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dustedmagazine · 4 months

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Jennifer Kelly’s 2023 in Review: Still Human FWIW

I finally saw Sun Ra Arkestra

I first heard about Chat GPT in January this year, and it sounded bad from the start. I make most of my living writing things for big faceless corporations who view me as a cost. Cut that cost to zero and I’m out of a job. But for the first five months of 2024, I continued to be busy and I thought, well maybe it’s nothing. Then in May, like a light switch, everything stopped. I had one regular client who continued to pay a monthly retainer. Nothing else. And the usual mailings, pleadings with old clients, etc. had no effect. I’m close to retirement age. This summer, I thought I had arrived early.

Things have picked up since then, and right now, I’m in a good place. People are starting to notice Chat GPT’s ignorance of anything post 2021, its refusal to factcheck or footnote and its relentless blandness. Clients are coming back, but the floor doesn’t feel very solid under my feet. It could all go away at any time. (This is the lesson we all learned from COVID-19…that you could fall into the pit any time.)

The one thing that didn’t stop was Dusted, and for that I am very grateful. As I’ll explain to anyone who asks, there’s never been any money in Dusted, so there can’t be any less. We are more or less immune to economic pressures. And as long as we’re here, there is lots and lots of good music to write about.

My year started with two records that blew me away in January (and maybe December 2022) and held #1 and #2 slots all year. They were Meg Baird’s Furling and Robert Forster’s the Candle and the Flame. Next, came an email from Rob from Sunburned with a link to Stella Kola’s extraordinary debut, and then gosh, Sub Pop still sends me promos and here’s one from Mudhoney! Every time 2024 succeeded in getting me down, I’d get music from someone.

Live music was another solace. Shows that made me happy this year included Warp Trio, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Dear Nora, Vieux Farka Toure, Bridget St. John with Stella Kola, Sun Ra Arkestra, Kid Millions with Sarah Bernstein, Faun Fables, Sweeping Promises, Daniel Higgs, Constant Smiles, Baba Commandant (RIP), Xylouris White, Joseph Allred with Ruth Garbus and Ryan Davis with his Roadhouse band. Special mention goes to the always astonishing Thing in the Spring with Editrix, Rough Francis, Thus Love, Gorilla Toss, Equipment Pointed Ankh. Susan Alcorn, Marisa Anderson and Jim White and Bill Callahan.

The best show of the year, however, came late in the summer with William Tyler and the Impossible Truth band, an unbelievably talented, seasoned crew with Luke Schneider on pedal steel, Third Man mainstay Jack Lawrence on bass and Brian Kotzgur on drums. The way they opened up and fired up Tyler’s songs was a revelation, even to someone, like me, who’s been a fan since Behold the Spirit. Garcia Peoples opened, and they were great, too.

I should mention that we have recently been blessed with a bunch of excellent music venues nearby—Nova Arts in Keene and Epsilon Spires and the Stone Church in Brattleboro. Going to music used to always mean driving back from at least Northampton, sometimes further, late at night, and, as I get older and my night vision fades, it has been really nice not to have to do that. (Also, to all my Dusted-reader-musician-friends, if you play one of these venues, thank you, and let me know when you’re coming.)

With that, it’s time to talk about 2023 favorites. I’ll write about the first ten and then just list the rest.

Meg Baird — Furling (Drag City)

Meg Baird’s gorgeous solo album alternates between ghostly, inward-looking piano songs and bright swirls of 1960s psychedelia. Her extraordinary voice, high, pure, and unearthly, joins lush, burnished guitar grooves. Sometimes I think I like the swaggering bounce of “Will You Follow Me Home,” the best, but other times, the disembodied otherness of “Ashes, Ashes” is the prettiest thing I know.

Robert Forster — The Candle and the Flame (Tapete)

Forster’s solo records are always good, wry and funny and stuttering with strummy punk energy, but this one, recorded with family while his wife battled cancer, is his best yet. “She’s a Fighter,” a group sing-along is prickly and defiant, the only song specifically written about Karin’s illness, but threads of enduring, life-long love run all through this album. “Tender Years” is especially moving, as Forster sings, “I’m in a story with her, I know I can’t live without her, I can’t imagine why,” in a voice cracked with sincerity and feeling. Very few albums make me cry, but this one does.

Anohni and the Johnsons—My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross (Secretly Canadian)

The sound on Anohni’s fifth album with the Johnsons smolders in the pocket, its textures a nod to Marvin Gaye’s classic What’s Going On? It’s velvety smooth but taut with urgency, as the artist contemplates climate disaster and personal struggles. “It Must Change,” trills with the coolest falsetto, while “Sliver of Ice” reverberates with a low, hushed passion. Every song lands a punch, soft when it happens but ringing for days in your ears.

The Drin — Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom (Feel It)

“Venom” lurches and blurts, bass thumping, drums clashing, monotone vocals drenched in menace. It’s a punk song distilled to essence, a world in itself, a short, brutal blast that is also somehow psychedelically expansive. The Fall, the Swell Maps and Adrian Sherwood haunt this disc in various places, but the Drin is its own mysterious thing.

Wreckless Eric — Leisureland (Tapete)

“Get yourself a one-way ticket for the merry-go-round,” sings the Bard of Hull on the last and most exhilarating song from his ninth full-length. That’s “Drag Time,” with its indelible hook, its enveloping harmonies, its hint of Amy Rigby in the chorus. Let’s just go way out on a limb here and say it’s as good, maybe better, than “Whole Wide World.”

En Attendant Ana — Principia (Trouble in Mind)

Good lord, was Trouble in Mind on a roll this year or what? I could put Melanas or Tubs here, with FACS not far behind, but instead, let us contemplate the light-and-dark wonder of “Black Morning,” with its giddy counterpoints, its bright, sustaining trumpet, its boppy beat and its underpinning, somehow, of shadowy melancholy. Or the skanky bass that kicks off “Same Old Story,” in a prickly way, the lone element of dissonance that gives a daydream teeth.

Stella Kola—S-T (Self-Release)

Everybody who’s anybody in W. Mass alt.folk does a turn on this magical LP—centered around Beverly Ketch and Rob Thomas but including PG Six, Wednesday Knudson, Jeremy Pisani, Willy Lane and Jen Gelineau. Despite the expansiveness of the ensemble, these songs are feather light and lucid, like Pentangle sprinkled with magic dust.

Mudhoney — Plastic Eternity (Sub Pop)

Psychedelic overload meets raw punk and potty humor in this 12th album from the grunge godfathers. I like the sheer rush and swirl of cuts like “Almost Everything” and “Souvenir of my Trip” best, but bare, belligerent “Flush the Fascists” is grade-A too, and how can anyone resist Mark Arm paying tribute to his best bud on “Little Dogs.”

Beirut — Hadsel (Pompeii)

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Hadsel is surprisingly cheery for an album recorded on a remote Norwegian island in the dead of winter, with swoony harmonies and counterpoints, intricate synthesized beats and blares of an antique pipe organ. “We had so many plans,” Zach Condon sings, both mourning and subtly sending up his cohort’s response to the COVID pandemic, but this remarkably pretty album seems more like a happy accident.

The Feelies—Some Kinda Love (Bar None)

What a total pleasure it is when one jangly, drone-y, indie rock phenomenon pays tribute to the wellspring. In this case, it’s the Feelies covering many of the Velvet Underground’s best known songs at a live show in 2018 where everyone had a blast. Now you can, too.

More albums that I loved in the order that I thought of them.

Iron & Wine—Who Can See Forever Soundtrack (Sub Pop)

Melanas—Ahora (Trouble in Mind)

Sleaford Mods — UK Grim (Domino)

The Tubs — Dead Meat (Trouble in Mind)

Sky Furrows—Reflect and Oppose (Feeding Tube/Cardinal Fuzz)

Lonnie Holley — Oh Me Oh My (Jagjaguwar)

Yo La Tengo—This Stupid World (Matador)

The Toads—In the Wilderness (Upset the Rhythm)

Dan Melchior—Welcome to Redacted City (Midnight Cruiser)

James and the Giants—S-T (Kill Rock Stars)

Ben Chasny and Rick Tomlinson—Waves (VOIX)