#jake xerxes fussell

[dustedmagazine]

Jake Xerxes Fussell—When I’m Called (Fat Possum)

Folk musician and curator Jake Xerxes Fussell was initially known for recordings with a front porch vibe. On his latest, When I’m Called, some performances hew to traditional lines. The album’s opener, “Andy,” is a story about Andy Warhol by Maestro Gaxiola, depicting a pseudo-rivalry between the artists. Fussell plays it simply, just acoustic guitar and voice, giving the song a rustic rework.

Elsewhere, new and past collaborators perform with Fussell. Like his 2022 release, Good and Green Again, James Elkington produces, creating elaborate arrangements and contributing instruments to several of the songs. Other frequent collaborators join them, including horn-player Anna Jacobsen, guitarist Blake Mills, bassist Ben Whitely, who plays both electric and upright bass and drummer Joe Westerlund. Musicians new to Fussell’s orbit include string player Jane Cook and woodwind performer Hunter Diamond. Throughout, Fussell’s understated baritone allows the words practically to speak for themselves.

Fussell culls another selection from a different source than usual. Composer Benjamin Britten collected many folk songs, arranging them for classical and scholastic musicians. Britten’s collaboration with Jane Taylor, “Cuckoo,” is given the Fussell/Elkington treatment, obscuring its rather formal source. Joan Shelley provides backing vocals on the chorus.

One of Fussell’s mentor figures, the poly artist and folklorist Art Rosenbaum, passed away in 2022. Several songs from Rosenbaum’s collection are featured on When I’m Called: “Leaving Here, Don’t Know Where I’m Going” the Scottish ballad “Feeing Day,” “Gone to Hilo,” “Who Killed Poor Robin”, and the album closer “Going to Georgia.” Each is treated a each bit differently: “Leaving Here…” has a pastoral vibe that includes winds, harmonica, and piano, “Feeing Day” has sustained horn chords in the background, “Who Killed Poor Robin” incorporates an inexorable character in the rhythm section and Elkington playing tangy organ chords and autoharp, “Gone to Hilo” has guitar soloing from Fussell and Elkington on pedal steel and organ, and “Going to Georgia” has Mills providing an extra guitar, Cook strings, Elkington organ and feedback, and Whitely and Westerlund grounding the whole in an Appalachian mid-tempo pattern. While many of the songs are given relatively brief renditions, “Going to Georgia” allows the musicians a chance to stretch out a bit.

Fussell is still a captivating figure singing by himself with a guitar; I wouldn’t want to see his front porch abandoned. However, this album's changes in approach and material invariably work. These and the talents of his collaborators help When I’m Called to be one of Fussell’s strongest recordings to date.

Christian Carey

[musicwithoutborders]

Jake Xerxes Fussell, Washington I Good and Green Again, 2022

[inclusivefenders]

Jake Xerxes Fussell - "Frolic"

[sinceileftyoublog]

Jake Xerxes Fussell Live Show Review: 10/17, Empty Bottle, Chicago

Jake Xerxes Fussell

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Over the years, Jake Xerxes Fussell's repertoire and sound have expanded, though he's never lost sight of his exploratory ethos. On his self-titled debut and sophomore effort What in the Natural World, he introduced himself as a contemporary troubadour, an interpreter who used original arrangements to surface the universal meaning out of old songs. 2019's Out of Sight was his first record with a full band, 2022's Good and Green Again his first to combine traditional songs with wholly original compositions. In July, Fussell brought it all together on his debut album for Fat Possum, When I'm Called; it's an album featuring a murderer's row of collaborators and songs that Fussell constructed backwards, coming up with melodies and riffs before adapting them to folk songs that fit.

On When I'm Called, legends Fussell knew who may or may not have met each other, like cowboy artist Maestro Gaxiola and painter, musician, and folklorist Art Rosenbaum (a mentor of Fussell's who passed away in 2022), are intimate bedfellows. Fussell lifts from the public domain, Benjamin Britten, and found poetry on a scrap of paper. Returning are close collaborators like James Elkington, in the producer's chair and playing seemingly everything from synth to harmonica, as well as Joan Shelley, singing alongside Fussell's baritone on "Cuckoo!". Uniting with Fussell for the first time are guitar luminary Blake Mills, whose abstract tones nestle between Fussell's acoustic guitar and Elkington's pedal steel on "Going to Georgia", and Hunter Diamond, whose woodwinds pop up just when you need them most, like a consistent smiling face around the neighborhood. In general, on When I'm Called, more than ever, the band gets room to meander, to take in their surroundings.

Fussell & Ben Whiteley

How, then, would Fussell, who usually plays solo, adapt the arrangements not just to a live stage, but for a crowd who has had months to take in the recorded versions? Indeed, Thursday's show at the Empty Bottle featured the youngest crowd I've ever seen at a Fussell headlining show. Some of that, perhaps, had to do with the venue itself and the start time of his set (after 10 P.M.). But something tells me, at this point, people are less inclined to hear beloved old songs and more amped for Fussell specifically, the guitar player who picks bright-eyed on "Jump for Joy", the singer who belts, "Well, wake up woman, take your big leg off of mine," on "Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing on a Sweet Potato Vine?". (I went to get a beer at the bar as he sang, passing by a crowd member cackling, turning to their friend and declaring, "I love that line!") Well, for one, Fussell didn't play solo this time. He was always accompanied by bassist Ben Whiteley, who plays on When I'm Called. Whiteley's steady plucking eased us into "Michael Was Hearty", and his rhythms buoyed Fussell's chugging guitars on an unexpected, but great cover of Nick Lowe's new wave classic "I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass". As we were in Chicago, Elkington, too, joined Fussell on stage for a number of songs, providing contrasting guitar textures on "Cuckoo!" Even The Weather Station's Tamara Lindeman, all the way from Toronto, was in the crowd and came on for backing vocals.

Fussell

It's easy to say that what is usually a lonesome affair turned into a party, given that the number of people on stage at any given moment quadrupled from its usual number. The more I thought about it, though, whether it's four musicians crowding around each other or just Fussell perched on a stool, his shows are always communal. On Thursday, the most affecting and memorable moments of the night were spontaneous. Out of Sight's "Jubliee" started as a singalong and felt like a full-on hymnal towards the end, the crowd repeating, "Swing and turn, Jubilee / Live and learn, Jubilee," like it was a mantra of keeping-on. And then there was "Donkey Riding", a traditional song which does not (yet) have a studio version, inspiring the biggest, and somehow still most polite sing-and-clap-along of the night. The moment the crowd seemed to get a tad too rowdy, we shushed each other so we could hear one last instrumental flourish, one last guitar lick from the artist who continues to give us gifts we didn't even know we already had.

[musiconspotify]

Jake Xerxes Fussell - When I’m Called (2024) … his fifth album …

[nexusrasp]

Edmonton Folk Fest photodump

best sets, pictured here: S. G. Goodman, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Jess Williamson, and Elisapie. also big shoutout to Buffalo Nichols, Miko Marks, Ruen Brothers, The Langan Band, KT Tunstall, and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss (really!). all amazing artists who i didn't get pictures of on stage.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: Linda Thompson Special

Y'all, I'll be back on the Dublab airwaves this Sunday 4-6pm PST for another installment of Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard, which Chad DePasquale and I put together every dang month. I am unclear who listens to this thing (hey I'm unclear who reads D&GFTT, now that you mention it), but I enjoy doing it, getting some sounds out there for anyone who needs/wants it.

This month, as a follow-up to my recent interview with her, I've made a mix of Linda Thompson deep cuts/rarities/favorites that stretches from the late 1960s to the singer's new one, Proxy Music. There's plenty of Richard Thompson in there, but also Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny and even Elton freaking John. A good listen — it'll be archived via Dublab a few days after it airs, but what the heck, it's more fun to tune in as it happens, right? (Semi-related: I encourage you to check out my infamous brother's ongoing Sandy Saturdays series, which is only rarely published on Saturdays.)

Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard is free to all; Aquarium Drunkard, as of this spring, is a member-based website these days. I'm biased of course, but AD is better than ever in 2024 — just this week we've published my Danny Paul Grody interview, a Jake Xerxes Fussell Q&A, an insightful appreciation of Herbie Hancock's Fat Albert Rotunda and a look at Anne Phillips' hidden gem of jazz noir, Born To Be Blue. And more!

[dustedmagazine]

Learning to go out again:  Jennifer Kelly’s 2022 in review

Meg Baird plays Chicago

Meg Baird calls it “people practice,” the ordinary skills that we require to interact successfully with other human beings. Small talk, the appropriate amount of eye contact, a certain minimal degree of comfort in crowds: these are all things that eroded in the pandemic.  And going even further, I’d add we ran short of “leaving your living room practice,” the difficult process of readjusting to unpredictable environments again. I got really bad at that in 2020 and 2021.

So, while 2022 was, in many ways, a joyous return to the norm, it was also deeply uncomfortable. Again and again, I’d show up far too early to shows and avoid talking to strangers.  I’d mistake soundchecks for music. I’d get bands mixed up and think the opener was the headliner or at least the second band. It was like I’d never been to a show in my life.  But gradually, over a year that was really genuinely rich in opportunities to see live music, I started to remember why I loved it — and how to be marginally less annoying to everyone around me. And I got to see some wonderful performances.

There was James Xerxes Fussell’s intricately re-arranged Americana on the eve of a blizzard in January and Jaimie Branch’s mesmerizing Anteloper just a month or so before she died. Our local festival, Thing in the Spring, once again delivered incredible abundance with Lee Ranaldo, Myriam Gendron, Jeff Parker, Tashji Dorji and others all taking turns on the stage. I experienced the twilight magic of Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles on a back porch in Northampton as the bats darted overhead, as well as the viscera-stirring low tones of Sarah Davachi at a three-story-tall pipe organ at Epsilon Spires in Brattleboro. I got to see one of my very favorite bands, Oneida, at a club in Greenfield, MA, late in the year. I saw my friend Eric Gagne’s band Footings expand Bonny Prince Billy’s songs into epic, twanging bravado. Yo La Tengo came to my tiny little town and tore the place down.  In Chicago for my birthday weekend, I got a chance to hear Meg Baird and Chris Forsyth at a whiskey distillery on the Chicago River. It was a great year. I’m so glad I was there for it.  

It was also an exceptional year for recorded music as, honestly, it always is. Here are the records I enjoyed the most in 2022, but don’t pay too much attention to the numbers. The order could change tomorrow, and I may very well discover more favorites in other people’s lists.  (We’ll have a Slept On feature at some point early in 2023.) I’ve written a little bit about the top ten, but you can find longer reviews of most of them in the Dusted archives. I’ve linked these where available.

1. Winged Wheel—No Island (12XU): An underground-all-star remote collaboration melds the hard punk jangle of Rider/Horse’s Cory Plump, the unyielding percussion of Fred Thomas, the radiant guitar textures of Matthew J. Rolin and the ethereal vocal atmospheres of Matchess’ Whitney Johnson in a driving, enveloping otherworld. Just gorgeous.  

2. Oneida—Success (Joyful Noise): The best band of the aughts has dabbled in all manner of droning, experimental forms in recent years, but with Success, they return to basics.  “Beat Me to the Punch” and “I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand” are gleeful bangers.  “Paralyzed” is a keyboard pulsing, beat-rattling psychedelic dreamworld. Success is Oneida’s best album since Secret Wars and maybe ever. (I wrote the one-sheet for Success, but I would feel this way regardless.)

3. Cate Le Bon—Pompeii (Drag City): Eerie, madcap Pompeii refracts pandemic alienation through the lens of ancient disaster, floating narcotic imagery atop herky-jerk rhythms.  Abstract and experimental, but also sublimely pop, Pompeii haunts and charms in equal measure.  

4. Destroyer—Labyrinthitis (Merge):  Dan Bejar is always interesting, but the COVID lockdown seems to have shaken him loose a bit. Labyrinthitis is typically arch, elliptical and elegant, but also a bit unhinged. Hear it in the extended rap that closes “June” or in the manic disco beat of “Suffer” or oblique but perfect wordplay in “Tinoretto, It’s for You.”  

5. Horsegirl—Versions of Modern Performance (Matador): Horsegirl elicits a lysergic roar that’s loud but somehow serene, urgent but chilled. The trio out of Chicago were everywhere suddenly and all at once, as sometimes happens to bands, but on the strength of “World of Pots and Pans” and “Billy” I suspect they’ll stick around.  

6. Jake Xerxes Fussell—Good and Green Again (Paradise of Bachelors): An early favorite that refused to fade, Good and Green Again considers old-time music from a variety of angles, often incorporating more than one version of a traditional tune in a seamless way.  The music is lovely, made more exquisite still by James Elkington’s arrangements, which are subtle, right and unexpected.  

7. Lambchop—The Bible (Merge): Stark and lavish at the same time, The Bible catches Kurt Wagner at his morose and mesmerizing best. Surreal sonic textures—including orchestral flourishes and autotuned funk beats—wreathe his weathered baritone, as he traipses through ordinary landscapes turned strange and warped.  

8. The Weather Station—How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars (Fat Possum): Tamara Lindeman drew on Toronto’s vibrant jazz community to form her band for this sixth album as the Weather Station. The band improvised alongside here as it learned the songs. As a result, these songs have the usual pristine folk purity, but also a haze of late night sophistication in elegant runs of piano and pensive plucks of bass.  

9. The Reds, Pinks and Purples—Summer at Land’s End (Slumberland): Glenn Donaldson is pretty much the best at bittersweet jangle pop right now, and this wistful, graceful collection of songs about life’s dissatisfactions is every bit as good as last year’s Uncommon Weather. Plus it’s got a seven-plus minute improvised guitar piece right in the middle, what’s not to love?

10. Tha Retail Simps—Reverberant Scratch (Total Punk): Montreal’s Retail Simps make ferocious garage rock with a bit of soul in its tail feathers. “Hit and Run” sounds like a lost Sam and the Shams b-side and “End of Times – Hip Shaker” with having doing exactly that. If they ever remake Animal House, here’s the band. 

25 more albums I loved: 

Non Plus Temps—Desire Choir (Post-Present Medium)

Joan Shelley—The Spur (Important)

Mountain Goats—Bleed Out (Merge)

The Sadies—Colder Streams (Yep Roc)

Spiritualized—Everything Was Beautiful (Fat Possum)

Superchunk—Wild Loneliness (Merge)

Hammered Hulls—Careening (Dischord)

Kilynn Lunsford—Custodians of Human Succession (Ever/Never)

Oren Ambarchi/Johan Berthling/Andreas Werliin—Ghosted (Drag City)

Green/Blue—Paper Thin (Feel It)

E—Any Information (Silver Rocket)

Sick Thoughts—Heaven Is No Fun (Total Punk)

Pedro the Lion—Havasu (Polyvinyl)

Pan*American—The Patience Fader (Kranky)

Weak Signal—War & War (Colonel)

Frog Eyes—The Bees (Paper Bag)

Pinch Points—Process (Exploding in Sound)

LIFE—True North (The Liquid Label)

Mary Lattimore & Paul Sukeena—West Kensington (Three Lobed)

Wau Wau Collectif—Mariage (Sahel Sounds)

Vintage Crop—Kibitzer (Upset the Rhythm)

Anna Tivel—Outsiders (Mama Bird)

Chronophage—S-T (Post-Present Medium/Bruit Direct Disques)

Sélébéyone— Xaybu: The Unseen (Pi)

Zachary Cale—Skywriting (Org Music)

Jennifer Kelly

[soliti]

SOLITI 2023: THE END OF YEAR LISTS

Triani from Soliti

The Good Times Lovely Soliti releases from Ghosts on TV, Juppe, Stinako and Knife Girl.

Old Music Ennio Morricone – Quando l’amore e Sensualita Beach Boys – Friends George Michael – Older Felt discography The Songs of Bacharach and Costello was on constant rotation (my fave reissue of the year.) Teardrop Explodes – Culture Bunker box set Lana Del Ray – Norman Fucking Rockwell Rip Rig & Panic – I Am Cold Plush – More You Becomes You Neil Young – Chrome Dreams Stevie Wonder – Fulfilling His First Finale Joan Baez – Blessed Are Paul Weller – 22 dreams Sault discography Velvet Underground – Loaded Thelonious Monk – Straight, No Chaser Arthur Russell – Picture of Bunny Rabbit David Sylvian discography

New Music I didn’t think this year offered much until I put this list together. It’s been quietly fabulous.

Lana Del Ray – Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd Kara Jackson – Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? Robert Forster – The Candle And The Flame SAZ – SOS Feist – Multitudes King Krule – Space Heavy Christine and the Queens – PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE Overmono – Good Lies Ryuichi Sakamoto – 12 The Lemon Twigs – Everything Harmony John Cale – Mercy Bar Italia – Tracey Denim Sufjan Steven – Javelin Wilco – Cousin Sparklehorse – Bird Machine Amanda Brown – Eight Guitars Durand Jones – Wait Til I Get Over Lil Yachty – Let’s Start Here. Beach Fossils – Bunny ANHONI – My Back Was a Bridge For You To Cross Lankum – False Lankum Mitski – The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We El Michels Affair & Black Thought – Glorious Game

Best tracks Everything But The Girl – Nothing Left To Lose Dexys – My Submission Lana Del Rey – A&W

Devendra Banhart – Sirens Kara Jackson – no fun/party Knife Girl – Estrogen Felt – Primitive Painters

TV, films books The Bear (TV series) The Last of Us (TV series) Mrs Davis (TV Series) The Last Movie Stars (TV Series) Welcome to Wrexham (TV Series) Dirty Harry movie box set (all five movies) Richard Jewell (Film) Crimes oF The Future (Film) Barbie vs Oppenheimer (loved both of these) The Exorcist (Film) Love to Love You, Donna Summer (documentary) Quentin Tarantino – Cinema Speculation (Book) Dylan Jones – Loaded: The Life (and Afterlife) of the Velvet Underground (Book) Alan Moore/Jacen Burrows – Neonomicon (Book) Collected Judge Dredd (Books) Sight & Sound (magazine) The Guardian (online) The Quietus (online)

This is a good thing My family and home life. It’s still my favourite place to be. Football in all its gross financial injustices, still remains a truly entertaining, all welcoming spectacle – a break from our  realities. I spent a lot of my days obsessed with the beautiful game. My own team Tottenham’s reimagining as a team for the neutral under Ange Postecoglou. I’ve had a serious post-covid hangover about going out; crowds and especially going to concerts. But still this year I managed to catch a few shows. John Cale and Knife Girl at the Helsinki Festival was very special. Elvis Costello at Kulttuuritalo was a great way to spend an evening – I didn’t really want it to end (and this was also a rare date with my partner!) Emma Ruth Rundle, Sorry, Jake Xerxes Fussell were good festival experiences. I’m an eternal optimist with dreams that we can all get along, people can be who they wanna be and somehow humanity pulls together to save the planet. My dream state staves off the dark feelings that are increasingly hard to ignore.

This is a low The Israel demolition of Palestine in response to Hamas atrocities is a key world happening which will resonate for decades to come. British Conservatives and all right wing ideologues who – in collusion with the mainstream media – spend most of their time demonising refugees and the trans community. The public discussion around minorities in Finland is base and inhumane. This right-wing Finnish government has been a hard dose of reality that has sprung many of us out of our comfort zones. The casual racism of the Finnish government has normalised terminology that should offend everyone. Disgraceful. The lack of a moral compass or compassion in world politics – who exactly are the good guys? I hope someone could point out who’s looking out for us all nowadays? Elon Musk and the destabilising of Twitter. He just couldn’t leave it alone could he? The unstoppable rise of AI. It’s a slow process (or maybe a fast one) that results in the death of a certain kind of creativity. Hearing that some people in the Music business are using AI to write press releases is a little sad. The Saudi exploitation of football.  It doesn’t stop. How long till the whole of football is owned by Saudi Arabia? The Vinyl market  becoming an expensive artefact for the wealthy. In typical Music Industry fashion, the vinyl format becomes revitalised only for the music industry to make the price prohibitive for most people. Own goals are rarely clearer.

Future To be a better me.

Happy holidays x

[aquariumdrunkard]

The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)

Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.

Intro ++ Cotton Jones – I Was Stoned By The Choir ++ Phosphorescent – The Quotidian Beasts ++ Woods – Weekend Wind ++ Rose City Band – Me And Willie ++ Steve Gunn – The Lurker ++ Cass McCombs & Steve Gunn – Wild Mountain Thyme ++ Cass McCombs – Morning Star ++ Amen Dunes – Splits Are Parted ++ Anna St. Louis – Fire ++ Jake Xerxes Fussell – Frolic ++ Brightblack Morning Light – Miwok Shapes ++ Jake Xerxes Fussell – Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing On A Sweet Potato Vine? ++ Quilt – Cowboys In The Void ++ John Andrews & The Yawns – Drivers > Johnny’s Cookbook ++ Kacy & Clayton – The Siren’s Song ++ Spencer Cullum & Erin Rae – Betwixt And Between ++ The Echocentics – Canyon ++ Cotton Jones – I Was Stoned By The Choir ++ Kacy & Clayton – Springtime Of The Year ++ Tobacco City – Blue Raspberry ++ Color Green – In My Mind ++ Scott Hirsch – No No ++ Natural Child – Out In The Country ++ William Tyler & The Impossible Truth – Area Code 601 (Live)

Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page.

[mondkopf]

Favorite Albums of 2022

Almanac Behind by Daniel Bachman

For Leolanda by Maria Moles

I get along without you very well by Ellen Arkbro & Johan Graden

caroline by caroline

Monuments to Impermanence by Pyrithe

Fleeting Adventure by Andrew Tuttle

Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy by Jeff Parker ETA IVtet

Bonnie Rides With Us by Adam Harding & Thor Harris

Ghosts by HARESS

Sweet Tooth by Mali Obomsawin

ZYGGURAT by Zyggurat

Music for Magnesium_173 by Ian William Craig

Amplified Guitar by Mat Ball

All The Things That Happen by Steve Bates

MCVII - I by DISTANT VOICES

Labyrinthine by Nadja

How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack by Ben McElroy

Good and Green Again by Jake Xerxes Fussell

NOW I AM ALONE BEFORE THE STARS by VILLENEUVE

Earthbound by Tome of the Unreplenished

[kentuckyanarchist]

Songs of 2022

Year-end lists always seem doomed to become outdated. Am I really expected to have heard all the best songs of 2022 in 2022? It’s never going to work, they’ll seep through over the course of the following year or years. But giving it six weeks is better than nothing, so here we are in mid-late February.

1. Tomberlin, “Stoned”.

Stoned indeed: woozy, baffled, bodily undone.

2. Camp Cope, “Running with the Hurricane”.

Camp Cope perfected a bassy, blunt melancholy with How to Socialise & Make Friends; here they don’t so much break from that template as turn it to other—affirmative? aggressive?—purposes.

3. Caroline, “Good Morning (Red)”.

The year’s most something-new-on-every-listen song, its most capacious.

4. Christian Lee Hutson, “Age Difference”.

Lyric of the year: “Do my impression of John Malkovich critiquing food in prison / At first it isn’t funny, then it is, and then it isn’t.”

5. Big Thief, “Change”.

A panoply of possibilities on such a sprawling, immersive album by the absolute best in the game, but this most plaintive and stubborn lament just edges the rest.

6. Rachika Nayar ft. Maria BC, “Heaven Come Crashing”.

Sounds for the silentest disco.

7. The A’s, “Why I’m Grieving”.

A path not taken from an archive not delved-into; a peppy sad spurt of jolly heartbreak.

8. Black Country, New Road, “Snow Globes”.

I’m still not sure if this song’s about going mad, getting old, living through winter, all three, or none.

9. Arctic Monkeys, “Body Paint”.

Searching, insistent: like Alex Turner’s got you caught in a lie.

10. Stella Donnelly, “Cold”.

This could’ve been any of Stella Donnelly’s songs where the lilt of her voice is always dropping into conversationality, but this one, where she ends the conversation, full-stop, shuts me up the most.

11. Martha, “Irreversible Motion”.

So many of these songs are about little things, like the bones of the inner ear; this one maybe more than all the others.

12. Florist, “Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning)”.

A delicate retrospective collage, a slow bashful loving appreciation, a puzzled amazed asking-why, a cautious comfort.

13. Aldous Harding, “Fever”.

Aldous Harding’s songs have this wonderful, dignified refusal to cohere; this one just lopes, or loafs, in and out of view.

14. Meg Baird, “Will You Follow Me Home?”.

The way Meg Baird’s vocals stay half-submerged here is what gets me: “Will You Follow Me Home?” goes from lazy river to maelstrom without you quite noticing.

15. Brian Eno, “Making Gardens Out of Silence”.

If you ask me, “Making Gardens Out of Silence” is a panorama from the time after humans, built from salvage by whatever-comes-next.

16. Hurray for the Riff Raff, “SAGA”.

A lot of these songs express a specifically 2022 kind of bafflement. “SAGA” doesn’t know how to get past this condition either, but it’s pushing against the boundaries.

17. Lana Del Rey, “Watercolor Eyes”.

You think you know someone’s schtick, but they surprise you.

18. Black Belt Eagle Scout, “My Blood Runs Through This Land".

Alternating between wordlessness and breathlessness, either way keeping on building to something.

19. Jake Xerxes Fussell, “Love Farewell”.

Stoic and stolid, Jake Xerxes Fussell bets on metaphor but could’ve made do with just rumble, growl and twinkle.

20. Ezra Furman, “Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club”.

Secret-telling in movie-theatre darkness.

21. Let’s Eat Grandma, “Happy New Year”.

Let’s Eat Grandma have the saddest synths but this one’s rose-coloured.

22. Joshua Burnside, “Louis Mercier”.

Time-travel klezmer-pop that jostles you like a cobbled towpath.

23. Beth Orton, “Weather Alive”.

When talking songs become singing songs so sylphlike and effortless.

24. Sault, “Life We Rent but Love Is Free”.

Sounds like certain small parts of London, for certain small moments, on busy summer days in the past.

25. Bill Callahan, “Coyotes”.

One for slickrock and sagebrush, which are not without their romance.

26. Yard Act, “Tall Poppies”.

A self-consciously small story, a kitchen-sink drama, a talking head, no denouément.

27. Angel Olsen, “All the Good Times”.

A rhinestone widescreen production, a road movie on a soundstage.

28. Beach House, “Hurts to Love”.

Generationally speaking, the ending of Skins series 1 still packs a fair bit of a punch, so rewriting “Wild World” by Cat Stevens makes more sense than you’d think.

29. The 1975, “The 1975”.

Imagine taking “All My Friends” and making it about your cock and it’s still good; that takes rare talent.

30. Craig Finn, “Birthdays”.

Comforting because it really is nice to know there’s someone in this world who’s always known you, and comforting because it’s Craig Finn doing Craig Finn stuff with his big dumb Craig Finn voice.

31. Julia Jacklin, “Lydia Wears a Cross”.

A bodily song: knees, eyes, clothes, adornments.

32. Anaïs Mitchell, “On Your Way (Felix Song)”.

You get the sense Anaïs Mitchell finds nothing all that difficult—eulogising, philosophising, doing justice to a life, picking out the pithiest reminiscences, in just under three minutes she bowls it all over.

33. Billy Woods, “Pollo Rico”.

Intrusive thoughts, compulsion to repeat. A personal history of madness.

34. Bright Eyes, “Arc of Time (Time Code) (Companion Version)”.

This year Bright Eyes re-recorded some of the songs from the 2000s I love/hate the most. “Arc of Time” gets remade without the beats or the keys, but stays smart and wry and death stays on its mind. 

35. Fred again.., “Berwyn (all that i got is you)”.

Fred again..’s songs are urban explorations, entries to London’s subterrene.

36. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Spitting Off the Edge of the World”.

Cosmic.

37. The Big Moon, “Ladye Bay”.

Supersized, tectonic.

38. Drive-By Truckers, “The Driver”.

Grimy, grunting noir.

39. Ethel Cain, “American Teenager”.

D. H. Lawrence would’ve liked Ethel Cain and her Great American Hauntedness.

40. Girlpool, “Butterfly Bulletholes”.

Such a shame to lose Girlpool in 2022 but they were four or five bands in just two people, they gave us a lot.

41. The Beths, “Expert in a Dying Field”.

This one speaks for itself.

42. Nilüfer Yanya, “Shameless”.

Breathless, almost somehow fleshless, rattling ribcage xylophone.

43. Mesadorm, “Soap Opera”.

Skew-whiff boiler-hiss robot pop.

44. Porridge Radio, “Back to the Radio”.

Porridge Radio’s skills are in cacophony, cataclysm, crisis, ruination, disaster mismanagement.

45. Wet Leg, “Too Late Now”.

Every introspection needs a wise-crack or two.

46. Wilco, “Tired of Taking It Out on You”.

Aged 29, I had chickenpox recently; I recovered but it’s made looking in the mirror interesting, all these new small markings on the same face.

47. Plains, “Hurricane”.

The lyrics to “Hurricane” read like an apology, but Katie Crutchfield’s voice always sounds a little barbed to me; that’s what makes this work, I think.

48. Daniel Avery, “Higher”.

Frenetic travel in place.

49. Kevin Morby, “Bittersweet, TN”.

Kevin Morby hits all the requirements, he straight-A’s being a country singer.

50. Beabadoobee, “You’re Here That’s the Thing”.

In 2023 I resolve to continue to love silly rhymes, campfire rhythms, dewdrops and holding hands.