2023 music review
Hello!
Waiting until well into the new year to review the last one. I have been tired, and busy, and tired. I really did want to do a write-up by or on December 31. I’ve decided to split this into two for the sake of feeling like I had something written, so this will be soon followed by a part two on books and film. Beneath my shell of being a lover is a layer of being a hater and an inner core of being a lover. Now, I’m inviting you to a summer day with a cool breeze and cold lemon tea, music humming through a tinny speaker.
statistics
First, statistics time. According to last.fm, my top twenty listened to artists were: Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, The National, Florence + the Machine, Lorde, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Samia, Fall Out Boy, boygenius, Maisie Peters, Wolf Alice, Lana Del Rey, CHVRCHES, Mallrat, Olivia Rodrigo, Paramore, The Japanese House, Linying, MUNA. Pretty consistent with most other years wit the addition of Maisie Peters and Olivia Rodrigo, both of which I had moments with this year :)
And my most listened to songs were:
- Don’t Delete the Kisses by Wolf Alice
- Self Love by Metro Boomin & Coi Leray
- I Need My Girl by The National
- Cool About It by boygenius
- The Archer by Taylor Swift
- American Teenager by Ethel Cain
- Over by CHVRCHES
- Lost the Breakup by Maisie Peters
- Charm You by Samia
- Groceries by Mallrat
- Bad Ideas by Tessa Violet
- Ribs by Lorde
- Francis Forever by Mitski
- She’s the Prettiest Girl at the Party, And She Can Prove It with a Solid Right Hook by Frank Iero
- Not Strong Enough by boygenius
- all-american bitch by Olivia Rodrigo
- (Coffee’s for Closers) by Fall Out Boy
- Crush by Tessa Violet
- I’m On Fire by Bruce Springsteen
- Maps by Samia
jo top albums
The fun bit! 2023 was full of many and splendid new music ventures and so it was incredibly hard to narrow this down to just a few. I’ve ended up with a collection of albums that I found myself drawn to over and over again, and then additional special mentions. The writeups do essentially add up to ‘wow. sounds and music’.
Alex Lahey — The Answer is Always Yes
Alex Lahey is a local indie darling (along with Angie McMahon above), and I thoroughly enjoyed this latest album; it really just settled across my life for a while, the songs appearing again and again in my listening playlist. This album is easy listening that’s never boring, with neat little riffs and catchy, occasionally repetitive refrains. The lyrics are grounded in a way that does feel stylistic of Australian indie rock, at least the artists I like best — a certain blend of down-to-earth frankness and hyperspecific details that do lend themselves to relatability, a certain ‘well, this is how it is is’. I think that The Answer is Always Yes would work well to soundtrack to the gay sitcom that I sometimes write myself into, usually revolving around somebody else’s little life but with me as a recurring character, by which I really just mean that Please Like Me irreversably altered my psyche.
Favourites: ‘The Sky is Melting’, ‘Permanent’, ‘Makes Me Sick’
Angie McMahon — Light, Dark, Light Again
Light, Dark, Light Again is an indie record that turns to shades of light and shadow to find and offer comfort. It plays with texture, layers of drum, piano, and guitar layered with Angie’s voice which comes through soft or soaring by turns. I listen to these songs and feel myself storing them somewhere in my chest, each note resonating. I almost don’t know how to write about it. Except that ‘Letting Go’ was released as a single in July, at a time when I truly benefitted from hear it. Something about this album does feel like it is drawing itself to me and I to it; it reminds me of sitting on the rocks above the beach near the house where I grew up, and makes me wish that I had sat there to watch the sea more often.
Favourites: ‘Letting Go’, ‘Exploding’, ‘Making it Through’
Blusher — Should We Go Dance? (EP)
An extended play of gorgeous, gorgeous dance pop from Australian three piece Blusher. Just from my habit of listening to songs all the time whenever I can, I had already encountered previous projects from all three girls — Lauren as Azura (solo) and Audition Tape (duo), Miranda as Austen, Jade as Jade Bird. As a trio, their voices blend magically, leaving me so very excited by this project. Should We Go Dance? is five dreamy pop tracks with endlessly evocative synths, evocative of walking through suburban night in a city that you know so well, guided by streetlights and the rush of being there in the moment, letting it envelop you. The EP title asks whether we should go dance and the music itself is eminently danceable, even as the girls tell us “the whole crowd is just background / you’re the only reason I came out” (‘Limelight’). I’m enamoured. I love music.
Favourites: ‘Softly Spoken’, ‘Limelight’
Chappell Roan — The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess
The thing about Chappell Roan is that I first heard ‘Naked in Manhattan’ and then the songs that she released afterwards simply weren’t ‘Naked in Manhattan’. Even so, I was incredibly keen for her debut album. It delivered with a collection of infectious bangers complete with proper bridges in a world where people seem reluctant to write a proper bridge. And an album mostly about gay sex, no less. Genuinely though, it remains refreshing to see gay artists experiment with theatricality and performance in pop music, expressing themselves and calling on listeners to do the same. Midwestern Princess is so full of melodrama and desire and explicit calls to sexuality, usually both at once. The exact image I think of is actually from the chorus of Shontelle’s heartbreak ballad ‘Impossible’, the heartfelt plea “shout it from the rooftops”. Except that what Chappell is saying is “I kinda wanna kiss your girlfriend if you don’t mind” (‘After Midnight’). Banger album and incredible to see live!
Favourites: ‘Femininomenon’, ‘Red Wine Supernova’, ‘Naked in Manhattan’
Haley Blais — Wisecrack
Wisecrack is an indie pop record that’s just nice to listen to. Sometimes, that is all you need. It’s the kind of music you can close your eyes and melt into by picking out elements one at a time, with its acoustic arrangements and gentle production. Wisecrack isn’t really an album of bombastic statements or heartwrenching emotions. Rather, it is full of quiet contemplation-slash-confession as Haley asks, “Can’t a girl mourn the death of her dog at the back of the theatre anymore?” (‘Survivor’s Grief’) and laments the loss of childhood and need for constant performance by reflecting, “I want my baby teeth back” (‘Baby Teeth’) — I could list line after line but I won’t. The album ends with about three and a half minutes of the line: “one minute she wasn’t there / and then the next minute there she was”, regular production delving into an acapella recording with the band, then overlaid with snippets conversation and the sounds of a baby’s laughter. In an Instagram comment, Haley explained that the line refers to the birth of her baby niece, how she just seemed to appear. This final track ties together a quite lonely album and seems to summarise it for me: life offers these sudden and unexpected moments, and so we continue to move through.
Favourites: ‘Survivor’s Grief’, ‘Reset’, ‘Coolest fucking bitch in town’
Linying — House Mouse EP
Sometimes a perfect release is four (4) songs, each so full of heart. This one does come with emotion bursting from every note. Linying is one of my favourite singer-songwriters, and here her voice is lovely as ever, her lyricism full of hyperspecific imagery all wrapped up in a hope and nostalgia and anxiety that can really only be described as ‘tenderness’, a term that now feels devoid of meaning but here still fits completely. I like that the meaning is obscured sometimes, less music as music as storytelling and more music as conveying an emotion — at least to me. I think what strikes me most about House Mouse is how lush it sounds, buoyed by the honeyed instrumental arrangements. In one missive to listeners surrounding the release, Linying wrote that “Happiness requires both effort and ease”, and I think the album carries that. Full to the brim with a golden light, Linying sings on the album of hesistance and uncertainty but always seems to urge forward, and the music has a sense of polished ease, content and confident. ‘Take Me To Your House’ is truly something special to me, but then every other song is also a gem. I truly recommend this album with all my heart.
Favourite: ‘Take Me To Your House’
Red Velvet — Chill Kill
Chill Kill is Red Velvet’s first full album release in over half a decade, and so truthfully I was more than ready to absorb it into my consciousness. Lukcily, the album stuck the landing, and probably exemplifies many of my favourite things about this group’s music: distinct vocals coming together for incredible harmonies; occasional weird sounds. The title track is theatric and buoyant, horns and percussion and electronic distortions and chanting and melodic lines stacked over one another to create a song that’s always evolving and sounds like no other. The girls sound gorgeous and confident across the album, dipping deftly into pop, trap, r’n’b and jazz styles and delivering an exceptional, well-rounded collection of songs that seems to mark their position now as an older, more mature group amidst the kpop landscape.
Favourites: ‘Chill Kill’, ‘One Kiss’, ‘Underwater’
Samia — Honey
Although this list is unranked, Honey was probably my favourite album of the year. I never tired of listening, and in fact would frequently pick up on new details to latch onto. It feels minimal, centred around Samia’s voice: between the piercing clarity of her vocals and her words being full of lyrical quirks, the album enmeshes you again and again in its careful storytelling, each song a little universe. In some songs, she is mourning the end of a relationship; in others, Honey turns to the joys of hanging out, and the desire to run into life headfirst, to go to the beach and die on the beach and become a mermaid; elsewhere still, Samia sings of how she doesn’t want to charm someone because she doesn’t want to end up crying. ‘Breathing Song’ is a song about sexual assault with Samia accompanied by just a few piano notes, where gravity is laid into each word and especially in the resonous chorus of “no, no, no”.
It’s winter and Samia is singing, “I thought about lying when I found my passport / ’cause I would’ve stayed kinda drunk and afraid / in your room ’til I died in your room / if you asked for it” (‘Kill Her Freak Out’), you know? Or maybe you don’t know, or not yet. It’s all honey, honey, honey.
Favourites: ‘Kill Her Freak Out’ ‘Charm You’, ‘Honey’, ‘To Me It Was’
The Japanese House — In the End it Always Does
I’ve listened to The Japanese House for a while, since ‘Saw You In A Dream’. I wasn’t gripped by Amber Bain’s debut album (yes this is a white person’s solo project under the moniker of The Japanese House), in fact I liked the album version of ‘Saw You In A Dream’ less than the original rendition. Yet, something about this sophomore album has gripped me. The sounds are simple but layered beautifully, and paired with a melancholic vocal line. Bain does have a lovely voice, which Jordan once described as sounding like all three members of Muna at once, which was astoundingly true. And of course, there is a fun Muna collab on the album itself; I have fond memories of sitting to a rock in a park, listening to that song. The title is taken from a line from ‘Sunshine Baby’: “putting off the end, ’cause in the end it always does”. I think of it as an album primarily about letting go, but it’s also about coming back, as in, everything ends and restarts. “Look at this clip I found / I watch it round and round and round / I watch it round and round and round / I watch it round and round and round” (‘Indexical reminder of a morning well spent’)
Favourites: ‘Boyhood’, ‘Sunshine Baby’, ‘Morning Pages’
Troye Sivan — Something to Give Each Other
Australia’s greatest twink export, to me. This album did kind of creep up on me. I found myself listening to it on repeat in mid to late December. I think the album has a sense of headiness that I love, glorious and readily giving itself over to desire — whether that’s longing for a long-distance lover or reminiscing about a lost love or valorising the thrill of the club. At the same time, I enjoy that Troye is clearly revelling in music-making, unafraid to get fun with it. Something about the album reminds me of a luscious peach, almost overripe but not quite. I love the hazy outro of ‘Still Got It’, the distortions at the beginning of ‘Can’t Go Back, Baby’, the bounce of ‘Silly’, the pre-chorus of ‘One Of Your Girls’ which is a little cringe but so very catchy (what a song). Ten little pop songs can be all you need! I too am annoyed that ‘Rush’ is less than three minutes longer when the music video has a longer audio right there but this only detracts a little bit from a great record. I love you fun gay club music.
Favourites: ‘One Of Your Girls’, ‘Got Me Started’, ‘In My Room’
Special mentions go to:
Arlo Parks — My Soft Machine: This is an album that carried me through a lot of the middle of the year, that April to August period. At the time, I listened a lot to first the pre-released singles and then eventually to the full album, and it did make me feel less alone. I think of Arlo as a quite earnest songwriter, and to great effect. Her lyrics are littered with details from everyday life, and here, she captures the turbulence of being in your early 20s and seeking connection despite the weight of it all. ‘Pegasus’ is a love song almost heartbreakingly gorgeous. Much adoration and admiration for Arlo ♡
Maisie Peters — The Good Witch: TGW has an interesting position in that I only really started listening to Maisie Peters last year and latched onto a lot of songs at various times, but only a handful were from this album this album. Still, the songs that stand out do hit hard; special mention to ‘Lost the Breakup’, truly a perfect pop song complete with sassy spoken-word bridge. Maisie Peters was born in the same week as me which is also pretty epic, and I do like that she is also petty and insane and singing about it as a pop girl for me to listen to. It’s pretty great.
Mitski — The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We: Mitski’s latest album didn’t take over my imagination— maybe her time is still to come — but it certainly captured it. She knows how to write a song and create a sonic landscape and it’s wonderful.
Olivia Rodrigo — Guts: Fun pop music! Again falls to the phenomenon of a few epichits and various songs that don’t quite stand out except in this case to be used in fan video edits (a worthy mantle, to be clear). Lots of love to Olivia, I truly do love how sincere this album is and I love listening.
Paramore — This Is Why: I do think that seeing Paramore live changed my life. Rather than listening to TIW in its entirely I spent a lot of time with individual songs off the album, in particular ‘You First’ and ‘Thick Skull’. Feels very much like an album that is both passionate and refined, and Hayley Williams is phenomenal forever.
The National — Laugh Track and First Two Pages of Frankenstein: The National is truly a band for fans of sounds. I was compelled by Laugh Track over Frankenstein, but generally these were lovely songs that made me go ‘wow that’s fucked up’ if I paid attention to the lyrics, and ‘wow I love sounds’ at all other times. ^_^
jo top songs
This year I do not have a kpop ranking list because I was not able to follow closely enough… everybody clap and cheer. Instead I will direct you to the Shad Grammys, for which a playlist can be found on Spotify here.
I do have a running list of my favourite individual songs of 2023, songs that struck me as exquisite, that conveyed some emotion or struck me some certain way, or were simply wonderful pop songs with a great bridge. I add to this throughout the year and often play it back on shuffle, before finally cutting and arranging in a loose order. Here are thirty songs that always delighted me to hear again.
Finally, just quickly: 2023 was an incredible year of concerts for me. Specifically, it was truly a year for international artists to tour Australia. I don’t have energy nor space to properly summarise these shows or even try to list a top few (I tried). I also began to pick out songs that stand out now in my memory, and even this list became unwieldy. I do think that Dog Days Are Over by Florence + the Machine remains at the top of this, with all three of Ribs/Buzzcut Season/The Louvre not far behind at all. And then Sun Bleached Flies by Ethel Cain. Mostly, I wanted to say again that live music is one of life’s small (or great joys). It’s one of my top hobbies. And of course, hearing a song or album or artist live can absolutely change your relationship to that music going forward — this happened to me. Literally it’s about the human experience bro. Kind of transformational.
There we go! I love music. I even love saying little words. Thanks to all who followed me to Medium. Until next time (soon! hopefully).
