Here is the music I liked the most that came out in 2022. Much of the music listed here, I first heard about from places like The Quietus, Treblezine, and The Wire magazine, so thank you to them. I also have been pretty exclusively buying music via Bandcamp, so thank you to them also. All of these are available there.
1) Loop, Sonancy. My favorite new album of this year, and the only one I am “ranking”. The loud guitar music I didn’t know I needed, from a band whom I wish I’d known about back in the day. Music that fills aural space, in a genuine way that I don’t hear often enough.
2) Wet Leg, Wet Leg. Fun. Sassy. Two women who write solid, catchy pop about what it’s like to be in your 20s today. I expect their lyrics to appear in Ph.D. theses written in 2150 on what it was like to be young in the first quarter of the 21st century. If you heard “Chaise Longue” once it’s in your head forever. Which will be fine with you, I promise.
3) Nik Colk Void, Bucked Up Space. Deep. Enthralling. Music that would fit in a lot of different environments, from headphone listening to the dancefloor to a particular type of art installation. She’s worked with lots of different artists and was a founding member of Factory Floor, but as her first truly solo effort this is something special.
4) GNOD, Hexen Valley. I owe my discovery of GNOD to The Quietus, for which I am eternally grateful. This is a bit of a different piece for them, I think, but it still comes with all of the things I love them for – charisma, energy, noise, community.
5) A Place to Bury Strangers, See Through You. Apparently this was the year for me to find new, loud, guitar-based music, which I had been missing. And apparently this was also the year for me to find bands I wish I’d known about earlier (see Loop).
6) Ashenspire, Hostile Architecture. Metal (?) from Scotland, with a fantastic edge and fascinating instrumentation (saxophones! violin!). Political, and angry, and perfect for this, our nth consecutive garbage year. I have to believe that this group, live, is monstrous, a steamroller flattening everything before it.
7) Russian Circles, Gnosis. I’ve known about these folks for a while, but nothing really caught my ear before. But this is a great album. I am a sucker for instrumental heavy rock, and this fits the bill very nicely.
8) Hazel English, Summer Nights (EP). Her voice is fantastic, and she writes great songs that take me back to listening to records on my parents’ stereo in the 1970s in a weird way. A younger version of me would still be shocked that she’s not better known in the wider pop world, but I’m older and more cynical about what is “popular” than I once was. “Shaking” (on her earlier album, Wake Up!) is one of the finest pop songs I’ve heard in a decade, and this EP has got 5 more examples of high quality pop music.
9) Stephen Mallinder, tick tick tick. I’m sure it’s tiresome for him to hear things like “Stephen Mallinder, ex-Cabaret Voltaire…”, but that’s how many folks would have heard of him. Which is a shame because this is a great album that people should know about on its (and his!) own merits. A party, winding down, in the basement of a somewhat dilapidated nightclub, as the house lights are about to come on, indicating it’s time for the revelers to go home…
10) Pye Corner Audio, Let’s Emerge! Another artist I’ve known of for quite a while, but had never listened to their music. Now I have and I am glad I have. This album gives me the feeling of sitting on a patio overlooking a seashore. Sun overhead, drink in hand (Dark & Stormy?), clouds on the horizon, and fog rolling in. Very enjoyable.
11) The Bad Plus, The Bad Plus. I’m not as much into jazz as I might be, and I cannot keep up with all the subgenres that exist there (as they do in every “genre” at this point), but I enjoy the way these folks interact with each other musically. I gather they’ve gone through several iterations in terms of membership, but this one seems particularly strong to me – I especially like Ben Monder, a really interesting guitarist, who contributes mightily to the lineup’s sound.
12) Working Men’s Club, Fear Fear. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am a big Depeche Mode fan, particularly of the music they released when I was an angsty teen in the 1980s. Somehow, this hits me in a lot of the same ways. It’s not a copy, or even an homage, to be clear, but there’s something about the feeling that just puts me in a similar headspace. And the fact that the leader of this group is barely 20 (I think) is impressive.
13) Winter, What Kind of Blue Are You? A lovely album that I found very recently, with an excellent set of songs. Winter is another artist to watch and who I hope finds a wider audience (see also Hazel English, above). I tend to think of music like this as “in a fair world, these artists would be topping the charts”.