It’s the moment I – and likely only I – have been waiting for: Having waded through another 12 months’ worth of albums squeezed out by a rapidly atrophying music industry, it’s time to put together an arbitrary list of the ones I deem worthy of repeat listens. Oh Grant, says you, who even listens to albums anymore? It’s the TikTok age, bro, where digital natives with the attention span of an apathetic medium-sized dog vibe on the same 10-second clip of music over and over without questioning their life choices. Who has time to waste on, like, actual full songs, let alone a complete sequence of songs lovingly crafted and ordered by an artist who probably earns less than minimum wage from their collected Spotify royalties? Give it up, man. Besides, there’s a cost of living crisis going on – music’s a luxury. Oh, you beg to differ? Let me ask you this: What are you gonna do when the shelves are empty, eat the music? Burn it for warmth when the oil runs out? Turn it into a boat and float on it when the sea levels rise? Didn’t think so, you elitist fool. Pffh, “albums”. Next you’ll be telling me you actually enjoy films made before 2001. You…what? That’s it, get out.
Daniel Bachman – Almanac Behind
Like tapping into the disturbed dreams of the banjo kid from Deliverance after he grew up and decided he wasn’t content with sitting on a porch plucking the old gruntilda for clueless tourists and so moved into a two-room shithouse near the railroad tracks on the outskirts of the city and spent his days as a security guard and his nights mechanically opening flat-top cans of beer with a church key. This is lonely, eerie music, with celluloid crackles, distorted radio broadcasts and spectral winds serving as a backdrop against which snatches of banjo unfurl and grinding violas engage in Godspeed You! Black Emperor cosplay. Apropos GY!BE: With names like ‘Flood Stage’, ‘Wildfire’ and ‘Barometric Cascade (Signal Collapse)’, this is an album that would serve pretty well as a soundtrack to a climate-induced apocalyptic event. Definitely one to put on with the family around Christmas time.
Key track: Daybreak (In The Awful Silence)
Daniel Avery – Ultra Truth
I continue to feel like this guy isn’t getting the recognition he deserves. Maybe it’s the name. Daniel Avery. Sounds like the kind of dude who spent six years as a Junior Marketing Manager at a mid-sized firm that produces sensors for robotic vacuum cleaners and then became Head of Social Media because no one else wanted the job and he was desperate to add a new title to his LinkedIn page. In any case, from 2013’s Drone Logic through to Ultra Truth in the present, he keeps adding textures and nuances and layers to his bag of electronic tricks and pushes the boundaries of same-same genres like ambient techno and microhouse to new heights. This is music for the all-controlling-neural-chip-at-the-base-of-your-skull generation. Bonus points for the sexy lipstick-smeared watercolour sock puppet on the cover.
Key track: Wall Of Sleep
Brutus – Unison Life
My tattoo artist put me onto this band. He’s a man of simple pleasures: He sees a fierce, willowy woman with a severe fringe and arms covered in ink wearing a vintage Deftones T-shirt and he’s happy. Me, I need a little more than that. I need earnestly butch song titles like ‘War’ and ‘Brave’ and ‘Liar’. I need every song to abruptly switch from clean-picked guitar and reverb-heavy vocals to galloping post-hardcore around the two-minute mark. I need sweat-soaked live videos on YouTube that make me feel as though I’ve wasted my life playing stoner rock in drop D. And I need an album cover with a font that looks like it’s been ripped straight from a mid-80s Yngwie Malmsteen record. Thankfully, Brutus gives me all of this.
Key track: War
King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard – Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava
An end-of-year album list wouldn’t be complete without a King Gizzard record. This year, the bloody good Australian blokes released five albums, three of which eclipse the high point of many bands’ entire careers. Ice, Death, etc. consists of seven meaty Spirit-inflected jazz-rock tracks, the shortest of which is 6:41 and the longest 13:28. I’m not sure how they’re doing this. Drugs, sure. A lack of other things to do in Melbourne once you’ve exhausted GQ Australia’s list of ‘Best places to grab a flat white’, no doubt. A pact with the devil, maybe. Whatever the case, I reckon King Gizzard – officially 712th in line to the throne – would have been a better choice to take over from Elizabeth than Charlie. They could have pepped up the national anthem at least, given it a bit of a skronkin’.
Key track: Magma
Fontaines D.C. – Skinty Fia
From the moment Grian Chatten opens his mouth and that angry Irish brogue joins the loose post-punk stylings of the rest of the band, I was sold on this masterwork. There is no weak point on it. It’s the kind of album that makes me wish I was back at university in some crappy halls of residence, just so I could play it at full blast over the free plastic speakers that I got when I bought six pints of Guinness at the same time on St. Patrick’s Day, an insufferably smug smile on my face, feeling like what I was doing was both rebellious and vital and that this is why you come to uni, man, to blow peoples’ minds with your amazing taste in tunes, and if anyone complains then they’re just a milquetoast idiot who probably wears their pyjamas to the communal canteen at breakfast. Definitely the album of the year for me.
Key track: I Love You
Jockstrap – I Love You, Jennifer B
I’m going to be honest: I don’t truly understand Jockstrap. Listening to Jennifer B was a moment when I realised music has quite possibly advanced without me. Like, I hear it and I enjoy it, but I’m so lost after the first 30 seconds. Are we in the A part still? The B part? Is this the chorus? Is it a metal structure for a pop song? Is this what a Beck album would have sounded like if Beck had collaborated with Sophie? WHAT’S HAPPENING IN DEBRA. It sounds like one of those dreams when you visit like 12 different places within the space of a minute with a companion who morphs from your girlfriend into your dad and then a teacher you haven’t thought about for years, and in the moment it makes sense. It’s only after you wake up, when you try to tell someone about what happened, that you realise it’s complete nonsense.
Key track: Concrete Over Water
The Afghan Whigs – How Do You Burn?
Ah, Greg Dulli. How consistent you are. Some kind of maudlin poetry about star-crossed love and flawed masculinity. A bit of religious imagery. A few crunchy guitars that veer dangerously close to dad rock territory, but which are saved by your aggressively 90s vocals and lavish use of strings. Likely some reference, opaque or otherwise, to your dick. An album cover that wouldn’t look out of place on a True Detective Pinterest board. There is nothing more I want or expect from the Whigs, and the overlooked How Do You Burn? delivers on every front.
Key track: Catch A Colt
Moiré – Circuits
When an album is called Circuits and it features such tracks as ‘Circuit 7’, ‘Circuit 8’ and ‘Circuit 15’, I can only conclude that Moiré – whoever they are – is quite into circuits. Either that or they’re not into circuits at all, that in fact they hate circuits, and that Circuits by Moiré is their warning against the encroachment of paths that follow a roughly circular route.
Key track: Circuit 16
The Chats – Get Fucked
The band responsible for me going up to people for a month and saying I WANT SMOKO returned in 2022 with Get Fucked, a title that best sums up my attitude toward the year. Fast, obnoxious and snarlingly charming, The Chats are a mash-up of Fugazi, Black Flag and The Damned, but with their own Aussie-tinged vocals – making for a pretty awesome band and an album that rips through 13 tracks in under 28 minutes. I hope these boys keep doing their stuff and wanting smoko for many years to come.
Key track: Southport Superman
Two Shell – Icons
Another record that confuses me some because of how the tracks are structured. It’s like if someone took a Four Tet B-side that even Kieran Hebden thought was too wild, then put it in a blender with a copy of the soundtrack of the Sega Genesis game B.O.B. and the voice of the record promo lady who used to speak halfway through a track so people couldn’t use it in a DJ set ahead of release, and then they set the blender to ‘peanut butter’. Icons is smooth and funky and icy and cool at the same time, and I wish there were more than just five tracks.
Key track: Ghosts
Sonhos tomam conta – Maladaptive Daydreaming
Could have come out in 1992, 2002, 2012 or 2022, this one. Has shoegaze ever evolved since it first emerged from the lithe foot of Kevin Shields (or The Jesus and Mary Chain, I dunno)? Maybe this one leans a little more toward the emo route trailblazed by A Place To Bury Strangers than the swirling baggy dreamscapes of Ride or Slowdive, but there isn’t much in it. Regardless, what you get is nine beautiful tracks that take themselves super seriously (just like me), all wrapped up in a cover that looks like it should have been used for a Korn album.
Key Track: Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Anymore
Madrugada – Chimes at Midnight
Sivert Høyem could be singing about how he loves to walk around his village with a plastic baby in a pram insisting people compliment him on it and he would still make it sound like the most meaningful thing in the world. Back him up with a band that is the second coming of Tindersticks and you have a Norwegian gem that has never released a bad album, least of all Chimes at Midnight, which sounds like it belongs in a different, less breakneck time. This is one to play during a camping trip, late of an evening, when the fire is spitting out tooth-sized embers and the tin pots from dinner have yet to be washed up, and the Glenlivet in the hip flask is running low but you have a pleasant buzz going on anyway.
Key track: Nobody Loves You Like I Do
FKA Twigs – Caprisongs
A mixtape released all the way back in January, the music landscape moves so fast that I could barely remember this, despite being super hyped when it came out. A renewed listen reveals the following: Twigs is hedonism. She’s all about finding outlets for desires and enjoying life and chasing highs and getting The Weeknd to guest on a track in a shameless attempt to garner radio play, and that’s great. I do kind of hate the cod-philosophy interludes and aimless stories and overdone London accents, but I suppose that’s all part of it.
Key track: Minds of Men
Duster – Together
What album covers accurately reflect the music within? Ride the Lightning. Hot Buttered Soul. Tomorrow’s Harvest. Any Fela Kuti record. And Together by Duster. Look at it: an unknown person cowers from the day, one hand clutching a white duvet like the aegis of Athena, while on the beside table next to them a half-finished cigarette sits in an orange ashtray, waiting to be sparked up and smoked and then chased down with whatever tepid liquid is in that plastic bottle and/or disposable cup. That’s what this album sounds like: a big old I have a mega bastard behind the eyes and unless someone is making waffles downstairs then I ain’t getting up today, not even to brush my teeth, which, by the way, taste like someone pissed on them in the night.
Key track: Familiar Fields
Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
I didn’t think Capacity or B.F.O.F were any great shakes, but this album, in which a dinosaur sits around a campfire with two owls and a rocking bear making music deep into the night, caught my imagination. In a year of unrelenting global dogshit, sometimes what you need is to listen to the spiritual successor of Fleetwood Mac and stare out the window and wonder if you should make yourself a mug of hot chocolate even though it’s only 10:43 in the morning. Those campfire animals have things worked out much better than we do.
Key track: Change
yeule – Glitch Princess
Creepy sexy future music that should be listened to on headphones. RYM lists some of the descriptors as: self-hatred, alienation, ominous, noisy, surreal, suicide, drugs. What a cocktail. This and Two Shell’s Icons are the best indicators of where I’d like music to go in the next five years. Less of a focus on creating actual traditional ‘songs’ and more on building up soundscapes that could soundtrack a limited series about a robot servant that realises it’s actually a thawed-out human with a five-year shelf life. Note: it is always rewarding to type ‘yeule’ into Google Images and see what kind of post-Björk outfits she has come up with this week.
Key track: Electric
Ethel Cain – Preacher’s Daughter
I have a friend who is an undertaker and he is obsessed with this album. I bet that’s what Ethel Cain would have wanted while writing this album. Sure, she might sound like the singer from London Grammar met up with the Preatures to write a dream pop soundtrack for a Greta Gerwig movie, but listen to those lyrics. Cannibals, the undead, lust, betrayal, a super problematic love that endures despite the protagonist no longer breathing. It’s not exactly “Wasting My Young Years”. I love those guitar solos, too. Bring back guitar solos. It’s time.
Key track: Gibson Girl
Bringing up the rear:
Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry
Primus – Conspiranoid
Caroline Loveglow – Strawberry
Jenny Hval – Classic Objects