This is my list of favorite albums for 2023.
2023 was a solid and respectable twelve months for music. It was a pleasant mix of new stuff and familiar faces. The year wasn't a grand extreme of the best or the worst, 2023 showed up, did its work, and everything was fine. This is in contrast to how I felt that 2022 was mostly underwhelming.
For shows, I finally made it back to Buffalo to see Wolf Eyes at the Mohawk Place. They were great and it was good to get out again. There hasn't really been much that interests me for concerts so I haven't bothered going to anything.
I dabbled with picking up a few reissues over the year. It was nice to add older material from Ash Ra Tempel, Bardo Pond, Bee Mask, Bowery Electric, Everyone Asked About You, Lush, and Wolf Eyes to the collection.
Caterina Barbieri composed an efficient classical synthesizer album. Lea Bertucci had a fascinating recording of two longform discordant drone pieces created with electronics and orchestral instruments. Marcia Bassett and Ursula Scherrer burned up a batch of CDs for the soundtrack to a live video performance in Paris that featured ethereal synths, field recordings, and manipulated voices.
BIG | BRAVE recorded another slab of their cold Montreal in winter metal. I should've gone to see them play Buffalo back in June. Blues Ambush delivered three completely zorched out instrumental guitar jams. Dana Ma's Cloning smooshed together a collection of unsettling cut-up noise. I correctly figured out what the cover is.
Collate rattled off some quick and catchy Minutemen style punk. This type of music works better when it isn't all dudes. Mutwawa successfully returned with a full length of their spooky and haunting noise. Guitarist Emily Robb released her second solo album and had a limited edition tour tape with Bill Nace pressed up into record form. Robb is one of the best six string players out there at the moment.
Terms churned out more of their wonderful abstract avant-garde noise rock. It's awesome to see the aesthetic of weirdness pioneered by Skin Graft Records is going strong in the 2020s. Wolf Eyes expounded upon the brooding minimal atmospheres of their last couple albums with Dreams In Splattered Lines, which had refined synthesizer/drum programing, Nate Young's cryptic lyrics, and John Olson's mutant reeds.
As always any album had to be released in the calendar year and I had to listen to it a lot. And if you are one of those types who needs a definitive album of the year, then that honor goes to On The Creekbeds On The Thrones by XV on Ginkgo. The trio of Claire Cirocco, Emily Roll, and Shelley Salant crafted an album that recalls the Galaxie 500 and probably that one band that had a banana on the cover of their first record. XV tags themselves as uncomfortable free punk from Michigan. On The Creekbeds On The Thrones has an almost lackadaisical mood to it. It's not so much lackadaisical as in laziness, but more of a relaxed step back or time out from the stress of the modern world.
The list goes band/album/label for those with questions of that nature.
01. Caterina Barbieri - Myuthafoo - Light Years
02. Lea Bertucci - Of Shadow and Substance - Cibachrome Editions
03. Marcia Bassett & Ursula Scherrer - A La Maison Live - Yew Recordings
04. BIG | BRAVE - Nature Morte - Thrill Jockey
05. Blues Ambush - s/t - Radical Documents
06. Cloning - Squirters - Blorpus Editions
07. Collate - Generative Systems - Domestic Departure
08. Mutwawa - Radiation Radio - Decoherence
09. Emily Robb - If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection - Petty Bunco
10. Terms - All Becomes Indistinct - Skin Graft
11. Wolf Eyes - Dreams In Splattered Lines - Disciples
12. XV - On The Creekbeds On The Thrones - Ginkgo
