The Best Albums of 2023

the irrefutable list

We’re going to take a little break from our regular stream of nostalgia plays and album rankings to recognize the best records from 2023. Are these albums definitively the best of the year? Yes. Because I write on the internet, where opinions are facts.

Albums are presented in alphabetical order and followed by a (rather lengthy) list of additional thoughts on the year in music. And then the usual list of footnotes. This is a long email, is what I’m saying.

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The Artist In the Ambulance - Revisited by Thrice

The Artist In the Ambulance may not be the greatest Thrice record, but it’s almost certainly the one most responsible for expanding the band’s fanbase, yours truly included. The original recording is youthful and energetic, but it’s also thinner than the compositions warrant; songs like the crunching “Silhouette” were clearly meant to be heavier than they sounded on that 2003 recording. And while Revisited honors the deceptively poppy hooks of that original record, it’s also dramatically heavier (here’s “Silhouette” again), with thicker guitars and Dustin Kensrue’s wonderfully aged voice lending a tone of world-weary gravitas. There result is … well, there’s a bit of Pierre Menard here, isn’t there? As 2023 Kensrue sings “they are sick / they are poor / and they die by the thousands and we look away / … / ‘cause we don’t have the time / here at the top of the world” you can hear in his strained voice the 20 years that have passed since he first wrote those words, and how the passage of time only amplifies the painfully evergreen truth in them.

The Brightest Days by Origami Angel

Even as there are some common threads across their albums—technical guitar work, ear-worm hooks, a sense of light humor—Origami Angel are fundamentally shapeshifters.¹ (Remember that time they wrote a Pokémon EP? Good times.) The Brightest Days is their poppiest record yet, and I’d argue that it’s their best. Across a scant 22 minutes, the band offers up a legitimate summer pop anthem, the catchiest song ever named after a Star Trek plot point,² and even a bit of political commentary. I can’t claim that this band or this album is for everyone, but I think The Brightest Days is the best entry point for Origami Angel’s impressive oeuvre, so if you’re interested in guitar-forward pop-rock, there are worse ways to spend a sitcom runtime.

End by Explosions in the Sky

One of the challenges of writing about a genre-defining band like Explosions in the Sky is that most readers will either already A) be huge fans, or B) have decided that they’re never going to listen to this band. So, almost definitionally, End is unlikely to change either of those opinions, but as I’m in the fan camp, I’m enamored with this new release which falls somewhere between 2016’s electronica-infused The Wilderness and 2021’s delightfully acoustic-oriented Big Bend.³ If you’re a fan, I think you’ll like End, too. And if you’re not a fan, well, I recommend at least giving the back half of album-opener “Ten Billion People” a shot; it’s one of the most beautiful passages of the year.

Hapax Legomena by Pete Davis

Pete Davis’ 2011 release, The Pottsville Conglomerate, is one of the longest, most dense, and most difficult records that I have ever come to love. But, boy, did I ever come to love it.⁴ Hapax Legomena takes that same energy—epic but acoustic, dense but catchy—and condenses it into a dozen one-minute songs. The album’s title is a classical Greek term for a word or phrase that occurs only once in a body of work, and so while Davis’ Hapax Legomena is divided into twelve tracks, it’s roughly a through-composed twelve-minute song. On the one hand, I love the way this man’s brain works and am more than willing to submit to his peculiarities, and on the other, there are moments on Hapax Legomena that are so good that I want them to occur much more than once—the latter half of “Before the Shelves Fell” and the central section of “And We Could See Through to the Scenery There”⁵ come to mind. That just means the record needs to be spun again and again, I suppose.

i/o by Peter Gabriel

In the past, I’ve tried to articulate the indefinable way that foundational music becomes a part of the fabric of who we are as people. Talking about new Peter Gabriel material is difficult for me because, not only is his work foundational for me in that most exclusive and personal of ways, but it’s also deeply interwoven into my relationship with my father.⁶ Threads run this way and that, tethered to memories and feelings, known joys and subconscious preferences. New music shifts the weight of those strings, pulling in every direction at once in a fashion that is difficult to parse and impossible to communicate in short form with any clarity.

So here’s what I’ll say about i/o: It’s every bit as complicated as this review has been and will continue to be. The album was released in full early this month, but Gabriel preempted that album drop over the last year by releasing one song per full moon (because of course). He also released alternate mixes for each track, and the completionist listener can even find a third mix for every track on some of the album’s physical releases. It’s a lot to take in and it can make talking about the album difficult.⁷ But there are a lot of wonderful moments on i/o, particularly the cozy “This Is Home,” the triumphant “Live and Let Live,” and the heartfelt “Four Kinds of Horses.”⁸ I’m one of those weirdos that thinks 2002’s dark and industrial Up is Gabriel’s best album, but most fans will be pleased that i/o leaves much of that album’s anguish behind in favor of the brighter and more accessible sounds that marked his work in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Really, if you have any interest at all in Gabriel’s work, you should spend some time with i/o. It won’t disappoint.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that my father and I were able to catch Gabriel on tour earlier this year; rather than go on and on about how remarkable that performance was, I’ll simply say that it was undoubtedly one of the four or five greatest performances I have ever seen. Peter Gabriel is an absolute miracle.

Lighteater by Future Crooks

(Disclosure: Friend of the newsletter Kevin Ann Dye plays guitar in Future Crooks and produced Lighteater.)

As my fellow parishioners in the Church of Pop-Punk can attest, there’s something innocent and pure about the way an upbeat pop-punk record can reflexively put a smile on your face.⁹ Lighteater skirts the edges of being true pop-punk, but that same pure, innocent joy courses through every single second of its 27-minute runtime. No matter how dour your mood when you first fire up Lighteater, I refuse to believe that anyone can maintain a frown past the 1:20 mark of album opener “Summer Thunder” when a brief bridge pounds out the downbeats and vocalist Mike Rogers sings “and then they showed up / and said, ‘Mike, don’t worry about the end’ / we’re not going home, going home / my long lost friend.” It’s one of the more sonically uplifting moments of the year. Later tracks continue the trend: “The Wind” is likely going to be on every summer playlist I make for the rest of my life, the fun of “Gloomy Sunday” is exactly antithetical to the song’s title, and “Poppy’s Song” is one of the first millennial entries in the pantheon of great dad songs and deserves a place next to “Cat’s in the Cradle,” “Father and Son,” “Still Fighting It,” and “Gracie.”¹⁰ It’s tough being a sentient being in 2023, so put on Lighteater and feel good for a while.

May This Keep You Safe From Harm by Off Road Mini Van

Maybe 20 years ago, Dave Grohl went on some late-night show and asked David Letterman or Conan O’Brien or Jay Leno or whoever it was, “What happened to all the rock bands?” And he had a point. I’ve argued that Foo Fighters might well be the last great rock band with no prefix—no post or hard or punk or synth or indie or whatever amending the “rock”—and while rock hasn’t been the best or most interesting or most important genre in music for a long time, it’s still a genre that can provide value. Off Road Minivan, whose “17 Years” is amazing and whose debut full-length, 2020’s Swan Dive, doesn’t quite live up to what I said about it at the time, released May This Keep You Safe from Harm in June and it’s the best collective release from the band yet, by an order of magnitude. If you, like Dave Grohl, are trying to find a rock band, there’s one for you here. Album opener “Fade Out” deftly executes the traditional soft/hard dynamic shift, “Pity Sex” is all loud guitars and angst, and the outro of finale “It’s Nothing Personal” is exactly as crunchy and punishing as you’d want it to be. It’s not 1997 anymore, but I still love rock music and May This Keep You Safe From Harm is a great reminder why.

Migrant Returned by The Dear Hunter

I rolled my eyes when I found out that The Dear Hunter was re-releasing Migrant. It’s only been a decade since the album’s original release and … the original still holds up pretty well? Unlike Thrice’s The Artist in the Ambulance, Migrant isn’t showing its age yet. And yet, despite my doubts, Migrant Returned is excellent. The album features remixed versions of all its original tracks and that change is a material one; in the years since Migrant’s release, TDH mastermind Casey Crescenzo came to realize that the album should have been more of a guitar-forward rock record, and so he had it remixed to that effect. It not only works, but I would argue that it’s a legitimate improvement. Migrant has some wonderful songwriting but it always seemed a little lost. It’s got direction now. Additionally, Crescenzo incorporated the B-sides that were previously released as a tour exclusive called The Migration Annex, and re-ordered the entire tracklist. The result is a behemoth record—18 songs clocking in at 70 minutes—but also a more cohesive, propulsive whole. If you liked Migrant the first time, or if you’re a TDH fan who didn’t like Migrant, or if you’re looking for what might now be the best entry point to one of this era’s best bands, Migrant Returned is worth your time.

somebody in hell loves you by Sydney Sprague

Sydney Sprague is six years younger than I am and given the tectonic generational shift that rapidly increasing internet accessibility caused during my high school and college years, that gap often seems much, much larger. But, musically at least, Sprague seems to have grown up just as I did; she toured as the opening act for Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World, for god’s sake. In any case, her sophomore outing, somebody in hell loves you, is a lesson in crafting low-key pop-rock that’s dripping with character. “terrible places” is the kind of song that could have elevated an Olivia Rodrigo record, “if im honest” is textbook-perfect in its construction and execution, and “nobody knows anything” is an instant anthem that also takes a delightful shot at the 3rd-wave emo that comprised my adolescent musical environs.¹¹ Sprague’s lyrical narrators are awkward and uncomfortable, but somebody in hell loves you is the work of an artist fully grasping their medium.

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More Notes on the Year in Music

Alternate Sub-Title: A (Very Long) List of Additional Assorted Thoughts on Other Music from 2023, for Those Who Have the Time to Keep Reading and Are Interested in Such Things

• 2016’s 131 is the only Emarosa record that I enjoy from front to back, but the band has released a few quality singles over the years. “Attention” is the best of the bunch by an incalculable distance. It’s unquestionably the band’s best song and, arguably, the best song of 2023 from any band. At the very least, Spotify tells me that it was the single track I listened to the most this year, and that happened despite my not caring much for the balance of Sting.

• I’m not a fan of live records as they remove the polish of studio recordings and the communal joy of live performances, somehow memorializing the worst parts of both. And yet! If you’re a fan of The Dear Hunter, as you know I am if you’ve read this far, you owe it to yourself to listen to Act I: The Lake South,¹² The River North (Live from Seattle, WA) at least once, just to hear Casey Crescenzo absolutely wail. That man can sing.

• The weirdest musical trend of 2023 was a large number of artists deciding, apparently simultaneously, to go back to the well and re-release and/or re-record old records. Naturally, Taylor Swift is leading the charge here and I assume that, once she’s done re-recording all of her old records, we’ll get Taylor’s Versions of every other album from every other band until digital music collapses into its destined Swift Singularity. In the meantime, and as mentioned above, we’ll have to settle for legacy acts like Thrice and The Dear Hunter re-releasing their own work along the way. Additional entries in this, our Year of the Re-Release 2023, include Bad Books’ II: Revisited, which turns the quirky charm of the original into a depressing dirge, and The Mars Volta’s Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazon which provides a serviceable acoustic rendition of last year’s self-titled album. Despite attending a shockingly excellent live show from the Volta last year, I’ve just never quite connected with that record and the acoustic version doesn’t change that. Lastly, and in that same vein, I didn’t much care for Death Cab for Cutie’s Asphalt Meadows upon its release last year. And, for the most part, I still don’t. But something about stripping those songs down to their base parts has made them infinitely more appealing to me in this year’s acoustic re-release.

• I really enjoyed Kesha’s 2017 funk-rock blast Rainbow and, like any millennial with a pulse, I love “Die Young.” But 2020’s High Road left me empty and this year’s Gag Order is interesting but also kind of boring, except for the droning, hypnotic “Eat the Acid” which sounds like a B-side from Halsey’s excellent If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, which I loved when it dropped in 2021.

• In February, SYML¹³ released The Day My Father Died, a brutally named album featuring the wonderful “Sweet Home”¹⁴ and yet another song titled “You and I.” Then, in December, SYML released How I Got Home, a brief instrumental EP which isn’t exactly memorable but does make for an excellent reading soundtrack. I can respect that.

• My beloved Bad Suns released Infinite Joy, a meh EP that I’ll surely spend more time with but which continues a downward arc started with last year’s Apocalypse Whenever.

• Somehow, I’m one of the few people who aren’t in on boygenius. They’re … fine? It’s just not my thing, for whatever reason. But even I have to admit that “Not Strong Enough” is great.

• Sigur Rós’ ÁTTA is comfort food for fans of the band, but what was much more impressive than their new release this year was their North American tour. I caught them in Detroit and would comfortably call it the second-best concert I’ve ever attended, behind only Peter Gabriel’s phenomenal Growing Up tour in 2003.

• The title track of The Aces’ I’ve Loved You For So Long is truly phenomenal, a great vibe that I’ve returned to over and over throughout the year. The rest of the album is fine, but it doesn’t hit nearly as hard as their prior two records.

• I can’t tell if Adjy is the weirdest band making music or a normal band composed of the weirdest people making music. Either way, I’m always up to try out whatever they’re doing, and the shockingly brief June Songs Vol. 1 is by far their most straightforward release. It’s also very good! But unlike their prior records, there are no sky-high moments that completely capture me, which is why it’s not listed above. Of course, of all the albums mentioned in these notes, this seems the one most likely to grow on me to the point that I come to regret not including it above. So it goes.

• Several of my friends—and readers!—recommended Hot Mulligan’s Why Would I Watch, an album that I found to be perfectly acceptable and about which I have no deeper thoughts. And it was fun when they did that Lofi EP, too.

• Together in Lonesome is a fine addition to the pop-punk canon, even if I don’t love it. But Youth Fountain’s cover of Less Than Jake’s classic “Look What Happened” is the most fun thing the band did this year, if only for the shot of nostalgia and the reminder of what an impeccable piece of songwriting LTJ managed with that one.

• I’m very glad that Closure in Moscow is back and I’m even more glad that Soft Hell has a lot of the DNA that made the band great on The Penance and the Patience and First Temple. Of course, there’s also plenty of Pink Lemonade here and that is an album for which I have little patience. (In many cases literally; those songs are way, way too long.) When Soft Hell hits it’s a lot of fun, but it doesn’t hit often enough to land up above.

• We’ll close on a fittingly festive note: I won’t pretend to be familiar with any Pogues deep cuts, but like everyone in my sphere, I’m a fan of “Fairytale of New York” in all its many forms. I was introduced to the song by No Use for a Name and could be convinced that the Dustin Kensrue version is the best. Or at least, I could have been convinced of that. At the funeral for Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan, a band led by Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill performed the song and, I mean … mourners rose out of their seats to start dancing at a funeral. A remarkable version of a remarkable song. The bells were ringing out, indeed.

1. 2021’s Gami Gang contains 20 tracks and a roughly equal number of genres.

2. In addition to this and the Pokémon EP, the band also has a Minecraft EP and a split EP with Street Fighter-inspired cover art. Origami Angel are huge nerds and I love it.

3. 2021 was a bit of a crazy year in my house and I full-on missed Big Bend, which is a shame because I absolutely love it. It has been the soundtrack to much of my reading time in 2023, a trend that I don’t expect to end anytime soon. (No pun intended, honestly.)

4. I’ve been in an on-again, off-again relationship with a Pottsville-inspired short story for a dozen years. One of these years, I’m actually going to finish the damn thing.

5. The Through in the song’s title is misspelled in Spotify as Throught, but I think we can use context to safely assume the intention is, you know, the one that’s an actual word.

6. Hi, Dad! That interweaving is exclusively positive in nature, I should note.

7. If I recommend a song, which of the three mixes do I suggest? For that matter, how different are they? Even now, I don’t have answers, though I’m mostly leaning towards the Bright Side mixes at the moment.

8. The back half of the Bright Side mix is one of my favorite passages of the year.

9. Of course, pop-punk, like any broad category, contains multitudes. Some albums and bands bearing the label are dark and troubled and far too many are problematic for other reasons, such as the flagrant misogyny—both implicit and explicit—that has been entrenched in the genre for years.

10. And “Poppy’s Song” is the rare dad song that is purely uplifting. No cross-generational strife here! “You’re gonna be alright / ‘cause you’re like me / you’re gonna be brave / you’re gonna be strong / you’re gonna be Poppy.” Not even an Elsa-ice-blast to the chest could keep those lines from warming your heart. And if you’re interested, you can go back to 2020’s The Wind EP to hear a delightful proto-version titled “Poppy’s Lullaby” that still rocks.

11. In the song’s second verse, Sprague sings: “I saw what you said to my mother / I guess you don’t have any decency now / I guess Ohio is not just for lovers / and I guess it’s not so bad to be the bad guy.” For the uninitiated, “Ohio Is for Lovers” was one of the biggest—and inarguably one of the worst—songs of the 3rd-wave emo boom; the song’s refrain of “cut my wrists and black my eyes” was immediately and enduringly the legacy of how melodramatically vapid the genre could be.

12. Real ones know this is actually The Lkae South.

13. The current solo project from former Barcelona frontman Brian Fennell. Long-time readers will know that I strongly recommend some Barcelona work.

14. Released as a single way back in early 2022.