The pirate site community I’m a part of has an annual submission and vote for the top albums of the year, so I figured I’d share this year’s list for me, along with brief little blurbs about each!
I know I likely have a vastly different taste in music from you, but I love all of these albums, and it’d be really cool to introduce someone to their new favorite album (or song, or whatever), SO I made a (gasp) Spotify playlist with a favorite/more accessible song from each album! (Minus one that’s not on streaming.) There’s also a YouTube link to each song next to the album title, and the titles themselves are linked to their respective Bandcamp pages, where applicable (and Discogs if not).
(What’s Bandcamp, you ask? Why, only the best way to support your favorite artists and indie labels by purchasing directly from them! I strongly recommend you check it out if you’re not familiar with it! Alas, its recent acquisition by Songtradr is not looking good, especially after they immediately laid off half of their workers and most of their editorial staff, including extremely disproportionate numbers of queer and Black workers, but at least for now it remains the best at what it does.)
I hope you find something you like! (And tell me if you do so we can then geek out about it together!)
I've also assembled a top "discoveries" of 2023 list!
Please note: I am not claiming these are the best albums of 2023—only that these are my favorite!
If you'd have told me in 2022 that Squid would release my favorite album of the year, I... well, yeah, I would have believed you. But I would have been surprised. Their 2021 debut Bright Green Field was hailed as a crowning achievement of the year's post-punk explosion, but aside from a few songs, it didn't do as much for me personally as their previous EP Town Centre. This year's follow-up, though, has blown me away. Rather than rehashing the repetitive slow builds that Bright Green Field seemed to rely on for its biggest moments, the songs on O Monolith are constantly evolving, shifting through an array of strange sounds and time signatures, sometimes to the point where it's hard hard to tell if you're even listening to the same song anymore. The only real exception is lead single "Swing (In A Dream)", whose pulsating 7/8 beat loops and layers into a grand, desperate finale. ("Swing" was also my most-played song of the year, mostly by virtue of having been released like six months ahead of the actual album, meaning I listened to it a LOT before the album came out, and then a LOT after it came out.) Ultimately: it's weird, it's experimental, it's yelpy, it's great.
Also I'd be remiss if I didn’t point out that the album is even better with the intro that appears as a Japanese bonus track, so... hit me up if you’d like that.
Who could be almost as good as Squid? Why, Colossal Squid, of course. I discovered this artist earlier this year, but I'd already been listening to his work as the virtuosic drummer of weirdo math-rock band Three Trapped Tigers. Turns out Adam Betts is also a producer of bizarre, twisted, rhythm-driven pseudo-pop. The songs on this third album of his are generally more accessible than his previous work, but that's not saying much, saying as the most accessible track on this one ("Park") features heavily caffeinated drumbeats with molluscoid alien vocals on top. And yet, with those massive lead synths that dominate the album, how could it not be pop?
More animals! But fear not, we shall return to mollusks. Despite the goofy, light-hearted band name, this jazz trio (consisting of an upright bassist, pianist, and drummer) rips your heart out with this album—then gives it a hug and puts it back. The band has been open about the grief that they were processing while writing this album, and it drips through nearly every note. The ethereal keyboard parts, exquisite bass timbres, and thick, jazzy chords pack a massive impact. It's a beautiful and haunting album, one that manages to be hopeful without being naïve. Yes, the pain is real, it says, and it's awful. But you will make it through this, even if this grief will be a part of you forever.
I was seeing this album everywhere all year, but only finally got around to listening to it in December—and damn, I should have listened earlier. I heard “art rock” (whatever that means) and “indie pop” and was expecting one thing, but nothing prepared me for how delightfully weird this album is. The lead single “Barley”, for instance, which whipped up a lot of hype for them before the album even came out, features a jarringly repeated synth sample and strange cascading guitars that sound simultaneously horrendously ugly but also amazing. The experimentation with weird timbres and dissonance continues throughout the album, and somehow they manage to make it hella catchy the entire time. I don’t really know what’s “indie pop” about it—is it just that it’s fronted by a non-man?—but the sound to me is ultimately rooted in the same post-punk stylings as, say, Wet Leg: fuzzed-out bass and angular guitars. Frontperson (I hesitate to say “singer”) Rachel Brown’s detached vocals may not always be the most emotive, but hey, again—it’s post-punk.
Back to animals! I mean, of course there’s a King Gizzard album here. One of the two they released this year, this is the one that really connects with me—massive riffs over warring polyrhythmic time signatures and roaring about one of the world’s only two venomous lizard species. It’s not for everyone, but what is?
Oh, and for the record (heh), the full title of this album is PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. (It’s a concept album, see.)
Still more animals?? It’s easy to make electronic music that sounds cold and emotionless. I remember my Electronic Music Composition professor (Peter!!) challenging us to make music without snapping every sound to a grid, and Clark has heeded this same wisdom his entire career. This, his penchant for cut-up live drums, and other fine details give him a unique knack for warmth and organicness that pervades even his most industrial works. Sus Dog is no different in that regard, but it certainly is different in many other ways—it’s his first vocal album and by far his most accessible to date, with all his strange ideas wrangled into beautiful four-minute pop gems, marinated in a hopeful melancholy. To learn to sing, he enlisted the help of none other than Thom Yorke, who joins Clark’s emotive falsetto on the penultimate track “Medicine”. It’s a different side of Clark than we’d seen, but it’s still unmistakably him.
Somehow I had never thought to wonder what the perfect mix of post-punk and math rock would sound like, but now I know it would sound a lot like Chiyoda Ku’s latest album: thick electric bass with mathy distorted staccato guitars and plenty of weird time signatures and counting. A lot of bands in the math rock scene end up dropping vocals at some point, but Chiyoda Ku went the opposite route: this is their first release with vocals. It’s hard to say if the decision added much of value to the music, but I certainly don’t think it detracted, and with how much better the songwriting is on this release versus their last, perhaps thinking about composition in a different way helped them come into their own.
The more I’ve gotten into post-rock, the more boring I’ve realized it can be. So many bands seem to rely on the same basic chord progressions over a 4/4 beat with the simplest possible excuses for melodies. But Black Sky Giant has riffs, dammit, and basslines that do more than just follow the chords, and even despite the midi drums, this thing rocks. Except—wait, what’s that you say? Black Sky Giant isn’t post-rock? They’re... psychedelic stoner desert rock?
Sure. Sometimes the best post-rock doesn’t want to admit it’s post-rock.
Yet another reason to thank the online pirate community: this gem would otherwise never have popped onto my radar, and there would have been only seven people at their show at O’Briens back in May instead of eight. (Shoutout to the guy who invited his Tinder date to the show; you, sir, are Doing the Work.) This is an album for staring out of the window into the rain and wondering why you have so many emotions. As one Bandcamp reviewer put it, “every song is able to cry your heart out to.” Thick and present basslines, angular guitars à la Franz Ferdinand, and pounding drums; emotive vocals that switch between singing and screaming, but which are surprisingly non-cheesy for a post-hardcore-adjacent band. It’s powerful stuff.
Mississippi’s MSPAINT manages to be punk without guitars. Their thick, heavy bass and synth lines pack all the power and abrasiveness a guitar could, and the shouted vocals offer an unexpectedly hopeful vision of a Post-American future “where no one will profit”. After all, flowers grow up through concrete. My favorite part though is when they go “HARD-WIRED TO YOUR BRAIN TO YOUR BRAIN TO YOUR BRAIN” over and over.
I can’t believe I used to hate saxophones. This Belgian jazz trio revolves around the instrument as a centerpiece, backed up with drums and an upright bass, though there’s a lot more going on in the production than just those few instruments. While the songs all began as improvisations, they’ve been harvested and sculpted into masterful compositions that do anything but wander.
This one’s an EP, not an album, but it’s one of those releases that I immediately fell in love with when I first heard it. For all the talk about how Nine Inch Nails (my all-time favorite band, obviously) put industrial rock into the mainstream, I don’t actually tend to like a lot of industrial music. But recently I’ve realized the issue: most “industrial” music, while wonderfully noisy, is just too perfect. In other words, the noise is too programmed, or distorted too obviously, to the point where it doesn’t sound like real noise. This EP, though—this is what industrial rock should sound like. Ugly enough to actually make you feel something. And there’s a lot to feel here, especially in the boundlessly beautiful closing track, which makes me want to cry everytiem.
I tend to feel about shoegaze much the same way as I do about post-rock—that a lot of bands out there tend to rely on soaking everything in reverb to distract from subpar songwriting. Only about half the songs on Evol, Polyester Embassy’s first album in 12 years, are straight-up shoegaze, but the album’s dream pop sensibilities come with plenty of reverb—and plenty of great songwriting to back it up. Unlike most of the other albums on this list, this is not a weird album: it’s pretty straightforward dreamy indie rock, but beautifully executed.
Yet another album I saw everywhere, but only got around to listening to in December. This is a beautifully dark, at times blisteringly loud album that introduces a little more noise rock (think distorted but beautiful thick chords) into their sound. The deep, brooding vocals, which edge occasionally into groans and screams, sound a lot like IDLES’—except here the music is actually consistently good (oof!).
Another EP has snuck onto the favorite albums list! This one’s from Jarcrew, a group that had been broken up for two decades, only to get back together and release something even better than any of their original output (at least in my own humble opinion). This is the sound of a band having way more fun, but still letting themselves have feels occasionally. It’s almost hard to believe that it didn’t come out a good decade before the band even formed, because it manages to be so 80s without relying on any of the usual gimmicks. I just wish it were more than four songs—but the cover art does say “EXTENDED PLAY 1” on it, so I’m holding out hope for more next year.
Yet another party I was late to because I thought the artist name was dumb. I mean, who gives themselves the last name Tumor?? But I should have given them a chance after they opened for Nine Inch Nails last year. Trying to make post-punk into pop isn’t anything new—why not add dark pop melodies to your fuzzed-out bass and ethereal pads?—but it’s not something that’s been done well these past few decades. And yet, for all of their callbacks to the 80s (both in style and the many masterful samples), their sound is still fresh and unique. Especially on the penultimate track, the instrumental “Purified by the Fire”, which uses a powerful manipulation of a 1960s soul sample as its foundation. While this album is a lot less weird and more accessible than their earlier stuff, it’s still fantastic.
Hey, look, it’s another good post-rock album! L.O.E apparently stands for Last of Eden, which isn’t actually their name, except it appears alongside L.O.E on all of their releases so is it?? While it’s not entirely the most imaginative or innovative on the scene, there is something about this album that sets it apart from the endless post-rock churn, even if the liberal (as in not-leftist) politics of its various sampled speeches are occasionally a little goofy. (JFK talking about an elite cabal controlling the world behind the scenes; another of literally Spiro Agnew seeming to lament that people are too quick to protest instead of, you know, trying to calmly talk people out of genocide. Oh, and renowned domestic abuser John Lennon suggesting we just “give peace a chance”, as if war is simply a matter of disagreement and there aren’t massive systems in place that depend on and profit from it!) But back to the music: L.O.E seem to be successfully doing what most post-rock bands can only try to do—craft music with actual emotion, music that actually makes you feel things instead of just making you feel like you’re watching a dramatic movie. That’s not to say they’re not prone to some of the same pitfalls, and there are a lot of cheesy moments, but even when relying on basic chord progressions, their riffs, rhythms, and varied timbres give their music character that the likes of Explosions in the Sky and God Is an Astronaut could only hope for.
Some of you may know that War Widow’s 2009 song “Tear It Up” is my most-played song of all time. So I was thrilled when their frontman/songwriter Jon Peloso mentioned in an email to me (#humblebrag) in 2022 that, for the first time in nearly a decade, there was new War Widow music in the works. The resultant record doesn’t quite follow in the same spirit as the noisy synths, adventurous songwriting, and strange time signatures of their debut, but it’s got the same post-punk stylings and dark, ethereal pads—just with a hearty helping of classic rock-n-roll on top. These days, bands trying to take cues from classic rock usually come off as helplessly cheesy, but here these influences are handled very subtly and tastefully for an album that references, however indirectly, Ronnie James Dio on the first track. The result is a brooding, reverbed, heavy-hitting 80s experience that doesn’t exactly break new ground but still offers a lot to enjoy.
Back to mollusks! Originally a mathy folk-punk band, My Octopus Mind seems to have completed their evolution into a weirdo psych band—and a pretty good, if not amazing, one. Occasionally they seem to be trying a little too hard not to be normal, with their unhinged falsettos and quirky nonsensical lyrics (look no further than “Sabretooth Monkey”, whose title speaks for itself), both of which make it a bit harder for me to connect to the album on an emotional level. But it’s good, it’s groovy, and it’s weird in good ways too. The electric upright bass, bizarre song structures, and strange time signatures have all defined My Octopus Mind since the beginning, and it seems they’re here to stay.
This was another December discovery after this band, whom I’d never heard of, was announced as a performer at the London math rock/post-rock festival Portals (which I will hopefully be attending again come May!). This album is moody, atmospheric, and slow, yes, but also helplessly groovy. Each song is based around its own satisfying drumbeat, in a variety of time signatures, with insistent basslines and guitar tones that sit comfortably somewhere between psychedelic and mathy. A slow burn, but worth it.
Another win for the pirate site! Otherwise I don’t know if I’d have ever given this album a chance. Pop vocals over dark, clangy, industrial hip-hop beats. It’s noisy, it’s grimy, it’s catchy as hell—it’s Debby Friday.
Honestly, I have no idea how to describe this album, but I’ll give it a shot: imagine an abandoned factory haunted by the ghosts of percussionists past, who occasionally try their ephemeral hand at keening wails. That’s probably close enough. In fact, it was recorded in an abandoned factory (albeit by a living human), then sculpted into dark, brooding, rhythmic soundscapes. It’s much less melodic than his previous albums, and while it doesn’t hold a candle to his last one, 2017’s Compassion (one of my absolute favorite albums of all time), it’s trying to be a different sort of beast, and it does that beast very well.
This album was an unexpected grower on me. Similarly to industrial rock, industrial metal has never much been my thing—the overcranked amps tend to hide any tonality, thus disguising the poor songwriting, and simultaneously the industrial drums/sounds somehow tend to be too “perfect”. While this album does occasionally suffer from the second pitfall, the first is not an issue at all—while blisteringly distorted, the guitars never do lose their tonality, and the songwriting is actually decent, even good. The production, though—the richness of the sound, the immaculate tone of the snare perfectly punctuating the guitars on “Total Protonic Reversal”—is what kept me coming back, the riffs slowly settling into my brain and making me fall for this album.
JAAW is a supergroup, led primarily by Andy Cairns of Therapy?, whose distorted screams could almost be Al Jourgensen at times. But the reason this supergroup fell onto my radar is that its drummer is none other than Adam Betts, who is also the mind behind Colossal Squid (#2 on this list). His distinctive style of drumming is surprisingly absent for most of this album, though, save for the unexpected (for me, because I didn’t look at the track list beforehand) cover of Björk’s “Army of Me”—the way he lets loose on that one is unmistakably him.
A December release that appeared on my radar due to the talents of Sander Bryce, drummer extraordinaire (from Really From), whose fine work appears throughout this album. It’s a restrained, haunting affair, with a harplike acoustic guitar (or similar string instrument), beautiful melodies, and of course fantastic drums. That said, for all of its dreamlike ethereality, its depths are countered by plenty of bright and hopeful moments. I’m happy to have stumbled across this.
And, coming in 25th, here’s King Gizzard’s other album from this year! Whereas their first album of 2023, PetroDragonic Apocalypse (my #5 pick above), was thrash metal, this one sees them further exploring electronic music, crafting this synthpop/synthwave album solely on analog gear (including live electronic drums). Each of the seven songs is also directly related to its counterpart on PetroDragonic, meaning the two albums begin with the same riff—but in different keys, different timbres, and vastly different moods. Not to say that everything on The Silver Cord is light-hearted, though—there are moments of joy and ecstasy, but also patches of darkness throughout. Even so, it doesn’t always pack the emotional punch that I seek, and the hit-or-miss nature of this album for me is what leads to its relatively low ranking.
Oh, and this album comes in two different forms—the “standard”, whittled-down 28-minute version, and the 89-minute “extended” version that sees each song stretch past the 10-minute mark (and, in the opener’s case, the 20-minute mark). I like this album, but I don’t like it that much, so I’ll be sticking with the short version.
That’s a wrap for the top longer releases, but there were also a (literal) couple of standalone singles this year that I wanted to include, because they are really good. So here they are! These are also represented on the above playlist.
Not quite good enough to obtain entry to my top 25, but I still quite like them. (These are not on the playlist.) In alphabetical order by artist name: