-orchestra, RCE released two of my fav records of all time with 2010’s The Unmistakable Man and 2012’s Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Your Anger, both of which are regrettably not on spotify anymore. When they broke up in 2015, Michelini began releasing music under the American Trappist moniker and has since released four of my favorite albums of the last eight years! I called 2016’s American Trappist “angsty & heartfelt, religious & romantic!” 2018’s Tentanda Via “Springsteen-y boardwalk rock & roll!” and 2020’s The Gate “a goddamn dark, noisy masterpiece!” You can also read about the handmade, super personal Anthology Mixtape I made for myself during early Covid 2020, and the New Red Shoelaces Mixtape I traded Joe for an advance copy of The Gate! Safe to say, I have a long, growing & evolving history with these songs, but let’s talk about Poison Reverse!

Album opener “Split Horizon” brings back all the early 2000s indie vibes, a brooding acoustic riff and 2.5 minutes of Michelini quietly intention setting “Far from the edge I’m lost, taking my necklace off / making a pact with loss to never be whole / closer to death again, willing myself back in, begging for punishment / & I wanna grow old someday, giving myself away / I won’t make the same mistakes back on the ground.” From there “Seg Fault” explodes into an epic Michelini guitar solo at 1:55 and wakes up some demons. From the psychobilly punk of ”What Did You Wish For” to the raucous, queer energy of “Lipstick” it’s apparent that this is another American Trappist classic. In their journey to finding themselves, Michelini has dealt with things as a queer, non-binary artist that I have not dealt with. Their writing explores those things fragilely, gently & majestically on Poison Reverse. Michelini opens up not only their deeper thoughts & emotions but also their physicality; unafraid to examine their physical body, its growth, its changes, what remains & what fades. This is a landmark album in their discography. A lighthouse, a beacon, a “weird, little candle.” Album centerpiece, obvious personal favorite, and song of the year contender “Temple Song'' is the flame & heartbeat. Michelini talked about this song on its release explaining “I will say by some cosmic arrangement beyond my understanding, from time to time, I have been guided to a little light, and in the best of times have possessed that light & protected that light. Let me share that with you now: a weird, little candle that won’t burn forever, but maybe enough to serve as a reminder until the next time you find rest.”

These are songs about finding yourself. About how to care for past wounds and move forward. About trying to know the truest, deepest, best version of you. About how to allow growth & change to take you in new directions. These are songs you can sing back in the mirror when you’re scared of what’s coming and you doubt your purpose. Poison Reverse is unsure of the future, but sure of the strategies and work required to get there. When Michelini was asked about the meaning of the breathtaking cover art (and album in general) they explained “To me, it is new growth in the darkness. It is dawn. It is hope… A few years ago my therapist asked me what I would have to say to my younger self and I was crying so much in the session that I couldn’t respond, but when I sat down to think about it later and drafted an e-mail to her, I wrote: ‘If you don’t believe in the potential for things to get better, nothing that comes next will be worth it.’”

“I’m still alive and I wanna dive in / It’s not enough surviving, I wanna break the spell / I’m gonna kiss the memory in the darkest part of me / I’m gonna leave the light on for everybody else…”

ANGIE MCMAHON / Light, Dark, Light Again

There is a point about halfway through Angie McMahon’s once-in-a-lifetime, masterpiece sophomore album, in the driving “Divine Fault Line” where she lifts up her head and sings directly at me over a steady guitar strum “I’m learning to love my skin, I’m learning to dive right in” she encourages me as if she knows exactly what I’m afraid to hear. “I think it’s time to sweep the eggshells clean” she continues, as I’m doing the dishes, or meal prepping in my kitchen, or cleaning my bathroom, and I cock my head and listen (like really listen) “I’m starting to dance again” Angie sings with an increasing carefree confidence “I’m using my hands again” In these 35 seconds I can see the sunrise. I can feel the Spring coming. I believe that I can change. That these days or weeks or months or years of darkness will pass. That when you’re “all fucked up and wanting to die” that maybe God is just a divine fault line and that “when you got no water left in the well” maybe that’s just “the place where breaking out begins.”

Angie McMahon’s lyrics are my favorite of the year. If you asked me to pick my personal favorite album of the year, I would say Light, Dark, Light Again. In fact “Divine Fault Line’ is literally like my 7th favorite song on this album! There are at least five songs on Light that are contenders for my song of the year. Lyric snippets worthy of tattoos & late-night prayers, lines that I will return to until the day I die.

Opening track “Saturn Returning” finds McMahon singing (as she sings many of her songs here) hair down, staring into a mirror, face to face with herself, with her growth, her survival, her story. The same way that I often chose to listen to this album in 2023. Staring in my own mirror, facing myself, my growth, my survival, my story. What begins as a simple, repeating piano riff, quickly swells to a swirling epic ballad, McMahon spitting one liners like “I’m gonna dance everyday till I’m old” and “I’m gonna love every inch of this body, the limbs that are writing each day of this story” and finally “i just wanna be wide awake when I’m 40” Holy fucking shit Angie. “Saturn” is over as quickly as it begins, surrendering its keys to the universe, 2 minutes and 44 seconds of a storm rushing through, setting the tone for an album that is as emotionally challenging as it is inspiring. These are songs about growing up, songs about youthful drunk kisses, feeling caught in older, more constraining relationships, songs exploring the real shit. Secret personal fav “Exploding” rides another steady, explosive guitar to a burning outro, singing along with McMahon wailing “I hope I am always exploding!” If good songwriting is about making up words and rhymes, then “supernoving” is a gamechanger. This collection of songs also happens to be brought to life by some of my favorite musicians and producers. Brad Cook is probably my all time favorite producer, and it’s hard not to listen to the enchanting “Staying Down Low” without hearing Canadian super-sad-star Leif Vollebekk (see ya in 2024 Leif?!) and not think of his & Angie’s whistling, duet version of her “If You Call” that soundtracked so many of my Summer nights in 2021 & 22. For all the aching, end-of-the-world emptiness on Light, there are friends, familiar faces & familiar voices.

There are two songs on Light that I especially, deeply, deeply love, songs that will stay with me for a long time; so I want to close by talking about sister songs “Letting Go” and “Making It Through.” The twin mission statements of Light, one an uptempo, driving indie rocker; one a swirling, piano, power-emo ballad. “Letting Go” paints a picture of a dark time (“six months lying on my living room floor / sick, then well, then sick some more”) but it speaks of the growth that happens in those times (“I might be prouder of me than I ever have been”) and the catch, the hardest thing for those of us like me & Angie… The power of letting go. How to do it “without my claws scratching the surfaces.” When Angie finally repeats the closing line over & over, louder & louder, increasingly more violent & unhinged at the end of the song, it always feels like she is holding me by the shoulders and shaking me, looking me directly in my face and admonishing me “It’s OK, it’s OK, make mistakes… MAKE MISTAKES!” In a year of making mistakes, letting go, feeling my claws scratching the surfaces, and wasting time; what a comfort to talk to someone about “closing some doors, hoping to open more down the line.” This song is a force, and an all time, lifetime fucking favorite.

Finally, at the end of the record, lies the secret to all of this. The hope, the story, the thing that gets you up out of bed. The first time I heard a snippet of this song, back in October, 10 days before the album came out, Angie posted a quick video of her playing it on a little keyboard saying it contained the mantra that made it all make sense… light, dark, light again. I remember watching tentatively and then dropping my phone almost instantly, sobbing on my bed, thinking of everyone I love, thinking of my place in the world, thinking of how to love better, how to be better… how to survive. How to make it through. There will be years for fighting, there will be years for making a difference. This year for me, was about just making it through. So I kneel late at night and early every morning, waking up with a view of the moon, and I say the same prayer that Angie sings as the album closes “Time is supposed to run out. Sun is supposed to go down. Like your mood, like your power, like your battery. Rise, fall, rise. Life, death, life again. Sky, ground, sky. Day, night, day again. Light, dark, light again. Light, dark, light again…” Thank you for this album Angie. I truly, truly love it. Light, dark… Light again.

“& when I grow up, I wanna be like a tree / & change with the seasons, helping people breathe / but all I’ve achieved lately / is making it through / just making it through… / I froze on the spot where you left me / to hold everything still worth protecting / I know now at the end of the ending / that just making it through is the lesson / just making it through…”

BECCA MANCARI / Left Hand

There is a centerpiece lyrical idea running like a river through Becca Mancari’s magically enchanting third album Left Hand. Stated most simply on the magnificent “Don’t Close Your Eyes” Becca pleads with us “Don’t close your eyes. Are you ready? Only get one life. Wake up, it’s right here. Are you ready?” When you dig deep into most of the albums on this list honestly, that idea is running underneath all of my favorite writing. It is the idea of life & love. How, in order to live your truest, best life, you need to do the inner work to love yourself. The work that Becca is describing is very specific to the queer experience, and Left Hand is full of songs about coming out, and being true to yourself. It is glowingly apparent that Becca has done & is doing that life-changing work, and encouraging us all (queer or not) to do the same. You can hear it on the desperate title track, a statement “Wake up. Love yourself. Be honest.” and a plea “I want to live. I want you to live too.” Or in the epic, swirling album closer “To Love The Earth” where they quietly & defiantly declare “I wanna live right here, right now. Wanna let go of the past.” Clearly these thoughts are too important to ignore, and Becca strikes me as the kind of friend who skips small talk for the real, important shit.

Speaking of friends, Left Hand is an album made with friends & for friends! In the midst of their “love yourself” work, Becca chose to co-produce and play the album with their good friends. Becca plays many of the instruments (guitar, synth, bass, drums, vibraphone, OP-1 & piano!) and recruits friends to give the album a cohesive, brooding, indie pop-rock authenticity. Masterfully crafted instrumentals, calming drum machines, layered synths, cascading chimes, commanded by Becca’s singular voice, at times shallow & quiet, growing strong & urgent, leading the songs through rises & falls. The Brittany Howard assisted groovy opener “Don’t Worry” is a powerful love song to & for their queer community. Becca encourages & pushes a friend or a lover to “Give me all you got, I can handle it.” They see them slipping, running out of time; but they’re not leaving “Go & take your time, I’ll be right here” Becca comforts. Then louder, more final “Don’t even worry, I’ve got you.” From there, “Homesick Honeybee” opens with fluttering synths and the sweetest voicemail message from Becca’s grandfather. The song builds on itself until closing with stabs of roaring, grungy guitar. Radio single “Over and Over” is a huge queer pop anthem. The earworm chorus sticky & sweet “There is something to the feeling, head hanging out of the window, being ok that we don’t know / & we can have it like we used to, over & over & over & over again / we were invincible, do you remember that feeling?...” While much of Left Hand rides similar uplifting pop vibes, the moodier, darker moments are some of the most powerful. Ultimately (as with all the albums on this years’ list) it is Becca’s writing that cements Left Hand as a coming-of-age classic, lines of poetry that I will surely recite to myself for years & years to come.

We were lucky enough to host Becca at Lost Lake (one of the venues I work for!) on Halloween night. It was that night, celebrating these songs with Becca live, that I finally, fully realized how special they are. Becca’s presence is warm & energetic, like an old friend, and I felt deeply how real & important these songs are to them. How in Becca’s openness to share pieces of themself, their work and their journey, they are encouraging me to do the same. Through the gifts of sharing & listening, I know Becca deeper, feel the things they care about, and am inspired by their courage & vision. I cry often at live music, usually in a cathartic, very good kind of way haha, and all I could think on Halloween night was how special this bond is. How lucky I am to get to know people through songs, and how grateful I am for people like Becca sharing themselves. Being true, being good, working hard, digging deep, being strong. The encouragement & empowerment I feel after listening to Left Hand, is similar to what I get from talking to my best friends. I feel motivated to keep doing the hard work. To keep trying to better love myself and be the best version of myself. Left Hand is the sort of masterpiece that I will return to when I need that encouragement. To check in with Becca and their songs and to catch up. Left Hand is a career defining record for an artist on the verge of breaking out. Left Hand is also one of my new best friends.

“We’re here and then we’re just not, what a magical thing…”

BLACK BELT EAGLE SCOUT / The Land, The Water, The Sky

The songs on Black Belt Eagle Scout’s third album, the perfectly titled The Land, The Water, The Sky, echo back screams from the planet she sings so passionately about. Screams of beauty, rage, agony, destruction, despair, magnificence, majesty, peace & power. When I wrote about the first two Black Belt Eagle Scout albums, 2018’s Mother of My Children and 2019’s At the Party With My Brown Friends, I talked about Katherine Paul’s incredible writing & playing, about how those albums made for such great driving music (a very important genre in my own head!) but also how culturally important those albums were in their time & place. How important it is for us to listen to (and heed the warnings) of queer, indigenous songwriting. The Land, The Water, The Sky is no different. A searing statement on the scary state of our planet, yet filled with tender explorations of Paul’s mental health & familial bonds. Paul is equally skilled writing cinematic, widescreen, sprawling epics about the vastness of the earth and its many mysteries, or small, gentle tales about how to take care of yourself. How to quiet your mind. How to love yourself. For my money, she is also the best guitarist in rock & roll right now.

Musically, The Land wastes no time, opening track and song-of-the-year contender “My Blood Runs Through This Land” squalls from 0:01 into a monstrous guitar wall that builds and burns behind delicately measured vocals, an absolute showstopper of grungy, shoegaze-y, post rock, with a solo that could cause a rockslide. As with their first two albums, Paul plays all the guitar AND drums (while also adding keys, mellotron, vibraphone, omnichord & organ!) and (as with Becca Mancari -see above!) co-produces. She brings in collaborators for understated, orchestral strings, PNW legend Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie & The Microphones fame, and her parents even sing on the gorgeous “Spaces.” This album SOUNDS HUGE! Like an avalanche, like a thunderstorm, like a wildfire. Paul’s writing has always had an environmental bent, the kind of detail-oriented, time & place writing that makes a good listener actually feel why the protection of the land is important to her. It is the way I feel when I’m in wild places, when I force my racing thoughts to be quiet, when I listen to the trees & the wind & the hills & the animals. A joined chorus of anguish, an upwelling of desire to remain. To stay safely untouched, to continue through time as always, steadfast & serene, changing only with the seasons. How could something in such distress remain so peaceful?

Although Paul is very deeply connected to their native PNW, I can hear in these songs all the places I love and have spent time in, as well as majestic, mysterious places that I watch on National Geographic & Planet Earth, ones that I can only hope to see someday. From my beloved creeks careening & crisscrossing the Colorado mountains, to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, the skeleton coast dunes of Namibia, the wild, remote deserts of Siberia, the green rolling hills leading to the exquisite coastline of Northern California, deserts, lakes, oceans, mountains & trees. The magic in Paul’s writing is how she can make us feel these things, these huge abstract, wild places; while still making the songs intimate, filled with details of an important life. Waking up, touching rocks in the river, watching out a car window, a phone call, a kiss, a skinny dip, a good cry & a deep laugh. Like many of the artists on this list, we were lucky enough to host Black Belt Eagle Scout at Lost Lake last June. A rescheduled show from one that was postponed due to a (ha!) epic, late-spring, Colorado snowstorm. Seeing Katherine live was like watching a superstar. They were warm, friendly, and the music was emotional & powerful. Hands down one of my favorite shows of the year. I’ll be listening to The Land, The Water, The Sky on road trips for years to come! Long live Black Belt Eagle Scout.

“Slow, important love / it keeps me alive / you wanted a second chance at life / well… you’re alive / you hear your heart beating / you walk under the trees / I was only seventeen / I was only seventy / the land, the water, the sky…”

FUST / Genevieve

If you’ve followed this list for the last 10 years, you know that I write A LOT about North Carolina bands and the albums & songs & connections I have with that state. I’ll talk about that more when I write about Kym Register (the deepest example of my fav “North Carolina sound”!) but this year, Asheville based “supergroup” Fust is the latest iteration of a specific North Carolina vibe that I can’t help but love. The songwriting project of Aaron Dowdy (who’s actually from Virginia ha!) Fust’s second full length album swells with the kind of yearning, hopeful, achy, pedal steel folk, alt country & americana songs that can soundtrack any backroad mountain drive, from Colorado to Carolina & California! My favorite moments include when “Violent Jubilee” rises up on layered electric guitar throbs and becomes a true road trip anthem with Dowdy cutting loose belting creakily “I like driving with the odometer busted, when I know the stars are gonna fall any minute! & I’m ready to burn up with it!” Or the bittersweet sadness in the struggling marriage/relationship commitments lamented on “Rockfort Bay” when Dowdy confides to his partner that he wants “a small life” and wants them both to “Do their best tonight, I’m praying we do not fight, I’m thinking we’ll be alright.” but also the creeping, darker secret that Dowdy admits halfheartedly “I’ve got a bad feeling, I’m never gonna change…”

These strong, nuanced lyrical themes across Genevieve set it apart from any old folk-americana album you might hear on a Spotify playlist, and in my mind, it’s almost a concept album of sorts. Themes of marriage & divorce, friendship & commitment. Themes of searching, restlessness & unsettledness. Themes of domestic contentment and what to do when you & the person you love want different things and have different goals in life. On the resigned “Open Water” Dowdy reveals longingly that despite all his restlessness, what he really wants is “a little old home to call my own / Where I like the wallpaper and what the sun’s done to it.” or in the Indigo De Souza (more on her in a sec obv!) assisted “Town in Decline” where he rejoices in a warm house, cooking, watching the news & cleaning the gutters, singing “I’ll bring candles, we can celebrate, the paper plates are fine!” There are also people all over the record, Genevieve of course (a fictional character according to Dowdy) John & Angel, Sarah Lee, Jimmy, Sam, sisters, brothers, neighbors, the whole damn band! There are also the real life collaborators in the Fust circle of music that I love, Indigo of course, drummer Avery Sullivan, Jake Lenderman and Xandy Chelmis from Wednesday (a record that I also loved but not on this list!) Courtney Werner from North Carolina legends Magic Tuber String Band, and all brought together on the production side by one of my all time fav producers Alex Farrar (Hurray For The Riff Raff, Tre Burt, Indigo, Wednesday etc…) Musically this album contains all the little evocative elements of North Carolina that I’m in love with.

The mission statement, gut punch of the album is one of my favorite sad songs of the year. The accurately titled “A Clown Like Me” is a languid, ranging, late afternoon-into-dusk heartbreaker. There are enough clues in Dowdy’s small details & big ideas that I think I know deeply what this song is about, but I feel it more than any other song on the record. In a year where I started coming to grips with my own life decisions costing me actual, real things, and my carelessness hurting actual real relationships & people, this one hurts. This is an aching anthem for how to move forward. How to have open & honest conversations about it. How to walk & talk & make plans big & small. How to rebuild and try to make the deepest kind of friends. The awkwardness, the hardness, the checking in on family members & friends. The ache of loss and the bright, dull sting of a future alone or together. My fault I fear. There is still light shining through the kitchen window and the Winter is long. You should park on 4th. Seventh Ave stretches out forever and iced coffee tastes good even when it’s cold outside. How are your parents? I don’t know what I want. My family is good, things are changing, but good. Nieces, nephews, new job? Oh, your sister’s worried. How’s Sam? I’ve been trying really hard too, but feel like treading water, getting tired. I thought you’d want what I want. This song plays hard on the place that I knew you were dark. I was just trying to tell you how proud I am. I’m in awe and regret everything. My fault I fear. The sun goes down, the light slants differently when you’re not around. We don’t know how to do this but we are doing it anyway. Songs like this are hard but necessary. I feel heard & seen. I am listening & learning. Growing & moving forward. I feel that this hardness will never really go away.

“It feels good to be a part of a greater kind of looking / gonna be a searcher for the rest of my days…”

GENESIS OWUSU / Struggler

“Sometimes it feels like there’s an old man waiting in the sky, just to fuck my life up.” begins the driving “The Old Man” on Genesis Owusu’s breathtaking sophomore album Struggler. He refers to this non-benevolent God all across the album, the title track crashes with the refrain “better run, there’s a God, and He’s coming for me!” and in “Stay Blessed” Owusu is just “a roach that a God is coming after.” Owusu has said that his alter ego “the roach” that appears in every song on this concept album, also represents humankind, fighting against the struggles daily life throws at us, surviving day-to-day, just getting up, “putting our ties on, and keep truckin!” He says the “God” that just won’t leave the poor roach alone (could that be the God of the bible?!) represents "these huge, unrelenting, uncontrollable forces that, by every logical means, should have crushed us a long time ago.” Lyrically, this concept is repeated over & over again across the album, almost every song references the struggle between the roach & god. But the music… the music of Struggler is where Owusu comes alive and breathes life into his epic narrative! From the first 30 seconds of the frenetic, electric opening track “Leaving The Light” I knew this one was gonna be special. Dance pop, synthwave, pop rap, breakbeat, funk jazz, disco & neo soul, part Bloc Party, part Jean Dawson, part Prince. It’s all splattered across Struggler, upbeat & relentless, danceable & underground-y, vibrant & all out wild. In a year where I continued to lean into lyrics, this is one of the albums on this list (add Kumo 99, Paris Texas, Sofia Kourtesis & Y La Bamba) where I can confidently say I like the music more than the lyrics,

The first time I saw Genesis Owusu was at the magical Treefort Music Festival in 2022. It was a late night set at the Shrine and Owusu’s stage presence was incredible, from the dark, theater-influenced “black dog” opening half, to the celebratory dance party that had everyone in Boise sweating, it was my favorite set of the festival! I told everyone about Genesis, and riding a scooter home at 3AM along the Boise River, I knew I had found a lifelong musical friend. Owusu brought that same energy to little old Globe Hall back in November, playing one of my favorite shows of last year. For the sold-outest of crowds, Owusu commanded the stage all by himself, dancing, singing, taking to the crowd to start a pit and sing along with fans. Owusu is one of those “you have to see him live” kind of talents. Born in Ghana, raised in Australia, Owusu is creating his career with a singular voice. Staying true to himself, shapeshifting, crawling, dancing, roaching, running, crashing, and always in the end… getting up again.

“Feeling like Gregor Samsa / a bug in the cog of a grey-walled cancer / I’m tryna break free with a penciled stanza / so are we human or are we dancer?...”

INDIGO DE SOUZA / All of This Will End

When Indigo De Souza released her incredible third album All of This Will End in late April, I listened to about 30 seconds of the first track, the innocently poppy, burning 2 minutes of “Time Back” and realized that this album was going to be one of my favorites, but also REALLY hard for me to listen to. Like she did on Any Shape You Take (one of my favorite albums of 2021) De Souza holds nothing back, making the most soul baring, life questioning indie rock album of 2023. When I wrote about Shape back in 2021, I called it a truly great emo album and said it made me feel like a teenager again. With this album, I feel like I am growing up alongside & with Indigo. Despite all the heartwreck that she’s singing openly about, she manages to grin & bear it, to see some lightness. “We’re gonna love again on the other side / when you come home I will begin again” she smiles through tears on “Time Back.” When she’s calling off work on the catchy, upbeat “Parking Lot” she laments “I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, but it’s probably just hard to be a person feeling anything / I’m a growing girl my ups & downs are natural” and at the end she concludes “maybe I’ll always be just a little bit sad.” She unpacks trauma and abuse in real time on the raging “You Can Be Mean” slyly admonishing “I’d like to think you got a heart and your dad was just an asshole growing up / but I don’t see you trying that hard to be better than he is.” and the fuzzed out, rocking grunge & bloodcurdling screams of “Wasting Your Time” & “Always'' are heavier shit than any album on this list. Like she has mastered in her blossoming career, De Souza continually balances the darkest darkness with the sweetest light, whether musically (“Losing” masks it’s aching longing with De Souza’s friendly, lilting vocals and a gentle, rolling guitar) or lyrically (“The Water” quickly came my favorite skinny dip song and soundtracked many river & creek hangs throughout my summer). The honest autobiography of Indigo’s writing lets me in on her secrets & growth, and I feel like I’ve known her through this chapter of her life.

As I’ve sought out new friends this year (my first year of being truly single since I was kid) I’ve been drawn to people who want to talk about things the way that De Souza does in her songs. People who know the world is ending. People who struggle with their place in all of it. People who don’t feel like they fit in, but face it anyway. De Souza mixes an everyday “conversations with coworkers” vibe, with a deep, deep restlessness. The kind of unsettledness that makes her either the most fun at parties, or the kind of person that runs & hides. At the center of the album sits the title track. A mission statement & a bleak revelation, but one that could be looked at in many different lights. De Souza realizes that no matter how hard you try at all the things shes writing about, sometimes none of it matters and all of this will end anyway. She faces her deepest fears & inadequacies, forgiving herself and coming out singing “I’m only loving, only moving through and trying my best / sometimes it’s not enough but I’m still real and I forgive”

This self-gentleness & self-forgiveness shines through especially bright on the gorgeous album closing ballad “Younger & Dumber.” Go watch the music video for this one, it’s incredible! I looped this song on repeat one night last Summer at Cheesman Park (“having an experience”!) sitting at the columns and watching a roller skater perform a routine that I SWEAR was made for “Younger & Dumber.” As the song picks up, pedal steel whining and De Souza’s voice rising fiercely with the second chorus, my anonymous roller-skater spun faster in the sunset “Sometimes I just don’t wanna be alone & it’s not cause I’m lonely” De Souza confides “It’s just cause I get so tired of filling the space all around me / & the love I feel is so powerful…” It’s here, on the brink of the end of the album, that De Souza changes the words to how powerful this love they feel is. On the printed lyrics in my CD copy they say “I’ll meet you anywhere.” This is of course a powerful, romantic statement. A commitment of love. But when De Souza sings the song on the album, they don’t say they’ll meet someone anywhere. They say that the love they feel is so powerful “it can take you anywhere.” This is self love. This is an open future. The freedom to let love take you anywhere. To love others truly, you must first love yourself. You must first admit to past mistakes, to know that “when I was younger / younger & dumber / I didn’t know better…”

As with many of the musicians I love and follow online, I feel super connected to Indigo through her social media. I’ve read a lot about “parasocial” relationships, and I’m always careful with how invested I get, but as I’ve referenced countless times in these reviews, following & connecting with artists, specifically their lyrics, has completely changed my life direction over the last 10-15 years. But when I see someone like Indigo struggling, posting openly & honestly about her struggles, I want to reach through the vastness and tell her it’s gonna be ok. That she is loved, that she is incredible, that her work is valid, important & essential. To help her in some way. In that feeling & that moment, I realize… Indigo is reaching through the vastness to tell me the same thing. Her work, her songs, her music, her lyrics, are carrying me. She is reminding me that I am loved. That life is hard but I am incredible. My passions & my work are important. The greatest gift, the deepest magic. Time travel, teleportation, whatever you want to call it… I call it magic. Hug your friends. Talk about everything with them. Be open & honest with your struggles. Who gives a fuck, all of this will end.

“Am I losing to the dark? / is it overtaking me? / I was overcoming last month / but June is killing me / & all my friends are leaving or trying on new faces / & in the dark, where my car’s been parked / I remember how to face it / there is nothing I can do when the winds of change blow through…”

KING TUFF / Smalltown Stardust

“There are times in our life when we feel magic in the air.” So begins the bio/press release for King Tuff’s magical fifth album Smalltown Stardust. Way way back in November of 2022 (!) one of the venues I work for, Globe Hall, was getting ready to announce a King Tuff show in March of 2023. As I gathered all the info I would need to put the show on our website, I sat and read all about King Tuff’s new album and subsequent tour. As that kind of writing often does, I was brought to tears. I knew a little of King Tuff, was familiar with his fuzzy, psychedelic rock background and wizard’s hat, but reading about his desire to “make an album to remind myself that life is magical. An album about love & nature & youth.” and his ultimate revelation that “I’m a different person now than I was 20 years ago when I first started this. But oddly, when I first started the band, it was more like this.” There are glimpses about his journey back to Brattleboro, Vermont (the town he grew up in), his communion with nature, his collaborative community (he lives & records in LA with Meg Duffy of Hand Habits and Sasami, who also co-wrote much of Stardust!), his joy & energy bouncing off the page and coming to a life as a real life wizard right in front of me. I became an instant fan!

The actual songs on Smalltown Stardust make good on all those promises! With some classic touchstones (I can’t help but hear The Beatles all over this record!) it is a psychedelic, hippie, pop-rock masterpiece. From the celestial garden swing of green thumb opener (“I just wanna dance & write love letters to plants”) to the rollicking, mountain folk rock of “Portrait Of God” and the measured indie of personal favorite “Rock River,” a summer river, skinny-dip love song for the ages! My favorite thing about the glorious nature King Tuff has splattered all over Stardust, is that it is accessible, ordinary, & worth celebrating! When you grow up in the heart of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, there is a tendency to search for nature that is epic. Hard to get to, untouched, Instagram worthy, requiring multiple plane flights, or strenuous double digit mile hikes to obtain. Tuff’s nature can be found right in your own backyard! Green plants & wildflowers. Butterflies, stars, sunflowers & rain. “Walking in the woods, wading in the river, breathing in the mountain air.” Falling leaves & pebbles in a stream. As I get older (like Tuff) I have continually turned to nature for comfort, and last Summer found me exploring secret, favorite “accessible nature” spots less than 30 minutes from downtown Denver. Hit me up next Summer for secret creek spots in Clear Creek Canyon, Bear Creek & Boulder Creek. Come run around on Green Mountain! And of course, my deep, deep favorite nature spot… Cheesman Park!

My final connection with Smalltown Stardust & King Tuff was cemented last March, when my already-planned trip to see my little sister in Arkansas was unfortunately happening on the same weekend as King Tuff’s Globe Hall show in Denver. Tbh, I thought about canceling my trip and staying for Tuff, but I went to Arkansas and instead told my sister all about the album, the bio, and we stayed up late talking about nature & friends, siblings & youth, bittersweet nostalgia & an epic future! We drove rural Arkansas backroads to waterfalls, epic cliffs, mossy, leafy ravines, rock walls, Candy Mountain & Middle Earth. We drove through forests, across rivers, under skies storming with March gray & blue. We drank dark beers late into the night, talking about all the things that matter. I find myself always thinking a lot about how “growing up” feels. About my siblings and my friends old & new. Thinking about times when I was a kid in nature “In the back of a pickup truck, staring up at the blue, blazing down the backroads, blooming wild.” Sometimes as we get older, it feels like we’ll never have those same kind of feelings again. And more heavily than that, it feels like we shouldn’t want to have those feelings again. Like we need to grow up past those feelings. I’m so grateful for artists like King Tuff, friends like my sister Bethy (and of course my old and always best friend Stephen who always talks about all this shit with me haha!) and all the other people & music in my life that help me celebrate those feelings. That cycle of life. As King Tuff closes the album, I’m right there next to him, driving through our love & nature & youth together “Caught up in the turning of the wheel… & it’s coming round again…”

“When I close my eyes I’m going home / lonely sidewalks where I used to roam / ‘I’m A Loser’ lost in my headphones / back when all my dreams were silver & gold / sitting under the falling leaves / wondering where I’ll go / I’ll be where the rivers meet / looking for answers that I’ll never know / that’s where you’ll always find me…”

KUMO 99 / Headplate

Headplate, the third album from LA duo Kumo 99, roars to life with the kind of visceral, electronic energy you won’t find anywhere else on this list. Kumo 99 describe themselves as “post-national, apocalypse-adjacent, lo-tech love songs for the digital native.“ Nate Donmoyer (Passion Pit, Brandon Flowers, Crosses) handles the production and Ami Komai sings with a shapeshifting wildness that absolutely lights this album up. Sung entirely in Japanese, she explains “making the choice not to write our lyrics in English is a political act. Our lack of translation is political.” While I haven’t yet done all the translation work to dig into what this Japanese-American duo is singing about, the music needs absolutely no translation. This is mosh-pit ready EDM for the underground. Breakbeat, drum & bass, jungle, glossy pop-techno, all carried by a ferocious punk energy that tears at its seams and explodes out through Komai. At times she is sleek, slinking cat-like through 8bit video game beats and stomp-y pop, regal & aloof. When she cuts loose, like on the bonkers-ballistic “Dopamine Chaser” her screaming tag-teams the energy of the beat, both leveling up to a frenetic climax, the punk-est thing you’ll hear this year. Headplate is 29 minutes & 22 seconds of trance-inducing magic. If you’re still missing Crystal Castles… Go dive in.

“Breathe calmly! / grab your hair in your hands! / hug each other till you’re one & the same!...”

KYM REGISTER & THE MELTDOWN RODEO / Meltdown Rodeo

Back in 2016, I put Kym Register’s debut album Sweet High Rise on my fifth annual favorites list. They were still going by Loamlands then, and I was at the beginning of a journey that I am still very much on now, and will be for life. I was starting to unpack a lot of my internalized racism, sexism, & homophobia from my years spent in conservative, christian, straight-white-male circles; choosing the wrong friends, and being afraid to stand up for what I thought was right. It was through musicians like Register (and countless others) that I started finding inspiration, searching for progressive, challenging lyrics over familiar favorite sounds. I have been inspired watching them confront their peers, watching them write songs unpacking their own trauma, telling American stories about the racism, sexism, & homophobia that our country is built on. I began collecting musicians like Kym as inspiration, as education, people I could look up to, songs that challenged what I had once believed. Songs that encouraged me to challenge those around me. Songs that the new & changing me was proud to sing along with. Soon I began to collect friends & peers who believed the same things as I did and helped push me further down that road. Today, I still have so far to go on that journey, but it is not an exaggeration to say that musicians like Kym Register and albums like Meltdown Rodeo have completely changed my life. Woohoo! Let’s melt it down!

Meltdown Rodeo begins in a very similar place to Sweet High RIse. “Scottsboro” tells the horrifying story of The Scottsboro Boys, nine African American teenagers who were falsely accused of rape and sentenced to prison in Alabama in 1931. “Come on now” a frustrated Register mutters “this story’s not that old.” Sweet High Rise standout “Little River” told another off-forgotten, historical tale, the murder of Ronald Antonevitch at a popular gay swimming hole, that led to North Carolina’s first gay pride marches. While the music of “Scottsboro” echoes the sadness of the story, with yearning & spiraling guitar, track two “Blue” cuts loose with the kind of rage that reminds you of Register’s background in the punk scene. Telling another historically accurate story about Joni Mitchell wearing blackface, a song about how to critically examine your “heroes.” Lyrically Meltdown Rodeo deals with intense topics, but Register’s classic folk-country storytellers’ heart, makes them personal & relatable. These are real people, real struggles, and Register is constantly examining their own heart & brain, unpacking trauma, digging & replanting, learning & regrowing. Challenging the listener to do the same.

Musically, this album takes me to North Carolina in the best way possible. I had a weird, deep connection with the state before I had even been there, and a lot of it had to do with the music made there. I didn’t step foot inside NC till 2016, but I’ve been there 12 times since! In a way, the connection that I’ve built over those seven years probably mirrors the internal growth I talked about, the most important years of my life so far. I have loved so much music from North Carolina in the last ten years and I hope to live there someday. Register owns The Pinhook in downtown Durham and is a staple in the local scene. The powerful guitar of Meltdown Rodeo and Register’s singular, ramrod vocals are evocative of the North Carolina countryside, rolling, rugged & gorgeous. Sweaty, humid & full of life. Of course, the musicians in this iteration of The Meltdown Rodeo are an all star cast of North Carolina legends! Rissi Palmer, Kamara Thomas, Phil Cook, Saman Khoujinian, Brevan Hampden, Sinclair Palmer, Joe Westerlund, & Matt Phillips. If you know, you know! I’ve compared them to Lucinda Williams & Fleetwood Mac, but the closest thing I’ve been able to say is that it sounds like how North Carolina feels. Sweltering, swaying, stabbing guitar; melancholic yet hopeful, spring-y in all its longing.

I’ve been lucky enough the last two septembers to finally catch a Kym Register set at Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, and their presence & energy has been magical. There are a few bands that I’m always scared I’ll never have the chance to see live (looking at you American Trappist!) and the Meltdown Rodeo was one of them, until I snuck out of an eTix work conference in 2022, ran to Kings, bought myself a Tecate and a cheap whiskey shot, and started crying the second Kym started singing. Singing songs that I’ve kept close these last seven years. Songs that I’ve played every single one of the 12 times I’ve been in North Carolina. Songs that have actually helped me grow & change. I promise you, Meltdown Rodeo sounds so much better live. The guitars & organs crunch & squall together, and the drums lurch in mesmerizingly, making this also one of my favorite backroad driving records. When I live there someday, I’ll take these songs out on the backroads. From Asheville to the coast, I-40, 15-501 & the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’ll visit old friends. I’ll drive over the Little River, the Haw River, the Eno, the Deep. Until then, when I put this record on, I just close my eyes & I listen to the stories, I feel the staggering, suffocating heat, I hear the bugs & the birds. I can smell magnolia, dogwood & hydrangeas. I let the pedal steel carry me away. I melt down slowly in a good way. My brain & my body dissociating into something new & better. Melting down to start over. To begin again. I think about my past & my future. I know these songs are sticking with me forever. In a way… I’m already home.

“Lightning bugs are larger when you’re lit up / can’t tell what’s sweat from mountain dew / foggy summer mornings they hide the shadows / and the barking dogs are songs to wake up to / daddy never taught me one good lesson / no one ever told me the truth / the South is a hotbed of resistance / to the whiteness that keeps trying to bury you / that’s why I’m coming home… / the only name I can reclaim is my own…”

MARGO CILKER / Valley Of Heart’s Delight

There is a simple conversation that opens my favorite song on Margo Cilker’s incredible sophomore album Valley Of Heart’s Delight. The next to last song on the album “Sound And Fury'' opens with a rolling country gait and finds Margo asking “Tell me where you’re going, ask what I’m doing, wonder how it’s coming along / It’s a piece of a puzzle, it’s a midnight struggle, I’m goin, I’m goin, I’m gone.” Sung direct & straightforward in Cilker’s powerful, conversational tone, it’s lines like these that endear me to writers like Cilker. Real, authentic country, americana & folk lyrics over familiar, worn musical ground. Pedal steel, fiddle, & piano rolling right along stretches of blacktop highway & “Lowland Trails.” This is running into a neighbor at the grocery store (New Castle City Market IYKYK), this is sharing life challenges over a cup of bad coffee at the dusty diner, later this is deep, heartfelt conversations over cheap beer at the kind of pool hall or dive bar that can be found in any of the small towns Cilker namechecks across Valley. In her own carefree style, this album begins to cement Cilker in a growing pantheon of “new country” (anybody got a catchier name?!) songwriters, as much Prine & Dylan as Willie or Waylon, Lucinda, Linda, Townes, Steve Earle, The Band, there’s probably a long list of influences & favorites here that I would love to stay up late hearing Margo talk about!

Growing up in rural, western Colorado, I fell for country music in high school, and it’s been hard to shake ever since. Good country mind you, not the shit you find on mainstream country radio these days. Musically, Cilker’s band really cooks, most notably in the lighthearted “Steelhead Trout” (the only cover on the album) and the driving, dramatic “Mother Told Her Mother Told Me.” Another great folk songwriter Sera Cahoone (who I was lucky enough to catch at Red Rocks last Summer) produces the album, plays drums and calls Margo “her own authentic weirdo.” Cilker’s “weirdo” nomadic lifestyle is a huge influence here, these songs trace lines and name cities all across the US (Greenville, San Francisco, Oakland, Lodi, Bozeman, Boston, Los Gatos, Los Altos, Manhattan, Houston & little Santa Rosa, NM!) Despite all Margo’s journeys, there is a clear sense of place, and her Northern California roots are deep & evident throughout. In fact, when “Sound And Fury” turns late night serious in it’s second half, acknowledging America’s racial tension, economic depression, and climate crisis. Referencing William Faulkner and “the gatekeeper’s footing disturbed” Cilker takes comfort in her familiar places. She talks about the yearly return of the apricots, her home in Los Altos, and her deep held beliefs in listening & learning. “It’s a song down the ages” she sings with just the slightest twang “It’s a tearing of pages, I’m listening, I’m listening, I’ve heard.” She doesn’t have all the answers, but she’s working hard toward simple, deep truths. When she finally closes Valley on the Justin Townes elegy “All Tied Together” it comes with a deep answer and a simple question. “It’s all tied together” she sings confidently if sadly. But like so many of us, those of us out searching for these kinds of truths, that answer makes her question… “If it’s all tied together… Are we better unwound?”

“I remember Montana always treating me fine / driving up to Eureka / Polebridge on the 4th of July / went on a bender in Bozeman / sobered up in Hamilton / fell in love with a fisherman / but it was catch & release…”

McKINLEY DIXON / Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?

“I’m crazy about this city” begins McKinley Dixon’s majestic Beloved! Paradise! Jazz?! These are not Dixon’s own words or voice; instead, legendary poet Hanif Abdurraqib reading one of Dixon’s favorite writers, the also legendary Toni Morrison. Dixon named the album after Morrison’s Harlem-based trilogy of novels. Hanif & Toni go on to tell us all about the city they love, their specific, slanting details echoing the intimate, illuminating details that Dixon is about to share across his jazz soaked, ethereal, classic rap album. Hanif talked about Dixon’s writing style saying “You have to archive the beautiful corners of where you’re from, because if you don’t then no one else will.” Archiving beautiful corners is such a meaningful way to describe Dixon’s writing (and great writing in general!) and to really listen to Beloved is to gain a deeper understanding of those beautiful corners that Dixon really loves. His city, his people, his life. Blooming & bursting through tragedy & trauma. Inspirational, life giving & heartfelt.

To answer the question mark in the album title, McKinley Dixon’s Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? Is my favorite jazz album of the year! Of course, this is also one of the best rap albums of the year! Dixon raps & sings over a sizzling live band, skittering & swaying over horns & strings, poetry, jazz, time travel, paradise, love, friends, death, forever. From the mood setting harp that introduces the shimmering opening song “Sun, I Rise” a forward looking anthem featuring Spacebomb Records sister Angélica Garcia (see you in 2024 Angélica!) to the undeniably bouncy piano riff that starts “Run, Run, Run” the musicianship here pulls its weight supporting Dixon’s generational-talent lyrics and fierce, focused delivery. Dixon is a can’t miss artist building an impressive catalog. A Richmond, VA native, who I discovered through one of my favorite record labels/recording studios/music collectives, Richmond’s mighty Spacebomb Records. There’s definitely a future version of me that moves to Richmond and works for Spacebomb! When I wrote about Dixon’s Spacebomb debut (the intensely personal For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her) on my 2021 Favs list, I referenced the trauma & death that gives birth to this kind of writing. Make no mistake, that trauma & death is still very present on Beloved. Take the bombastic, friday-night-lights brass of second single “Tyler, Forever” a song Dixon penned for his friend that passed on. In the last verse he imagines them laughing together “If he was here now he’d say that that shit’s unheard of / I’d laugh, say yeah he right, it’s probably true / Then sitting on his floor I’d realize poets lie too.” Dixon says the song shows how “Celebrations of life & moments of sadness can be tied to each other.” and “To Tyler: I made it off 225th! I remember you laughing when I showed you my first song in 2014. The whole world to us was only Linden BLVD. Never woulda thought we make it this far. I take you wherever I go.” All across Beloved it’s clear that Dixon really is taking people & places from his past wherever he goes. References to his parents, grandparents, close friends & cousins imbue the album with familial love & warmth amidst the inescapable death, violence & trauma.

Personal fav “Live! from the Kitchen Table” is a song inspired by Carrie Mae Weems 1990s photo series of the same name. Breathtaking black & white photographs showing essential family activities happening around the kitchen table. I am instantly taken back to seeing Bruce Springsteen with my dad and hearing Bruce talk about his own father. It was the River Tour and Bruce was introducing his heartbreaker "Independence Day." He said the song is set around a late night kitchen table conversation between him & his dad, and if I close my eyes I can see the picture Weems would’ve taken. “Well papa go to bed now it’s getting late” Bruce begins, before painting a picture of leaving town, a story of striking out on your own. This town could be anywhere, Dixon’s Richmond, Springsteen’s Freehold, or my New Castle, but the idea is the same. Bruce went on to explain the song as a memory of the first time he saw his parents as their own people, chasing their own dreams, trying to make their own way in life. Dixon explores that very same balance delicately throughout Beloved, checking back in on his childhood self, remembering his earliest connections, holding on to what made him, but also, striking out on his own. Chasing dreams, chasing sunlight, chasing better for everyone he loves. Chasing as Morrison says “Future thoughts.” Look out everybody, “Here comes the new!”

“LIve! From my momma’s kitchen table / where she pulls heartbreak to her chest and folds up cards to keep legs stable / where the currency for meals is often the laughter that’s exchanged in / I ain’t seen you in a minute, so sorry, tears blurring your frame / our line different, nothing missing, you ain’t call but we ain’t trippin / come in / still remember the seatin’, treat the home just like the heart / keep it warm and always beatin’ / it’s alive / Live!”

THE NATIONAL / First Two Pages of Frankenstein & Laugh Track

For being one of my all-time favorite bands, it’s hard to believe that The National has only made this list once, all the way back in 2013 when Trouble Will Find Me (my all time favorite National record) lost out to only Josh Ritter, Frightened Rabbit, Phosphorescent, & of course Typhoon (more on them later shhh!) in my second year of making this list! If you look at it that way, it makes a little more sense, as each of the three pre-Trouble National records (High Violet, Boxer & Alligator) would have been at the top had I been making this list before 2012. Plus, since then, I was fairly un-enamored with their direction for Sleep Well Beast and I Am Easy To Find. Also, only releasing two albums in the ten years since Trouble?! Welllll… discography lesson aside, Indie Rock’s favorite Sad Dads The National are back in a BIG WAY in 2023! Releasing not one but TWO career-defining albums, somehow becoming a way wayyyy better live band (mixing up setlists, satisfying the die-hards with deep cuts galore, and playing 27-33 songs per show!) and doubling down on the kind of middle age mediocre angst (ha!) that seems to speak to me more deeply the more angsty, mediocre, & middle aged I get! I fucking love both these albums, I’ve cried to these songs more than a few times, and The National b2b nights at Mission Ballroom two days after my birthday in the heart of last Summer, was one of my most special memories from last year. The general consensus across critical reviews (and of course the reddit threads!) was that you could combine both albums, trim some excess, and make one absolutely great National album! The funny thing was however, everyone’s “one great new National album” looked completely different! I of course made my own 13 song favorites album mix called Demolished & Laughing, named after my favorite new National couplet from “New Order T-Shirt.” My longtime best online music friend Adam made his mix 50% different from mine! One of my favorite music writers (and National diehard) Steven Hyden cleverly called his album mix Frankenstein Laughs, but somehow left off “Once Upon A Poolside” (the Sufjan assisted all timer) and “New Order T-Shirt” which was my MOST LISTENED TO SONG OF 2023! I’m mostly joking here of course, but it did show me that while we all agree there’s some duds between the two albums, we differ vastly on which songs are “duds” and maybe sometimes more actually is better!

My National album opens exactly how Frankenstein opened (and how they opened both nights at Mission Ballroom) with the ultimate, middle-age scene setter “Once Upon A Poolside.” An austere, Sufjan assisted piano ballad with everybody watching. A more direct sister to their cult favorite, live staple “About Today.” Where that song finds a couple in bed late at night, one asking the other “hey, are you awake? How close am I to losing you?” I can imagine the answer coming 19 years later, from across the million miles of a queen size bed “What was the worried thing you said to me?” Track two is my song of the year, the song I listened to more than any other “New Order T-Shirt.” When this song was released as the second single off Frankenstein, I thought of it as a sad, end-of-the relationship song, and (knowing The National) it probably is! But something turned in me when I began to think of “I keep what I can of you…” as something good. Something worth treasuring. Whether those “split second glimpses & snapshots & sounds” are the exciting beginnings of a new crush or the heartbreaking endings of when someone really good is actually gone, they’re still worth holding onto. Carry them with you & flicker through. From there Laugh Track’s “Deep End” is a song I first heard live this Summer, a Trouble-level National jam, Bryan Devendorf’s drums sound SO GOOD, and when was the last time they started a song as strong as “I’m going off the deep end, barely sleeping”?! Perfect. You have to go back to Fall 2022 for when I heard The National debut “Grease In Your Hair” at Red Rocks and that song has stuck with me since. I think of it as a cousin to “Don’t Swallow The Cap” and the liftoff that happens when the song hits “Down we go on the grass!” is one of my favorite musical moments across both albums, an epic indie rock jam. The thing most everyone did agree on is that “Space Invader” and especially “Smoke Detector” were a return to the old (and I mean like Alligator/Boxer old) National. “Space Invader” is the first 6+ minute song The National has ever released, and the build that starts at about 3:20 and carries the last half of the song is the noisiest The National have ever sounded. Walls upon walls of screeching guitars, drums crashing like waves and Matt Berninger almost unintelligible, muttering “quarter after four in the morning. Why’d I leave it like that?” Absolutely epic. “Smoke Detector” is an almost 8 minute fever dream, increasingly hazy & disorienting, Berninger muttering, sometimes almost out of breath, restlessly repeating lines over the Dessner brothers' chaotic guitar squeals & squalls. This is the closest The National have ever come to capturing their live sound on tape.

Two of my favorite nights of 2023 were spent with The National at Mission Ballroom on August 11th & 12th. I want to close with the wandering, Summer haze writing I typed out on my Instagram after the shows. This is how most of my music writing has sounded the last few years.

It felt so SO good to dance & sweat & sing and mark some time & space with a band I’ve grown up with since college. Singing about decisions & choices & aging, about how to face your future and the future of a world that's burning. As always, it’s all about how the show made me FEEL. Sometimes it’s seeing someone else lose their shit. Dancing like they’re the only person alive on the giant, extravagant mission floor, running their fingers through their hair, claiming the song as theirs. Sharing the song as ours. A communal experience, energy exchanged. To feel all humming live wires. Tired & wired. Summer like a wasp nest. Summer like a drug. Sometimes it takes sobbing to the songs live to know they’re yours. To hear what they’re trying to teach you, whispering in your brain what you’re feeling before you even know yourself. What was the worried thing you said to me? Songs about brutally specific things & places & memories. About how endings & beginnings sometimes feel the same. About how it’s good to say all the painful parts out loud. Maybe we’re in the middle of some kind of cosmic rearrangement. I keep what I can of you. Split second glimpses & snapshots & sounds. Snapshots of running around r(h)ino for hours, chasing food trucks & feelings. Deep in conversation about trauma & generations, about growing older, about finding out what you want. Like what do you REALLY WANT out of your one wild & precious life. Meteor showers over dark hot springs. Joy & pain, sadness, grief, and ecstatic elation stabbing your ribs like a mystic, fantastic narwhal tusk. Silly till you cry from laughing. Or laugh from crying. Sneaking into fancy hotels, demolished & laughing. Memorize the air, there will come a time I’ll wanna know I was here. In the end, when the waters are rising, string yourself up for love again and sing… “Leave your home / Change your name / Live alone / Eat your cake…” The National are one of my all time favorite bands and 2023 was their year.

“What if I’d never written the letter / I slipped in the sleeve of the record I gave you? / what if I stayed on the C Train until Lafayette? / what if we’d never met? / what if I’d only just done what you told me and never looked back? / what if I’d only ducked away down the hallway and faded to black? / it’ll come to me later / like a space invader / & I won’t be able to get it out of my head…”

NO-NO BOY / Empire Electric

Julian Saporiti’s archival songwriting project No-No Boy is absolutely everything I want in great folk songwriting. His sophomore album Empire Electric is full of rich & lush songs, filled with ambient & found sounds, tropical & magical, bird chirps, ocean waves, & ancient sunshine.. His history textbook lyrics tell real stories and demand not only liner notes reading over coffee, but googling countries & years, or even visiting your local library to check out actual books! His songs are sweet & familiar, his voice gentle & friendly, like a storyteller lulling you into a trance, filling his stories with generations of history both personal & communal, a twinkle in his eye, a true folk songwriter, always a little bittersweet chuckle in the heartache of the folks he’s singing about.

For any history or music scholar, Julian Saporiti definitely has the chops. Many of the stories on Empire Electric come from his PhD in Asian American history. The history in these songs is meticulously researched, but imbued with the kind of fantasy starlight that makes the songs truly come alive. From Japanese internment camps to the onion farms in Oregon on the ethereal opener “The Onion Kings of Ontario!” to the coast of California in the 17th century on the blooming “1603.” When indie-rock anthem “Sayonara” explodes out of a rolling rhythm, it sounds for all the world like the kind of earth-shattering, hipster-indie-cool, love song I would’ve put on an actual mix CD for a pretty girl in the early 2000s! All Vampire Weekend-y, the kind of song you dance to in the teen-movie prom! Personal favorite “Nashville” (Saporiti’s current hometown!) tells a familiar story of immigration & gentrification, painted into an all-time classic country song. Woven in with stories of actual people from Saporiti’s past & present, he explores his own intergenerational trauma, another story in the endless line of personal stories, to listen & learn is the greatest gift we have.

This sort of writing shows me what I love most about storytelling in music. How these simple song structures seem to be my most accessible medium for learning about people. Not just the real, individual people who write biographical songs (although believe me I feel like I can call every artist on this list a friend!) but the people in these songs, the characters the songs reveal to me, the ideas in characters’ heads that push me to explore more. Lines that make me do my own research, brain digging & gardening to unearth my own weaknesses, my flaws, my little prejudices that keep me from being the best version of myself. Ever since around 2015, when I fully committed to music, I made a point to seek out artists & songwriters, telling stories different from mine. Of course, I still connect with the stories that mirror mine, the ones that make me feel seen & heard in my own personal struggles, but in committing to diving into a deeper, diverse pool of artists (hint -not just white men in their 30-40s singing about religious trauma & heartbreak hahaha) I unwittingly opened the doors for a better version of myself to begin to bloom. This version might be mostly unrecognizable to 21 year old Matty, playing Division 2 baseball for a private Christian College, trying to please Jesus and find his way in life, but it’s the version I’m most proud of now. Although I admittedly still have a long long way to go and lots of things to work on in this journey, I know I’m on the right path. The songs & stories in Empire Electric remind me of why I love music & songwriting & history & places & people & stories. This album is special.

“She had played a million shows like this / but she had never heard no songs like his / he told her ‘baby I’m a Dylan kid… but my favorite song is “Maaf Cintaku” (look it up!) / He loaded out just before her set / wrapped in a cloud of cigarettes / he heard a voice that you don’t forget / she sang, “Meet Me in the Morning” / not 56th & Wabasha / just the donut den over by the mall / she said ‘brother sometimes I miss it all’ ”

PARIS TEXAS / MID AIR

I got really into Paris Texas last Summer when I was digging around for artists that sounded like Jean Dawson. Paris Texas is the cool kid, slacker rock, underground rap, critically acclaimed, deadly serious, hilariously carefree, don’t-give-a-fuck, make the best music you can and fuck the rest, best friends duo of Louie Pastel & Felix. MID AIR is their sophomore album and it goes hard. Manic, urgent, rap-rock energy. Soul-baring lyricism grating up against swaggering, sky shooting songs, money, cars & women. Late night, hardcore, steady, dirty beats. I knew that MID AIR was going to be on this list about 30 seconds into burning opener “tenTHIRTYseven” when Louie Pastel jumps in with a “Yeah!” over a huge beat asking “Who wanna rock?! Who wanna roll?! Who wanna die?! I’m throwing a fit! Let’s get in the pit! Not leaving alive!” I read a lot of interviews, reviews, blogs, reddit threads and discords to try and decide what I wanted to write about MID AIR, but I’m gonna keep it short & sweet. Louie & Felix are pretty direct when asked about genre comparisons, expectations, career goals, creative process etc… They make what they think sounds cool, they’re trying to be the best at it, their creative vision is expansive, think movie-plot music videos, billboards, huge features, blah blah blah. Bottom line, their caffeinated, creative energy makes MID AIR bounce off walls, sprint down alleys at breakneck speed, and change the direction of underground music going forward.

Founded in 2018 when they were in community college, Louie Pastel makes most of the beats & Felix raps. They built soundcloud cred & a sick live show before releasing their critically acclaimed debut album Boy Anonymous in 2021 (which by the way you can still download for name-your-price on bandcamp)! They blend breakneck, indie rock guitar riffs, ominous, skittering DIY beats, and bombastic, humorous, vulnerable emo raps. Personal fav “DnD” rides an instantly infectious Kurt Cobain guitar riff, a SoCal Vince Staples beat and guest star Kenny Mason rapping what could a mission statement for MID AIR (or even a mission statement for Paris Texas if they weren’t too self aware to claim anything other than brilliant aloofness) “Too hood for the art shit / too smart for the hard shit / too depressed to be a narcissist / I just know my shit better than yall shit.” Secret weapon dilip co-produces, he’s worked with Denzel Curry, Juice WRLD, & ZelooperZ. Kenny & Teezo Touchdown feature, but mostly this is the Paris Texas show. If you read this list every year, you know that this is not my most knowledgeable genre but MID AIR recalls some of my favorite work from Death Grips, Jean Dawson, Ho99o9, The Injury Reserve, TV On The Radio, Nirvana, Das Racist, Kendrick Lamar, Ratatat, Odd Future & many more. Bottom line, MID AIR is exciting, energetic, and forward thinking, the kind of don’t-give-a-fuck attitude that makes me excited for what comes next. Not just for Paris Texas, but for music in general. Who wanna rock?!

“There’s love in the air so I will not breathe in / I made it alive I survived the deep end / I’m back on my bullshit, I’m back with revenge / I saw all of this behind my eyes dreaming… / I’m trying, trying, trying, trying… / one day I’ll be gone…”

PETER GABRIEL / i/o

Peter Gabriel was a music staple in our house as long as I can remember. Thanks to my baby boomer, music-loving parents, I grew up with Gabriel, Paul Simon, James Taylor & Neil Diamond. Of course we mostly listened to Contemporary Christian radio & Sunday morning worship, but Gabriel was one of the white men who shaped my earliest music listening habits. Not just “Sledgehammer” and “Solsbury Hill” (although both of those songs are lifetime favs) but the absolute epic live version of "Come Talk To Me," the breathtaking Kate Bush duet “Don’t Give Up,” and of course dancing to “In Your Eyes'' at every family wedding & dance party that I can remember. Gabriel always struck me as something of a heartfelt misfit. A little emo, a little too sincere, not cool, not hip, but creatively, he was able to sneak deep, heart wrenching songwriting into his sometimes cheesy 80s songs. For all the years of work & tinkering Gabriel has put into i/o (there are two different mixes of each song on the album, and this is his first album of new material in 21 years, and second in 31 years!!) the songs here are clear, direct, & powerful. I’ve always been a fringe fan (I even got the chance to see him with Sting back in 2015!) but it wasn’t until last Summer, in my little brother & sister Willie & Mad’s sunkissed Portland, Oregon kitchen, when he reminded me to check out the new Peter Gabriel single “i/o.” I was instantly hooked. A simple, catchy piano tinkling under Gabriel’s timeless voice “I’m just a part of everything” he opens deeply & cheerfully “I stand on two legs and I learn to sing. I walk with my dog and I whistle with the birds.” When he drops the huge “Solsbury Hill” worthy chorus, it’s hard not to sing along “I-O, I-O! I’m coming out, I’m going in! I-O, I-O! I’m just a part of everything!”

This year my family time (aka my favorite time!) has been full of new life. Two new babies (!) new love, weddings, new jobs, new tattoos & new homes! That birth & new life is echoed all over i/o, truly this is a magically warm & wet Springtime record; full of plants and life on earth! Gabriel sings about green grass & soft soil, tubers, fungi & seeds, rivers & lakes, old oak trees & olive trees, tentacles & octopus suckers, buzzard wings, elephant trunks, buzzing bees, dogs, birds, snakes, sharks, horses, mist & haze, smoke & flames, mountains, lightning bolts, asteroids & rainbows! His writing has aged beautifully and his voice sounds more poignant & genuine now than ever. You can hear his energy in the infectious blooming Spring anthem “Olive Tree” (seriously-YOU try not dancing around your kitchen to that chorus!) belting “The change is coming fast & it’s… Oh oh I’ve got the water falling on me! It’s all waking up now! I’ve got the sunlight warming my back! Warming up all my bones! I’ve got the cool breeze right on my skin! bringing every cell to life…” The funky (mayyyybe slightly Sledgehammer-y?!) “Road to Joy” finds him making the kind of dancing song he needs to wake up his body “Wake up every part of me / get the blood to flow in every nook & cranny / get the blood to flow from my head to my toes / put the life in my soul back in the world / we’re walking down the road to joy!”

Personally, 2023 was the year where I started to feel my age. Mentally, emotionally & physically, turning 37 seemed to make me think about age more. In those feelings i/o was a friend & a comfort that “feeling old” and thinking about life from an older perspective is ok. Gabriel embraces his age, while pushing against time; madly creating and doing as much as possible. He touches on time across i/o, most notably on the sweeping “Playing For Time” where he searches galaxies & distant planets before zeroing on the thing everybody is desperate for… Time. But the somber standout “So Much” hit home to me the hardest. “So much unfinished business” Gabriel sings bleakly as he contemplates the end. “All of it comes & goes, there’s only so much can be done.” He is watching time slip by in the mirror and it gets pretty dark. “The body stiffens, tires & aches / in its wrinkled, blotchy skin / with each decade, more camouflage / for the wild eyed child within…” He calls all of us, old AND young, to close our eyes for a moment and meditate on time. Then, with his warm, aging voice soft enough to be standing beside you, he encourages “Look down & look above / all the warmth inside of you comes from those you love / oh, there’s so much to live for / so much left to give…” No other album on this list spans the emotions of feeling young & new, old & hopeful as well as i/o, thank you Peter for reminding me what a gift it is to grow older.

“Just how much does it have to hurt / before you let go the pain? / and just how deep does it have to be / before you yearn to be free again? / every wound can lock you away / you can walk or you can choose to remain / but every day can pass you by / while you were holding the key / this is how it turns… / this is what we do… / this is who we are… / when we forgive we can move on… / we belong to the burden til it’s gone…”

PLASMA CANVAS / Dusk

“All the parts of me are in constant motion” sings Plasma Canvas frontwoman Ren Ash over Evalyn Flowers’ relentless drumming, before exploding in screams, belting “I wanna kill this part of me that I despise.” Motion & change have defined much of Plasma Canvas’ career as one of the front range’s most inspiring hardcore bands. Their songs & albums & especially their fiery live show are a constant reminder of the power of growing & changing into the person that you were meant to become. The person that you most desperately want to be. The best version of yourself. Sometimes it takes screaming to songs that sound as intense as these to really push yourself to the idea of “killing the parts of you that you despise.” There is a place for meditation & gentleness (and both can be found even on Dusk!) but make no mistake, this album screams about life struggles like no other album on this list. So as Plasma Canvas enters another chapter of motion, growth & change in their life as a band, inspiring each of us individually to do the same; I want to recognize their masterpiece of a farewell statement, their burning sophomore album Dusk. As Ren writes in the liner notes of “You’re enough. Go get what you want out of this one life that you have.”

Plasma Canvas has been a mainstay in the Colorado hardcore scene for seven plus years, and Dusk is a punk, pop-punk, emo & hardcore masterpiece. If you’ve followed my music writing, you know that hardcore is one of the genres I’m least knowledgeable in (especially as I get older) but I’ve always loved Plasma Canvas for reminding me of the great pop-punk & emo bands I grew up loving. It’s impossible for me to listen to Dusk and not hear My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World, Green Day, The Ataris, Vendetta Red, Coheed & Cambria, Br*nd N*w, & even The Cure. Dusk is a huge shot from Plasma Canvas at an epic album (their first full length since 2016!) and if you paid attention to both of their magnificent & obliterating EPs, you might be surprised to hear the scene-setting, opening track “Hymn.” Guided by a gentle, slowly swelling piano line, frontwoman Ren Ash tells a story of death & memories on a cold Texas day “as the snow falls in Midland.” The song rises with choir vocals and then finally explodes at its close with crashing guitars searing into huge single “Blistered World.” Three Cheers-era My Chem guitars wail behind Ash, with one of my favorite vocal takes of the year yelling “I swear to anybody listening, this ain’t the end!” Ash’s vocals are a highlight throughout Dusk, the perfect hardcore mix of singing & screaming; melodic, aggressive, every word believable & incredibly emotive. From true screamo lung rippers, to huge singalong choruses (I dare you not to sing “My head is heavy with suicide! My heart is soaring with love”!) the songs on Dusk never sacrifice melody or meaningfulness. I’ve seen Plasma Canvas all over Denver over the last 5 years, from the Hi-Dive & Seventh Circle, to UMS & the Marquis, and their shows are always uplifting. A chance to scream, a chance to dance, a chance to be yourself. I guess when I call them Punk, it’s that ethos that I’m talking about. A ”fuck the world-be yourself” persona, full of love & acceptance, but ran through with rage against everything that is fucked up in our world. Ren & Evalyn have been outspoken activists for trans rights and their shows are a testament to being yourself. So as they grow & move on, motioning & changing into whatever form Plasma Canvas ends up being somewhere down the road, I’m glad they’re leaving us with this record. A massive, firework, pipe bomb testimony of how to go down swinging. Being yourself, being true, and not being afraid to scream about it. Press play and turn it up to 11. This is the hugest album on this list and I’m so happy that Plasma Canvas exists.

“I remember the stain / the dirty tint to everything in our house / I remember the cold… / I’m in a new place / I want my things / I want my space / I don’t like it… / I wanna go home / where is my home?... / home is togetherness / everything we lost / all that we still have / we can still heal / we can move past it / i can heal / i can heal… / i will heal…”

ROSELIT BONE / Ofrenda

There are a lot of incredible songwriters on this list, but as far as bands go, Roselit Bone may be the greatest living American band and Ofrenda may be the greatest American album of the last couple years! A messy mix of everything that makes America great & terrible, Roselit Bone is blood & sweat & tears & shit & piss, music as rooted in the deserts & canyons & mountains & plains & cities & towns of America, as any album I’ve heard. Like a sun-bleached strip mall, everything on Ofrenda is splattered in chaos & corrosion. Guitars & brass & strings blast classic country, punk, psychobilly, rockabilly, mexican ranchera, lonely gothic folk & jazzy, bluesy, garage-y, stomping rock & roll. Roselit Bone is a band’s band, a Portland Oregon 8-piece, cutting their chops on the road for over a decade. I’ve been lucky enough to catch them twice at the Hi-Dive on South Broadway here in Denver, and this is one of my favorite live bands I”ve ever seen. Frontwoman Charlotte McCaslin is not only an incredible writer (these songs are bleeding stories of her divorce, gender transition, and inner turmoil) but a once-in-a-lifetime stage presence. She brings the kind of energy that makes me glad bands like this still play venues like Hi-Dive. Don’t miss Roselit Bone next time they’re in your town. And if you live in Denver, come with me next time they’re here!

Ofrenda was written in the midst of the global pandemic and the black lives matter protests in McCaslin’s native Portland. These songs growl with unrest, anger & frustration, and tell stories of trauma & violence, despair & love. From the opening notes, Ofrenda reads like an apocalyptic nightmare. To listen deep to McCaslin is to feel dread around every corner. Most of her dread is just our basic, everyday American horror. Murder, rape, capitalism, sexism, racism, evil, climate change etc… and her darkness always feels like it’s chasing, relentless & evil. From the agonized yowling of kick-down-the-door opener “Your Gun” (“the bedroom smells like spray paint & cum”) to the swelling delta blues of the haunting “The Tower” (“we ran for our lives as the angels took power and I could feel the wires uncoil / we’ll make love one day on more fertile ground”) to the finality & despair of “Ain’t No Right Way To Feel” sung passionately over an 80’s power pop beat. It makes sense that I finally fell in love with Ofrenda driving through the remote deserts of the great Southwest; somewhere between Colorado, New Mexico (Truth of Consequences FTW!) and Arizona, somewhere between 2023 & 2024, somewhere between death & life. Living like Roselit Bone. Always on the run & always on the road. Always holding on… Always letting go… If you’ve ever stayed at a shitty motel in a shitty American town, grab a six pack of beer and a pack of smokes and let Ofrenda wash you away. Long live Roselit Bone, the greatest fucking American band!

“I don’t even mind it / the lightning or the wind / I thought that I would find it when the roses bloom again / but I came to my senses / out in Truth or Consequences…”

SHALOM / Sublimation

The first thing you hear on Shalom’s instantly arresting debut album is Shalom’s voice, bluntly opening the aptly named “Narcissist” with the line “Oh god I think about myself so much.” In a way, that line not only explains what I love so much about Shalom’s writing, but also what I personally am trying to work on in what has been a hard, sometimes selfish year. For the record, “Narcissist” kicks off Sublimation with an explosive, late 90s, grungy fire, singing like an angry Alanis over Third Eye Blind “wooooos”! Shalom’s writing goes deep on her feelings, the good, the bad, the stuff that needs to be worked out internally (or in this case, externally! For our -the listeners- benefit) before she/we/me can turn our focus outward to changing the world. All this work can happen simultaneously of course, but self introspection, self challenge, and self growth, are essential to making the world a better place, in whatever field you are in.

Musically, Sublimation is my favorite kind of album. Glowing with color & light, ranging from ragged, modern indie rock, aforementioned 90’s grunge and radio rock, to upbeat fun pop. Shalom Obisie-Orlu is an indie kids’ indie kid, Baltimore born, South African raised, living in Brooklyn; writing honest, scathing bedroom rock & roll. As with most of the albums on this list, the writing is what sets Sublimation apart. Shalom is a fascinating writer, her Instagram is a must-follow, she writes bluntly & honestly about her life, the good & the bad, her writing style is equal parts laugh out loud funny and hippie inspiring. She refuses to dull down or sanitize any of her feelings. She rages, she rambles, she sings about the important things, she wholeheartedly looks at the world and asks what she can do to make it better, to make herself better.

On Sublimation release day she wrote this on instagram:

“Most importantly, this album is for my 12 year old yellow loving self who knew she was different and didn’t know what to do about it. Little me, we figured it out! And it’s so good. I’m so so thankful & grateful to all the past versions of me that didn’t give up and allowed us to be here now. I’ve been crying my eyes out all morning.”

Some of my favorite writing, and a lot of my favorite albums contain songs written for past versions of yourself. On my 2020 Favs list, Joy Oladokun referenced writing the songs that 12 year old christian & queer Joy needed to hear. Shalom thanks past versions of herself for not giving up, for pushing her to get where she is now. In a year where I have struggled and have felt little dashes of that same kind of “giving up” in a way I haven’t felt before, I can also feel myself pushing through, surviving, and moving forward. It’s nice to have an album full of songs celebrating that survival to sing along to.

“I wanna be older for the first time in my life… / I wanna be yours, but I have to be mine first…”

SOFIA KOURTESIS / Madres

I discovered Sofia Kourtesis’ glowing, dancing debut album Madres in the dark of November, when I was struggling mentally, emotionally & physically. The Solstice was still over a month out, I was trapped in some cycles of things that weren’t healthy and I wasn’t treating myself well. Something about Sofia’s bright, uplifting rhythms & melodies, her gossamer vocals and airy soundscapes, started chipping away at my soul, and although it may be (like a lot of my writing about music tends to be!) a slight exaggeration, saved me and kept me going through another dark, dark winter. Indeed there is a Spring-like warmth in Madres that I haven’t really felt in a lot of music that sounds like this. Kourtesis is a world renowned DJ, curating and performing at Berlin’s famous Funkhaus, but her philosophy is simple “At the end, you make music for the people” she says “so the people have to be in the music as well” I feel like my favorites list is always so full of inward facing albums, important writing about self reflection & self love, but the community that you can feel in Kourtesis’ writing, the outward facing, “dancing together” vibe, is palpable & welcome, celebratory & joyful.

I’m the first to say that I don’t listen to a ton of “EDM” but there is something magical in Kourtesis’ writing style, and the more I listened and read and watched her interviews, I became entranced with the juxtaposition (maybe collaging is a better word) inherent in her work. She floats a line between the technical (“nerdy” she calls it) structure of the high class DJ world, but forgoes rules and imbues her work with found sounds, delightful dance breaks, and the carefree approach of a true artist. Born in Lima, Peru, Kourtesis moved to Berlin in her late teens, and that duality is at the core of what makes Madres so inspiring. She talks about the romanticism of her Peruvian heart, the silliness, the yearning, the sea, the airy nonsense, floating away. When those feelings meet the all-business practicality of her new German home, the work ethic, the structure, the magic of Madres is born. Long ago, I made my best friend Stephen a mixtape inspired by a line in the movie “Interstellar” about a similar juxtaposition between “The Dirt & The Stars.” The idea is simple, our work is here on earth, in the dirt, hands always filthy, digging away at finding our place in the rocks & trees, grass & sea. But to let our eyes drift to the stars, to float, like Kourtesis’ airborne acrobatics, to dream about another life beyond this one, is at the root of what makes us human. To dream about what’s out there. To wonder what it must be like to fly like Peter Pan through a night sky full of stars, these things can, and (to people like me and my friend Stephen - and my friend Sofia!) MUST coexist. We must hold both at the same time. We must try to be the best person we can, both at digging in the dirt… AND sailing in the stars!

Madres is dedicated to Sofia’s mother, a Peruvian activist in a long line of activists, who taught her to take to the streets, to protest, to rebel, to be yourself, to want more. Somehow I know that Sofia and her mom are the kind of people I want to surround myself with, to look up to, to emulate, to take motivation from. Before her father passed away, he encouraged her to travel, to collage her adventures into the kind of inspirational house music that makes Madres so special. To listen to these songs, you can hear the people. You can hear Sofia’s familial bonds, but also, cultures, rhythms, explorations, adventure. This is the sound of wanting to do better. To be the best version of yourself. When things were dark in November, this album helped with my survival, helped with my sanity, and proved, as track 4 says “How Music Makes You Feel Better.” Go listen to Madres till Spring! Thank you Sofia for being yourself.

“Vamos vamos para adelante / dime qué está en tu mente / vas a querer hablarme…

Come on, let’s move forward / tell me what’s on your mind / you’re going to want to talk to me…”

TRÉ BURT / Traffic Fiction

Tré Burt’s magical third album Traffic Fiction opens with one of my favorite lyrics of the year. “In the mind of the wind is where I come from” Burt purrs over the grooviest beat. You can point to a few different “mission statement” lyrics across Traffic (in the reckless “KIDS IN THA YARD” he growls “I do what I want when I’m paying the rent / I’ll never be free, but I can pretend” and in the bittersweet “PIECE OF ME” he confides “Who said it ain’t a love song mama? / More than one thing can be true”) but “TRAFFIC FICTION” is the title track for a reason. Burt has described the idea of “Traffic Fiction” as “the fake problems us humans create for ourselves and subjugate each other to, out of spite, greed, boredom, pain, confusion & ignorance or worse…” How do we ride through those atrocities (as small as traffic and as monstrous as genocide) and do right in the world? How do we eat breakfast when everything is on fire? Personally, I’ve struggled with this all year, but sometimes I need artists like Burt to help explain it to me. When the end comes, we’re gonna need our artists, our creatives, to tell the stories. Legendary author Ursula Le Guin said “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted & changed by human beings. Resistance & change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” This is why we need artists like Burt to be true to themselves. Everybody has to attack the shit from their deepest, most personal angle. Burt calls Traffic a “romance at the start of the apocalypse” album, and despite the waves of darkness, it’s hard not to hear Burt physically grabbing back his joy in every song. His attack, his writing style, is not of this world. His mind is different. “In the mind of the wind is where I come from.” Burt is a one-of-a-kind generational talent, and when the aliens come, I think I’ll just throw them a burned CD copy of Traffic Fiction, a six pack of mexican beer, and a cigarette. When that alien spaceship speaker sound system blinks on and roars to life, Traffic Fiction sounds for all the world like the grooviest, most monstrous American album I’ve ever heard.

I won’t go deep on genres here, Traffic Fiction mostly just sounds like Tré Burt. He calls it “future doo-wop.” Groovy synths & keys abound, guitars squeal & crash, ripple & stream, and the rhythm section ABSOLUTELY FUCKS. Musically, Fiction sounds exactly like what I want out of a “romance at the start of the apocalypse” record. We’re fucked, let’s dance. Burt steers everything with his detailed, time-traveling songwriting & classic voice. He has a way of making his trademark melancholy melodies feel haunting & bright, like a breezy, early spring afternoon. Originally from northern California and currently based in Nashville, Traffic has an otherworldly vibe that’s hard to pin down. What started as a poem written on a napkin in a Calgary bar, was recorded at a remote lake in Ontario, with Burt referring to the songwriting process as “going down to the caves” and whipping himself into a state of hypnosis to “get to the goo.” These songs ask all-time questions like “If everything’s already been said, then why do I feel so much coming out?” and “What’s in heaven that aint buried in the ground?” In the driving “TOLD YA THEN” Burt laughs “I like a desperate situation, but only the kind where ya win.” and then again on personal fav “SANTIAGO” “I’ve been meaning to forget about all the pain in my heart.” For all the deep, existential, future-alien-doo-wop ideas, Traffic Fiction is rooted in real places & with real people. Santiago in 2022, Decatur, Savannah, Times Square, Wyoming, LA, Ohio, Lillian, Emily, and of course Burt’s grandfather. Fiction is interspersed with recordings of their conversations, before he passed away while Burt was making the album. Musically & lyrically, I can hear Burt’s “pops” all over this record. A future generation being born as another generation dies. The passing of time.

When the title track (and third single) dropped ON my 37th birthday last Summer, I knew Tré & I were gonna be bonded forever. Bonded by the Summer heat, sweat & Modelos, the river & the romance at the start of the apocalypse. It began when I saw him live for the first time ON my 35th birthday in rugged northern Colorado back in 2021. Then, on the eve of my 36th bday, I saw his afternoon set at Hinterlands Festival in Iowa. For my 37th bday, all I could do was spin “TRAFFIC FICTION” on repeat, sitting in the creek at my secret spot, drinking Tecate and feeling young & old. Turns out Traffic Fiction is the album that I think I’m gonna need most in 2024. I’m working hard on taking some of Tre’s teachings to heart, trying to take a little joy into this next year, knowing that I’ll be a stronger person for it. Better able to fight those atrocities, better able to handle the “traffic.” You gotta be yourself first and love yourself. If you’ve read this far, you know that 2023 was sad & hard and I often felt helpless & selfish, unable to fight to change the world. Unable or unwilling to make a difference to the people & causes that I claim to care about. Traffic Fiction gives me the energy to work against those feelings. Ammunition to fight darkness with dancing. To embrace the apocalypse with romance. To commit to changing myself. It catches me with the car windows down, warm breeze in January, belting “I found a lighter in my coat!” It catches me dancing in my kitchen at dusk. It catches me starting to believe. Thanks Tré, I’m never letting this one go.

“Put the fine for the bridge on the dash for the judge / let it burn like a witch in the rhinestone sun / every mile every mile I’mma get reborn / but I’m dying by the minute good lord / move move moving, never going back / silver moon is looming, sky is black / I’m a soul on parole in a desert land / thrown back into prison and damned by the damned…”

TYPHOON / White Lighter (10th Anniversary Edition)

“In the beginning there was one source of light” So begins Typhoon’s masterpiece 2013 album White Lighter. A grand stage that finds this album traversing galaxies & centuries. The orchestral, mini-epic opener “Artificial Light” is one of my favorite songs of all time. Frontman Kyle Morton skips through eons of time, touching on particle physics and prehistoric cave drawings, before finding himself as a kid, standing in the yard, pointing up at the stars. We’ll revisit that kid a few times across these 14 songs, White Lighter is still singing us stories about youth & aging, time & place, death… and survival. Over the past 10 years, I have lived what feels like a lifetime. I have changed more than I would have thought possible. But I have also remained the same. From the first time I heard Typhoon, I have been hooked. This band & this album represent so much of who I am… and who I was… and I guess who I’m going to be. Although this list is usually about the new, it’s impossible for me not to pay homage to one of my favorite albums of all time. If you’ve asked me the impossible question in the last 7 years “who’s your favorite band” I probably gave you a cutesy spiel about finding new & upcoming songwriters whose writing style made me feel understood, emo hippie lyrics over sad-ish, complex indie rock, but always about the lyrics. But if I had to relent and pick one band, I probably said Typhoon. If you asked me what my favorite album of all time is, I probably said White LIghter. The older I get and the deeper I fall in love with music; the more this collection of songs means to me, and the more I cling to Typhoon’s ragged declaration of youth & survival.

If you’re unfamiliar, Typhoon started as the greatest of rag-tag, underdog indie folk-rock bands. 13 kids packed on a stage, from Portland Oregon to Larimer Lounge & Hi-Dive, to Bluebird & Gothic, making a ruckus, singing their hearts out for us. You can find me extolling my love for White Lighter 10 years ago, and making myself insanely detailed handmade mixtapes celebrating their discography! Typhoon lyrics are tattooed on my heart & brain, always helping me through challenges, always making me feel young again. When they announced the deluxe 10 year anniversary edition of White Lighter (and a couple reunion shows, see ya in Portland in a month and a half!) the only “unreleased” song I really needed was “Reed Rd.” When I saw them at the sold out Hi-DIve show in 2013 (one of my favorite live experiences of all time) they closed with a new song I had never heard. I was eventually able to rip a live version from youtube, and for years, my personal burned copy of White Lighter tacked on a bonus hidden track after “Post Script.” The shitty yet raging “Reed Rd” made this the definitive version of the album. The song that closes White Lighter’s memory loop. A stoic, horn blast, a swelling elegy, death & life & the end of the world. “You were born in a hospital bed” begins Morton gently “you will return to a hospital bed my friend.” This is a song about dying. “Life’s a beast that shits & eats from the same end.” But there is so much more than death “Get the keys, we’re gonna go for a ride!” From there the song rattles along through a lifetime of memories. Maybe my last 10 years, maybe my whole life. Like a film strip Morton lists them off as they pass. Places: the house you were raised in, the yard where you played (and pointed out the stars remember?), the school that taught you to talk, and people: your friends & your lovers, people you hate, mothers & fathers, brothers & sisters. In the end, “Reed Rd” drives through the night, covering miles in the darkness, before rising in a cacophony, a horror movie ending full of fire & light, moths & death & madness, a scene so terrifying you almost can’t watch. The band fever pitches, wailing behind him as Morton stumbles on, finally ripping himself away, begging & pleading & making a stand for himself. “I walked away from the fire” he declares “I found myself in the orchard.” And then, after all the years, decades, centuries, eons of failure & frustration, he stands “I came to take up your offer… to no longer be tortured!”

As the insane energy of “Reed Rd” slowly fades, the chaos of growing up & growing old has often found me in a parked car after dark, blasting White Lighter into the night. As quickly as the last track ends, you can start the CD again. Typhoon wakes up. “In the beginning…” Is this youth? Or are we old? The years flow in decade cycles. The older I get, the younger I feel. “I woke up in the morning to a pale light tangled in your hair” Morton whispers. Holding onto memories & moments (a favorite pastime of mine) Morton confides “I would try to hold it. I would try to keep the moment. Like a photograph of the sunset. Like a little kid with a bug net. Like a dying man I swear.” and then, as Typhoon’s orchestra swells & crashes behind him “Light goes off… Comes back on… I’ll be here, In my familiar haunts. Empty jars & stolen songs, wait for the light to come back on…” So here I am. Listening to the same 10 year old songs. Trying to keep the moment. Waiting for the light to come back on. I look forward to 10 years from now. Who I am.. Who I’m gonna be… Growing up & growing old. Remembering those nights when I took up your offer. To no longer be tortured. Songs to hold & keep me. Songs to lead & guide me. My eyes are on the flame. It’s just a little white lighter.

“Oh what am I waiting for? / a spell to be cast or for it to be broken? / at the very last / some wild ghost from my past comes to split me wide open… / I’ve been trying to make myself better…”

Y LA BAMBA / Lucha

Y La Bamba’s seventh full length record Lucha is a magical collection of songs; lush & full of life, swirling Mexican folk-rock, mesmerizing & memorable. Y La Bamba is the long time project of Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos, based between the Pacific Northwest & Mexico City, gradually growing, always expansive, and one of my long-time favorite bands! It’s hard to remember exactly when or where I first heard about Y La Bamba, but I have a hunch it was through boutique record label and music store Tender Loving Empire in Portland. But more on that later!.

Lucha finds Luz coming into their own, writing powerful lyrics over delightfully dreamy melodies, lyrics gently unpacking ideas of identity & trauma, misogyny & racism. As with many artists on this list, it is always eye opening and educational to read lyrics & interviews, to actually listen, and to learn about struggles that I personally will never have to face. Mendoza Ramos is open about those struggles and their trauma, and Lucha is an open invitation to work on those conversations. It also reminds me that I really want to learn Spanish! The heart-aching Hank Williams cover “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is one of the few songs sung in English. “Lucha” is Spanish for “fight,” but it is also an endearing nickname that Mendoza Ramos has claimed over the years. Luz has also taken over production duties on Lucha, and their fingerprints are all over the album, filling it with life, love & care. This is the fullest Y La Bamba has ever sounded; deep & complex, songs bursting with rhythms & sound, tropical bird chirps, rainstorms, summer wind & waves. The songs blend silkily into each other, warm spring mornings awash in sunlight, streaming creek beds full of snowmelt, late night red wine & mezcal, cascading thoughts & memories, black & white photos and vivid color palettes.

As we reach the end of my annual favorite albums list, it’s cool to see the similarities in so many of these albums. Lucha’s ambient, tropical found sounds echo No-No Boy, Angie McMahon, Sofia Kourtesis, & King Tuff. Their songwriting AND production prowess echoes Becca Mancari & Black Belt Eagle Scout. The connections through over a decade of my music loving & searching, are deep. In the Winter of 2012, my dear friend Malachi had just moved to Portland and he gave me TLE’s Friends & Friends of Friends mixtape Vol 4. It opened with Typhoon’s “The Honest Truth” and track 3 was Y La Bamba’s “Abducted” off their 2010 album Lupon. SInce then, every time I visit Portland (and it’s in the double digits, see ya in march PDX!) I would go into TLE, buy postcards, weird art, patches, christmas presents, and ALWAYS… music! I now own Y La Bamba’s entire discography on CD simply from buying them one at a time, years apart, from TLE. I listened mostly as background music, dreamy & warm when it’s cold outside, moodsetters on my little portable boombox as I moved apartments from 32nd & Lowell, to Colfax & Logan, then into the heart of Cap Hill at 12th & Marion, and finally to now, 11th & Clarkson. In 2015, in the midst of a career & life crisis, I applied for a job at TLE, scared to get it, scared to move forward, scared to move at all. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t get that job, but when I finally FINALLY quit my corporate job in 2021 to start from the ground up working in music, I was asked to work my first shift in music at Larimer Lounge immediately after I got hired. The show was sold out and magical, the band was Y La Bamba.

"Estaba muy confundida por los recuerdos / de un triste ayer / todo de color azul / de color amarillo..."

"I was very confused by the memories / from a sad yesterday / all blue & all yellow..."

EP BONUS

DUNUMS & MANAS / DUNUMS & MANAS

Blown out live noise, only available on bandcamp. Dunums is a wild, majestic band I was lucky enough to see at Hopscotch last year.

HEMLOCKE SPRINGS / going…going…GONE!

80’s Tears For Fears magic meets TikTok, heart on sleeve silly songwriting. So catchy!

ICE SPICE / Like..?

Catchy trap beats and Ice Spice bringing some much needed feral, laugh out loud, sexy energy to this list.

MEDIUM BUILD / Health EP

Songs about your hometown & your lifelong best friends. One of my most favorite Globe Hall shows of 2023.

NABIHAH IQBAL / Far Out (Audiotree Sessions)

Her album Dreamer should’ve been on my full list, but I discovered this too late so oh well, these two songs are magic. Her Lost Lake show a week ago was special.

SYLVAN ESSO / Live At Electric Lady

What I wouldn’t give for a full band Sylvan Esso album. “Coming Back To You” at Red Rocks with my sisters in the rain made my year.

Till next year! Music marks time & space...

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