2023 In Review: Christine’s Top 5 Songs and Albums
Year-end lists of the best music of 2023 abound right now, so we thought we’d throw one in the mix. Contributor Christine Buckley gives us her picks for the top five songs and albums of the year in rock, folk and indie pop.
SONGS
5. Everything Everything, ‘Cold Reactor’
In March, the electronic indie outfit will release Mountainhead, its fourth LP in four years (counting the 31-track reissue of 2010’s Man Alive). The lead single has EE’s usual combination of bouncy delivery and grotesque imagery, foreshadowing their album concept of a caste-based society perched on a mountainside. Prolific doesn’t always translate to inspired, but Mountainhead could be EE’s most fascinating album yet.
4. Pink and Brandi Carlile, ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’
Hours after Sinéad O'Connor’s passing in July, Pink and Brandi Carlile honored the Irish singer-activist with this impassioned duet on Pink’s Summer Carnival tour. Phone videos went viral, garnering millions of Youtube views and earning a spot on Pink’s TRUSTFALL Deluxe, released December 1. Few have done O'Connor’s signature song justice, but two of the greatest modern female vocalists managed it in this astonishing tribute.
3. Lewis Capaldi, ‘The Pretender’
Heartwrenching piano ballads are the Scots singer’s forte, but this is his most personal, a confession of deeply rooted insecurity. The song echoes Capaldi’s documentary “How I’m Feeling Now,” where he discussed living with Tourette’s Syndrome and hits home for anyone who has ever run from themselves.
2. Paris Paloma, ‘Labour’
This year’s feminist TikTok anthem drives a stake into, in Paloma’s words, “dangerous misogyny that paves the way for benign boyfriends and husbands to benefit.” The dark, rhythmic folk track’s title hints at childbirth, reflecting lyrics about a daughter doomed to relive her mother’s oppressions. Let’s hope for a 2024 debut album from this young talent.
1. Big Thief, ‘Vampire Empire’
This chaotic live favorite finally found a recorded home. A few deceptively peaceful opening bars give way to a frenzied, ultimately screaming grievance with a dithering lover: “Well, I walked into your dagger for the last time / It's like trying to start a fire with matches in the snow.” 2024 will probably be quiet for Big Thief as Adrianne Lenker enters a solo album cycle, but elements of this banger would be quite welcome therein.
ALBUMS
5. Olivia Dean, ‘Messy’
On her long-awaited debut album, Olivia Dean delights with her trademark songwriting that draws poignancy from the everyday. “Ladies Room” begs for space in a relationship, “The Hardest Part” apologizes for growing up, and “I Could Be A Florist” brings you gifts to make you smile. Dean’s effortless vocals navigate folk, soul and pop, inviting us gently into her bright space of hope.
4. Amber Run, ‘How To Be Human’
Desolate, aching and beautiful, the fusion of Amber Run’s preceding three EPs The Search, The Start and The Hurt gathers the band’s mood-driven grooves into their most ambitious and finest foray yet. A record about life’s beauty and suffering could emerge overwrought, but Joe Keough and company have pulled off a philosophical novel in indie pop form.
3. Boygenius, ‘The Record’
Not for nothing has The Record garnered countless nominations, awards and spots on year-end lists. The three masterful songwriters leveled up on their debut LP, bringing their individual styles – Bridgers’s edge, Baker’s soul and Dacus’s poetry – into songs that swing from garage rock to americana to emo. It’s an ingeniously crafted ode to friendship, with no skips.
2. The Early Purple, ‘Summer Hide’ EP
Multi-instrumentalist Matt Saxon’s indie folk project paints a sonic world as earthy and texturally gorgeous as his cover art, layering expert melodies and golden harmonies with hand-pumped harmonium and his hallmark resonant acoustic fingerpicking. Themes of regret and grief are tempered by solace in nature; the exquisite eponymous track urges us to travel “out of the way of the carousel,” which this collection certainly helps us do.
1. Nothing But Thieves, ‘Dead Club City’
On their fourth LP, the genre-fluid English rockers handily apply the concept of a city-sized members-only club to issues of belonging, public opinion and alienation. Left lyrically vague enough to relate to your institution of choice – religion? politics? the music industry? – Dead Club City fuses euphoric prog guitar riffs, synthpop hooks and punk beats with the ever-shifting vocals of dynamo Conor Mason and the sureness of a group that trusts in its growing success.