2023 Music | Read Write Collect

Bookmarked Hottest 100 of 2023 | Vote now (hottest100.abc.net.au)

Vote now in triple j’s Hottest 100 of 2023

I always find it interesting to scroll through the songs listed and reflect on what stood out to me this year. Other than Theia, which should really be in as Theia / The Silver Cord / Set, as this is how I first heard / saw it on Rage, the rest of the tracks I added manually.

With my focus on vulnerability this year, I kind of gave up on keeping abreast of new new music. I listened to plenty of new old music, but not so many albums hot off the press. (Although both Damian Cowell and High Pass Filter released new retrospectives, so I am not sure what those albums constitute as.) I also listened to a lot of music while exercising, so that probably influenced some of my choices too.

Here then is my attempt at the songs that grabbed me:

Theia — King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Foolish Thinking — Kimbra
Blood and Butter — Caroline Polachek
Free Yourself — Jessie Ware
Moves to Make — Daði Freyr
Live Again (feat. Halo Maud) — Chemical Brothers
Will Anybody Ever Love Me? — Sufjan Stevens
Syreen — Lindstrøm
Night Is Not — L’Ecstasy
I’ve Gone Hillsong — TISM

There was an option to vote for your favourite track, which for me was Blood and Butter. Caroline Polachek’s album Desire, I Want to Turn Into You was an oddity for me, it was one that took a few listens to settle, but when my ears adjusted, I felt that everything sounded different afterwards. For me, there is something sonically slick about Blood and Butter that lulls the ears in like venus fly trap.

Listened The Loveliest Time by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

The Loveliest Time is the seventh studio album by Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen, released on July 28, 2023, by 604, Schoolboy and Interscope Records. It serves as a companion piece to The Loneliest Time (2022), featuring songs from sessions for the original album. It was preceded by the single “Shy Boy”.

I am always intrigued by the choices made in putting an album together. I accept that there are some artists, like Tame Impala, that record the album and that is it. However, Carly Rae Jepsen has spoken quite a bit over the years how she write a lot of songs, many of which do not it onto the album. This has led to a tradition of releasing a B-side album with each of her albums.

In the course of composing her last two albums, Emotion and Dedicated, Jepsen wrote more than 200 songs. Many of her favorite works didn’t make it onto either final album, so she’s started a tradition of releasing “Side B” records on the one-year anniversary of her last release.

Source: “I’m a bit of an overwriter”: How Carly Rae Jepsen whittled 200 songs down to 12 for her new album by Charlie Harding

One of the interesting things in listening to Loveliest Times is how some of these songs would have changed the feel of The Loneliest Times. This is picked up somewhat in the title of the album ‘The Loveliest Times’ as this album does feel more upbeat to the often reflective The Loneliest Times. Maybe we might never hear ‘Disco Sweat’ in its entirety, but it definitely feels like it always has a presence, especially in the B-Sides:

I have an entire album called Disco Sweat that no one will ever hear. It was really fun to make, though. “Cut to the Feeling” is a good example of that. It was never going to come out. And then I did a voiceover for the cartoon film Ballerina, and they were like, “Do you have any tunes?” And I’m like, “Well, this one’s very theatrical. I think it could work.” So that’s sort of how I roll. [The song made the year-end best lists on Billboard, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair.]

Source: “I’m a bit of an overwriter”: How Carly Rae Jepsen whittled 200 songs down to 12 for her new album by Charlie Harding

Listen to This Love Isn’t Crazy from Dedicated B-Sides for another possible ‘Disco Sweat’ track.

Listened Atta by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Átta (lit. ’Eight’) is the eighth studio album by Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, released through Von Dur and BMG Rights Management on 16 June 2023. It is their first studio album in 10 years, following Kveikur (2013), and is their first since 2012’s Valtari to feature keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson, who rejoined the band in 2022. The seven-minute lead single “Blóðberg” was released on 12 June 2023 alongside its music video, directed by Johan Renck. Physical editions of the album are scheduled to be released on 1 September 2023. The band will embark on a tour from June 2023 backed by a 41-piece orchestra.

In Phil Mongredien’s review, he describes Átta as ‘disappointing homogeneity’. I wonder if the criticisms of the albums ‘unengaging’ nature reflects the challenges of the modern world where so much revolves around the ‘next hit’. If this is what you are after, then this album may not be it. (Maybe try Jonsi’s solo album Shiver?) However, I wonder if Sigur Rós ever really fitted that niche?

Ian Cohen suggests that the album offers ‘equisite beauty’.

While he’s never made the same album twice, either as a solo artist or a collaborator or the frontman of Sigur Rós, he’s also never made an album that turned out anything other than exquisitely beautiful, no matter how much he’s fought against it.

Source: Átta – Sigur Rós by Ian Cohen

While NPR argues that this is an album for our times. In an interview with Bob Boilen, Jónsi describes the album as heavy but hopeful.

It is interesting because when we were doing this album, there was this, I don’t know, maybe it’s just in the world we’re living now, but it’s this doom and gloom everywhere you scroll on social media and and everything kind of has this apocalyptic feel to it. The world is ending, nature is dying, climate disasters one after the other. Yeah, wildfires in Canada and a lot of wildfires in LA War in Ukraine and all this stuff. And we were kind of doing it at that time the war started and all these disasters. And I remember, yeah, there’s definitely something … not gloomy, but, I don’t know, something heavy but also hopeful [at the] same time.

Source: Jónsi explains how Sigur Rós made its first new album in a decade by @NPR

This balance allows the listener to make of it what they want.

I think what is most remarkable is that people take their own meaning from it because they don’t understand the lyrics. Or everybody makes their own meaning and interpretation in their mind. And I think that’s kind of amazing. You’re not like being spoon fed some specific lyrics, some love lyrics or something.

Source: Jónsi explains how Sigur Rós made its first new album in a decade by @NPR

I feel this album important for the moment in the same way that Mixing Colours was right for the start of the pandemic. It forces us to stop and consider.

Listened First Two Pages of Frankenstein, by The National from The National

11 track album

In an interview for Matt Berninger’s solo album, he spoke about the importance of exploring other projects and how that feeds back into The National. Listening to First Two Pages of Frankenstein, I cannot help but hear Aaron Dessner’s work on Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore. I was therefore not surprised to find out that they were both recorded at Long Pond Studio. I feel it is more subdued, also it continues with the collaborative enterprise started with I Am Easy to Find, with appearances by Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift.

Although I have enjoyed it, I cannot help compare it to High Violet. I wonder if it is on of those albums that would have a second life in seeing it live. I think time will tell where it sits in their œuvre.

Place between Taylor Swift’s Folklore and The War on Drugs.

Listened Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, by Caroline Polachek from Caroline Polachek

12 track album

There are some albums that I find hard to click with. I listened to Desire, I Want to Turn Into You when it came out and watched a few of Polachek’s television performances. I really did not know what to make of it. However, after listening to Switched on Pop’s discussion of the new age references and disruptive structure, I felt like I was better able to appreciate it.

In a performance on KXEP, she discusses the non-linear lyricism at the heart of the album, as well as the ‘hyper-maximalist’ approach designed to capture the too muchness and awe in the world. When challenges about pushing the boundaries of pop music, Polachek wonders if ‘pop’ means being part of an inside joke. She instead suggests that the binaries that matter to her are boldness and nuiance, it is about hitting in a different way. With this, she argues that the album is best considered as a constellation with some tracks acting as a bridge between different planets.

Place between Grimes and Montaigne.

Listened 2023 studio album by Kimbra by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

A Reckoning is the fourth studio album by New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra, and the first under the label Inertia and [PIAS], having previously been signed with the label Warner Music.[1] It was released on 27 January 2023.[2] The album was promoted with the singles “Save Me”,[3] “Replay!”[4] and “Foolish Thinking”.[5]

A few years ago, my family and I went on a holiday to New Zealand. One of the things the stuck out to me was the balance between beauty and chaos. On the one hand, there are majestic landscapes, but these always feel in contrast to thermal mud pools and dormant volcanoes. I came away thinking that maybe one was not possible without the other. I had a similar experience with Kimbra’s new album.

It some ways A Reckoning continues on the path started with the raw striped back reimagining of Primal Heart. This is captured through tracks like Save Me, I Don’t Want to Fight and Foolish Thinking. However, this is contrasted by more upbeat and sometimes abrasive sounds, such as Replay and New Habit. This is something that Kimbra herself has touched upon:

Kimbra: There’s a juxtaposition in the aggression of certain sounds against something very soft and tender, which is really me in a nutshell. I have all these conflicting things that live within me. My art is an attempt to translate my inner world to be understood, like all of us. The sonic identity is ever-changing, because I’m ever-changing.

Source: Kimbra is Busier Than Ever After a Five-Year Recording Break: ‘I’m Growing as a Person’ by Bradley Stern

Even with the various ebbs and flows, the album still feels contained. For Kimbra, the constant is the storytelling:

Kimbra: I think the cohesion in my work is often the storyteller at the center, the voice that leads you through these different worlds.

Source: Kimbra is Busier Than Ever After a Five-Year Recording Break: ‘I’m Growing as a Person’ by Bradley Stern

An embracing of the contemplation:

Kimbra: It’s my belief that, when you try to annihilate parts of you, they just get stronger, you know? So, instead, I wanted to sit and listen to them and embrace the chaos and embrace the contemplation.

Source: Kimbra: “If You Try To Annihilate Parts Of Yourself, They Just Get Stronger” by Cyclone Wehner

Capturing the current shift we are all experiencing:

“We’re in a reckoning around spirit, race, our earth and how people walk in the world with a sense of conscience,” Kimbra has said of creating her fourth album. “I wanted to have something to say in my work that spoke to that shift we’re all experiencing.”

Source: Kimbra’s A Reckoning is mesmeric, contemplative and incredibly intimate by Bryget Chrisfield

Pain can transform us, and that this transformation is ultimately our best chance at a happy and just world.

Source: Kimbra – A Reckoning – Double J by @doublejradio

Additionally, the constant with A Reckoning is Ryan Lotts co-production that provides a consistent sonic pallet throughout. When I think about what makes that ‘pallet’, it is the tightness throughout. Whether it be strong sounds coming in just as quickly as they cut out or the way in which the vocals one minute feel distant and then feel close.

One of the interesting things I read about the collaboration between Kimbra and Lott was the way in which his role resembled a remixer.

Hunkering down in Upstate New York, she sent vocal demos to Lott, whose role resembled that of a remixer.

Source: Kimbra: “If You Try To Annihilate Parts Of Yourself, They Just Get Stronger” by Cyclone Wehner

Alternatively, Charles Brownstein has suggested that it is Kimbra’s performance the pulls all the disparate parts together:

You could listen to this album on shuffle, or the way it was designed, it really doesn’t matter — the one throughline is Kimbra’s performance. She always sells the song, whether it’s the yelling to get out of one’s head on “replay!” or the barely-there vocals of the closer. And on songs where the arrangements are eclectic, like on “la type”, “the way we were”, or “GLT”, she manages to make pop music fresh.

Source: Kimbra – A Reckoning – Northern Transmissions by Charles Brownstein

Place between Daniel Johns and James Blake.