Five radical releases set for 2023
2022 was one hell of a year for music. In addition to stellar releases from big names like Arctic Monkeys, Kendrick Lamar and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, we saw a steady flow of LPs by fringe artists breaking into the mainstream, many of them female. Aldous Harding, Wet Leg and Gwenno all offered up something fresh and vital. Hopefully, 2023 will be even better.
Looking ahead, our hope is that the playfulness and left-field creativity which characterised 2022’s best records will come to define 2023. Let this be the year of genuine innovation, the year of stepping into the unknown waters.
To give those green shoots which started sprouting in 2022 the chance to thrive, a lot of dead wood needs cutting away. Last year got off to a really exciting start, but by the end of the year, a sense of stagnation had started to creep in. It’s a hard time for musicians, and many have decided to weather the storm by catering to the desires of labels and critics. Of course, we’re all losers in that game.
In this list, we’ll be showcasing five albums that feel genuinely fresh. The year has just begun, and the wind is starting to change. So, let’s get stuck in. shall we? These are five radical records set for 2023.
Five radical releases for 2023:
FourPlay String Quartet and Neil Gaiman – Sign of Life (April 28th)
Back in 2012, Neil Gaiman and FourPlay String Quartet performed to a sold-out audience at the Sydney Opera House. 12 years after that debut performance, the Sandman author is set to rejoin the ensemble for Sign Of Life, slated for April 28th.
We’ve already been treated to preview tracks ‘Bloody Sunrise’, ‘Credo’ and ‘Wreckers’, the first of which tells of a love-hungry vampire. If these early previews are anything to go buy, Sign of Life is set to be a very strange offering indeed. Put together by two famously nonconformist artists, this new record is one we’ll be keeping a very close eye on.
Iggy Pop – Every Loser (January 6th)
Iggy Pop is 75 and still rocking harder than most musicians half his age. His new album, a frenetic swirl of a thing, was released on January 6th and is joyously unhinged. His 19th studio album, Every Loser is a celebration of Pop’s proto-punk roots and a testament to one of rock’s great survivors.
As we noted in our recent review of the LP, “surviving isn’t what Pop is concerned with” on this record. As he succinctly puts it in the song ‘Comments’, “The problem with life is that it stops.” Pop isn’t just looking to be thankful that he’s still around: he’s out to prove that he’s still got the goods. With more than five decades of music in his rearview mirror, it’s remarkable just how fresh an album like Every Loser sounds.
Quasi – Breaking The Balls of History (February 10th)
Set for release on February 10th via SubPop, Breaking The Balls of History looks set to breathe new life into the DIY sphere. It marks Qausi’s tenth release, arriving a full ten years after their last album. Recorded in one room across five days, this kaleidoscopic record is proof that the most innovative music often emerges when its progenitors are looking the other way.
Explaining how the album came about in a recent statement, Sam Coomes wrote: “In August 2019, a car smashed into Janet’s and broke both legs and her collarbone. Then a deadly virus collided with all of us, and no one knew when or if live music as we knew it—the touring, the communal crowds, the sonic church of the dark club—would ever happen again. ‘There’s no investing in the future anymore,’ Janet realised. ‘The future is now. Do it now if you want to do it. Don’t put it off. All those things you only realise when it’s almost too late. It could be gone in a second.'”
The Go! Team – Get Up Sequences Part 2 (February 3rd)
The Go! Team’s 2004 debut still sounds as if it was made tomorrow. Nearly 20 years since that first offering, the Brighton outfit are back with the follow-up to 2021’s Get Up Sequences Part 1. Their latest single ‘Gemini’ demonstrated that they’re still capable of making innovation look effortless, and we can’t wait to hear the full album.
Discussing Get Up Sequences Part Two – set for release on February 3rd – head honcho Ian Parton talked about wanting to capture that feeling of there being “so much good shit out there that you are grabbing it all at the same time. The record is saying: ‘Look at this. Look at this’,” he added. “When you listen to it, you just want the saturation of the world to be turned up”.
John Cale – Noise of You (January 20th)
If you were surprised by news of Iggy Pop’s latest album, just wait until you hear Mercy, the forthcoming album by experimental musician and former Velvet Underground member John Cale. At 80 years old, Cale is making some of the most astonishing music of his career. Lush, avant-garde and cathartic, the album’s lead single ‘Noise of You’ is a tender meditation on the human capacity for love.
“I don’t tend to romanticise the idea of love,” Cale explains in a statement. “It represents ‘need’, and that’s not something I’m particularly comfortable with. When it gets a hold of you though – don’t let go – no matter how many times you mess it up!” Featuring contributions from Weyes Blood, Laurel Halo, Sylvan Esso, and Animal Collective, this is one album you won’t be able to ignore.
