2022 Music: Top 25 Albums of the Year

 Alright, final post to wrap up our music project for another year. I believe Jez is planning to write up his top 25 in two different posts but I DON'T DO THINGS THAT WAY. So enjoy this hideously long post. Or who am I kidding, you're just going to scroll straight down to number 1 and then get angry and rage-quit. Aren't you, Mother? Well, enjoy.

 

25) A Bit Of Previous - Belle and Sebastian (Indie Pop) 

Starting off with a familiar name, I mean obviously familiar if you were actively listening to Indie Pop music in the 90s, but familiar even if you pay attention to my end of year music posts (which I know you do, Mother) as these guys did my #7 album and #3 song of 2018. While not exactly their follow-up (they released a soundtrack album and a live album in the interim), this was delightfully more of the same as their first proper album since that time. If there's a reason they drop down the list a little bit here, it's mainly that their 2018 effort had a far grander scope, and I feel had a bit more bite in the wonderfully sardonic vocals of Stuart Murdoch, but otherwise it's a very bright and entertaining pop outing from these veterans.

24) Formentera - Metric (Post-Punk Revival)

Straight away we have another alumnus of my 2018 end-of-year list (as I'm sure you can recall Mother, they did my #87 song and were an honourable mention for my top 25 albums. Alright I'm going to stop addressing my mother directly now). This one really surprised me, as to be honest I'd kind of forgotten that Metric's 2018 album had that kind of success with me. Kicking off with the sprawling and wonderful bit of progressive pop "Doomscroller", the album has a consistently good sort of dance-punk quality to it, which does start to feel a bit effortful as it goes on; there's an attitude to the vocals while the music earnestly tries to be catchy and perky, and it's that audible effort only that prevented me from loving this more on a relisten and for it to be higher.

23) Crisis Of Faith - Billy Talent (Pop Punk)

To refer back to my previous writeup again, this album from old Canadian punk-rockers Billy Talent also kicks off with a sprawling track ("Forgiveness I + II") which I wrote up yesterday as part of my top 20 songs of the year. I don't always have a lot of time for pop punk music generally, mainly because it all has the same kind of raucous energy coupled with youthful whingeing (/Billy Joe Armstrong impersonation contest) in place of vocals. So these guys stand apart mainly because they have a more mature sound both vocally and in the sense that their arrangements and compositions are thoughtful and aren't just plugged into the automatic punk music generator machine. But it retains the raucous energetic fun, and I'm very here for that when it's this well done.

22) Cheers - Jukebox the Ghost (Power Pop)

This was a major turnup when it came to relistening. The references to previous music project artists from 2018 keep coming, because these guys had a big hit in that year for us with "Jumpstarted" which started to wear heavily on me as the year wore on, ended up only #66 and in the years since has in fact started to give me the shits. So I was pleasantly surprised that this album worked better on the first listen, but I fully expected in relistening to just throw this straight on the trash heap where it belonged. Instead, here it is cracking the top 25 that their previous album failed to. Main reason is that, while these guys obviously do fun and silly bombast very well, this album has a fully-fledged cabaret kind of feel to it, where they explore greater depths in slower and more thoughtful songs, and the whole thing retains the 'dudes having fun together' party spirit but also feels more restrained and just sophisticated, so in every way I just think it's a better and more complete album rather than a gimmick.

21) Something In The Making - Team Me (Indie Pop)

I feel like my 25-21 picks are very heavy on the 'pop', possibly because there's a bunch of poppier albums that worked consistently for me but it's in other styles and genres that the real contenders emerge. This one here is very high on production value, which means there's a nice schmick quality to the way it sounds but it also means there's a certain artificiality to it that often puts me at a remove. In this case though I feel every song brings a unique personality, and the whole album has a really fun, unpredictable quality to the way it works through its different guises. "Song for a Drummer" is definitely the standout track here though.

20) Fossora - Björk (Art Pop)

This feels like possibly the only place where I cross over with the general critical consensus on best of the year, and honestly I'm not even sure why. It's actually really hard to fully embrace this outing from Björk because it really is the most avant-garde/experimental she's ever been. There's little in the way of rhythmic coherence, she leans heavily on the woodwinds and the strings but not necessarily in a melodious way. Somehow though, the end result I find completely compelling, mainly because they're such idiosyncratic soundscapes and don't sound like they could come from anyone or anywhere else. I will also admit that I'd probably have hated this if I hadn't listened to all of Björk's discography a couple of years ago and got a fuller understanding of her quirks as an artist. I disliked her 2017 album "Utopia" when I first heard it for example. So if this one really isn't your cup of tea, I can understand - but it is worth working your way chronologically through as, in context, this one really takes off with a lot of wonderful weirdness.

19) The Gods We Can Touch - Aurora (Dreampop)

Another beloved previous music project artist (who did my #1 song of the year the first year we did this, in 2016), this is another case where all Aurora had to do was keep plugging away at her usual thing to win me over. There's some inconsistencies in this album to be fair; in particular with tone. I feel she vacillates a little too much between airy softness and down-to-earth pop and she tends to be at her best when she occupies the space in between. But there's a high concentration of her best work here with contrasting tracks like the spooky chamber quality of "Everything Matters" or the upbeat charm of "Giving In to the Love" that it had to find a spot in my top twenty.

18) Never Let Me Go - Placebo (Alt Rock)

Although this should almost feel over-familiar to the point of cliché for someone my age to like Placebo, truth is I wasn't into them in their heyday and in fact hadn't really sat down to listen to their music at all until this album. It's fair to say then that I was very late to the Placebo party (that sounds like a wild time, doesn't it) but I'm definitely dancing on the table by now. Similar to Aurora, this album has a lot of high points like "The Prodigal" and "Surrounded by Spies" that showcase a band who's really comfortable with their sound after many years making it and really know how to put a song together, but it does find itself down the bottom half of my top of the year just for some songs that aren't as good, which ultimately makes the album about ten minutes longer and more indulgent than it needs to be.

17) exuvium [OBLIVIØN pt. II] - Crywolf (Experimental Downtempo)

This was an album that Jez chose, and normally when Jez calls anything "experimental" it's code for "Sam is going to be furiously angry at how shit and intractable this is" so it's really a delightful surprise to find it in fact good enough for a top of the year ranking. Its key strength is also its key weakness, which is that it's really powerfully dense. There's something quite captivating about this both musically and artistically, but the fact is it really doesn't let up with the piling on of musical complexity and dramatic, expansive experimentation. It's definitely an impressive set of music but I am held back a bit by feeling like it's sometimes an artistic curiosity more than it is a collection of music.

16) Strange Time To Be Alive - Early James (Chamber Blues)

Another discovery by Jez that I never came across, this guy really won me over with his extraordinary gravelly blues voice. The voice itself shouldn't be a revelation, it's just the kind of voice you develop from sixty years of whiskey and cigarettes, but in fact this bloke is younger than me by some eight years. In some ways there's also nothing revelatory about his songwriting or instrumentation, it's just really solid, earthy blues that can deliver some wonderful grunt. "Racing to a Red Light" and "Harder to Blame" are definitely my standout tracks here.

15) And I Have Been  - Benjamin Clementine (Post-Music)

I mentioned in my songs writeup yesterday that this full album (featuring my #6 song of the year, "Copening") was arguably one of the most anticipated of the year, and it didn't... really disappoint. Fact is Benjamin Clementine has one of the most intrinsically captivating voices around, and there's a showmanship to his songwriting that's quite wonderful. What I could certainly see as a disappointment here is that he's really toned down the wacky playfulness he displayed in his first two albums, and while I do instead love the intimacy of having him, his piano and the occasional bit of string support, it does feel like it's missing something. I wouldn't change very much about Clementine's music, but I'm not sure he puts enough of his creativity and personality into this album, otherwise we might be talking about this ten, even fourteen albums later than we are.

14) Ini (Spirit) - Digawolf (Canadian Indigenous Folktronica)

Canadian Indigenous folk music was definitely my huge discovery of the year, having spent the first seven months running through the entire back catalogue of Buffy Sainte-Marie. So this album was perfectly timed late in the year to hit that sweet spot again. Not - I hasten to point out - that I'm suggesting this is in any way similar music from two completely different indigenous nations from different parts of Canada, but what this does produce is the modern twist on traditional sounds that I loved so much from the latter stage of Buffy's career. In some ways this reminds me more of Musk Ox - who did my #6 song of last year - in that it has a raw, rustic quality that's extremely evocative of untamed northern wilderness, but in this case produced with a curious electronic accompaniment that provides a constantly intriguing contrast.

13) Leather Terror - Carpenter Brut (Synthwave)

Ha. I think after a couple of really sophisticated and even delicate bits of composition in Benjamin Clementine and Digawolf, we dive belly first into a giant pool of silly bombast with this. Carpenter Brut is an artist that checks subtlety at the door, in this case fusing his trademark over-the-top mixing and beats with elements of death metal, post-punk and even some exotic pop. At the end of the day though, this is just wall-to-wall bangers and being non-stop fun, I found it completely irresistible even on a relisten.

12) Churches - LP (Pop)

From very early in the year (in fact this was a December 2021 release), this one definitely became one of my most beloved pop albums of the year. Held up largely by LP's hugely impressive voice, she just carries an immense amount of raw emotive power that works through a number of different moods and paces. It's a nicely slick pop album but it feels very much her own rather than some amalgam of committee thinking and what feels like it should work. I feel this is very much just a strong collection of songs rather than an album that stands as some grand musical statement, but the sheer volume of stirring and at times provocative individual songs here meant it was always going to play near the top of my year.

11) From Wasteland To Wonderland - Paddy And The Rats (Hungarian Celtic Punk)

I feel I really can't stop myself from making a bunch of dumb jokes at this point, but... aaargh I love Celtic punk music generally and it just seems like the most absurd thing in the world that the only really great example of it we got this year was from some Hungarian guys who decided to tap into that great Celtic tradition of their country?? Yeah I tried my hardest to think of this as camp, forgettable silliness because truly they do sound a lot like that Eastern European Eurovision entry who decides to do Celtic punk for some reason, but man they just do it so well. Not just the camp rap-folk of "Everybody Get Up" and the pirate lilt of "Ship Will Sail" but they manage the impossible task of delivering some really stirring folk heart with "After the Rain" and "Standing in the Storm" to show that beyond the gimmick of Hungarian Celtic punk, these guys actually have some serious musical and songwriting chops.

10) Radiant Bloom - Astronoid (Post-Metal)

This album was a disagreement between me and Jez, so I was determined to push this into my top 10 just to spite him. Thankfully I also love the album so the spite never really entered into my decision (or did it?). I mean, it's fair to say that I'm very open to music that could be described as 'droney' and while I can see this coming across as droney, I feel it's actually one of the most complex and dynamic sets of music of the year. The guitar movements are very intricate and constantly moving, so on the surface it appears droney but there's so much going on underneath when you pay attention. There's also delightful contrast here - as I talked about yesterday for "Human", my #9 song of the year from this album - between the light and dark elements of the music that gives it a nice hum but also plenty of melody to give it a more complete musical character. Whether you end up liking this or not is of course subjective, but I think this is a bit of technical mastery that manages to produce some surprisingly beautiful music.

9) White Jesus Black Problems - Fantastic Negrito (Contemporary Blues)

A mainstay of my top 25 albums, Fantastic Negrito did my #1 album of 2018 (which I've since gone on to consider as my favourite album of the first five years we did this music project) so this one was hotly anticipated and it absolutely didn't disappoint. His lyrics are always very pointed, and this album stands as a vociferous personal statement about black identity but it's really in his music and songwriting that the best of his beautiful spontaneity happens. I just love the way this guy seems to constantly surprise with new twists on blues conventions (such as the rollicking country-infused "Trudoo" here) and plays with such passion and personality. He's genuinely one of the most innovative artists working today and I feel very lucky to be able to follow his career as he keeps churning out brilliance like this.

8) Still Life - The Slow Show (Indie Pop Rock)

I talked about these guys again yesterday as my #20 song of the year "Mountbatten" comes from this album. One of the more general things I can say about the album is how strongly The Slow Show reminds me of another favourite discovery of the music project for me, Future Islands. Or rather how much singer Rob Goodwin reminds me of Future Islands' Samuel T Herring. In this case though the music is less synthpop and has more of a rock drive, and in doing so they produce a different aesthetic but the same musical philosophy of delivering sometimes dark and brooding lyrics but in a moving and upbeat kind of way. There's a real performative aspect to the way Goodwin switches between his singing and his spoken-word deliveries, and the string and piano orchestrations are subtly done to set the mood in an ambient kind of way that never really takes over the overall feel.

7) ForeverAndEverNoMore  - Brian Eno (Ambient Rock)

Speaking of ambient, we have the pioneer of ambient rock landing at #7 and yes, he still absolutely has 'it'. Now for those who don't know (I think you know this though, Mother), I have a very soft spot for Brian Eno's ambient music because we spent the first couple of years of our son's life using Eno's "Music for Airports" suite as white noise while he slept. So I'm always excited about new Eno music, but the fact is this is frankly the best he's released since possibly the 70s. It's testament to how good he is as a thinker that he can create such interesting and surprising music like this decades into his career. I think as well there's a real commitment to the bit here in music that can come across as pretentious, but because he's so committed to tranquility and peace in his soundscapes, it ends up being so immersive and peaceful. It's ultimately just very cool as well. Sidenote stat, worth noting that this is my highest-ranked album that only won runner-up album of the week it was released. And yes, there's a reason for that: the album that beat it that week is still to come. 

6) Maxim - Drew Worthley & No Spinoza (Nursery Rhyme Folktronica)

I seem to be liking to make segues into my next writeup, so speaking of commitment to the bit, this was one of the most delightful surprises of the year. The premise is simple to explain: they sing a bunch of nursery rhymes, and they lay down electronic folk compositions around the text. But the execution really is not simple at all, and that's where the commitment to the bit makes this such a wonderfully rich and deep album. Each nursery rhyme is given a full musical composition with its own personality, whether or not the tunes exist or not, but the tone they take with it is also so important. The album feels gimmicky but there's not a hint of irony or that these guys are taking the piss, and I feel if they'd done that, or alternatively if they'd tried to imbue too much drama into it, it would completely undermine how wonderful their compositions are. It's not a satirical album at all: it's nursery rhymes given a brilliant new lease on life thanks to the combined genius at work here from Worthley and No Spinoza.

5) Hold the Girl - Rina Sawayama (Art Pop)

This is probably the album that had the biggest surge in relistening (possibly second to Jukebox the Ghost) as I felt I'd unfairly underrated it myself in doing my initial arbitrary rankings. I enjoyed Rina Sawayama's self-titled album "Sawayama" a couple of years ago, and really found this a far more rich and captivating manifest of her songwriting. She obviously has a strong voice, but I find the key strength is how adaptable that voice is. Through this album she works through every emotive expression available: tender, vulnerable, furious and plaintive, all very much with a lot of raw feeling throughout. This made it to the very top tier of my year though mainly because I can't find a weak song on here: there are some I like more than others but every note of this serves a purpose and hits its target, never losing momentum. This is definitely my pop album of the year.

4) Between Two Waves - GoGo Penguin (Contemporary Jazz)

I telegraphed this in yesterday's post, but the makers of my runner-up album of 2018 have made it into my top 5 again. This is also my highest-rated EP of the year - Jez and I played this year with a 'mandatory weekly EP' rule to keep the overall listening time down a bit, and this squeezes into the criteria at 24 minutes - and notably is also higher than Fantastic Negrito's album (who beat them to the #1 spot of 2018). These guys just consistently deliver astounding improvisational jazz, with the piano and double bass being beautifully held together by Rob Turner on the drums who just seems to keep playing despite what nonsensical time signature they're playing in. I love how constantly surprising and moving their music is while they manage to always move together and keep a coherent musical theme going. In this case they also really emphasise electronic augmentation and it's lovely and subtle in the way that the jazz will transition into something more electronically based without me even noticing. It'd be hard for me to judge this as better than "A Humdrum Star" but at 24 minutes it's certainly the album I'd more likely recommend as it's just pure gold throughout.

3) Bronco - Orville Peck (Queer Country)

I feel like I've been skirting around my full thoughts on Orville Peck, through two top 50 (including one top ten) songs of the year, because I've known all along of course that this is coming. But what really struck me in listening to this album - and it didn't strike me when I listened to Pony, its critically-acclaimed predecessor - is just how exciting this guy is as a musician. I was obviously too young to experience Elvis Presley fervour at its height, or even really understand his appeal as an artist, but Orville Peck makes me realise what that feeling could have amounted to. But there's an added spark to Orville Peck, which is that he brings that same feeling of stirring emotions, puts it in a country music setting that's really evocative of place and time, and also adds that queer love element that really expands the scope of both country music and rock & roll in ways that are fascinating and profound.

2) ILYSM  - Wild Pink (Dreamfolk)

 So yeah, if there was money in betting on my album of the year, the follow-up to my #1 album of last year (only 18-odd months in the making) would have been too short odds. But you would have been fucking WRONG anyway, because it's only #2 of 2022. I feel like I've spoken enough through all the songs and albums from Wild Pink that I've written up before, but what made this album so fascinating this year was the fact that they retained all of their (and specifically frontman John Ross') gentle and curious wonder, but in this case explored more of a down-to-earth rock aesthetic that worked to liven up beautifully what might have felt stale or samey, while also doing it in a strange way that felt new and yes, weirdly exciting. But at the end of the day, like last year's "big warm hug" that was A Billion Little Lights, this is a sentimental and reassuring album that reminds you of what really matters in life (hint: it's not Elon Musk's twitter stream).

1) Rakshak - Bloodywood (Indian Rap Metal) 

But - and it's a big but - for some reason despite the fact that 2022 was a lot more predictable and stable than the last two years have been (and I mean personally, although globally as well), I really did take an immense amount of solace in the raw, furious anger that these guys brought this year. I feel like I've hinted at this through several writeups now but this album, from the first time I heard it in February, was absolutely unbeatable to the top spot of my year. It should be noted that this is the first time that an artist has claimed my #1 song (with Chakh Le) and #1 album of the year spot, but everything about both that song and this album hits absolutely hard in my sweet spot. The fusion of traditional Punjabi folk music with the really on-point fury of their guitars and the anger of their vocals. Their rap has a certain kind of "people imitating hip-hop artists" quality to it, but it all absolutely makes sense in the east-meets-west vibes that they're laying down. I will say that I find this album utterly perfect as it stands, but that itself feels like a double-edged sword, in that I'm not sure I'll love a follow-up from them with this much fervour. They're playing here with very much the same ingredients but invoking them in different ways and combinations and it's wonderful as it exists, but I do feel they'll need a proper twist in the sophomore effort or this will start to feel like a gimmick. Possibly it is already, but I think it's exquisitely executed and I've just bloody loved headbanging to these guys all year.

So that's it for another year of music listening. Of course there were many, many more albums I would consider worthy of mention, and here are my honourable mentions. I lose track of the stupid ways I decide to order these, but this year they're ordered... in order. It's just my #26-45 albums, without any further commentary.

Was kost die Welt - Versengold (Pagan Folk Rock)

Emerald Sea - Sound of Ceres (Dreampop)

Valtos - Valtos (Celtic Folktronica)

Chimes at Midnight - Madrugada (Dark Country)

Moch - Dlù (Modern Gaelic Folk)

Physical Thrills - Silversun Pickups (Post-Punk Revival)

Libre - Jesse Cook (Nuevo Flamenco)

El Mirador - Calexico (Desert Rock)

Firmament - Dim Gray (Prog Rock)

Impera - Ghost (Heavy Metal)

Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum - Alestorm (Pirate Metal)

Smoke & Oakum - The Longest Johns (Sea Shanties)

Flames of Perdition - Dawn Of Solace (Doom Metal)

Will of the People - MUSE (Glam Pop Rock)

Tularosa: An American Dreamtime - Kamara Thomas (Psychedelic Country)

Roots - Children of the Sün (Psychedelic Rock)

Do You Need A Release? - De Lux (Post-Disco)

Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam - The Comet Is Coming (Psychedelic Jazz Rock)

Sunir - IANAI (World Folk)

PSYCHX - Kordhell & Scarlxrd (Drift Phonk/Scream Rap Fusion)