Favorite releases of 2022
Once again, I did not listen to a ton of new music, though this was mostly due to the happy reason that my wife and I welcomed a second baby—a boy who loves to hang out with his older sister—to our family and that has taken up most of my time outside of work. The little time I got to spend listening closely to albums, I savored. I don’t really write about albums I don’t love anymore, so my top releases of the year were basically all the albums I wrote about, with the exception of one item on the list. These aren’t presented in any real order or hierarchy, though if I had to pick favorites from this year, I’d say the Flaccid Mojo, Makaya McCraven, and Cola albums have really stuck with me.
Flaccid Mojo is a new project from Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren of Black Dice. Like Black Dice, Flaccid Mojo deals in otherworldly sounds and grooves, off-balance beats and disguised vocals—though as Copeland mentioned, with Flaccid Mojo, he and Warren keep the songs a lot more open, with the effect that “FM,” Flaccid Mojo’s debut album, feels relaxed and curious, playfully moving from sound world to sound world in a really accessible way. There’s something that happens with both Flaccid Mojo and Black Dice—they give the listener something to hold onto: a groove, some percussive element, or a little melodic theme to anchor even the most wild tracks. “FM” is both mindbending and super enjoyable, a record that’s fun to think about and fun to listen to.
There are so many pleasures to discover on “FM”—the Seussian sounds and disfigured Teddy Ruxpin vocals of “Moonwalk the Tomb;” the sweet tones of “Striped Pants,” which could sit right alongside the prettiest songs released by Black Dice; the lahar-like flow of noise erupting from “Straight Arrow” and its metallic beats; the slant-rhyme Jane Fonda 80s workout jam of “Garbage People; the possible “Do It Again”-referencing beginning of “FM Drive;” and the total high-RPM jam juggernaut of “Fried Muscles,” vocals sung from around the corner, a song that builds up a head of steam and never relents.
[BUY FM]
“Sometimes, Forever,” Soccer Mommy’s third album, continues Sophie Allison’s streak of making great albums and challenging herself to try new things as a songwriter. Allison enlisted Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, to produce and record the album and the results are pretty stunning—still recognizably Soccer Mommy (catchy melodies, 90s-rock referencing riffs, insightful and heartbreaking lyrics), but with some darker, knottier sonic touches that allow Allison to explore different forms and moods than she has in the past. Lopatin’s production is great—not only for those instances when he’s helping to bring a different/OPN aesthetic to the forefront (on songs like “Unholy Affliction,” “newdemo,” “Darkness Forever,” and the horror tale of “Following Eyes”) but also with some subtle background stuff, like the clouds of synths on “Still” or the long noisy outro on “Bones.”
“Sometimes, Forever” is a gorgeous and adventurous album. Allison seems to be reflecting on things that a lot of us are probably thinking about. The future does not look bright, for any number of reasons, but it’s also still good to take pleasure and comfort in the things that bring us joy, like caring relationships, cold beer and ice cream, or heading out in your truck towards the horizon.
Alvvays continue their streak of catchy, compelling albums with the release of “Blue Rev,” which comes five years after their second album, “Antisocialites.” This album is packed with ideas, so much so that there are little interstitial songs studded throughout the album (at the beginning of “Easy On Your Own,” “Tom Verlaine,” “Velveteen,” and “Belinda Says”). There’s also a lot more noise on “Blue Rev” than there was on the first two albums, a layer of fuzz and distortion that makes “Blue Rev” feel louder and at times more like a live performance than the band’s other records—and it’s a good textural contrast with Molly Rankin’s bright, sweet voice. I’ve always heard a lot of Orange Juice-style guitar tone (especially “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”-era Orange Juice) or Felt in the band’s songs (“After the Earthquake” on this album is a prime example), but on “Blue Rev” it feels like there’s some element of heavier shoegaze there too, or even something like the blown-out guitars of Disco Inferno or Sam Mehran’s work as Matrix Metals or Outer Limits Recordings. Rankin’s voice is at times even a little buried in the songs, moreso than on the band’s first two albums.
“Bored in Bristol” is another favorite song on the album, maybe along with “Tile By Tile” the two purely prettiest tunes on “Blue Rev.” It’s all sweet keyboard and grooving bass and soft drums. Rankin sings about being willing to commit to almost anything to keep up with someone, “If there’s a fine/I’ll pay it/If you are destroyed/I’ll call another ride/If that’s the game you’re playing/Let me know the rules and I will be all right,” — but possibly caught in a situation where whatever she does, it’s not enough, as she sings longingly in the chorus, “Always waiting,” over and over. Rankin also has a way of writing evocative and beautiful-sounding descriptions of the most mundane suburban or urban landscapes—at the end of this song, she sings, “Artificial light cascading/cool dismissal, self-effacing/Bored in Bristol, always waiting,” which brings to mind the little scene in “Forget About Life” when she sings, “Did you wanna forget about life/with me tonight/under condominium signs.” No one has ever made light pollution and billboards sound so romantic.
“Waiting Game,” Junior Boys’ first album in six years, is a at once luxurious and somber, withdrawn, and isolated. It has a few of the prettiest songs the group has ever done and it also has a feel of desolation and exhaustion. Jeremy Greenspan’s voice, which is usually so present and central on their albums, is rarely unfiltered or unmodified on this album—it’s shifted, garbled, mechanized, or sped up on almost every one of the album’s tracks.
“Big Black Coat,” the group’s last album, was enjoyable but a little thin—it felt like a more brittle record, less stable, and maybe that was to reflect what Greenspan mentioned as one of the inspirations for the album, the lonely guys he saw wandering around Hamilton, Ontario, frustrated by life. “Waiting Game” returns to the high-level sound design that Junior Boys have deployed throughout most of their albums—the depth of sound they achieve is hard to believe.
Greenspan has mentioned in interviews that, before “Waiting Game,” he built a studio in Hamilton with a dedicated synth room and mixing room, acquired new tape machines, and spent a lot of the early pandemic years learning how to use and calibrate his studio equipment. Greenspan also mentioned that he’d been worn out by how loud music had become and wanted to make something quieter and deeper.
If you’re not a hardcore audiophile, you might think, okay, whatever, but you can totally hear it on these new songs—the sound feels endlessly deep, endlessly sharp. “Might Be All the Wrong Things” and “Night Walk,” the first two tracks on the album, really show off how hypnotizing this is. “Might Be All the Wrong Things,” now probably in my top-10 Junior Boys songs, feels so slight at first, but it’s a spectacle, a simple construction of tones that spins out into its own world, a quick hit of bass, and then Greenspan’s vocals, one line sung sweetly, rippled out to dissipate over the course of the track.
Makaya McCraven has been working on “In These Times” for seven years, all while also putting out a series of incredible albums (see last year’s “Deciphering the Message”). “In These Times” is a labor of love, a big, bold statement from McCraven. These songs show why McCraven is so great—he’s not only a fantastic drummer, but he’s also a talented composer and arranger: so many of the tracks on “In These Times” are bustling, bursting with ideas, little textures that color the margins of the songs, business that you only notice on the third or fourth listen (but not business that makes the songs sound busy or overwhelming). One of the best and most vital albums I’ve heard this year, “In These Times” really does feel like a culmination of what McCraven’s been doing since “Highly Rare.”
One thing to note about so many tracks on the album is that McCraven, who is an awesome drummer, never really shows off—or he does, kind of, but in a really understated way. He’s always there, adding something interesting, some percussive texture, some wild but totally fitting beat. There are a few exceptions to this—he’s really out there in front on “This Place That Place” (which is mind-boggling), “Seventh String,” and “The Knew Untitled”—but for the most part he’s doing the classic bandleader thing of letting other players shine and bring his compositions to life, providing the best possible frame for their work.
Cola’s debut album, “Deep in View,” is among the best released this year. One of the most impressive things to me about this album is that it’s full of songs like “Blank Curtain,” which the band released in advance of the album late last fall. “Blank Curtain” sounds so simple and utilitarian in some ways, but the components of the song—Darcy’s detached vocals and mechanical guitar, Stidworthy’s bass and Cartwright’s calm and authoritative beats—combine into something incredibly compelling, a song that whirrs and collapses and moves so vividly.
“Water Table” might be my favorite song on the album. The beat is that dead, precise beat that you hear in some Joy Division and New Order songs, a flat pulse, accompanied by occasional bass and quick brush strokes of guitar. Darcy starts the song by singing, “Desalinate the sea/and pour the waters into me,” in a defeated, resigned voice. And, later, “I think I’m doing all right/I don’t need additional lives,” and “Last long enough to go extinct/just long enough to overthink.” There’s a tone running throughout the album, here and there in Darcy’s lyrics, of being exhausted by the shittiness of the state of the world, the endless immiseration, our inability to stop wreaking havoc on each other and the natural world.
“Deep in View” is, from top to bottom, an album that holds your attention—it’s a post-punk album, it’s a guitar album, but it’s also the kind of album that scratches an itch you didn’t even know you had.
“Invite Your Eye,” by Ilhan Ersahin, Dave Harrington, and Kenny Wolleson, is a big, swirling album of spaced-out jams. It’s got elements of jazz fusion, drone, and early 00’s post-rock. There are songs with charismatic grooves and songs that meditate studiously on a phrase or two or interrogate an idea slowly. Ersahin, Harrington, and Wolleson’s work has both the feel of free improvisation and studied, considered revision, songs generated from wild, exploratory playing and then taken apart, rearranged, rewritten.
“Invite Your Eye” launches straight into a multi-tracked sax weaving into and around itself, then busts into one of the best beats on the album around the one-minute mark, accompanied by more righteous declarations from the sax. A weird, degraded guitar (?) enters, dropping, lurching behind the sax. Besides having one of the best grooves on the album, the title track is also probably the noisiest and maybe the most reminiscent of Darkside, Harrington’s group with Nicolas Jaar. The track ends with clattering percussion, coins in your pocket as you walk at a brisk pace down the street.
“Lucifer on the Sofa” is a classic rock album, according to the band, and that’s evident in the choices the band makes on the songs: big beats from Eno’s percussion, aggressive and swaggering vocals from Daniel, lots of great guitar solos, sounds, outbursts. As usual with Spoon, you get melodies and hooks that stick with you for weeks on end (with almost every Spoon album I’ve ever heard, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with the songs in my head—this happens more with them than maybe any other band). “Lucifer on the Sofa” also has some of the bigger-sounding songs they’ve done recently: “Wild” is a soaring, beautiful song, up there with “Underdog” in terms of the band’s poppiest tunes; “Held,” a Smog cover, brings back some of the straight-to-the-point vocals and cascading guitars from songs like “The Beast and Dragon Adored;” “The Hardest Cut” is one of their best guitar songs, sort of austere and simple, with a great solo towards the end; and “On the Radio” is a huge, driving song, a tremendous riff backed by great bass and piano, with a satisfying build-up at the end.
Jeff Parker, Jay Bellerose, Anna Butterss, and Josh Johnson. Four tracks of gorgeous improv. Listening to this album, it almost defies belief that these pieces come together in the way they do: the shifts, the adventurous risk-taking, the doubling-down, the settling in. How do they do it? A kind of unbelievable magic.