Favorite Non-Local Albums of the Year
Ethel Cain, Preacher’s Daughter
My first introduction to Mother Cain’s masterful second album was via Tik Tok. When a user described their deep connection to a story of a young girl escaping her religious upbringing, only to be cannibalized by her lover. At face value, seems shocking and brutal. Which, at times, this album is both of those things. However, it’s also lush, beautiful and even funny. From singing about NASCAR in your local shopping mall on the instant classic “American Teenager”, musing about setting out for the west on “Thoroughfare” or bracing for a pain-stricken (and iconic) scream on “Ptolemaea”. 2022 became the year for religious inspired brutal Americana, and Cain’s vice grip on the hearts and mind’s of listeners doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon.
-Andrew Bourque
PUP, The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND
Each PUP album has been better than the previous one, but to keep the trend going they needed to being something special for their fourth release. Luckily the Canadian punk group landed on a meta concept album, one that sees the band facing an internal strife in regards to the very album you’re listening to. Do they cave to corporate labels and deliver a radio hit, or do they dig into their punk roots more? We listen to the band unravel at this decision with no knowledge if or how autobiographical it is. Add in some lyrics aimed at the industry that are both scathing and satirical and you’ve got one of the most unexpected records of the year.
-Andrew McNally
Destroyer, LABYRINTHITIS
“Fancy language dies and everyone’s happy to see it go.” That’s how Dan Bejar begins his six-minute disco-rock single “June.” If that sounds like a pretentious and impenitrable entry to the thirteenth Destroyer album, you’re half right. LABYRINTHITIS is a heady listen but not a boring one. “June” ends in a flurry of stream-of-consciousness nonsense poetry culminating in hilarious fashion with a deadpan “dump him.” The music is an energetic mix of new wave dance and post-punk starkness which keeps both of Bejar’s feet tapping on the ground, leaving his rangey lyricism space to work its magic.
-Ben Bonadies
Momma, Household Name
Momma combines everything I love about ’90s/early ’00s indie rock into one perfect album about being in a band. It references Pavement’s “Gold Soundz” which serves as an inspiration for the guiding sound of Household Name even if the lyrical content is a bit more ‘Cut Your Hair.” Standout tracks include “Lucky,” “Medicine,” “Tall Home,” and “Speeding 72.”
-Christine Varriale
Aldous Harding, Warm Chris
Harding delivers each song on Warm Chris with a different vocal style. She has said she doesn’t know what her singing is supposed to sound like anymore. I think this is why I love Chris in particular. Each song is definitively an Aldous Harding tune but also refreshingly distinct. So, I think this is the best album of the year – it’s a shiny, weird, statement record by a generational talent that is absolutely gleaming the cube.
-Dan Moffat
Rachika Nayar, Heaven Come Crashing
Ambient music is less a rigid genre practice than a guiding light, and this is especially true in the hands of New York producer Rachika Nayar. Inspired as much by the serene calm of drone as she is by the radical hedonism of a warehouse rave, the music on her sophomore LP Heaven Come Crashing stakes a claim somewhere between the two. The end result is something akin to the emotional catch and release of post-rock: big swells of sound collapse on the listener in waves, with a rhythmic churn driven not be drums (although the breaks on the D&B adjacent title track feel like a relief comparatively), but purely by the weight of Nayar’s synths and electronically treated guitars.
-Dillon Riley
Olivia Barton, This is a Good Sign
This Is A Good Sign is an album that creates an entirely familiar and nostalgic world in itself. This world belongs to Olivia Barton, a Nashville artist by way of Orlando, Florida, then Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Her twelve song sophomore LP, via illuminati hotties’ Snack Shack Tracks label, is a feat of incredible songwriting and storytelling that tackles subjects ranging from the enveloping daze of experiencing the death of a friend (“White Knuckling”) and sexual violence on the important, echoing ballad, “Erotic,” to a sweet, Southern love songs that steadies the heavy (“Florida Honey”), and a few ever-relatable tunes that capture exactly how it feels to be idling as a 20-something in the year 2022 (“I Don’t Sing My Songs”, “Good Day,”). Barton’s voice is sweet, lilting, and often layered over itself, but just as often quips with biting, anecdotal lyrics that are almost too relatable for anyone who’s ever fallen apart. But within This Is A Good Sign, just like life, Barton finds a balance, and the album ends with a lyric that everyone should hear as the curtain closes on 2022: “What if all this is a good sign? / When I let go and make space to try.” RIYL: Being nostalgic for Florida even though you’re gay and they hate us there, riding the T all day, Phoebe Bridgers, Madi Diaz, and Margaret Glaspy.
-Jackie Swisshelm
Bad Bunny, Un Verano Sin Ti / Little Simz, NO THANK YOU
I picked two. Sue me. Bad Bunny keeps delivering without disappointment. Un Verano Sin Ti feels epic in scope: where 2020’s YHLQMDLG was a tribute to the reggaeton that Benito grew up with, Un Verano is a celebration of the current state of contemporary Latin music. This still includes reggaeton, but also throws dembow, Latin house, Latin trap. Hell, he even flexes a little merengue muscle on “Después de la Playa.” While he’s branching out, he still brings an anthemic quality to his songs. You don’t need to speak or understand Spanish to feel the sublime beauty of Bomba Estéreo’s chorus on “Ojitos Lindos” or feel the raw sexuality of the synth riff on “El Apagón,” which features the undeniably catchy hook of “Me gusta la chocha de Puerto Rico.” If you don’t know what “la chocha” means… Google it when you get home from work. I have only one humble request for the now-global superstar: come on my podcast, please? Please? Pleeeeeaaaaaseeeeee?
Simz probably thought she was being slick by waiting ’til December – after year-end lists had already come out – to drop her latest project NO THANK YOU. Well it seems like she didn’t see us coming! The British rapper keeps putting out work that is consistently high quality (and perennially underrated), proving that the UK rap scene has a bit more to offer than the grime that has become something of a meme recently. Coming off the heels of her last release Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, this time around she’s less inwardly focused, turning the lens outward, opening up. She returns to topics she’s covered before, like the death of one of her best friends on opener “Angel.” She’s able to reveal vulnerabilities without losing any of the bravado that allows her to stand up to any other rapper in the game. How she isn’t getting consistent placement on lists of the best rappers at work these days feels like a solid justification to completely write off any top 10 lists that don’t include her. “Name one time when I didn’t deliver?” she interrogates on “Gorilla.” If I actually could, I’d probably opt to just keep my mouth shut.
-Harry Gustafson
Favorite Songs of the Year
The 1975, “Happiness”
First time being tipsy at 36k feet, I played The 1975’s latest effort Being Funny In A Foreign Language. Before I knew it I had repeatedly listened to the second track “Happiness” for nearly 90 minutes. I can’t imagine what the passenger next to me was thinking. However, I can’t remember an easier and better way to pass the time. Matty Healy and the boys of The 1975 always manage to deliver on their signature aloof/bright-pop vibe. Infectious bops and heartfelt zingers delivered with tongue-in-cheek sincerity. Never too serious, but always great.
-Andrew Bourque
Orville Peck, “Daytona Sand”
Opening tracks have to make a statement, and they’re often my favorite cuts from albums. Orville Peck’s recent sophomore album was no different, as “Daytona Sand” recaptured the minimalist, mystical glory of Pony. Peck’s bass crooning has rarely sounded better, from the defiant chorus to the whispered outro. Although the song rests on a bold guitar lick, the choruses are propelled by a rolling snare drum. The melodies are simple but tantalizing. Peck’s interalbum offerings were frustratingly bland, but “Daytona Sand” rights the course and acts as a mission statement, that the masked singer would not fall victim to the sophomore curse.
-Andrew McNally
Caroline Polachek, “Billions”
You know what’s criminally underused in pop music? Children’s choirs. I’m always delighted when they show up in live performances or when they sing Björk in an auditorium. Bonus points if they’re British. Caroline Polachek and Danny L. Harle, the architects behind today’s most exciting pop music, know exactly how to deploy one for maximum effect. The angelic, eerie Trinity Choir enter as a human counterpoint to Harle’s sparse techno and Polachek digitally augmented vocalizations. Their entrance in the final 90 seconds of the song was my biggest fist-pump moment of 2022.
-Ben Bonadies
100 gecs, “Doritos & Fritos”
I may be the oldest person to call themselves a 100 gecs superfan at 33 years old, but I am 100% okay with that. 100 gecs didn’t bless us with a new album this year; 10,000 gecs releases next year. What they did bless us with is a morsel of a perfect song, “Doritos & Fritos.” It hits the 100 gecs formula perfectly with absurd lyrics like “eating burritos with Danny DeVito” (a dream to be honest!) and their unique combination of everything I listened to in high school like pop music, screamo, hip hop, and hardcore. 100 gecs could very well write a perfect earworm of a pop song with Dylan Brady and Laura Les’ encyclopedia of musical knowledge, but I love that they choose to explore the boundaries of genre time and time again.
-Christine Varriale
Cola, “At Pace”
Cola was formed as a Canadian indie-supergroup between members of bands Ought (Montreal) and U.S. Girls (Toronto). Somehow, they’re even better than expected. Cola’s standout track from this year’s debut album Deep In View is sleeper hit “At Pace.” Although “At Pace” was not one of the five (!) singles released to promote View, the album track has rightfully outpaced its peers on streaming services. When the guitar breaks down right before the chorus, you’ll get that old familiar elation, that music high that you’ve been hooked on since forever, and you won’t question it.
-Dan Moffat
Jim Legxacy – “dj” / Greg Freeman “Come and Change My Body”
SORRY couldn’t help myself, I had to put two songs.
Jim Legxacy – “dj”
When we talk about the power of the internet to change art in unique and exciting ways the end result should be more like Jim Legxacy’s single “dj.” Perched somewhere between midwest emo, R&B, and UK Garage, this is music that doesn’t transcend genre, but plots a connective thread between several of them in such a natural way it’s a wonder no one else has done it. Over a lone, twiddly guitar riff Jim Legxacy angelically runs through the greatest hits of a relationship on the fritz (the proverbial dj set that never got off the ground), while thunderous drumbreaks crackle all around him. I haven’t heard anything else quite like it.
Greg Freeman – “Come and Change My Body”
Burlington, Vermont had a hell of a year in indie rock, and Greg Freeman’s debut LP I Looked Out felt a lot like the culmination of something big. I loved the whole damn thing, but early single “Come and Change My Body” is something like a succinct thesis or skeleton key to the record’s ragged charm. Freeman sings with fragile beauty as his band stacks horns, harmonicas, strings, and wonderfully scuzzed up guitars over an alt country shuffle fit for any of those mighty 90’s records we all love. Simply one of the most beautifully fucked up indie rock songs you’ll listen to this year.
-Dillon Riley
Ethel Cain, “American Teenager”
As a queer bitch who hails from the Redneck Riviera and grew up under a religious/military community, pacing through strip malls and watching Nascar, this song just does it for me. That, and I will never get over the line “I do it for my daddy and I do it for Dale.”
-Jackie Swisshelm
Steve Lacy, “Helmet”
An anthem for people with attachment issues. “You were so automatic, so you know I had to have it, but loving you was a hazard, so I got my heart a helmet” is probably my lyric of the year, too. You see that, Steve? Someone does actually know the words to your songs.
-Harry Gustafson
Favorite Gigs of the Year
Andrew McNally: LCD Soundsystem @ Roadrunner (night….4?)
Andrew Bourque: The 1975 At Their Very Best @ MGM Music Hall (Night 1)
Ben Bonadies: Phoenix @ Roadrunner
Christine Varriale: Here & There Festival @ MoMa
Dan Moffat: Molchat Doma @ Royale
Dillon Riley: Dazey and the Scouts Reunion w/ Model/Actriz @ Elsewhere
Harry Gustafson: Tyler the Creator, Kali Uchis, and Vince Staples @ DCU Center
Jackie Swisshelm: Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams @ Leader Bank Pavillion
Additional Jawn
Most Pleasantly Surprised By: CHARLIE – Charlie Puth
He’s the internet’s boyfriend. The sweaty, usually half-naked boy next door who often engages with his feral fan base with the same energy, if not slightly more unhinged. Also a prolific Tik Tok user, the pop star began posting clips displaying his writing process in real time, crafting singles on the fly by twisting unconventional sounds and layering on beats and vocals. The product of all this noise, was Puth’s third studio album simply titled CHARLIE. A collection of 12 seductively sweet pop songs perfectly fitting of someone with Puth’s interminable charm. Previous releases just didn’t work the way this album does. Is he kind of annoying? Absolutely. Am I slightly obsessed? Absolutely.
-Andrew Bourque
Best Use of a Supertramp sample in a hip-hop song: Ghais Guevara – This Ski Mask Ain’t For COVID
Samples are an art form on their own – between the licensing and the ways they can be used and manipulated, there’s a lot of fun to be had. With each passing year, the coveted “Best Use Of A Supertramp Sample” award gets tougher and tougher, but Ghais Guevara earns it by brilliantly reworking and speeding up the rhythm to “Breakfast in America” in his song “This Ski Mask Ain’t For COVID,” to the point where I had to pause the song and hum it to myself to figure it out. Okay this was really just a way for me to sneak in a plug for Ghais Guevara.
-Andrew McNally
“Free Bird” of the Year: Alex G (Paradise Rock Club, 11/9/22)
In all my years of attending rock shows, I’ve heard the cry of “Free Bird” from the audience’s drunkest dudes no less than one million times. More of a jeer than a setlist suggestion, I have never seen a band actually attempt it. When the call came out at Alex G’s second night at Paradise Rock Club, I was all but positive it would come and go unnoticed. That was until guitarist Sam Acchione busted out the riff on a whim, prompting Giannascoli to pull out his phone, battle the notoriously bad cell reception in the venue, and recite the lyrics direct from Google. It was as hilarious and sloppy as an impromptu “Free Bird” ought to be.
-Ben Bonadies
Best Live Show Banter: going222jail
Just trust me.
-Christine Varriale
Best Band Merch: Hot Sauce Edition
Speedy Ortiz’ “The Death of Speedy Hot Sauce”
-Dan Moffat
Band of Year: They Are Gutting A Body Of Water
Philadelphian combo They Are Gutting A Body Of Water seem to carry the burden of an awfully long band name this year by playing more shows than any normal person could withstand. They also released a lot of music and all of it was insane. Between a split with A Country Western that split the difference between dirtbag shoegaze and whacked out drum and bass, an LP they jokingly misnamed on streaming, a Soundcloud dump page for fronter Doug Dulgarian’s further forays into hardcore rave, and now a rap side project TAGABOW stayed busy in 2022. I for one am very grateful.
-Dillon Riley
Thank You For Not Releasing an Album, Ariana Grande
It’s not that I dislike her music; in fact she’s got plenty of tracks that I think are fantastic, and she’s an immensely talented vocalist. That’s not my problem with her. But I have somehow been cursed, because the last three times she has released albums, within a week I have had a breakup (I dumped, mutual consent, I was dumped, in that order). It’s uncanny. And honestly, I’m not even really mad at her (all things come to an end eventually, and sometimes we should be extremely grateful for that). But every time I manage to get even somewhat settled in a situation, the constant dread that she might drop some surprise album just as I’ve settled into happiness. If I ever get married, I pray to God this woman has decided to retire. Please stop, Ariana. I’m begging you.
-Harry Gustafson
Best Music Podcast That’s Not The Puddcast: Bandsplain
Yasi Salek has created a podcast that explains cult bands and iconic artists in a way that totally avoids the whole condescending music critic stereotype. That alone is a feat and deserves high praise. At this point, I would never allow anyone other than Salek to explain to me the impact of Billy Corgan’s creative tyranny on the early 90’s, and I only want her to tell me how “Semi-Charmed Life” was actually the product of Stephen Jenkins’ rap duo (pre-Third Eye Blind). Listen to Bandsplain to enjoy Salek’s vocal fry, thoughtful musings, hilarious contextualizing and tangents, guest hosts who are extremely nerdy and open about their musical obsessions, and a theme song by friend of the pod, Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino. Plus, big props to fellow twee enthusiast and Rilo Kiley fan “Producer Dylan” (who will sadly be leaving the podcast this year). This goddamn gorgeous podcast deserves a listen if you’re a music fan with about four hours to spare.
-Jackie Swisshelm