Music I loved in 2023

I still listen to music

The music I like used to fall quite consistently into just two categories:

1. Good songs: Well-crafted songs (often on guitar) that make me feel things.

2. Cool sounds: Noises and beats (often electronic) that intrigue or move me.

This year, I’ve been listening to more ambient music and piano compositions so I’m changing the second category to Cool sounds and calm sounds. These picks are still instrumental and they still intrigue and move me, but they’re more than cool.

I spend a decent amount of time thinking about what it is I love about the music I listen to so, once again, I thought I’d share some of my favourite albums and songs that I loved this year with some brief thoughts on what it is I love about them.

Good songs

Boygenius—the record

It’s so comforting and grounding when excellent songwriters put pen to paper and write a bunch of good songs for us to enjoy. This record—the record—did that for me this year. A collection of heartfelt, movie-soundtrack bangers to get you weeping and/or pounding the steering wheel. I’ve heard criticism that the production was too on-the-nose but the on-the-noseness is what I love about this album. It’s here for you.

Emily, forgive me, can we
Make it up as we go along?
I'm twenty-seven and I don't know who I am
But I know what I want

Favourite track: Emily, I’m Sorry

MARO—hortelã

This is probably the album I’m most excited to put on people’s radars. Most of the songs on this cosy, delicate, unassuming acoustic album are sung in Portugese and MARO seems to get more attention for her features than her solo work. It seems the world is sleeping on this songwriter. She’s incredible and I think this album is some of her best work (though it’s also worth checking out “it’s OK”)

For a while I believed
That time and time and time cures it all
Things get mild then disappear

Favourite track: just wanna forget you

Tallest Man On Earth —Henry St.

One of my favourite songwriters, Kristian Matsson, returned this year with a full-band affair. His songs carry the same lightness, the same nostalgia and innocence, but are blended on this record with more guitars, hushed drums, pianos, horns and strings. There was definitely a risk that the band would limit Kristian, but the songs here are characteristically free-flowing and moving.

And the ghost of my hungry self
Linger in the way I speak
It's been long since I felt it all
I'm just waiting on a word from America

Favourite track: Major League

Ben Howard —Is It?

This really was the year of some of my favourite songwriters returning with something new and something brilliant. Probably my favourite album of the year, Ben Howard’s “Is It?” is glitchy and punchy yet hazy and mesmerising. At the core of each track is a Good Song but the Good Song is deconstructed and rebuilt—often with electronic guitars, mountains of reverb and bright drum samples—but never lost.

But you wanted to be more and that's ordinary
Put your hand in the machine, can you hold it steady?
They were watching sunsets, you were straining for a vision

Favourite track: Days of Lantana or Little Plant

The National —Laugh Track

I was disappointed with The National’s first release this year; First Two Pages of Frankenstein. It was slow and dull, the songs were simple and it seems like they were using big features (Sufjan Stevens, Taylor Swift) to cover up mediocre songwriting.

So, it was a great relief that they had a second album up their dusty, thick, plaid sleeves. Laugh Track has a bunch of energetic and moving tracks, and landed so much better because, in my opinion, they reintroduced their signature drum patterns, frenetic and full, carrying the mournful croning of the lyrics.

Full body gentle shutdown
So many people to letdown
Don't even think about me
Turn off the house

Favourite track: Turn off the House

Sufjan Stevens—Javelin

I won’t be straying far from any mainstream music reviewer this year if I say that Sufjan’s Steven’s new album Javelin is very good. It’s emotional, contemplative, meandering and beautiful. Other writers have written more.

Can you lift me up to a higher place?
Forget everything that was before
Turn your face around like the salted sphere
Turn yourself around to see what once was there
Everything that rises must converge

Favourite track: Everything That Rises

Bombay Bicycle Club —My Big Day

Another artist whose music I’ve enjoyed for a long time returned with another great album (has my music taste just ossified?). My Big Day is big and fun; triumphant yet silly. There’s huge variation between the tracks. There are classic BBC indie bops (My Big Day), sunny and upbeat numbers (Turn the World On) and even a 2-minute brass band and breakbeat (?) instrumental (Rural Radio Predicts The Rapture). Really good fun.

You always think you've blinked and missed it
On your last lap 'round the sun
I never felt so optimistic
Since the days when I was young

Favourite track: Turn the World On

Flyte—Flyte

Flyte return with an extremely cosy and old-fashioned acoustic album. The songs here are Good, the production minimal and the lyrics evocative yet deeply familiar. A nice, big hug.

I call your friends
They send me luck
And I pretend
I'm strong enough
To be your defender

Favourite track: Defender

Cool sounds and calm sounds

Duskus—Healers Vol.1

My favourite dance record of the year. Consistently emotive, textured and energetic. I had this EP on repeat in December. Cool.

Poppy Ackroyd—Resolve

One of my favourite discoveries of 2023, released in 2018. Ackroyd’s Resolve is an instrumental album largely built around sounds from the piano, from ringing high notes to the percussive sound of the hammers and body. With added strings and various collaborators, the sound is expansive, peaceful and melancholy.

Favourite track: Time (ft. Manu Delago)

Henrik Lindstrand—Klangland

Lindstrand’s music is the music I’m most inspired to emulate (more on this in an upcoming blog post). It’s also centred around the piano, but the compositions often build in cinematic strings very slowly and deliberately. The result is a patient, moving and immersive post-classical record.

Favourite track: Jord

John Hayes—Beautifully Lost Mind

John Hayes music is in a very similar genre as the two other recommendations in this category; piano-centred, atmospheric and moving. Beautifully Lost Mind could be classified as the most simple and most accessible of the three here, and that’s something I appreciated. The instrumentation is minimal but the result is grounded and peaceful.

Favourite track: Beautifully Lost Mind.

Honourable mentions

Good songs

Gregory Alan Isakov—Appaloosa Bones
Porter Robinson—Everything Goes On and Shelter
Phoebe Bridgers—Sidelines
The Japanese House—Boyhood (my most played song)
Fenne Lily—Big Picture
Rozi Plain—Prize
S. Carey et al.—New Meaning
Jacob Collier et al.—Little Blue

Cools and calm sounds

Two Shell—home
Fort Romeau—Untitled IV
Fred again… —adore u and ten
Max Cooper—Motif
Geotic—Eyes

Progressive metal

Periphery—Periphery V: Djent Is Not A Genre
Meshuggah—Immutable