Best of Newly Heard in 2023

I was not expecting this album, or for it to be this good. Hundred Reasons are a British rock/post-hardcore (shhh, emo?) band from the 00's that quietly went away without ever having the farewell they deserved, but Glorious Sunset feels like the send-0ff they've been denied all this time. It's not a repeat of their previous material, it's an older, and perhaps wiser, outlook, but still delivered with the emotion, energy and punch of a group twenty years younger.

The album revolves around saying different kinds of farewells, most directly to estranged relatives, and pondering if there was any way of salvaging the situation, or even if you'd made the effort to reach and out and re-connect - would it have worked? If it had worked, what do want from that relationship, revenge, vindication? This is most explicit on Wave Form, where Doran bitterly sings:

For nearly 30 years of nothing
Tell me you're sorry
Tell me you're sorry out loud
And don't think it comes with forgiveness
You did nothing

I could have picked any number of songs, such as Replicate, Done or The Old School Way, but for maximum impact I think Glorious Sunset stands out for its classic Hundred Reasons sound and pace, while able to set the scene for the album's main theme. I thoroughly enjoyed this album on its many listens, feeling simultaneously younger and older each time.

In 2016 Adam Young wrote 11 instrumental 'scores' albums, inspired by his love of movie music, each one telling a story as if it were the score to a film. While he's better known for being the artist behind Owl City, I'm really in awe of this work, and the musical skills it must take to produce not one, but eleven such albums, in one year.

I don't tend to listen to much film, or classical, music, and anything instrumental tends to come from the post-rock and instrumental metal direction, and hearing these songs from that background, they feel extremely concise and focused, both the songs and albums. Many are only around a half-hour long, and it's unusual for any song to be more than four minutes long. But each has a very clear motif, and variation, that beautifully encapsulates a moment or feeling. I'm guessing this tight editing comes from his pop experiences, where ten minute guitar odysseys are not indulged as much, as so ideas have to honed to a fine, but brief, moment.

My favourite single song is Take Off from The Sprit of St Louis, in which I can feel the nervousness and excitement of carefully coaxing the fuel laden experimental aircraft into the air for what would be a contentious 33 hour flight without any sleep. The theme is both uplifting and open ended, will it be a success or a disaster? Bold strings give way to a reflective piano, before resuming their onwards rise accompanied by marshal drums and then what feels like a break in the cloud at around the two minute mar. Each repeat of the refrain being a further gain in altitude; then the final piano being the plane vanishing into the cloud from the perspective of those on the ground watching Lindbergh's departure.

As an album I like Voyager is the most, being a beautiful collection of atmospheric songs, and so 1977 is included as an extra in the playlist.

The tip-off for these cam from Blake Watson, for which I'm very grateful. While easily available on streaming services, and it does look they used to be directly available to download as MP3s from the projects site, actually finding places to buy these albums was tricky. The only legitimate source in my area I could find them is as MP3 downloads from Amazon, but then it's only 8 of the 11 albums, Voyager, Mount Rushmoor and The Endurance are inexplicably missing.

Brutus are an exceptional mix of all things that make heavy music great, even when you can't quite place all the parts. The guitar feels post-rock and shoegaze, the drums and vocals more metal, but then there's also this strong melody at the front and the clarity of Mannaerts' amazingly varied singing. How she's able to do that, and drum like that at the same time, I have no idea.

Unison Life is a collection of stories of people repeating mistakes they should have learnt from by now, and the music matches that 'here we go again' and 'why can I not stop myself?' feeling beat for beat, roaring along just when you shouldn't be, and catching yourself just as you commit to the mistake, but then not stopping.

Most of the tracks are excellent, I think Victoria stand out as the best combination of sharp melody and lyrics reflecting that you've still not managed to deal with what you assumed were teenage problems, but aren't, and you can't just outgrow.

I loved this song even before I'd heard it. Dan Sinker's post The Saddest Song I Know tells such a great, moving story, of his relationship with this song that the two are now inseparable for me. I wasn't there when he had to clear out the warehouse of his Punk Zine; but I feel like I was, hearing the slide guitar and mournful voice echoing through warehouse space once filled with life.

Dan's post does what I always want from music journalism or criticism: not a judgement on the quality of the work, but a new way of seeing it, another interpretation and why you should also care about it. That, much more than some arbitrary rating, is the importance of writing and talking about music. In this case the song comes loaded with an additional memory and meaning beyond even its own content. Some music holds a special meaning for you because of its association with some moment in your life, and now Farewell Transmission comes with an additional layer from someone else's life.

But what about the songs themselves? Even without this introduction, they're fantastic, lonesome and aching. Magnolia Electric Co. reflects slowly and painfully on a life of bad luck and loss; chances of happiness that were just a mirage. I'm new to Jason Molina, but there is a rich catalogue of music there and I'm thankful to have found it.

I too have thought about the question posed in Dan's post, "What's the saddest song you know?", and it's a great question; but can't come to a single answer. It depends too much on what type of sadness you're talking about.

If you want to hear how the American dream was only every a dream with no chance of becoming reality, then let Spanish Love Songs be your guide. No Joy follows on from 2020's Routine Pain as it chronicles all those everyday failures that make up complete collapse, while putting it to a catchy tune and a good riff.

There's a strong similarity to The Menzingers, but The Menzingers tend to find the source of their bad luck in themselves and their screw ups; SLS makes it clear that sometimes there's just bad luck, and no system to help you if it happens. Perhaps SLS are more the flip side to something like The Gaslight Anthem, but instead of the bad luck heroes accepting their fate stoically, with their backs straight and facing into the coming storm, SLS are more focused on the why. Yes, they made mistakes, but the consequences shouldn't be so out of proportion. Being ill shouldn't be a death sentence in the richest country on Earth, in the same way that working a full time job should pay enough to feed and house yourself with dignity - but somehow these things have become nothing but a dream to most.

I don't know how I'd missed Spanish Love Songs until this year, but Spotify brought them up because of a cover of Jimmy Eat World's Futures on the Doom & Gloom Sessions EP. The Futures cover didn't add much, I think their versions of Grandaddy's Now It's On is much more interesting², but that lead me down the rabbit hole.

Most of the songs are great, but Clean-Up Crew really encapsulates the album's themes, and includes the line "The Sky looked like a cracked phone screen", which I'm assuming is a homage the famous opening line of William Gibson's Neuromancer?

If you're listening along at home, you'll notice this track is missing from the playlist, as Black Sky Giant don't appear to be on Spotify, but I'm sure you're able to click a link and listen to this Argentinean stoner band via Bandcamp instead, I have faith in you.

This track doesn't need as much explanation as the others, it's just an excellent stoner/desert rock song that pulls you along with it's memorising bass, in the same way the horizon does when driving through a flat desert. It's huge, it's deep and you're a vanishingly small mote just floating in it.

Hat tip to Jake for this one.

Picking a 'top six' is as arbitrary as anything else in this annual game, but this year the line between them and the other notable songs is so thin it wouldn't cast a shadow in the noon-day sun.

On the punk side I also very much enjoyed Birds in Row, a French hardcore band that released the awesome album Gris Klein in 2022, of which Water Wings is my favourite. Talking of The Menzingers, they also released a new album this year Some Of It Was True from which I currently like Hope is a Dangerous Little Thing most, but I've not had much chance to listen through the album that much yet, and can image that will change. Feels like classic Menzingers so far.

Drifting more into the Emo direction I've been listening to some more German bands (having already included Kettcar on my 2020 list), and this year's best find was Tomte's 2006 album Buchstaben über der Stadt and the lead single from it Ich sang die ganze Zeit von dir.

I did listen to much less non-Guitar music this year compared to the last few years. The things I liked most were the energetic Jump & Shuffle a high energy masterpiece in terms of turn-table skills, from Kid Koala and this year's Creatures of the Late Afternoon album. Another (new to me) artist I found via Mastodon was Tuxic, who deals in gritty chip-tunes. There's a lot of great songs there, and even a new album Nothing Much this year, but as an example, from the heavier side of things, but retaining the essential blips and bloops, is Oblivious from 2018's Oblivion and the song that I kept coming back to.

Two years ago Austin Lucas made it onto my best of list for his song Drive, and he hasn't released an original album since, but he has released a collection of Against Me! covers as Reinventing Against Me!, which are excellent. While they are acoustic covers, and many of the originals are little more than acoustic guitar, it's a great example of making a cover something new - doing it your own way and adding another dimension to it (see footnote 1). If you like either artist I highly recommend them.

I've seen more doom and death metal recommendations this year than I have in a long time, and I've not managed to give all of them a proper listen, I do keep coming back to Skeletonwitch and their perfect combination of dark thrash metal. Their sound has evolved somewhat over the years, and This Horrifying Force from 2011's Forever Abomination probably sits in the middle of their style and is a fantastic song.

It's interesting to compare what I think the songs I've heard for the first time in the last year are and compare them to Spotify's Wrapped. I don't entirely know what goes into the Wrapped algorithm, but I suspect it's very heavily play count based, and so it doesn't consider that some albums like Glorious Sunset, No Joy and Unison Life I've mostly heard on my stereo by directly playing the CD, and worse bands that aren't on Spotify. The last years Wrapped has certainly been skewed by things I've played for the children.

This year Spotify identified The National's Eucalyptus as my top song, from this year's First Two Pages of Frankenstein, which I guess I must have listened to it quite a bit, but couldn't have told you I had. It's not a bad song as such; but it feels a little like a stereotype of a recent era National - the kind of thing an AI would produce if you asked for "A song by The National, involving household items". It's not terrible, just doesn't seem to have registered with me.

Instead of leaving it to the shadowy results of a "AI" model, enjoy the above human curated list and I hope you have a great end to your year.

• Glorious Sunset - Hundred Reasons
• Takeoff - Adam Young
• Victoria - Brutus
• Farewell Transmission - Songs: Ohia, Jason Molina
• Clean-Up Crew - Spanish Love Songs
• Water Wings - Birds in Row
• Jump & Shuffle - Kid Koala
• Ich sang die ganze Zeit von dir - Tomte
• Hope is a Dangerous Little Thing - The Menzingers
• Oblivious - Tuxic
• This Horrifying Force (The Desire To Kill) - Skeletonwitch
• Pints Of Guinness Make You Strong - Austin Lucas
• 1977 - Adam Young