Top 3 new recordings of 2023

[Multicore]

It's time for those ill researched and hastily written end of year round ups!

Your task with the absurdly short deadline: produce five inches of copy with:

- Your Top Three releases of 2023.
- Text artist name and release title (for the sight limited and those of us with 3rd party content blockers).
- Listening links are optional but will be appreciated by many.
- Preferably a sentence about each. What's notable?
- A bonus, honorable mention, 4th if you like.

 

[Dunring]

Most fun songs I've heard this year:
1da Banton - Summer Love
Dancing with a stranger - Sam Smith
Regardless - Raye

 

[Joe Smith]

Nominated for best engineered recording, and very well deserved, is "Desire, I Want to Turn Into You" by Caroline Polachek. She should have received many more nominations for this remarkable alt-pop album.

Worth checking out...

 

[Multicore]

Nominated for best engineered recording, and very well deserved, is "Desire, I Want to Turn Into You" by Caroline Polachek. She should have received many more nominations for this remarkable alt-pop album.

Worth checking out...

do you have a suggested cut for us?

 

[Multicore]

1da Banton - Summer Love

I like that one. I quickly started to wonder, where's this from? It has some spice. Not from the islands, no. Turns out 1da Banton is from Nigeria.

 

[Multicore]

My notable releases of 2023.

1. City of Gold by Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway​

Tuttle has ascended to hero status in my pantheon. What a talent! The guitar and voice is obvious but her ability as composer, lyricist, arranger, and band leader are also impressive. The new album has a wide range of music with great players. You can find turbocharged bluegrass racing but I chose a slower one (with the estimable Jerry Douglas) for you that I think is a gem. I'm often not sure about what poetry means and that's the case here. I think it might be about watching TV.

Stranger Things

2. Miracle-Level by Deerhoof​

This, their 19th album since starting in the year of AOL 1995, might be a good starting place for those not yet familiar with this ever imaginative, fun band. I have always admired their successful merger of the virtues of prog rock with 90s indie punk. The new album is apparently their first recorded as a complete project in one studio with a producer and it works well. Nothing seems to have been lost by this method and the music is a bit clearer, cohering well but also with parts in more focus.

Phase-Out All Remaining Non-Miracles by 2028

3. Memoria by John Zorn and Bill Laswell​

Zorn (alto sax) and Laswell (bass guitar) improvise three cuts here, each named after a great jazz musician that died this year: Pharoah Sanders, Milford Graves, and Wayne Shorter. My friend Gavin says the 2nd cut reminds him of Stravinsky's Symphony for Wind Instruments. I'm not sure which bits of each correspond to the other ¯\_(⊙︿⊙)_/¯

Milford Graves

Honorable mention: I Am a Pilgrim: Doc Watson at 100​

A various artists compilation, I believe of new recordings made for this album, each a song by the great guitarist and singer or one that he played a lot. There's a lot to enjoy here but like a lot of tribute albums, sequencing is tricky so it might be better to dip into it. (Kinda like the new Dolly Parton Rockstar album which is just too much to listen to as an album. Way too much.)

Doc's Guitar played by Yasmin Williams. All guitar nerds gotta watch these three minutes carefully. It's really something.

 

[Joe Smith]

do you have a suggested cut for us?

It's all good, but the "lift" singles on it are "Bunny Is A Rider" and "Billions". The sound balance with the youth choir at end of "Billions" is particularly good.

Album broke in February, fans waited 10 months for the LP (damn you, Taylor Swift) but the vinyl mastering is, I am glad to report, very very good.

 

[Multicore]

What's wrong? Do ASR readers not listen to new music? Are y'all listening to the same old while tweaking your gear? I don't believe it. Prove me wrong.

Let's expand the remit to allow 2022 releases you heard for the first time in 2023.

 

[Moderate Dionysianism]

If I had to come up with three 2023 records that I found most fascinating:

• Spall by Kerry Leimer - the ambient + electroacoustic mixture works brilliantly on this one. Once again Kerry strikes the perfect balance between slow-moving soundscapes and unsettling timbres. Been tripping really hard do this album (with and without substances).
  
  
• Sticklip by Bec Plexus - a prime example of the unbridled creativity and imagination driving the European Pop underground atm. Hooks and passages just catching you off guard one after another, all in a thick sauce of weird & quirky. The scene produced lots of intriguing records in 2023, most notably: ML Buch, Pose Dia, Katie Gately, Oko Ebombo.
  
  
• Dogsbody by Model/Actriz - pure energy and raw emotion radiating from this one. They pick it up where Daughters stopped (in deserved disgrace unfortunately), and show that they're capable of taking the modern frenetic Post-Punk much further.

A collective honorable mention: the guitar-bashing, growling and shrieking crowd put out some spectacular records this year: Anti-God Hand, Portrayal of Guilt, Gabestok, Afsky, Ostraca, Kostnatění, Urfaust, Ezra Varier, to name the most memorable.


I also make Spotify playlists with stuff that caught my attention: 2022 and 2023 - feel free to dig in!