10 incredible albums from 2023 that have gone under the radar
We’re bombarded with more culture than ever before. There is a content overload. But if there is one thing that the recent vinyl reissue craze has proven, it’s that even when the cream seems to have sunk into such an oblivion that it has long been forgotten, it will still, eventually, rise to the top. So, while some of these albums might currently have escaped the attention of the masses, they’re masterpieces that will undoubtedly start flourishing via the greatest marketing tool of all: solid word of mouth. And we’ll be singing the praises of the likes of H. Hawkline and Yves Tumor as loud as we can.
After all, instant popularity has never been an arbiter of great art. As the following recollection by Brian Eno encapsulates: “My reputation is far bigger than my sales,” he said with a laugh on the phone from his home in Manhattan. “I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years.”
The musical luminary fatefully continued: “Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band! So I console myself in thinking that some things generate their rewards in second-hand ways.”
With that in mind, below, we have curated a wonderful assortment of albums from 2023 so far that deserve spades more attention than they have presently received. These masterpieces might have skirted under the radar for now, but they are well worth a listen, and that should surely ensure that they become celebrated as they make their way into the world.
10 of the best albums from 2023 so far:
Anne, If – Ghost Woman
You’d have a hard task explaining to a philistine how ‘cool’ can equate to a sound, but Anne, If is all the proof that you can, indeed, make a noise that seemingly swaggers right off the hymn sheet. The second album by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Evan Uschenko is a juggernaut of bluesy riffing. He drives this guitar power through a shimmer of psychedelia to create a textured wail that near enough pops your collar like Eric Cantona and slides some shades onto your face itself.
But coolness needs substance if it’s going to sustain itself, and Anne, If happily ushers its sauntering atmosphere towards catchy hooks. This is typified by the album’s zenith, the anthemic ‘The End of a Gun’, a song that will surely be on your road trip playlist forevermore. And that’s just as well because it is the sort of song that Hunter S. Thompson surely had in mind when he wrote: “On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio”. Ghost Woman is offering up some of the finest unleaded music around today, and it deserves more attention.
Come Back to Me – Peter One
Growing up in Bonoua, Cote d’Ivoire, Peter One wasn’t presented with a guitar until he was 17. However, he soon became enamoured with the instrument and looked to emulate his heroes like the Cameroonian troubadour Eboa Lotin. Quickly, he learnt that there was an interesting marriage to be made between the folk sounds of his homeland and his Western favourites like Simon & Garfunkel. Soon he produced a very singular sound akin to a one-man Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on vacation composing lilting tales from a pillow-propped disposition.
Fame followed for Peter One, but amid the tempestuous political climate of Cote d’Ivoire in the 1990s, this wasn’t always welcome, so he moved to the US and looked to further the horizons of his career. Come Back To Me sounds like he is finally sinking back into the core of his soulful sound. As he sings on the bluesy ‘Staring Into the Sun’, “It’s been 16 years a lot of changed since then, nobody is like you, nobody can really fill your shoes.” You can say that again, nobody makes singularity sound so seamless, and nobody makes delicate tones hit so deep.
And I’ll be damned if he doesn’t sound like he’s saying “Howay” in the thickest Geordie accent throughout the astoundingly pretty ‘Cherie Vico’.
Being – Baaba Maal
It has been seven years since we got a new record from the Senegalese legend Baaba Maal. However, he has far from been quiet in that time. He has collaborated with Damon Albarn, popped up on the Black Panther soundtrack, and clearly knuckled down into further honing his infectious sound. Being is an album brimming with assured experimentation.
In terms of musicology, Meal mixes traditional African folk techniques with studio pop engineering; however, aurally, this doesn’t seem like a hybrid, it comes out like a unified blast of cold water. Invigorating and innovative, this is experimental music at its easiest because while you might not have heard it before, you’ll find yourself having a ball all the same.
Milk For Flowers – H. Hawkline
With Milk For Flowers, H. Hawkline has produced a masterpiece. The Welsh singer-songwriter has cracked it, tapping into something singular and utterly sincere. The album has the air of a roving literary writer about it, a musical Tennessee Williams musing on the tricky matters of being alive in this world and the moments when some of us suddenly aren’t anymore. Hawkline’s ruminations are alluring and always unique.
He brilliantly bolsters this literary style with beauteous melodies that twist typical compositions in strange new ways. He crafts amazing choruses but often holds off from offering them. He creates luscious soundscapes with stirring chords but makes them notably sparse. All of this simply quirks the otherwise seamless beauty of his original pop sound. This is as good as songwriting gets. It is a triumph of taking tried and tested songwriting out for a spin on your own journey and seeing where it ends up at the hands of your subversive wheel.
Praise a Lord… – Yves Tumor
Yves Tumor’s latest album is a perfectly tesselate collage of pure originality. It is an album comprised of stark juxtapositions, Tumor’s work is sublime yet unnerving, equally as prone to emotive melodies as it is to dissonant textures; it looks to wrong-foot the listener at every turn like a tricky French winger, and that is a feat that forever pleases the crowd.
This swaggering ethos offers thrills throughout, weaving concise potency with overarching weirdness. There is a postmodern flair on display here that makes for a heady dose of sonic adrenaline. Vitally, no matter how manic things get, they always trust themselves to tie things to a core element – often the reverb-laden bassline – that can ensure you are whisked along into the maelstrom with something solid to cling to. So, the world that Praise a Lord… creates might be weird, but it is also strangely welcoming with its brooding cinematic prowess.
Norm – Andy Shauf
It’s all well and good judging a book by its cover, a book has never stalked anyone, but when it comes to people, you should be a little more cautious because appearances can prove deceptive. Andy Shauf muses on music’s potential to mask an unreliable narrator’s creepy conceits behind mellowed and magnetic melodies. In the process, the crooning Canadian chansonnier’s seventh album, Norm, offers a beguiling come-hither with beauty, entraps with odious depth, and then leaves you reeling with the subtlest of postmodernist prescience in these times of rampant deception and misguided Norms aplenty.
Once more, the album displays the sort of creativity that establishes him as the new indie answer to Randy Newman. Norm is a devilishly clever album resplendent with resonant notes that make dissonance seem like a silly flourish deployed by the uninventive. Instead, Shauf remains pleasantly peaceful and lets his wit do the ruffling. With it, he reaches the same lofty heights as the brilliant Neon Skyline. With a bit more time getting to know the oddly nefarious Norm, it may even surpass it. And that’s saying something. Superb stuff from Shauf, one of the year’s finest efforts so far.
Big Picture – Fenne Lily
Fenne Lily is finally ready to be happy on record and it is a glorious thing to behold. With the backing of her touring band, the Bristol-based songwriter has whisked up lullabies that welcome the sanguine days of summer to come with all the comforting love of a bundle of antihistamines. Sweet but never saccharine, these plucked ditties are as humbly day-brightening as a bouquet of daffodils.
Importantly for Lily, this new development does not abandon sincerity. She treads towards hope with a sense of innate trepidation that trembles the fragile refrains with beautiful depth and personality. Happiness isn’t easy, but she’s giving it a try, and that venture is a gift that she shares with you in quietly joyous melodies. Big Picture is an early summer gem.
The Candle and the Flame – Robert Forster
The pandemic was a period when we were all brought closer to mortality, Robert Forster was brought closer to it than most. When his mother died during it he commented: “I take solace from the fact she lived a long, happy life. My father died at 87. These are the kind of ages Karin and I are reaching for.” However, sadly his wife, Karin Bäumler, was diagnosed the stage four inoperable ovarian cancer. While most of the songs were written before this diagnosis, it imbued the family recording process with a sense of transcendence.
This creates an album that elevates Forster’s luscious lyricism to new heights. The soulful jamming feel to the punchy melodies has a poignancy of its own. As Bäumler later reflected: “Music was a refuge. It was like taking an amnesia tablet.” For the listener, however, the effect is quite the opposite, but in the same blissful fashion–you are, in fact, waltzed down memory lane and you find yourself savouring those moments as Forster’s stories whisk up personal corroborations to enjoy.
In Between Thoughts… – Rodrigo y Gabriela
Rodrigo y Gabriela once worked on a Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, which makes a lot of sense because listening to these rousing tunes makes you want to hijack a boat. These instrumental Mexicans strum away like dancing millipedes and whisk you over to a holiday booking site in an instant, assured that Mexico simply goes about things better than the rest of the world.
Found busking by Damien Rice, they hit the big time through a quirk of fate, but now they’ve even played in front of Barrack Obama and rumours it that his socks had been knocked off by the end of their gig. In Between Thoughts is pure musical poetry that entraps the adrenalised feeling of strolling Las Ramblas, deboarding a plane, or emerging over the sand dunes onto a luscious beach. If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, then maybe you’d be right not to dive into the duo’s latest work, but you also have deep-rooted problems to resolve.
Ali – Vieux Farka Touré & Khruangbin
Ali Farka Touré was one of music’s true heroes. However, at the time, he didn’t even consider himself a musician; he preferred the humble title of farmer. The legend stepped away from music in 200 to help cultivation projects in his home region. He poured his money into a community irrigation scheme and was elected mayor of 53 villages in 2004 before sadly passing away in 2006, a year after his fateful album In the Heart of the Moon with fellow Malian master Tounami Diabaté. In short, he is a man well worth honouring, and his son, Vieux Farka Touré, along with Khruangbin, have honoured him in style.
However, this is no pastiche. There is a freshness to the slight funk-inclined sound, implying the progression that the hero always sought. The free-form nature of the project provides vitality to these songs. Whether you’re looking for relaxing music to fill your background with a bit of relaxing beauty or a blanket you can sink into spiritually, Ali is a luscious gem with your time. In short, this is a peaceful place to picnic and a fitting tribute to an old master and hero.
