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manysmallhands · 4 months

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Albums of the Year - The Lower Card

My plan is to do two album posts. The second one, which may or may not go up tomorrow, will be my top 10 albums of 2023 (not really ranked although i'll tell you which is the best one). This one is dedicated to the second tier of my favourite albums. These are the records that i liked a lot this year but which were either straightforwardly not as good as the top ten or slightly compromised in my appreciation of them somehow. A few are albums that I really liked but just haven't been arsed to listen to that much. Others are things that i first heard only recently and would say right now that they're as good as anything in the Top 10, only I haven't known them long enough to commit myself to that. Other reasons are perhaps more idiosyncratic but we'll come to that as we go along.

Baby Queen - Quarter Life Crisis

Arabella Latham - the Baby Queen herself! - skirts a tricky line between knowing and vulnerable on Quarter Life Crisis, sniping waspishly at the modern world one minute before opening herself up enough to leave me in tears. She brings it all off surprisingly well, with her cynical persona always shot through with enough charm to take the weight off of each tonal shift. Musically the album feels reminiscent of Sucker-era Charli, moving between 80s style pop and more modern ideas while occasionally working in a softer, indie-style palette. But its Latham’s vocals which are the star of the record, with her pointed barbs and semi-rapped confessionals by turns funny, relatable and deeply, desperately sad. Kid Genius annoyed me at first with its straightforwardly dumb internet critique but it soon became a highlight, with nods of hypocritical agreement marking every hit on the target. At the other end of the scale is the devastating ballad Obvious, where Latham's pain is shattering enough to cancel out every last knowing wink.

Caroline Polachek - Desire I Want To Turn Into You

Caroline Polachek’s vastly hyped second album is not quite the triumph for me that it is for others, but in all fairness I still liked it a lot. While many of the best songs (Bunny, Billions) were already familiar, euphoric club bangers like Smoke and I Believe proved that there were still some big pop moments left to be mined. The slower material was more subtle in its appeal but repeat listens gave life to tracks like the hymnal Hopedrunk Everasking too. For me the real issue with the album was an occasional excess of politeness, as songs like Fly To You rambled along anonymously to little notable effect. But Desire... is certainly a step on from 2020's lacklustre Pang and contains enough great songs to slot in comfortably alongside the best of Polachek's past guises.

El Michels Affair/Black Thought - Glorious Game

Following on from 2022's excellent Danger Mouse collaboration Cheat Codes, Black Thought took the obvious move this year and found another producer with a strong, idiosyncratic approach. Leon Michels switched things around - sometimes backing the Roots star with a live band, sometimes recording material to chop up for samples - in the course of creating a 70s soul/funk sound that’s not so much laid back as stoned beyond redemption. In keeping with these more nostalgic elements, the rhymes have gentler vibe here than on Cheat Codes, but Black Thought is still prepared to dig deep, dissecting highly personal memories and stretching into sharp social analysis. Unsurprisingly, his performances are as fiercely on-point as ever on an album that displays all of the rapper's warmth and brusque charm.

Free Love - Insides

Husband and wife duo Free Love’s second album is an extraordinarily eclectic business. Whilst staying within the broad tent of electronic dance music, they journey through wibbling ambient house, acid pop and droning experimentalism, keeping a spirit of adventure about them which sees each bold step as a fairly reasonable response to the last, even as they sometimes seem to come entirely out of the blue. While I can honestly say that Insides is never a dull record, it’s the Virginia Wing style dance pop that sticks in the mind most firmly, with Suzi Cook’s smart Glaswegian patter adding another element of mischief to an already stacked LP.

PinkPantheress - Heaven Knows

Heaven Knows is not really a great leap forward for PinkPantheress so much as a refinement and consolidation: while some of the rhythms have softened a bit and the tracks grown more accomplished, we’re still very much in the sad girl drum n bass territory that we’ve all come to know and love. But the melodies are as sweet as ever, the emotions perhaps even more sore and relatable and her ability to resonate at a wider level seems increasingly assured throughout. The hit single Boy’s A Liar Pt 2 combines video game style charm with a cracking Ice Spice cameo but it's only one part of the album's greatness, with Mosquito’s gentle happy/sad melancholy and the eerie atmospherics and fierce breaks of Capable of Love being the songs that stuck with me the most.

SZA - SOS

I’ve frequently enjoyed SZA’s sprawling RnB epic throughout the year but I can’t really say that I got to know it that well. It’s too long to me to sit down and listen to in one go, so I’ve tended to wander about with it on the mp3 player as bits of it drifted in and out of my consciousness. What has stuck is, first and foremost, the hits - we all know Kill Bill surely, and Snooze’s just slower than it ought to be vibe is also a highlight - as well as the surprising moments and deep cut highlights, of which the folky Too Late is the absolute queen. But I think what are perhaps my favourite moments are the lines where SZA gives us plainly too much information - “now I’m ovulating and I need raw sex!”, “I don’t get the dick that I deserve”, “I’m horny, like suck these!” - which have made me warm to her on a personal level and appreciate the messy lyrical weight of her talent. So if I’m honest, the reason I come back to SOS is to hear about SZA’s sex life: not in a prurient way - it’s too humdrum to be sexy - but just because I find how she talks about it extremely funny. Never let it be said that this blog is high-minded.

Tate McRae - Think Later

Despite the brace of fantastic singles that preceded it, my hopes really weren’t that high for Think Later, largely because of how shabby last year’s I Used To Think I Could Fly LP had been. Happily, Tate has shifted up her style and gotten a bit of attitude and, as a consequence, presents herself as a much more interesting figure across an album of far stronger material. Combining her already keen sense of melody with a succession of rattling beats, McRae feels more assured here, turning in a string of bangers full of soaring hooks which rarely fail to hit their mark. Greedy was a massive and well deserved hit but the supremely catchy Exes, the windswept ballad Stay Done or the rumbling, guitar driven We're Not Alike are all equally as good. In truth, the only reason I didn’t elevate this to the top tier is cos it’s only been out for a week or two and I was worried that I might change my mind up (like it’s origami).

The Clientele - I Am Not There Anymore

Much was made of the new directions on The Clientele’s seventh album. Computers were talked about, experimental cut up techniques: it all sounded very fancy in the abstract. And yet if I’m honest, I Am Not There Anymore sounds suspiciously like just another very good Clientele record: maybe a little different but not so you'd find it hard to tell who it was. Fables Of The Silverlink synthesised their classic sound with a glitchy modern approach and there was a dark, rumbling vibe to much of the first half of the LP which definitely felt expansive in its ambitions. But there was still plenty of room for the autumnal elegance of Hey Siobhan and I Dreamed Of You Maria, on a record that sounded enjoyably familiar even within that extended range.

The Mountain Goats - Jenny From Thebes

TMG’s return to the characters from All Hail West Texas may not have recreated its ultra lo-fi sound, but the key attributes of compassion and intensity were still placed front and centre. While perhaps not the most immediate of records, Jenny From Thebes repaid repeat listening, with its compelling storylines, John Darnielle’s deft, intelligent lyrics and, more than anything, his unsinkable ability to carry a song proving over time to be the album’s most important qualities. And stepping away from the bigger picture, Clean Slate, Fresh Tattoo and Same As Cash were powerful standouts which packed a huge emotional punch, songs as good as anything in The Mountain Goats’ long and illustrious catalogue.

U.S. Girls - Bless This Mess

After the relatively scattershot Heavy Light, Meg Remy spent most of Bless This Mess playing with squelchy synthetic funk, sounding for all the world like she’d time travelled back to 1981 and was living it up in an artist’s commune. But despite the close thematic focus, she was still able to vary her approach a little, moving comfortably between pounding disco bangers, warm RnB and gentle psychedelic rock whilst staying well within the sound template that she'd set for herself. So Typically Now’s twitchy paranoid pop and the extended floor filler Tux were instant highlights, but it was songs like the moving Covid ballad Screen Face that increased its emotional depth, drawing out themes of connection and separation while adding some welcome humanity.

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manysmallhands · 4 months

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My Favourite Songs of 2023 pt. 3: 20 - 11

Carrying on from yesterday’s post: may the penultimate countdown commence!

20. pinkpantheress - Capable Of Love

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While Boy’s A Liar was by far the bigger hit, Capable Of Love was the single that captured pinkpantheress at her best this year, combining her sad girl tales of romantic doubt with a beat that goes hard enough to give you a paradoxically huge lift. While i can't help but worry about how terrified she sounds, her super sweet garage pop is a solid favourite of mine and I'll guess I'll just have to reconcile that with my conscience.

19. Jeff Rosenstock - FUTURE IS DUMB

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This year’s HELLMODE album saw Jeff in a slightly more reflective mode than usual but FUTURE IS DUMB was a nod to past glories, setting his frustrations about the modern world to dayglo punk pop played fast enough to comfortably sever your head from your body. While the takeaway - “the world doesn’t owe you” - seemed somewhat nihilistic, the general feeling of one man trying to make sense of a collapsing society was as relatable and moving as ever.

18. Black Thought /El Michels Affair - The Weather

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On something of a roll after last year’s album with Danger Mouse, Black Thought uses the El Michels band to full effect here as the pair speed up and slow down in perfect coordination on this summeriest of street scenes. Leon Michels works up a blissed out soulscape as the Roots star rhymes with intricacy and precision, by turns laid back and fiercely intense.

17. Aoife Nessa Frances - Fantasy

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Grandiose in design and epic in scope, Fantasy (not the Mariah song) takes Aoife’s moody psychpop template and gives it an extraordinary makeover. Decorated with orchestral fantasia, it sounds like the kind of music you might find in a high class opium den and that’s before you even get to Aoife’s velvety swoon of a voice. I honestly didn’t think she had this in her.

16. Billie Eilish - What Was I Made For?

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Billie’s second number one was a grower, a pristine piano ballad that managed the tricky business of projecting deep sadness without veering into mawkishness. Bille is ostensibly talking about Barbie (duh), but the lines seem to blur into her own commodification and the notion of becoming “just something you paid for” cuts uncomfortably close to the bone.

15. Caroline Polachek - Dang

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While the best songs from the "Desire, I Want To Turn Into You" album were actually from previous years, Polachek finished 2023 with a flourish, issuing a single that was an improvement on every last one of them. Built around a sample that sounds like a cat being strangled and a flash of old Hollywood melody, Dang sounded strange and glitchy but alway compelling. One of the best examples yet of her idiosyncratic vision of pop.

14. Palehound - Route 22

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Palehound’s Eye On The Bat album was their first to really make a dent in me, and Route 22 is both typical of its strengths and a standout on its own merits. Ellen Kempner’s bleary country rock ballad explores the lines between loving someone and the need to be appreciated, with its honesty all the more touching for the beauty of its setting.

13. Wednesday - Chosen To Deserve

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“I was here first!” I cry as I brandish my old Wednesday albums but it’s still a nice feeling to watch the world catch up, as well as interesting to see bands find themselves exalted who wouldn’t have gotten the time of day a few years ago. “Chosen To Deserve” itself is a sweet natured country rocker powered by a bone crunchingly fierce riff, as Karly Hartman’s tales of misspent youth skirt the line between humour and something more uncomfortable.

12. The Mountain Goats - Fresh Tattoo

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Jenny From Thebes is an album that requires a little patience but its second single found The Mountain Goats at their most immediate and effective. While it starts life as a breezy narrative ballad, Fresh Tattoo feeds off of its momentum to make a convincing shift to anthemic territory by the last verse. By turns warm, witty and extremely memorable, this is as good as they've ever sounded.

11. Olivia Rodrigo - Get Him Back

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Inescapable for months on Radio 1 (where it even had its own jingle), Olivia's love/hate anthem manages to indulge all her best instincts, especially her theatricality and love of 90s guitar rock. Powered by a surprisingly good rap/rock delivery, it’s filled with immensely quotable lines from top to bottom but be sure to seek out the clean version to hear the best one, cos everyone knew that guy was missing a screw!

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