Top Albums of 2022
2022 was an extremely strong year of music: so many favorite bands returned with strong albums, as well as new band emerged with distinct, impressive releases. *Ahem* I’m also proud of my latest G3 album, Summoning The Portal (my finest release to date IMHO).
1. Beach House — Once Twice Melody
Once Twice Melody is just a commanding work in the true sense — the well goes deep in this album where Beach House’s musical horizon is so expansive for their sound. The group makes bold, diverse choices bringing on soaring strings and sputtering synths that seem to be sending signals from beyond like an ouija board. Of course, the new album was met with those typical tired predictable complaints about Beach House sounding like “Beach House”— but Once Twice Melody there is an emotional core of yearning they tap into with full blown ambition widening the spectrum of the palate in an assured way. It’s an intoxicating dream that feels like an 80’s goth prom in the netherworld. It’s weirder than you think and leaves the listener in awe of what they can do and what they did on Once Twice Melody.
Beach House is becoming even more assured, poppier, and weirder than ever. There are moments that are simultaneously frantic, cathartic and beautiful where you can’t tell if this dream pop is teetering into nightmare. It’s as if someone slipped industrial strength Sudafed in their mojitos. It makes me wonder what it would have sounded like if early Ministry soundtracked John Hughes’s classic 80’s films.
2. Black Country, New Road — Ants From Up There
Ants From Up There is an oddly affecting and compelling, elegant, candid, vulnerable post-rock incel music for the “Dear Evan Hansen” chicken noodle soul. Its songs draw out raw feelings of anxiety, shame, longing, and heartache against the “now” backdrop of whatever young adulthood in the 2020’s is. As David Berman noted with the Silver Jews, “You can’t change the feeling. But you can change your feeling about the feelings” Here, Black Country, New Road takes these these impulsive, unseemly feelings and expresses them with empathy on a dignified epic scale that brings to mind the timeless classics — whereas instead of Aphrodite or Dante’s Inferno’s Beatrice, it’s now the name-checked Billie Ellish & Charli XCX as objects of obsessive desire. It reminds me a bit of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” where a majestic music gives a contemporary update to the unseemly frustrated feelings of hormones, angst, and longing that have been played on in the entire history of moral dilemmas of man— exactly the release that rock & roll should be the safe harbor for.
Here is what I wrote earlier in 2022 about Ants From Up There:
After all the mid-2022 “best albums of the year so far” lists have been released by the music blogs, online publications, etc., I was a bit miffed that Black Country, New Road’s new album, Ants From Up There, was not getting more attention. It’s definitely been one of my my favorite/most played albums this year. Its compelling combination of a more angsty early Belle and Sebastian or Arcade Fire, a less clever Smiths mixed with the cryptic post-rock of Slint and Mogwai scratches that cathartic itch of longing and shame that seems so profound from the late teens/early 20's (*ahem* male *ahem*) perspective. It's like elegant, sensible incel music for the "Dear Evan Hansen" chicken soup young adult soul, which music should arguably allow a safe harbor for(?).
Anyway, since their singer Isaac Woods left the group for mental health reasons (and according to a NYTimes article he is happily working in a cake shop now), the group won't be performing any of the songs from the album live. Therefore, the only quality footage of the band performing these songs are posted below and they have the awkward, but fitting, appeal as if Terrence Malick directed a pandemic episode of Glee.
3. Spiritualized — Everything Was Beautiful
Everything Was Beautiful feels invigorated, adventurous, and episodic where each song is a distinct, self contained vivid universe. Although just 7 tracks long, the album sets out Spiritualized’s trademark grandiose, orchestral, elegant, psychedelic rock on a compelling and trilling journey with rock & roll auteur Jason Pierce at the helm that comes together like a satisfying vibrant greatest hits collection or an epic prestige ensemble TV. It makes a persuasive case for Everything Was Beautiful as Spiritualized’s most dynamic album of gospel space rock in arguably 25 years.
4. The Smile — A Light For Attracting Attention
I’m trying to think of synonyms for “wicked,” “badass,” “shit-eating grin”, “swagger” because whatever the word is, it’s one of valuable qualities of Radiohead that often is overlooked while a lot of people instead focus on their “doom & gloom” and “paranoia.” (I think OK Computer is frequently darkly funny album at points.) The new, generous album, A Light For Attracting Attention, from The Smile, featuring Radiohead’s most distinct members Thom Yorke & Johnny Greenwood, has ample supply of this quality. It’s their scrappiest, funkiest, most rollicking playful yet languid album since 2007’s In Rainbows while also featuring some of Yorke’s and Greenwood’s most stunningly gorgeous moments with its surprisingly robust orchestral arrangements throughout the album.
The album gets better and better and more badass with each listen. My favorite moments shift around too — right now, the opening vocals on “Speech Bubbles” are breathtaking with their warmness and the last minute or so of “Waving A White Flag” sounds like Thom Yorke doing an impression of Scott Walker. The lead singles “Skrting On The Surface” and “The Smoke” may take the cake as my favorite songs.
5. Sorry — Anywhere But Here
On Anywhere But Here, Sorry come off like the scrappy, mischievous, cigarette-stealing, wet parking lot loitering, younger siblings of groups like The XX, Blur at their druggiest chimney sweeper cockney accent (which would be their 1999 album 13), Baxter Dury for you deep overcast UK art-pop fans out there. There's an ominous vibe to them that reminds me of a young adult lit version of 90's Massive Attack or Portishead. (It's interesting that Portishead member Adrian Utley produced the album.)
Anyway, the album is full of shaggy ditties full of personality and surprising poignancy. I've been appreciating this recent wave of UK groups, such as Black Country, New Road, Dry Cleaning, and Jockstrap, that have been making idiosyncratic tunes that leave a distinct impression.
6. Cate Le Bon — Pompeii
Who knew that the potential perfect album for summer outdoor drinking would also be one that would fit perfectly in a surreal 80’s fine art gallery? Cate Le Bon’s new album, Pompeii, makes me want to get an asymmetrical geometric haircut, wear a white blazer, sip wine coolers (or as one of the lyrics go “drink wine through a telescope” and stroll around a post-modern sculpture garden. On Pompeii, Le Bon fuses high brow art-rock sensibilities (you can hear Bowie, Eno, Kate Bush, King Crimson, even Pink Floyd) with palatable tuneful grooves that leads to its durability for any listening context. While her previous album, Reward, may be more stylistically diverse (some of Pompeii’s songs may initially sonically run together) there are no party vibe killers, only singular sophisticated feelings and fun.
7. Metronomy — Small World
“It was fun what I did/Got a job, had some kids/See you in the abyss” It’s fitting that one of the last shows I saw before the pandemic was Metronomy two years ago. Now they return with a new album, Small World, that details the crushing domestic mundane and life’s cliches with dry humor and poignant emotion. It feels like a mumblecore movie from the Duplass Brothers, Mike Judge, Todd Solondoz, or one of those dry BBC cringe comedies that has emotional core hidden underneath. The music has a pastoral, soft psychedelic New Wave vibe that brings to mind MGMT and The Cure. Another interesting musical influence on the album according to frontman Joseph Mount was that he wanted to make music like the one or two songs he liked out the otherwise “awful music” his parents listened to while he was a kid. Furthermore, the song titles, particularly “it’s good to be back,” are based on what he thought would be the “lamest platitude(s) people are going to be saying coming out of the past two years” that is yet true. Once again, further proof that it doesn’t matter if a creative work is “good” or “bad” as long as it executes its unique vision. Overall, it’s welcome to have a clever, smart band parse through the strange “wear & tear” of the last couple years in their work, even if it ranges from the small specifics to the vague obtuse.
8. Panda Bear + Sonic Boom — Reset
Back about 10+ to 20 years ago when I would drive regularly, I would listen to the oldies station (95.7 FM) or whatever odd/arty peculiar programming was on the college radio station I happen to get a signal from on 91.7 FM (either MSOE, UW-Whitewater, or UW-Madison). I remember thinking the oldies station had a punk/garage vibe or an innovative novel production technique to its tunes (see Phil Spector “Wall of Sound”; Tornados “Telestar”, the theremin on Beach Boys “Good Vibrations,” or the creepy vocal effect on “Crimson & Clover”). The new album Reset by Panda Bear (of Animal Collective) and Sonic Boom (of Spaceman 3 and production of all your fav indie acts of the last decade or so — MGMT, Beach House, Iceage) really fuses the memories of these two radio stations stations.
Panda Bear gives some of his most poppiest vocal performances here. I remember reading that Damon Albarn of Gorillaz studied pictures of the Beach Boys recording in the studio to try to replicate their vocal harmonies and stated that Brian Wilson always looked depressed in the photos while the other band members had smiles while recording their vocals and that was the key to the bittersweet melancholy pop sound. Panda Bear is definitely taking a similar cue here.
Additionally, the duo use sampling of 50’s/60’s tunes to create a psych time warp to summon timeless retro garage-y Beach Blanket Bingo/Beach Boys ‘Pet Sounds’-esque songs that never existed in the first place — it’s like they’re the Forrest Gump of psych blog-core indie rock. They sound like Flo & Eddie but deliver the goods like Harry & David…. {Also be sure to check out Panda Bear’s other recent features on the newly classic French house track “Step By Step” from Braxe & Falcon (https://youtu.be/pqKjFj6YoWM) and Daft Punk’s “Doin’ It Right” (https://youtu.be/LL-gyhZVvx0) }
(tie) 9. Wilco — Cruel Country
When Wilco announced their new album, Cruel Country, it was noted as a “country music double album” that “follows a loose conceptual narrative of the history of the United States.” In my mind, I was thinking “what PBS station or public library commissioned this?”
Who would have guessed that the results feel like a Damon Lindelof television series (a la the wandering emotionalism and absurdity of The Leftovers, Watchmen, Station 11) meets Robert Altman’s Prairie Home Companion? I was expecting an American history book but instead it feels like magical realism Americana with Jeff Tweedy stuck in the middle of Middle America like those memes of the Watchmen’s Professor Manhattan stuck in the middle of a lunar landscape. Even more delightful, the rest of the band add Easter eggs and other little mindbends of instrumentation like cinematography tricks, like the guitars sounding like distant police sirens in the title track “Cruel Country,” the little tempo changing guitar lines on “Tonight’s the Day” or the patient tension building of “Bird Without A Tail/Base Of My Skull.” Anyway, this is the most monumental Wilco has sounded in over a decade and a half by my estimate.
(tie) 9. Big Thief — Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
Big Thief’s double album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, is a very consistent quality album. Nothing really jaw dropping, but constantly intriguing — which is an artistic and athletic achievement in a “long distance runner” kind of way. The band feels like if the Box Car Children grew up, moved to Brooklyn, joined “Station Eleven’s” Traveling Symphony, and live on the set of REM’s “Losing My Religion” music video (https://youtu.be/xwtdhWltSIg). Strong 90’s VH1 adult alternative vibes (which are welcomed now days), as well as folk & Americana (which is surprising and well executed).
(tie) 10. Jarv Is… — This Is Going To Hurt (Original Soundtrack)
One of my all time favorites, Jarvis Cocker, is back at it again in 2022 after releasing his excellent album Beyond The Pale in 2020, with his group Jarv Is…, and his covers album of classic retro French tunes accompanying Wes Anderson’s film last year The French Dispatch. I was surprised how substantive his soundtrack/score was with legit songs for the new BBC series This Is Going To Hurt. Besides sounding like Jarvis’s solo albums and late period Pulp, the songs recall later period Leonard Cohen, classic era Scott Walker, and at times the last Bob Dylan album meets Dr. Who.
(tie) 10. Spoon — Lucifer On The Sofa
Spoon is back with meat and potatoes rock that’s on their “lean & mean” Atkins diet. Though not as experimental as some for their previous albums, Lucifer On The Sofa is an undeniable sturdy set of rock songs. Spoon here feels like the most badass live band karaoke playing Rolling Stones (“Wild”), U2, Beatles (“My Babe”), Hunky Dory/Ziggy era Bowie (“On The Radio”), The Kinks, and even Seals & Croft yacht rock(?)(“Astral Jacket”). Initially, I was underwhelmed with this solid release but as 2022 progressed I realized I underrated and and underappreciated Lucifer On The Sofa. After a bunch of art-rock, post-rock, blog-rock that’s been released so far this year, it’s refreshing to hear some straight genuine draft “rock.” On that note, much like Miller High Life is the “champagne of beers,” Spoon is the “champagne of indie rock.”
