These are my favorite albums that came out in 2023. With a couple notable exceptions, most of these are going to show up on lots of year-end lists—take that only as testament that you don’t need to read every list. Just this one, naturally.
I find I want to call almost all of these pop albums. Something’s been going on for many many years where pretty much anything that speaks to big human emotions I just want to bill as pop music. One thing about pop is that the lyrics never feel the same when just read as plain-text rather than sung/rapped/spoken as a part of the song itself. One hopes not, at least. That’s like, the reason it’s a song. And why they make bad tattoos. Or maybe great tattoos, like a really long-term commitment to an IYKYK thing. Okay wait, not #8, but that’s the exception proving this rule.
Another thing these all have in common is that they’re really good from start to finish. Objectively ;p. I am tempted to include highlight tracks, but c’mon, just give the whole thing a spin.
1. Pardoner: Peace-Loving People
Label: Bar None
RIYL: Pavement, Parquet Courts, Dinosaur Jr.
This one burns hot! With an average track clocking in at just a hair over two minutes, SF’s Pardoner doesn’t waste a moment of the 31 minutes they put down here. I went in for the pop sensibilities and sweetness braided nicely into squealing and snarling punk songs, and found myself coming back time and again for the genuine heart and relatively unadorned, sage storytelling they pack into the lyrics. I’m sure it helps that something not terribly unlike this shimmery garage psych sound is a lot of what attracted me to the Bay Area a decade ago. I think this year I needed the reminder that life’s still what you make of it, and I’m super thankful for the peace-loving people who made this one.
2. Slow Pulp: Yard
Label: ANTI-
RIYL: Jay Som, Tanukichan, Lomelda
It’s indie! Sonically familiar, with little to distract from how good or bad the songwriting is. Fortunately the songs are wonderful. Perhaps that’s an undersell. It’s far from one-note, and they do boast a range of styles that still surely could have fit into any college radio rotation stack since ’89 (not that I would know). That gamut runs from guitar rippers to folksy string-arrangement strummers to piano-driven heartstring pullers, everything with a bit of a since of stinging confessional outpouring and a pretty nice dose of catharsis to chase it down. “Yard” was potentially my song of the year, and I don’t think that’s just a personal matter. Even if so, it’s a great track at the center of a remarkable album that will only grown on you with repeat listens. Hold it dear, dear.
3. billy woods & Kenny Segal: Maps
Label: Backwoodz Studioz; Fat Possum
RIYL: Earl Sweatshirt (MIKE, Navy Blue, etc.), Alchemist-produced projects
Maps is my favorite rap album I’ve heard in years. Woods, Kenny Segal, and a cadre of esteemed collaborators come through with a big record here, and they get to it from the first track, laying out many of the motifs to come: a blownout drum machine, a syncopated and dissonant sample, visions of decay, general paranoia, eating a good meal (“skate wing, brown butter, and capers, sprigs of thyme, every pour is a natural wine”), and a dark ending. Clouds have silver linings and silver linings have clouds. Sweetness is bitter, bitterness is sweet.
Tales of home life and tour travels, music business and economic winds, mental toil and quietly beautiful moments, all nourished by consistent current of weed and food. The storytelling here is the centerpiece for me, but even if you don’t listen for the lyrics, the beats and flow are absolute heat from start to finish. There are a million reasons to love this disc, but you gotta say there’s some real clickbait to a music blog nerd like me in seeing Danny Brown and (Future Islands’s) Samuel T. Herring both listed on the features list. Those appearances are good, but well overshadowed for me by cameo verses from underground rap vets Quelle Chris, E L U C I D, and Aesop Rock. It’s a testament to the gravitational pull that woods and Segal have going on this album, being able to pull together all these personalities around a sound and narrative universe that’s so expansive and still cohesive.
4. Hysterical Love Project: lashes
Label: Motion Ward
RIYL: Portishead, Sade, Cocteau Twins
There’s nobody doing it like HLP right now. Or if there is, nobody’s told me. That is very possible as well. For the purpose of this blurb, let’s be solipsistic and say Lashes is the only album out this year that’s this slinky, slick, and downright sexy. Oh wait I wrote about this already. Here’s the gist:
This album is both immediate and so very nostalgic, with a wistfulness that caresses your cheek and drives off into the traffic-less highways of night… This is sexy music, intimate while also distant, like kissing someone’s neck beneath their ear before you leave, when they’re asleep atop the comforter. Yearn; exhale.
Bandcamp
5. Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
Label: Perpetual Novice
RIYL: Charli XCX, SOPHIE, Celine Dion
She’s only getting stronger. Caroline’s followup to 2019’s wholly unique Pang is a whole new creature—and I’m into it. Desire,… is at once a celebration of the dreamy but energetically pulsing sounds of the 90s/early 00s pop landscape and something starkly contemporary and, indeed, quite novel. Polachek and Danny L Harle (who also executive produced Pang) show off a vast palette of styles and fantastic depth of detail here in the tracks, providing a dynamic landscape that Polachek absolutely presides over like a benevolent deity. She further establishes her brand of braiding classical references with personal history and universal emotions, writing lyrics and songs that feel grand yet individual, timeless yet new. That alone is delightful, but her vocal performance all over the album takes it to the transcendent. She’s crisp, she’s languid; her siren-like calls are accompanied by plainspoken, fuzzy-phone-message overdubs; she soars over the seas and shoulders through the dancefloor. Influences from Shakira to Enya get digested and painted into this wonderful pastiche of artistically inclined diva-minded hyper-pop. Have funnn.
Bandcamp
6. Mary Jane Dunphe: Stage of Love
Label: Pop Wig
RIYL: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Björk, Robyn, DFA Records
Wow wow wow where to even file this?? I won’t pretend I knew who MJD was before this release, but this album felt instantly familiar, all DIY punk and strobing disco rock—or something like that. I adore how much swagger this has, and the way it feels larger-than-life (arena/festival-sized) and still low-to-the-ground (would not be shocked to see this performed at thee Stork Club or even an Oakland house show. I have a big soft spot for the kind of heart-on-sleeve art that can beat its chest with a teary smile or a stern rage, and in this record I hear also here the NY 80s club glamour of David Bowie, the DIY experimentalism of Arthur Russell, and the cool poise of Grace Jones. This thing struts and claps, squares up and throws down, and makes my heart grow in size so its presence can live within it.
Bandcamp
7. Mandy, Indiana: i’ve seen a way
Label: Fire Talk
RIYL: Special Interest, Water From Your Eyes, Model/Actriz
This is an album I’m sure will be divisive on reception. It’s the debut LP for the young group, and the emerge fully formed, with a sound that is beautiful and brash, plunging and leaping, screeching and screaming. I fell for the adamant and declarative French lyrics, admittedly, but the dramatic, cinematic, and sometimes punishing sounds kept me enthralled. This is danceable in the weirdest dark clubs, all pounding and creeping, with that haunting sense of the inhuman expressing humanity and the human expressing inhumanities. I suppose it’s most generally electronic post-punk/industrial, but I get plenty of pop and hip-hop out of the themes, expressions, and rhythms. Mandy, Indiana (British/French, actually) created something very fresh here, serving the aged goth, the tiktok teen, Berlin basements, and Barry’s Boot Camp (??) all as parts of the same very strange world.
Bandcamp
8. Mary Lattimore: Goodbye Hotel Arkada
Label: Ghostly International
RIYL: Ana Roxanne, Emily A. Sprague, Dylan Henner
The balance of tension and grace in Mary Lattimore’s music seems to me to aptly echo the actual instrument that is a harp, with the tautness of the strings and the sweeping poise of the structure framing them. Her songs grow and develop like timelapsed shots of vast landscapes, building and decaying more than layering, shifting, and repeating like most popular music, and indeed most music reviewed here. As it would turn out, the crystalline tones and caressing drones make a lovely and idyllic score for flying westward over the recently snowcapped Rockies, watching as the grassy plains upswell, are cleaved by a gorgeous but jagged upheaval of earth itself, then diligently transfigure into the desert’s tan scrub and so soon, rust canyons and turkey-tail bluffs.
Bandcamp
9. Greg Mendez: Greg Mendez
Label: Forged Artifacts
RIYL: Elliott Smith, Greg Freeman, Alex G
I don’t know a lot about Greg Mendez the person, and I don’t know anything about Greg Mendez the person that isn’t in his music. That said, I still feel like I know Greg Mendez a decent amount. Not like I know a decent amount about Greg Mendez, but what I said. Perhaps it’s symptomatic of growing up as a middle class white boy in the middle of the country, but Greg Mendez seems to give voice to a whole cohort of malaises, quiet joys, troubles, and moments of peace. It’d only be self-serving to write this without mentioning the spirit of Elliott Smith in the storytelling and the musical and recording styles, so I’ll reiterate what surely would be obvious in one track’s listen to anybody who’s heard them both, and what otherwise isn’t really relevant except to connect fans of one to fans of the other. (Greg Mendez Live at Purgatory is a great introduction point as well, pulling in songs from his prior record, Cherry Hell, as well.)
Bandcamp
10. Overmono: Good Lies
Label: XL
RIYL: Bicep, Two Shell, HAAi
Good Lies is the sound of flying free, feeling good, and sharing that joy with your truest mates. Big room fun abounds here, and my heart goes out for hooky, R&B/pop vocals and samples creating emotional depth for the bass throbs, synth washes, and kick/snare/hi-hat/cymbal dances. It sounds and feels hyped up like a mega-star in a Lambo, but at its heart is the genuine affection of a walk home, the wistful longing of laying on the hood of your friend’s car, and the simple, perfect revelry of getting a ride in the backseat of your own hatchback, windows down with some real ones at both your shoulders. It stays in a somewhat well-defined sonic pocket, but has range to stay fresh (dancehall to garage), and the whole album flows like a well-arranged DJ set, putting on a slew of standout singles, tempered with strong tracks that keep things rushing while also letting the hits breathe. Three waters, please.