The Retrographer, Issue 109 (1 0 0 2 0 2 3)

December 30, 2023

My top ten favorite songs and albums of the year, ten older albums I loved, fun/weird videos, and the best 100 songs of 2023!

The Retrographer 109 (1 0 0 2 0 2 3)

LISTEN TO THIS PLAYLIST ON SPOTIFY OR YOUTUBE 

Each year I take this space to reflect on my relationship with music. I’ve written about the times our tumultuous world has wrought music into a refuge, or made us shake sense from it amid prevailing senselessness. I’ve reflected on the impetus in my writing this newsletter and making these little playlist gift boxes in the hope that you find something to connect to here, even if you feel far from the contexts where new music once mattered to you. But it’s always been there, in one form or another, trying on meaning like new fashion and shedding it again for whatever’s next.

There have been years where that meaning has seemed to flicker, and times when it was wholly reinvented. This was the first year that music made me withdraw from this newsletter: After a hundred album essays, I found my inspiration had shifted too far to making my own music to keep writing them for their own sake.

Appreciating now its constancy I look at music’s role in my life with bemusement and reverence. It exerted great force on me for as long as I’ve been me. It was something I didn’t need to understand to feel; Or something I could understand only by feeling it. When I was around 14 I decided to try to figure it out for myself by learning songs on the bass and then later the guitar. It lost none of its mystery. When I was 20, I started trying to make my own stuff and started to crack my first few decent ideas. I remained awed. When I was 22 I wrote something that I thought was too good for me; a long guitar riff whose end was a sheer cliff: figuring out what to do next became a towering challenge. It took me two years to write the rest of the melody; two more years to write an arrangement. Last year, a decade after I started it, I finally wrote the lyrics and wove within them a passing comment on the phenomenology of music itself in my life: “invisible groove; I can’t explain how it moves.” That song is called “I Got It”, and you can listen to it here.

Music is my life all the time like a hometown is a home. It’s been my vocation, avocation, a topic of conversation, the ether of my days. My decisions have bent to it again and again. It is ever-present, yet ever-changing, and in its protean perpetuity, there is peace.

LISTEN TO THIS PLAYLIST ON SPOTIFY OR YOUTUBE

TOP TEN SONGS OF 2023

  1. “Working on a World” - Iris DeMent

  2. “I Just Wanna Be Alright” - Nico Hedley

  3. “Rhododendron” - Steve Gunn and David Moore

  4. “Agios” - Alena Spanger

  5. “Drive Around Singing” - The Bird Calls

  6. “Sandrail Silhouette” - Avalon Emerson

  7. “Good Boy 2” - Desolation Horse

  8. “Nadja” - Unknown Mortal Orchestra

  9. “Spirit 2.0” - Sampha

  10. “black mirror” - Noname

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2023

  1. Jasmine on a Night in July - Scree

  2. SCARING THE HOES - Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA

  3. Standards on Snare, Mandolin, and Bass Clarinet - Jason Burger, Jacob Jolliff, and Alec Spiegelman

  4. I Killed Your Dog - L’Rain

  5. The Window - Ratboys

  6. Spike Field - Maria BC

  7. Sundial - Noname

  8. PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE – Christine and the Queens

  9. With A Hammer - Yaeji

  10. Everyone’s Crushed - Water From Your Eyes

AN IMPORTANT REMINDER

I made an album this year! Buy a vinyl here and listen to it here.

TEN OLDER ALBUMS THAT MEANT SOMETHING TO ME IN 2023

  • Judee Sill - Judee Sill

  • Tim - The Replacements

  • High - The Blue Nile

  • Thank You For Being Here - cursetheknife

  • Pelican West Plus - Haircut 100

  • Master of Puppets - Metallica

  • Stronger Than Pride - Sade

  • Guitars, Cadillacs, etc., etc. - Dwight Yoakam

  • Blues Dream - Bill Frisell

  • The Fragile - Nine Inch Nails

AMAZING AND WEIRD VIDEOS I WATCHED IN 2023

  • “Agios”, Alena Spanger

  • “Billions”, Caroline Polachek

  • “Sandrail Silhouette”, Avalon Emerson

  • “PRECISION”, Davido

  • “Portrait Of God”, King Tuff

  • “I Just Wanna Be Alright”, Nico Hedley

  • “Pearl”, Empty Country

  • “Morning Zoo”, Ratboys

  • “Pilot Was A Dancer”, Westerman

  • “Satanist”, boygenius

  • “My Room”, Ty Segall

  • “Workin’ On A World”, Iris DeMent

  • “Ornithology”, Jason Burger, Jacob Joliff, and Alec Spiegelman

  • “Good Boy 2”, Desolation Horse

  • “20200324”, Mac DeMarco

  • “Cheerleader”, Liza Anne

  • “Too Much Music”, Jake Shears

  • “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl”, Chappell Roan

  • “Dance The Night”, Dua Lipa

  • “Free Yourself”, Jessie Ware

  • “Great Guy”, Asake

  • “Glass Shadows”, Liv.e

  • “black mirror”, Noname

  • “OMG”, NewJeans

  • “How To Stay With You”, Troy Sivan

  • “Submerge FM”, Yaeji

  • “Mississippi Slide”, Rae Sremmurd

  • “Shed That Fear”, Nourished by Time

  • “Sunshine Baby”, The Japanese House

  • “Holiday House”, Beach House

  • “lacy”, Olivia Rodrigo

  • “Our Funeral”, L’Rain

  • “Spirit 2.0”, Sapha

  • “Tioga Pass”, Yussef Dayes and Rocco Palladino

  • “Fooling Me Twice”, Villager

  • “Mancala”, Earl Sweatshirt, The Alchemist, and Vince Staples

  • “Agriculture”, billy woods and Kenny Mason

  • “Geronimo”, Young Fathers

  • “God Loves You”, JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown

  • “Big eye”, Christine and the Queens

  • “Barley”, Water From Your Eyes

  • “2 D I C U V”, Tirzah

  • “Never Gonna Be”, Villager

  • “Please Believe Me”, Los Latidos

  • “My Brother (is a Star)”, Croatia Amor

  • “Residuals”, J. Albert and Will August Park

  • “Bali Hai”, O’K

  • “Nadja”, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

  • “So Alive”, Gregory Uhlmann

  • “Wasted On You”, Andy Shauf

  • “Automatic”, Crosslegged

  • “Our Lady of the Desert (Live)”, William Tyler & The Impossible Truth

  • “Nothing In This World Ever Stays Still”, Allegra Kreiger

  • “This Ain’t It”, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

  • “Knockin - Live”, MJ Lenderman

  • “Town in Decline”, Fust and Indigo De Souza

  • “Flashes of Orange”, Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band

  • “Mill”, Sluice

  • “It’s Not My Job”, Cusp

  • “Vampire Empire”, Big Thief

  • “Motion Sickness”, Cory Hanson

  • “Bicycle”, Zack Rosen

  • “Bending Hectic”, The Smile

  • “Empty Stomach Space Cadet”, King Krule

  • “Break the Stones”, Truth Club

  • “Bull Believer”, Wednesday

  • “Beauty Filter”, Hotline TNT

  • “Come Home To God”, Amaarae

  • “Bloom”, Katy Pinke

  • “I’ve Got Me”, Joanna Sternberg

  • “lily”, Kara Jackson

  • “The Score”, Grian Chatten

  • “A Child’s Question, August”, PJ Harvey

  • “The Dream”, Jana Horn

  • “leikara ljóð”, Susanne Sundfør

  • “Everything That Rises”, Sufjan Stevens

  • “Skeleton Is Walking”, Blake Mills

  • “Where I’m Going”, Gabriel Bernini

  • “Drive Around Singing”, The Bird Calls

  • “Younger & Dumber”, Indigo De Souza

  • “5 to 8 Hours A Day (WWwaG)”, L’Rain

  • “What Was I Made For?”, Billie Eilish

  • “Doing It Wrong”, Kitba

  • “A&W”, Lana Del Rey

  • “The Layers”, Julian Lage

  • “Bloom”, Blue Lake

  • “Catch It”, Anagrams

  • “Haseen Thi”, Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily

  • “Echo”, Lucinda Chua

  • “Bug Like an Angel”, Mitski

  • “Cutting the Grass”, Levi Turner

  • “Portrait”, Hovvdy

  • “Watcher”, Maria BC

  • “What U See”, Trash Girl

  • “I Took All Of My Rings”, Feist

  • “Death Is The Diamond”, Julie Byrne

  • “Candid (response to Vulnerability)”, Julian Davis Reid

  • “Hot Fruit”, Adeline Hotel

  • “After The Ashes”, Scree

  • “Rhododendron”, Steve Gunn and David Moore

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