Like so many other things I’ve tried to do recently, it’s taken me longer than I hoped to get my year-end list put together. But it has been nice to take a step back and review all the new music that’s fallen into my life in 2022. While I haven’t been doing a formal gratitude journal for a while, I guess this practice of doing my annual list of favorite music could be looked at as an exercise in music gratitude. And during a year as long and challenging as 2022, I am certainly grateful for the gift of good music.
With that, let me get things started with my picks for favorite album. I’ll follow up with my list of favorite songs in a few days.
MY FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2022
I first discovered this group when I saw they were playing at a favorite local venue back in April. There was a brief write-up about this debut album which sparked my interest. One listen later and I was all in. (And their live performance was equally great.) The album stayed on the top of my playlist all year long. I’ve written before about this growing group of post-punk, “progressive-male” bands from the UK area (and this won’t be the only example in my 2022 lists) so some may think I’m treading tired ground. In my ears though, Yard Act brings their own style to the sub-genre. Despite the dry wit and sarcasm that drips heavily from most of the lyrics the songs feel almost uplifting and jaunty given the danceable beats and forward vocal production. In between the requisite post-punk cynicism there are moments of sincerity and humor that I find undeniably charming. This culminates with the final track of the album, “100% Endurance” – my hands-down most listened to song for the year, personal anthem for 2022, and what could be the best end to an album-closing track that I remember hearing.
“It’s all so pointless, ah, but it’s not though is it? / It’s really real and when you feel it, you can really feel it.
Grab somebody that you love / Grab anyone who needs to hear it / And shake ’em by the shoulders, scream in their face / Death is coming for us all, but not today / Today you’re living it, hey, you’re really feeling it.
Give it everything you’ve got knowing that you can’t take it with you / And all you ever needed to exist has always been within you / Gimme some of that good stuff that human spirit / Cut it with a hundred percent endurance.
It’s all so pointless, sure is / And when you’re gone / It makes me stronger knowing / That this will all just carry on / With someone else (someone else) / (Something new) something new / It’s not like there’s gonna be nothing, is it?”
Yanya hit my radar in 2019 with her debut album Miss Universe and gave fair warning that she had music writing chops. In PAINLESS, she returns with beautiful melodies you’ll happily slide into and the consistency needed to lure you along through every track. This is an album that pulls off the deceptively difficult balancing act of rich, detailed sound texture without sounding over produced. Arguably her most unique weapon is that voice – a voice that has always managed to be tender and sultry at the same time. Here she pushes the impact of that voice with intimate lyrics that speak of heartbreak and rejection in raw tones.
Raw production, ramshackle drums, clumsy banjos, the entire band shouting out a verse, and twang to spare. Frenetic, jangly, acoustic county-punk that hits all my trigger points with unflinching tenderness running through it all. The lyrics often stumble out at break-neck speed as if the thoughts and emotions from singer-songwriter Lomes Oleander are too strong to hold back. Is that what happens when you’re filled with the intensity of youthful idealism? Well a little dose of that could be a good thing for those of us more generally infected with middle-aged cynicism.
There are times in this album where the production and Tomberline’s delivery feel sweet in a way that probably contributed to my initial mixed reactions. However, with each subsequent listen I found deeper layers and picked up on the sprinkles of dissonance that keep things rooted. Subdued but still lush in its production, listened to as a whole the songs blend together creating an inviting space with what I now hear more as levity than sweetness. (“I know I’m not Jesus, but Jesus I’m trying to be.”) I don’t know Tomberine’s background but I come away hearing an album from someone who’s grown comfortable enough with loss, regret, and imperfection to simply focus on creating beautiful music through it all.
There is a clear lineage from Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers to the sound of this album, but filtered through the raw, bedroom recording antics of a band like Car Seat Headrest. The darker impact of the album though is in the lyrics – often depicting tangled images of unwashed Americana. And like our country right now, the lyrics range from farcical to ugly but with moments of simple honesty that shine through.
I’m going to argue that this is probably the most overlooked album (by music critics) in 2022. And I’m going to make a really bold statement and say that Britt Daniel and the boys in Spoon have proven themselves to be on par with the great Tom Petty – on par in being one of America’s most prolific and proficient creators of inherently catchy rock songs. (This claim was made independent of any Spoon/Petty connections.) Now I can understand why this album was easily overlooked. It’s not drastically different from their past work. It’s largely just straight-forward rockers. (No one cool listens to rock music any more.) And maybe most condemning of all, this album is not Spoon’s best. I’d say it ranks maybe third or fourth in their catalog. But the fact that Spoon’s third or fourth best album could still have this many simply great rock tunes is truly impressive. And albums should not be overlooked because an artist has been consistently great.
In the last two years the phrase “pandemic album” has been used a lot in the music world and it’s something I’ve grown a bit tired of, but with her track record of past work I knew Van Etten’s latest release was something I couldn’t just dismiss. In each of her past albums Van Etten has progressed from the sparse, singer-songwriter sound to a larger palette of instrumentation and dynamic range. “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong” takes a slight bend in that trajectory by shifting from the feel of a Van Etten led rock band to Van Etten’s take on a swooning, epic rock opera. Yes, I too generally recoil from the phrase “rock opera” but the key part to focus on is “Van Etten’s take on…” And while there’s a moody, potentially even bleak vein that runs over these songs, if you look deeper into what she’s created you find a current of resolve that brings light even in the darkness. (Not to mention, a hilarious, self-deprecating reference to the infamous moves of Elaine Benes.)
When I saw an album drop that was a collaboration between Danger Mouse and Black Thought (best known for his role in The Roots) it seemed a pretty safe bet for a placing on this end of year list. These two have hip-hop credentials a mile long. Then I started reading that it was a project they’d been working on sporadically for a decade. Did that mean they were patiently selecting just the right material and perfecting every groove, or did that mean they were just picking up scrap tracks and struggling to find the right chemistry, eventually releasing something under the pressure of outside expectations? The good news is that it’s very close to the former – not perfect in every single groove, but more consistent than you’ll find in just about any other hip-hop production. There’s great collaboration with guest voices (shout out to Run the Jewels!) and the sound is classic without coming across as dated, accessible without being plain.
In case of emergency (which seems more and more likely all the time) break open this album for an immediate dose of positive vibes and an instant booty-shakin’ dance party. Sometime in the 2000’s my life grew markedly brighter when I discovered the world of Afrobeats music. Like the children discovering the magic Narnian wardrobe, I was dropped into an amazing world – this one filled with music from all across Africa, going back to the 60’s, that pulses with a vitality and resilience we could all use in spades. Spreading out from the overarching umbrella of the Afrobeats sound, there can be a bewildering range of separate genres, sounds and artists. While K.O.G (a.k.a. Kweku of Ghana) is generally cataloged under the branch of Afro-Fusion, what I hear in this album is someone who’s brilliantly carried the tradition of Afrobeats forward, dials up the jazz, drops in the George Clinton-esque funk, adds a streak of reggae, and tops it all off with a layer of hip-hop. All done to create what K.O.G describes as a “weapon in the battlefield for peace of mind in the world.”
This is the album I struggled with the most when putting together my list. Is it really a favorite and an album I love? I’m honestly still not sure. But it is an album I found fascinating and kept coming back to. The cover art shows several people climbing through what looks to be the ruins of some building. I don’t know if it was intentional, but in a way this seems like an apt metaphor for how this album sounds at times – like a group of musicians are playing with the crumbled pieces of a collapsed folk song. I’ve seen their sound classified as post-rock but I think of it more like post-americana (which is ironic since this is a UK band). There are tracks where I feel I might be listening to a piece of classical impressionism. It is sparse. It can be jarring as it clatters along in broken rhythms. It is also enthralling and I find myself enchanted by the eerie spaces that it creates.
Bonny Light Horseman is a side project for three very experienced musicians – Anais Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), and Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, The National, Hiss Golden Messenger, Josh Ritter) – who’s other work ranges from indie-rock to folk-rock to singer-songwriter. Together they’ve landed pretty squarely in contemporary folk and being a fan particularly of Johnson and Kaufman’s other bands this was a project that got my attention. In 2020 they put out an album that most thought would be a one-time project and that I felt had wonderful moments but didn’t quite fully click. Now they’ve come back and delivered a charming album which fully clicked for me. I’m always turned off by overly polished, too-perfect music which generally turns saccharine and this seems to be a common danger with a lot of contemporary folk. Here in Rolling Golden Holy, Mitchell and Johnson’s vocals intermingle beautifully adding to a sweetness in the songwriting that could have gone too far. But I think Kaufman’s touch in the arrangements and production might be what keeps the final result feeling warm and balanced.
HONORABLE MENTION
White Trash Revelry, Adeem the Artist
El Bueno Y El Malo, Hermanos Gutierrez
Wet Leg, Wet Leg
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, Big Thief
In These Times, Makaya McCraven
Not More Music Crap? 