It’s the holidays, so things are winding down, and rather than talk about what I normally do, the various infuriating developments in technology and/or media, I thought I’d do something a bit more fun and round up my favourites of the year! This is part one, as I’ll have a part two just for movies once I have some time to see more of the year’s highlights. For now, here’s my favourite music, TV, and books of 2023!
MUSIC
All my favourite songs of the year are collected in this Spotify playlist:
Top 20 Albums
When it comes to choosing my favourite albums of the year, I tend to prefer a mix of artists that are entirely new to me which blew me away alongside old favourites whose latest records hit me in a different way. In other words, there are plenty of great albums by artists I like, including The National, James Blake, Danny Brown, Oneohtrix Point Never, Animal Collective, Jessie Ware, Kelela, and Kali Uchis — excellent work, but not singular in the way that some of those that appear below felt to me. That doesn’t really mean much in particular, but it makes sense to me!
20. Hannah Diamond — Perfect Picture
The new album from PC Music’s Hannah Diamond may at first seem like it has arrived too late, as her style of pop maximalism has been traded in for the sharper edges of hyperpop. This is a mistake, because Diamond marks out her place as her label comes to an end, an ideal plastic monument to the ambiguous blend of sincerity and artificiality that defines her music. As the prospect of AI pop stars becomes a more common reality, the reality-bending sophisticated pop songwriting of an artist like Diamond stands out even more.
19. Yaeji — With A Hammer
“For Granted” set the tone for the year in January, and then the rest of the album somehow ended up being just as good.
18. underscores — Wallsocket
I like underscores because she’s a bit like “Tik Tok”-era Kesha crossed with her frequent collaborators 100 gecs, balancing on the line of cringe but never crossing it, but the styles have a much wider range than that comparison. She has apparently been uploading music online on SoundCloud since she was 13, and now at 23, this album suggests a great career ahead.
17. IAN SWEET — SUCKER
These songs are full of irresistible hooks, quasi-pop punk attitude, and some of the year’s most memorable lyrical images, like the idea that “your spit tastes different” if you kiss like you mean it. It’s one of the most purely joyous records I’ve heard in a while.
16. a.s.o. — a.s.o.
Trip hop is, I think, hard to do well. Massive Attack, Portishead, DJ Shadow, these are the icons, but it’s easy for imitators to become trapped in simple formulae of the genre. a.s.o. tap into some of those signifiers, but rise above it all, sounding like 70s Bond movie theme songs brought to their logical downbeat conclusion. It makes you want to smooch your crush that’s too cool for you in the alley behind the club.
15. Avalon Emerson — & the Charm
“The world is a fuck,” Emerson sings on “Astrology Poisoning,” and she’s right. I was interested to find out that she was a big DJ at Berghain and other huge techno clubs, as the songs on this debut album are decidedly dream poppy, tapping into a 90s nostalgia for a mixture of smooth house jams and big pop production. Obviously, that mix works on me.
14. Vagabon — Sorry I Haven’t Called
Vagabon has never been happier, it seems, as her vibrant songs on this album show a glimmering side to her existing reputation as a thoughtful songwriter with a bit of a bone to pick. Here, there’s a desire for catharsis, and an almost head-in-the-sand belief in hope that shines through no matter what. But still, that other side peeks through the glitter. “I'm way too high for this, riding on a wave too low, never found myself through the smoke.”
13. U.S. Girls — Bless This Mess
While the songs on this album may be more direct in some ways, musically and lyrically, than Meg Remy’s previous work, that address works in their favour. Her interest in using her music in part to be political, creation as activism, is well-suited to this form of sonic experimentalism that embraces a broader palette to make its point, loud and with purpose.
12. Mary Jane Dunphe — Stage of Love
Dunphe is a longtime musician, but this is her debut solo album, and it is a bold piece of work, full of undeniable synth pop hooks but also numerous moments that zig or zag in a way that undercuts what came before, like she is challenging you to enjoy it anyway. And I do!
11. feeble little horses — Girl with Fish
In bringing together shoegaze’s dizzy guitar riffs (as part of that genre’s apparent resurgence) with the noisiest of bedroom pop, feeble little horses never overstays their welcome, each song its own short burst of zany energy, never staying still for more than a moment, like an impatient child too excited and emotionally responsive to everything around them.
10. Mitski — This Land is Inhospitable And So Are We
I had the pleasure of seeing Mitski perform this album in its entirety in a stripped down acoustic show in Edinburgh, and it is notable here if only to emphasize that what I appreciate about Mitski is that she only cares about the work, whether in its recorded form or performed in a way that seeks the same sense of perfectionist consequence and impact. It’s endlessly compelling, and deeply, deeply moving.
9. Water From Your Eyes — Everything’s Crushed
It’s okay if you don’t like the sound of Water From Your Eyes. The first time I listened to this album, I wasn’t sure about it, either. There’s a lot here that could seem annoying in lesser hands, but instead, I listened again, and then again, and it cohered into something unique, playful but political (“There are no happy endings, there are only things that happen, buy my product”), the (former?) stoner laziness obscuring a truly audacious artistry that isn’t afraid to challenge or confound your expectations, and even disappoint them. It’s exciting!
8. Lana Del Rey — Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd.
My pastor told me when you leave, all you take
Oh-oh, is your memory
And I'm gonna take minе of you with me
7. Gia Margaret — Romantic Piano
This was my go-to album all year for studying, resting, or whenever I just needed something to wash over me calmly. As with the best instrumental or ambient works, the album can serve that background purpose, but it also rewards close listening, as the soft piano also tends to be enshrouded in the sounds of quiet nature, evoking a melancholy that suits the spare compositions, underlying deadpan wit, and dedicated reinvention that sits comfortably amid, as a sample puts it on “La langue de l'amitié,” music as a “language of feeling.”
6. Slow Pulp — Yard
“Doubt” is one of those songs that feels like it has been around your whole life. This isn’t a skilled cover of some old standard? It’s that immediately good. The rest of the album works similarly, encountered for the first time like you’ve always known each of these sounds, every hazy guitar lick, every wry lamentation over old mistakes. It’s a comfort, though not without a bittersweet aftertaste.
5. Maria BC — Spike Field
Soft but powerful is how I’d describe Maria BC’s voice, and the album as a whole, plaintive and mournful but with an address that demands you fall into her emotional register, collectivity within the loneliness.
4. Palehound — Eye on the Bat
This album gives me good old fashioned hangout vibes, the kind of thing you’d throw on during a summer BBQ with your hippest friends. El Kempner’s lyrics are always fun to pay attention to, full of lovely details (“A bitch that grows like hair from my tongue cracks the egg we share and scrambles us in open space”), funny asides (“In that tiny dusty living room, full of candy wrappers and dirty shoes, and our cat licking his ass and looking confused”), and heartbreaking conclusions (“There’s nothing I can do to keep from fading to you”). Whatever mood I’m in, this album is there to speak to it.
3. Youth Lagoon — Heaven is a Junkyard
I came to this album late in the year, but I’ve had it on repeat ever since I finally dove in. It flows as a proper album, each song building on the previous one, with a confidence that behooves an artist who is, after all, a veteran of the indie blog moment of the early 2010s. In returning to the Youth Lagoon project, Trevor Powers melds his vast experimentation over the last decade-plus into some of his grandest arrangements yet — “Trapeze Artist,” for instance, is perhaps the most beautiful song Powers has produced…and next is probably its follow-up, “Mercury.”
2. Sufjan Stevens — Javelin
Even putting aside the real-life backdrop to Sufjan’s new album and its release, it would rank among his most affecting work, which is saying something. As others have noted, it revisits various Sufjan-isms, from Age of Adz bombastic maximalism to Seven Swans’ sparseness, often from moment to moment. But these lilting melodies and gigantic orchestrations also signal an artist growing a little older (he’s 48!), facing the limits of his body and the world alike, but finding hope nonetheless. That’s something to cling to.
1. Fever Ray — Radical Romantics
Looking for person
With a special kind of smile
Teeth like razors
Fingers like spice
Looking for a ghost
In the midst of life
Fever Ray is that rare artist that seems to be operating on my exact wavelength. You know what I mean, I imagine — you come across someone whose work feels exactly right. Their music, first with The Knife and as Fever Ray, approaches synth pop with all the elasticity and verve it can handle, pushing each bass line, turn of phrase, or kinky fantasy skewed every which way before coming back together into soundscapes of queer pop extravagance. It is infectious, like a virus.
Sucking on what’s mine
Love’s carbon dioxide
Top 5 TV Shows
I watched less new TV than ever this year. This is for a few reasons, but mostly, I think, because we’ve gone well past the “golden age” of peak TV and made our way deep into a period of total content glut. I often come across the poster for some new TV show and it looks like a lot like a joke TV show from 30 Rock. I’ve become pretty selective as a result. Moreover, I almost certainly haven’t watched whatever your favourite show is, and I don’t want to hear about it, sorry! Honestly, most of what I watched this year was old seasons of Survivor, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and King of the Hill. I did really like these 5, though.
5. Jury Duty
I was a bit skeptical of this series, both before I started it and through most of its episodes. Is there really much to be gained from such an elaborate premise being perpetrated on one random real dude, who just so happened to be one of the most genuinely decent dudes to ever be on TV? Is it just an excuse to see if they can keep up the charade, for us to gawk at what he’s able to accept as real? Does it have something greater to say about morality, justice, or human decency? Maybe, but it ends up feeling satisfying in the end, proving that my suspicions were unnecessary, and that’s an accomplishment on its own.
4. Party Down
The reboot is hard enough. But to reboot a beloved comedy that went off the air 13 years ago to the dismay of, I don’t know, a few thousand people who really loved it is even harder. Do you pitch it specifically at them? Do you go broader? Turns out that the best way forward is to just keep it up like you never went away at all.
3. The Righteous Gemstones
Danny McBride and Jody Hill (and, to perhaps a lesser extent, David Gordon Green) are highly observant chroniclers of the American id, from Eastbound & Down to Vice Principals to, lately, The Righteous Gemstones. As I argued in my post earlier this year about King of the Hill’s approach to conservative values and lifestyles, it is always best to take on themes and subjects like that from within. McBride and co. obviously have an intimate understanding of these worlds, and so, somehow, none of this hilarious show feels like a caricature. Instead, there is great compassion here sitting right alongside the acidic satire.
2. How To with John Wilson
It’s a shame that this was apparently the final season of John Wilson’s show, as it has become such a strong example of skilled non-fiction filmmaking that blurs its inspirations and routinely transcends the comedy of simple editing jokes into truly surprising profundities.
1. Succession
Listen, sometimes everyone else in the dwindling monoculture is right: Succession really was that great, and the final season stands up, pound for pound, to the series’ best moments. “You’re not serious people.”
Best Books I Read
I do not keep up with the latest books. I wish I read enough that I could do that, but it isn’t happening. Instead, then, here are the best books that I read this year.
The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
One of the best books (or, I suppose, three books) I’ve ever read, memoir of the highest order, not just intimate or vulnerable but scathing and indicting, occasionally deeply tender but mostly a succession of the most beautiful phrases stacked on top of each other. Would recommend to anyone.
Shadow & Claw: The First Half of The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
This book is largely responsible for my growing interest not only in science-fiction generally, but specifically in the subgenre of deep future, exploring what the world and people will be like so far in the future that it becomes difficult to recognize anything at all, even if there is a yearning for the retvrn. Wolfe has his limitations, but there are parts of these books that are among the most thrilling things I’ve encountered in genre fiction, stunning ideas woven through lovely prose, and countless times when all you can say is “hell yeah.”
Les Années and Happening by Annie Ernaux
Yes, the Nobel Prize still matters I guess, because it got me to start reading Annie Ernaux, and thank god. This was a big year in all-timer memoirists for me.
Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval
Early this year, in an effort to read more fiction and to have it be a more social experience, I started a small book club where we only read short books, usually 150 pages or less. Hval’s debut book was the first one we read, as I had wanted to read it since it was published in 2018. Hval is one of my favourite musicians, so I was eager to discover what her writing was like, and it all feels of a piece — dark, gross, perverse, and elegant. Also, if you want to join my book club, reach out!
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
An unbeatable premise executed superbly by the GOAT. The human mind can get used to anything.
Stay tuned for Part Two with my favourite movies of the year, including new-to-me discoveries! Coming soon to your email inbox.
Happy holidays!