2023 Albums

Hey y’all! I’m blogging less (I miss the old internet), but still listening to a ton of music. Thought I’d share my favorite albums from 2023.

1. Belair Lip Bombs – Lush Life (Cousin Will Records)
Lush Life by Melbourne, Australia’s Belair Lip Bombs was an album brimming with personality and confidence. It’s got urgent rockers, jangling pop songs, and longing introspective ballads. Pretty much everything I’m looking for in a record. Singer Maisie Everett has a voice that makes each song verge on great. I couldn’t get enough of this record this year and it was easily my most played album even though it came out halfway through the year.

2. Flyying Colours – You Never Know (Poison City Records)
Apparently, shoegaze is big with the kids on the old TicTok. It’s still big here at the Finest Kiss too ;-) The third album from these Melbourne, Australia shoegazers keeps up the high-quality standards established by their previous albums. Songs like Do You Feel the Same and I Live In a Small Town would easily hold their own with OG UK shoegazers of the 90’s.

3. Display Homes – What If You’re Right and They’re Wrong? (Erste Theke Tontrager)
You might remember Display Homes single Climate Change topping the singles charts on TFK back in 2017. The Sydney, Australia trio’s debut album has been a long time coming and its release coincided with the sudden and unexpected death of the band’s guitarist Darrell Beveridge. What If You’re Right and They’re Wrong? is full of great jagged riffs from the late guitarist that Steph King sings and rages over. Display Homes sound like the younger down under siblings of Athens, Georgia foundational post punks Pylon. They jab, swagger and groove in all the most unexpected ways.

4. Melenas – Ahora (Trouble In Mind)
For their third album, Pamplona, Spain’s Melenas trade in Flying Nun influenced garage riffs for a slightly different sound inspired by Electrelane, that features motorik grooves and more keyboards than guitars. It’s not just a schtick, where some bands do this and it’s whitewashed and boring. Ahora features great songs and memorable choruses. I think it’s their best album yet.

5. Co-Pilot – Rotate (Dell’Orso)
Co-Pilot are a team-up of Alan Peter Roberts aka Jim Noir and Leonore Wheatley of Soundcarriers and International Teachers of Pop. The album is chock full of icy pop in the vein of Broadcast which has become a genre in and of itself these days. This is top notch, psychedelic electronic pop, with hints of experimentation and the possibility of floating off into space on song.

6. Papernut Cambridge – Channel Suite (Gare du Nord)
Ian Button has been involved in quite a few bands. He played drums in Catenary Wires, he’s worked with Lawrence on Go-Kart Mozart albums. Going even further back and more obscure(?) he played guitar in the 1980’s band Thrashing Doves and 1990’s band Death In Vegas. Papernut Cambridge is his band and it’s a whole lot of low-key fun. It’s got a light touch of pastoral psychedelia, in the vein of Martin Newell (Cleaners from Venus). He’s got songs about cooking in the kitchen (La Cucina), travelogs (Trip to America) and how to write songs (Grimstone Green Hustle).

7. Rahill – Flowers At Your Feet (Big Dada)
Rahill Jamalifard is a cofounder of the New York garage rockers Habibi. There is no garage rock on her first solo album. Instead, Rahill takes the middle Eastern psychedelic rock of her Iranian heritage and comes up with her own vision of it on Flowers At Your Feet. She creates bucolic visions of childhood in fantastical place. It reminds me a little of the Ko-Stars (the Lucious Jacksons spin-off album). Beck shows up on one track (Fables) too.

8. Morgan and the Organ Doners – M.O.D.s (Perennial Death)
Olympia group features Tobi Vail of Bikin Kill and the Frumpies on drums, but don’t expect any punk songs, just punk influenced country-tinged beauties. The songs have a raw and authentic beauty to them, possibly inspired by the likes of Alex Chilton, Lucinda Willaims and X or similar artists and groups. Good old-fashioned rock that you’d expect to hear coming from one of those greasy spoon tabletop diner juke boxes.

9. Soft Covers – Soft Serve (Little Lunch)
More great music from Australia in the top ten! Soft Covers’ indiepop is classic sounding guy-girl shared vocals where they sound super happy and upbeat while singing about mostly depressing stuff. The perfect soundtrack to distract as we continue our march to oblivion.

10. En Attendant Ana – Principia (Trouble In Mind)
En Attendant Ana have been quietly making quality albums since 2016. Principia is their fourth and contains some of the Paris group’s best songs to date. I like the ones that delve slightly into prog rock territory like the chugging Wonder and Anita. The group feature motorik grooves and saxophones that provide a uniqueness to the is crowded corner of obscurity.

11. The Whiffs – Scratch ‘N’ Sniff (Dig! Records)
Powerpop never seems to get enough respect. Sure, there have been a minor hits by the likes of the Nerves, Plimsouls, the Beat, but it’s a genre that perennially flies under the zeitgeist. Kansas City’s the Whiffs make a very strong argument for powerpop with their second LP. It’s packed with polished gem after gem. Singer and main songwriter Rory Cameron sounds a little like Elvis Costello and his songs have a similar punk influenced urgency.

12. American Analog Set – For Forever (Hometown Fantasy)
The return of Austin’s American Analog Set came as quite a surprise this year. After all, it had been 18 years since their last one Set Free. Older age seems to have given the band a little more urgency than I remember. They keep their prog tendencies and sleek instrumentation intact, but singer Andrew Kinney sounds more animated and alive than before. I really like this (slightly) more upbeat and rocking version of the band.

13. White Poppy – Sound of Blue (Not Not Fun)
White Poppy is essentially Crystal Dorval. She creates widescreen, luscious soundscapes and has an ethereal voice to add the perfect complement to these gorgeous songs. On the cover she sort of looks like Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins which is fairly appropriate.

14. The Toads – In the Wilderness (Anti-Fade/Upset the Rhythm)
I’m not sure what’s going on with the Shifters, that Australian band that sounded like early Fall. Main Shifter Miles Jansen teams up with a few Parsnips for this Toads album. It’s a riotous affair that sounds an awful lot like the Shifters in palace of swords reversed only less tone deaf.

15. Jaimie Branch – Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) (International Anthem)
The world lost a truly unique voice in music in 2022. Jaimie Branch was only 39 when she left our world. Fly or Die…World War contains some her last recordings. She was considered to be jazz, but that was just a jumping off point. This record goes to many places, all of them amazing. She covers a Meat Puppets song (Comin’ Down) and turns it into the Mountain. She leads drones and wails over them with her trumpet and then pulls it back into the world of pop with her vocal performance. This album keeps you on the edge of your seat, because you never know what’s going to happen next.

16. Laure Briard – Ne Pas Trop Rester Bleue (Midnight Special/Third Eye Stimuli)
Laure Briard describes here music as a Francois Hardy mixed with the Beatles. Throw in some Lee Hazlewood and Latitia Sadier and you have a pretty good idea of what her album, half sung in French, half in English is about. This is fun eccentric French pop with a healthy dose of good old fashioned pastoral psychedelic country pop.

17. Mozart Estate – Pop-up! Ker-Ching and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping (Cherry Red)
Lawrence of Felt and Denim fame(?) is still putting out records, but they don’t seem to command the amount awe that his former band’s records get these days. Is he ahead of his time? Maybe. Or, just out of time. Pop-up sounds inspired by TV jingles and the Grease soundtrack. If you can manage the cheap sounding synths, these songs are earworms that will make you chuckle. Relative Poverty is the single and my favorite, but there’s loads of good stuff about shopping and longing for stuff that you can’t afford.

18. Wimps – City Lights (Youth Riot)
I was so happy to see that these Seattle punks came out semi-retirement (their last album Garbage People, came out in 2018) with their best album yet. The world of the Wimps has changed a little since we last caught up with them. Singer and guitarist Rachel Ratner is a mom now and singing about it and Naps too. Wimps’ priorities may have changed a bit, but they still deliver short, sharp, shock blasts of wry punk humor. 

19. Pachyman – Switched On (ATO)
Pachyman delivers another hi quality album of dub reggae on the down low. Pachy Garcia was born in Puerto Rico, but calls Los Angeles home these days. On his third full length, he continues stretching the boundaries of dub beyond the obvious influences of Scientist and King Tubby and even takes the lead vocals on some tracks, singing in Spanish.

20. Protomartyr – Formal Growth In the Desert (Domino)
It’s hard to believe that Formal Growth in the Desert is Protomartyr’s sixth album. They just keep making railing against fools. On 3800 Tigers he opens with “there’s 3800 tigers in this world, but there’s far too many of you of you fools”. On this record though, singer Joe Casey takes pity on the listener and infuses more melody and vulnerability in his songs than he has on previous records and it’s a welcome thing.

21. Sullen Eyes – Hardwood Floors and a Hand To Hold (Sunday Records)
These songs have been floating around the internet for a bit, but thanks to Sunday Records, Sullen Eyes debut is collected onto a single slap of vinyl. Recommended if you like Sourpatch, Rocketship and the One Last Kiss Spinart compilation. Long live indiepop!!

22. Smashing Times – This Sporting Life (Perennial Death)
Second album from this Baltimore, group that loves a good ramshackle pop song the same way the Pastels and the Television Personalities did.

23. Slow Pulp – Yard (Anti Records)
Midwestern alternative rockers do great things mixing up bedroom pop with grunge and deliver some great radio friendly rock.

24. Bug Club – Rare Birds: Hour of Song (We Are Busy Bodies)
The prolific Bug Club seem to have a problem of not being able to stop writing a recording songs. No complaints here. Keep ’em coming!

25. Gina Birch – I Play My Bass Loud (Third Man)
Former Raincoat singer and bassist makes her solo debut. She jumps around from dub, to noise pop to spoken word.

More albums that I played and loved this year, but didn’t have enough time to write about.

Modern Cosmology – What Will You Grow? (Duophonic)
Seablite – Lemon Lights (Mt St Mtn)
Holy Wave – Five of Cups (Suicide Squeeze)
Steve Mason – Brothers & Sisters (Domino)
Bar Italia – Tracey Denim & the Twits (Matador)
Vanishing Twin – Afternoon X (Fire)
Rocky – Rocky (Lulu’s Sonic Disc Club)
Blues Lawyer – All In Good Time (Dark Entries)
Holiday Ghosts – Absolute Reality (FatCat)
Sleaford Mods – UK Grim (Rough Trade)
Natural Information Society – Since Time Is Gravity (Eremite)
Shana Cleveland – Manzanita (Hardly Art)
The Reds, Pinks and Purples – The Town that Cursed Your Name (Slumberland)
Tee Vee Repairmann – What’s ON TV? (Total Punk)
The Tubs – Dead Meat (Trouble In Mind)
Being Dead – When Horses Would Run (Bayonet)
Lewsberg – Out and About (12XU)
Clientele – I Am Not There Anymore (Merge)
Deary – Deary (Sonic Cathedral)
Slowdive – Everything Is Alive (Dead Oceans)