As I mentioned in my intro blurb for my songs of the year list, my listening habits weren’t exactly expansive this year. I tended to lean on a lot of the same albums and genres throughout the past 12 months, which means there’s a good chance that I left your favorite album, or the most “important” album of the year, or some other album you think should have been on this list, off of it. So consider this more of a snapshot in time of my own taste than an attempt to define the canon – these are the records that meant a lot to me in 2023, and hopefully you’ll find a record that meant, or will come to mean, a lot to you in here as well (Read part 1 here)

10. The World Is Inhospitable and So Are We – Mitski

After releasing her version of a big synth-pop album with last year’s Laurel Hell, Mitski made a strategic retreat in 2023 with The World Is Inhospitable and So Are We, a stark chamber pop collection that’s a much more natural fit for her than talents than whatever “Should’ve Been Me” was supposed to be. Reuniting with her acoustic guitar and even adding a little pedal steel into the mix, Mitski once again finds herself contemplating loneliness, heartbreak, and the occasional love affair gone well. Every song feels like it was recorded by candlelight, and carries with it a distinct sense of looking for some brightness in a world gone dark. 

Recommended Tracks: “Bug Like an Angel,” “Heaven,” “My Love Mine All Mine”

9. Eye on the Bat – Palehound

Most break up albums were written to be cried along too, and while things do occasionally get misty on Palehound’s Eye on the Bat, it’s hardly a pity party. Instead, frontperson El Kemper documents both the good and the bad, from road trip singalongs to silent resentments and awkward birthday presents. That completeness expands to the album’s arrangements, which have evolved from Palehound’s earlier, lo-fi origins into something much fuller and more professional sounding, giving the album a sense of momentum even as Kemper finds herself stuck in the emotional mud. Human relationships are never just one thing, and Eye on the Bat tries to touch on everything that they can be, all the ups and down, all the twists and turns, all the quiet ballads and shouted rock songs. 

Recommended Tracks: “Independence Day,” “The Clutch,” “Eye on the Bat,” “Route 22”

8. Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd –  Lana Del Rey

This isn’t going to make a lot of sense, but I think there’s a case to be made that Lana Del Rey made the most album-y album of 2023. While I don’t love every single song on Did you know there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd, the sheer ambition of its 87-minute runtime, multiple interludes, and dark, dusky ballads make it impossible not to gawk at and admire. It’s a record that eats like a meal and, for the most part, justifies all the different courses it serves. It also feels like the first album where Del Rey reckons with herself on both a cultural and a spiritual level, contemplating what the retro-temptress role she plays does to her soul and the souls of the people around her. It’s not the album I listened to the most this year, but it might be the one I spent the most time thinking about. 

Recommended Tracks: “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd,” “A&W,” “Jon Batiste Interlude,” “Let the Light In” feat. Father John Misty

7. Perfect Saviors – The Armed

Maybe this makes me boring, but I don’t really care about the mystery surrounding The Armed and who they may or may not be. I have, however, been fascinated by their musical evolution, which saw them start out as a chaotic metalcore band before transitioning into a Fucked Up-style melodic hardcore project on 2021’s Ultrapop, and then shifting once again into a comparatively poppy and digestible mode on Perfect Saviors. While the band hasn’t completely abandoned the screaming and blast beats, they incorporate more industrial and even post-grunge influences on Perfect Saviors which, through its immense sense of grandeur and vanity, acts as a perfect critique of modern pop stardom. No song better encapsulates the band’s love/hate relationship with performance than “Everything’s Glitter,” in which they tout themselves as the hottest thing to roll through your “khaki town” while also fretting that they’re a “caricature.” Are they a truly great band or a pretentious self-parody? The beauty of Perfect Saviors is that it lets you decide. 

Recommended Tracks: “Everything’s Glitter,” “Sport of Form,” “Patient Mind”

6. Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? – Karen Jackson

The phrase “folk music” can convey a sense of smallness, the image of one person with a guitar singing simple songs about the everyday. Kara Jackson sings about the everyday, but her music is far from simple, redefining folk in a progressive, almost jazzy way that makes her songs about relationships and the never ending search for self-worth sound spectral and cosmic. But rather than sounding mannered and ornate like a Sufjan Stevens album, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? is more akin to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, a loose, wandering record that allows its author to explore their vocal register and the mysteries of life. It’s impossibly naturalistic for something so complex. 

Recommended tracks: “pawnshop,” “brain,” “why does the earth give us people to love?”

5. I’ve Got Me – Joanna Sternberg

Loneliness is often posed as the ultimate problem in pop music – something to be solved, avoided, and feared, the worst case scenario of any song about love and lust. Joanna Sternberg’s I’ve Got Me isn’t exactly a celebration of loneliness, but it is a more holistic exploration that recognizes loneliness as a multi-faceted state of being with its own advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes it’s a respite (“People are Toys to You”), sometimes it’s a prelude to a greater love (“I Will Be with You”), and sometimes it just is (“I’ve Got Me”), but no matter what facet of loneliness Sternberg explores, it’s beautifully illustrated by their froggy, Karen Dalton-esque voice and loose but stately folk arrangements. The instrumentation on this album is too complex for it to truly be considered bedroom pop, but the interiority it reflects, and the honest and intimate form of self-knowledge it describes, can only stem from solitude. 

Recommended Tracks: “I’ve Got Me,” “I Will Be with You,” “People are Toys to You,” “She Dreams”

4. softscars – yeule

Beginning their career as a self-identified “glitch princess,” yeule borrowed heavily from the Grimes playbook, presenting themself as a kind of virtual pop star obsessed with the pitfalls and possibilities of modern technology. The 25-year old Singaporean holds onto that tech fixation on softscars, but only as a counterpoint to their tortured corporeal existence, a contrast that’s mirrored by their newfound embrace of 90s alt rock influences like Smashing Pumpkins and Hole. Self-harm, self-cannibalism, and transhumanism all pop up on softscars, and while that should and does make for a disturbing listen, there’s something life affirming about yeule’s embrace of the raw power of loud guitars, even as the anesthetizing, dehumanizing glow of electronics remains ever present in the background. It’s chilly, squirmy, complicated stuff, just like the knowledge that the modern world holds the key to both your salvation and your destruction. 

Recommended Tracks: “x w x,” “sulky baby,” “4ui12,” “dazies,” “bloodbunny”

3. Time Ain’t Accidental – Jess Williamson

There may not be a more hopelessly romantic album on this list than Time Ain’t Accidental, Texas singer-songwriter Jess Williamson’s record about “a life of delusion” where “love is the cure.” But just because it’s romantic doesn’t mean that this album isn’t also realistic, as well. Throughout its runtime, WIlliamson treats Texas the way Bruce Springsteen treats New Jersey – both a place to be proud of, and the town of losers you need to pull out of to win. The music of Time Ain’t Accidental is slightly reminiscent of the Boss as well, pairing what are essentially country songs with drum machines and light kisses of saxophone, a collision of the traditional and the modern that speaks to Williamson’s conflicted identity. Of course, the most important instrument is her voice, sweet but never saccharine, occasionally matter of fact but never talk-y. Like the album’s cover, which features a lightning strike in a field, it gives the record both a grounded sense of place and a cosmic possibility.

Recommended Tracks: “Time Ain’t Accidental,” “Hunter,” “God in Everything,” “Topanga Two Step”

2. The Window – Ratboys

I’m not sure if my Spotify stats bear this out, but I’d wager that there isn’t an album I listened to more in 2023 than The Window, a record whose warmth and big heartedness made it the go-to background music for nearly everything I did this year. The winning combination of Julia Steiner’s wistful vocals, David Sagan’s expansive guitar heroics, and the band’s trademark touch of twang feels like a synthesis of Ratboys’ earlier twinkly, country-tinged emo iteration and the big ticket alt rock of 2020’s Printer’s Devil, coming together in what’s their most complete and consistent release yet. Whether it’s the straight-ahead rock of “Crossed that Line,” the mournful balladry of the title track, the classic rock epicness of “Black Earth, WI,” or the almost twee pop-expertise of “I Want You (Fall 2010),” there’s something for everybody on The Window, a giant musical tent under which everybody can come together and commiserate about the power of rock and roll.

Recommended Tracks: “Making Noise for the Ones You Love,” “It’s Alive!,” “The Window,” “Empty,” “Black Earth, WI”

1. Rat Saw God – Wednesday

This shouldn’t be a surprise. There’s no band I’ve written more about in 2023 than Wednesday, and no album I ever seriously thought was going to take this spot over Rat Saw God. All of the elements that have made Wednesday a praise worthy band since their inception – the feedback drenched guitars, squelching pedal steel, Karly Hartzman’s cracked vocals, and their trailer park Gothic lyrics – feel like they’ve come to a head on this album, resulting in a wholly unique form of indie rock just as the genre was beginning to sound a little same-y and predictable. It’s an album wholly disinterested with what’s going on in New York, LA, or Philly, a true product of the South that celebrates and wrestles with the region in equal measure, reverent of its country heroes but not too reverent, proud of its hometown but not too proud. Who knows what kind of influence Rat Saw God will have in the short and long term. But in 2023, it was a ragged, sweet, squalling, and entirely welcome shot in the arm. 

Recommended Tracks: “Hot Rotten Grass Smell,” “Bull Believer,” “Chosen to Deserve,” “Bath County,” “Turkey Vultures”