2023…. was a year! I don’t know what else to say about it other than that, but it had some music I really liked. Overall I felt like this year was weaker music-wise compared to some years past, but maybe I’m just getting old? I don’t know, but I had a hard time building this list this yearbecause I frequently found myself listening to older stuff. That being said, my favorites this years were albums I obsessed over and albums that I made some really great memories with, and that’s why they are on the list.

10. Did You Know That There’s A tunnel Under Ocean BLVD

Lana Del Rey

On one hand this is an other Lana Del Rey album, it’s a continuation of the sound she’s been on for the past few albums, but it’s a very well refined album that is easily in the top tiers of her catalogue. As the year went on I found myself increasingly attached this album, maybe it was seeing her twice that did that, but it really is the best example of what she is. The album is peaceful and just overall very pretty, vocally Lana sounds as best as she ever has and creates a nice well produced experience.

9. In Times New Roman…

Queens of the Stone Age

It’s very hard to a find a band who has been more consistent over the years than Queens of the Stone Age. Through multiple different line-ups and sounds they have always kept a high level of quality. On their 8th studio album they seem to find a balance of all the things that make them great. The riffs are heavy like something off Lullabies to Paralyze but then they are also catchy like something off Villians. It’s a no bullshit rock album, just simply a nice collection of well constructed songs that reminds you that they are kings (or I guess Queens) of the genre.

8. Desire, I Want To Turn Into You

Caroline Polachek

Coming into the year this was probably my most anticipated release. It was a long wait from 2019’s Pang, which is one of the best art pop albums of the past decade. I also saw her perform most of this album live a whole year before it came out, so that only added to the hype. In the end it delivered, this was a satisfying follow up and establishes Caroline as one of pop music’s most forward thinkers.

She works with Danny L. Harle who produced this album (seen holding his daughter on the album cover), and given his recent collaboration with Dua Lipa, I think is on his way to becoming a big name producer. The album just sounds so perfect from a sound design perspective, on good quality headphones you can really appreciate how detailed the sound is. On top of top tier production, the songs are catchy, “Bunny is a Rider” is an old song now, but I still can’t get enough of it. The opening track chorus always comes back into my head at some point, and the closing track, “Billions,” is just so pretty. It’s a well rounded art pop album that is still an easy listen despite an intimidating genre label.

7. 10,000 gecs

100 gecs

2019’s 1,000 gecs, the duos debut, is an instant classic. That album single handedly changed the way I perceive music, it’s ground breaking, it’s a perfect album, one my favorites ever made. So how do you follow that up? The answer is you don’t, you craft something that is entirely different, something that sounds as fresh and exiting as the debut did at the time.

10,000 gecs achieves this, it takes their sound pallet and expands it into the realm of rock music. This album features some of the catchiest guitar riffs of 2023 and uses them in a style that is uniquely theirs. Every song is it’s own unique experience, and there is some I don’t like I’ll be honest (“Frog on the Floor” lost this album a few spots), but the highlights kept this in my rotation the whole year. You never know to expect with this group, and I am sure that will remain true going into the future.

6.Powders

Eartheater

Every Eartheater project has it’s own unique sound, but for one reason or another her mix-tape from 2019, Trinity has become the project she’s known for. While she has been active in the time since, Powders feels like the follow up to it, taking the aesthetic and bringing her other sounds into it.

The opening track “Sugar Cane Switch” is one of my favorite songs of the year and recalls back to Bjork with her vocal style, but then the album also features a cover of System of a Downs “Chop Suey” that just needs to be heard to be understood. Eartheater clearly has a very wide array of influences and they all come together to make something really atmospheric and cool on this album.

5. The Whaler

Home is Where

I’ve lost track of what wave of emo we are on, but of this current wave Home is Where has quickly become one of my favorites. This is a concept album with a narrative that I don’t really understand, but I do understand that the songs are really good. There are more calm folkier cuts, but then other songs that are angry and boldly declare that “Every Day Is just Like 9/11” in bursts of energy you’d expect from the genre. I have really fallen out of emo over the years, maybe its getting older or maybe it just isn’t as good as it once was, I honestly don’t know, but it’s so nice hearing an album like this that makes me excited again.

4. Dogs Body

Model/Actriz

This album is the debut from a Brooklyn based band and I have a hard time describing. I guess it’s like a noisy post punk rock type thing but it sound completely unique to anything else within those genres. if you turned this on at a party they would kick you out, but if your in the mood for something unsettling this is it.

The guys in this band are each talented and create dark sounds, but it’s really front man Cole Haden who steals the show for me. Lyrically I think the songs could stand alone as poems, they are cryptic and interesting but the way they are delivered by the vocalist are just something else. Overall I’d just go listen to this one, it may not be for everyone, but if you want a forward thinking album of guitar music, check this out.

3. PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

Yeah that album title isn’t joke, but the title and cover describe the album perfectly, a prog thrash metal album about the end of the world. The basic story line is that mankind destroys the earth by polluting it, they summon a wizard to undo the pollution, but then the wizard accidentally creates a giant Gila Monster that destroys whatever is left, it’s so cool.

This the the 24th (lol yeah) album from King Gizz and it takes every thing they do well and applies it to the metal genre, it’s a real evolution over their past metal album, 2019’s Infest the Rat’s Nest but the compositions are so much more complex. There is so many weird poly rhythms and insane technical stuff that I don’t even understand. King Gizz is one of today’s most talented groups of musicians, and this is them going off.

2. Starfucker

Slayyyter

If I was insecure I might call this album a “guilty pleasure,” but I’m not, so this album is just a pleasure. Slayyyter (with 3 y’s) delivers a high energy pop album that takes elements from the hyper-pop genre she was born from into a more electro/dance pop direction. It works really well and is probably the best album from the “post-hyper pop” era as I have been referring to it as.

Every song is an ear worm and it’s been in my constant rotation since it came out, it’s just pure dumb fun. Certainly not an “intellectual album” for sure, the songs are about sex, drugs, and then more sex and drugs. There’s a whole song about her boob job that goes so hard, and then it’s followed up by one of the album’s sweeter moments on “Girl Like Me.” Starfucker takes everything I love about pop music, distills it down, and then injects it with every party drug it can find and I just can’t get enough of it.

1. Scaring the Hoes

Jpegmafia and Danny Brown

It’s difficult for me to justify putting anything else at the number 1 spot based off how much I listened to this album. For most of the year when I didn’t know what to listen too, this was the default. It’s two of today’s best rappers at the top of their game. Peggy and Danny’s styles compliment each other so well as they make jokes over gospel samples and chopped and screwed version of “Milk Shake” by Kelis.

The album was produced on a Roland SP-404SX, which is basically some antiquated equipment from the 90’s, but it gives the album a lo-fi grit that is unique to anything else coming out today. Peggy once again proves himself as the best producers in the game and offers a wide selection of songs that are just so creative.