The 20 best albums of 2023 so far
The statistics show that we’re now listening to more music than ever before; they also indicate that we’re listening to a wider spread. There is no concurrent zeitgeist currently, and this strange scattered nature of society means that music is proving more diversity too, pushing on into avant-garde areas, creating a whirlwind of interesting cultish flashes of brilliance, and a few follies too.
In some ways, 2023 has been the peak of this. It has seen the hangover of Covid-19 drift back into the recesses of the psyche, leaving a blank canvas for modern artists to paint upon. With AI also lingering in the shadows, this unique era feels like a precipice but not one waiting to move onto something better, simply a banquet of madness and reflection in a world going daft before the next wild thing comes along.
At the midpoint of the year, we’ve seen an epic array of releases. A few big guns from the old guard have reared their heads and delivered solidly enough but without ever scintillating. Meanwhile, some fresh voices have emerged with works that seem imbued with a wealth of confidence, perhaps culminated during the unfortunate pause of the bygone lockdown—a silver lining, if you will.
So, without further ado, let’s wade into the best records from the year so far. We have postmodern gems from Andy Shauf, almost-perturbing energy from Yves Tumor and some future classics that surely must be sleeper hits. If the assortment is this good by the end of the year, then 2023 will have been a very good one. However, with the current ‘content’ congestion, it can be hard for the cream to rise to the top, so it is vital that traditional tastemakers remain independent, which is why, as ever with Far Out, we have entirely independently curated this feature for your enjoyment.
The 20 best albums of 2023 so far:
20. I’ve Got Me – Joanna Sternberg
I’ve Got Me is an apt title for someone who seems like they’d be content to create music for an audience of one. Joanna Sternberg‘s humble almost-outsider essence is a comforting balm that happily ignores the platitudes of music aiming for loftier heights and instead dwells in the lowly everyday. It is far from polished and might not be one to pop on in the company, but for a lonesome sonic cuddle from a quirky soul, the album is as beauteous as hot cocoa with cream.
The New York City-born and based musician creates a unique sound that proves instantly recognisable despite the varied tones of I’ve Got Me, showcasing artistic assuredness. Sternberg is now a fixture of the arts scene, creating visual arts that bless the covers of the two records they have released to date and ladle further personality into proceedings. It is a wholesome world that Sternberg welcomes you into, but like the best of Peanuts, it is also a realm with little subversions of real-world wit.
19. I Don’t Know – Bdrmm
The title of Hull shoegaze outfit Bdrmm‘s second album, I Don’t Know, might suggest that the band are uncertain about their next steps, but the record couldn’t prove this more wrong. Through eight songs, Bdrmm offers a mixture of guitar and synths that highlight a desire to avoid complacency, instead leaning into more experimental influences. According to bassist Jordan Smith, “We’d made the guitar record. So we were thinking, ‘What else can we do?'”
The result is an eclectic yet cohesive collection of tunes that balance atmospheric numbers and singalong-appropriate cuts. From the pounding synthetics of the opener ‘Alps’ to the sweeping ‘Be Careful’ and the expansive closer ‘A Final Movement’, Bdrmm prove themselves as one of the most interesting bands to have emerged from England over the past few years.
18. My Back Was a Bridge For You to Cross – ANOHNI and the Johnsons
My Back Was a Bridge For You To Cross sees ANOHNI reunite with her collaborators, The Johnsons, for the first time in 13 years. The result is a terrifically soulful exploration of environmental concern, love and loss, with ANOHNI placing emphasis on the act of feeling. The record moves between rich, silky cuts and moments of sheer abrasion, as demonstrated by the experimental ‘Go Ahead’, which features grinding guitars and theatrical vocals.
Other highlights include the cinematic ‘Rest’, which contains stunningly sensuous instrumentation, and ‘Can’t’, which uses an upbeat sonic palette in contrast with a tragic grief-stricken narrative. ANOHNI’s songwriting skills are put on full display with beautifully emotive and poignant lyrics delivered in her gorgeous, expressive voice.
17. Life Under the Gun – Militarie Gun
Some debut albums seem like meek feet-finders, and others come roaring out the tracks with an assertiveness that only youth and a lack of dashed hopes can harness. Militarie Gun‘s first full-length effort was hotly-anticipated in punk circles, and Life Under the Gun shows no signs of double-guessing under that considerable pressure.
A bludgeon of visceral, angsty energy, these boys rattle off 12 shotgun riffs in under 30 minutes. There is a simplicity to this smash-and-dash dynamic that feels very refreshing throughout. It is typified by the same vagabond sense of wit that prompted the punk poet John Cooper Clarke to quip about the Ramones: ”They understood that it was better to have clever lyrics about moronic subjects than the other way round.” That’s not to say that Life Under the Gun doesn’t touch upon anything heavy, just that it is also self-aware of being the product of a rock band.
16. Ride On – The Nude Party
The Nude Party‘s knack for great opening lines remains intact as this time out, they grovel, “In that stately prison cell that you call home,” in the sludgy track ‘Stately Prison Cell’. The band have a wonderful way of creating little movie scenes with their songs, whether that be swaggering Cherry Red Boots dropping jaws in a Paul Thomas Anderson film or the withdrawn beat poetry of ‘Midnight in Lafayette Park’ that conjures up imagery like a romanticised Hubert Selby Jr..
Ride On meanders at its own pace, but The Nude Party remain infectiously happy to just be a band making music. The record has a sauntering guitar-driven sound that feels reminiscent of those glorious moments when you can simply shed the hangover through strong will and a sweet, breezy day to walk back out into. This wandering means it doesn’t stay in a lane for long, which might be to its detriment on first listen, but soon it endears itself as a smorgasbord of little snapshots from a filmic take on the global demimonde of this world.
15. Paranoïa, Angels, True Love – Christine and the Queens
Christine and the Queens‘ Paranoïa, Angels, True Love wastes no time in getting dramatic and heavenly. Like being welcomed into the bowels of Blade Runner, one of the first things you hear is the line, “From where I stand, everything is glorious,” with enough reverb to make you think you’re hearing the voice of an extraterrestrial. In other words, the album pulls no punches, so if it is not for you, then c’est la vie, but for everyone else, it is a wild ride through sonic eternities.
Featuring Madonna twice throughout, the 20 tracks encompass a very comprehensive piece of work. Paranoïa, Angels, True Love can be confounding, but this is by design, challenging you to waver through the rapids until the next luscious flow clarifies things. It also never loses sight of the importance of singles, with songs like ‘A Day in the Water’ and ‘To Be Honest’ standing out thanks to welcoming hooks.
14. That! Feels Good! – Jessie Ware
That! Feels Good! feels like waking up without plans on a sunny Saturday morning and receiving a text reading, ‘Fancy the beer garden today?’ from an old friend. Jessie Ware‘s album is one that reinvigorates life. It puts sex back into stilted marriages, gets dance-ophobes body-popping under the disco ball, orders a round of Baby Guinness, and dons bright red lippy in the mirror like a movie character in a montage.
It might not reinvent the wheel beyond that, and sure, some tracks offer a lot more pep than others, but what more do you want? The album feels like Ware is enjoying the liberation of sonic adventure. With crisp production and spade-loads of swagger, Ware herself has admitted that she needed this album to re-find her identity. She seems to have done that with stylish aplomb, and we can all rejoice and be glad in it.
13. Is It? – Ben Howard
There are albums that pine for you to pore over their postmodernist lyrics, others that beg you to be bewildered trying to breakdown their dazzling musicology, and a rarified kind that simply dig out the deck chair, croon out some blis and ask for nothing in return other than the occasional contented utterance of, ‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ Ben Howard’s Is It? is certainly the latter, but what truly makes it a summer masterpiece is that, in time, you’ll likely come to realise it has elements of all three. Turning recent hardships in the songwriter’s life into mere potholes on memory lane as he drives smoothly onto sunny horizons.
It is a record at one with itself, clear in its intent to be a ray of sunshine and reconciliation. That much is asserted by welcoming you in with the open arms of the most obvious single, ‘Couldn’t Make It Up’. Within a few bars of that beauteous opener, Howard extolls the sentiment of the album, singing: “Sitting in the garden listening to the radio.” That is exactly how Is It? will likely be devoured by many as it blossoms into the summer hit it was effortlessly born to be.
12. 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 mused on music’s potential to mask an unreliable narrator’s creepy conceits behind mellowed and magnetic melodies earlier this year with Norm. The album’s titular character is the proverbial delusional perennial victim of the modern age, oblivious to his own misguided attempts at escaping solitude.
With postmodern Kurt Vonnegut-like flourishes that see Shauf himself break the songwriting fourth wall and step into proceedings, urging the character he created to stop watching The Price is Right and cooking up crooked schemes for one-way love, this charming effort is brimming with literary depth. However, with Shauf’s laidback style still in swimming tact and lots of luscious arrangements on display, you can also enjoy this from a purely musical standpoint. Like a Coen brothers comedy, it titillates both the intellect and the more passive need for sweet, simple enjoyment.
11. The Last Rotation of Earth – BC Camplight
More than two decades into his career, New Jersey singer-songwriter BC Camplight only seems to be getting better and better. Melding the classic blue-collar attitude of Bruce Springsteen with the stark realities of addition within the heartland of America, Camplight is somehow funnier, sadder, and more interesting with every passing year.
That makes his sixth LP, The Last Rotation of Earth, one for the record books. Whether he’s conjuring up an entire symphony on ‘The Movie’ or stripping things back to their barest elements on ‘Going Out on a Low Note’, Camplight’s apocalyptic despair gets its most potent vehicle yet. It’s not really country, indie, rock, or anything else: it’s BC Camplight music.
10. Come Back to Me – Peter One
Bliss is an underrated state in this hectic modern age. But for Peter One, who left the tempestuous political climate of Cote d’Ivoire and the success he had found there behind in the 1990s before struggling to build up acclaim in the US, a state of hard-earned serenity is something that he is now happy to bask in. His latest album, Come Back to Me, is a purring piece of sunbaked reverie.
Throughout the album, you imagine that ambient field recordings of chirping birds and the breeze through long grass are woven into his gentle folk, but I’m not sure if they’re purely imagined. Come Back To Me sounds like he is finally sinking back into the core of his soulful sound after a long sigh with the sun on his face. As he sings on the bluesy ‘Staring Into the Sun’, “It’s been 16 years a lot of change since then, nobody is like you, nobody can really fill your shoes.” You can say that again, when it comes to Peter One, nobody makes singularity sound so seamless, and nobody makes delicate tones hit so deep. You could drop an atom bomb into these tracks, and they’d simply hit the bottom with a hushed waft.
9. This Stupid World – Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo found acclaim in the 1990s with albums such as I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, remaining cult favourites due to their enthralling take on indie rock and constant adventuring outside the confines of genre. With This Stupid World, their seventeenth studio album, Yo La Tengo proves that with decades of musical experience under their belt, their prowess is as polished as ever, and their muse still energised.
Yet, despite being on top of their game, the songs aren’t afraid to lean heavily into unpolished territory, with opener ‘Sinatra Drive Breakdown’ instantly entrancing listeners with its scratchy, dissonant guitars that whir with distinctive potency. This Stupid World is one of the band’s best records, rich with layered textures and aural experimentation that moves between beautiful melodies and sonic abrasions, constantly lulling and then shaking things up.
8. Gigi’s Revenge – The Murder Capital
Dublin indie rockers The Murder Capital made a splash with their debut LP When I Have Fears back in 2019. As the post-punk revolution exploded around them, it seemed as though one of the original voices of the genre’s new movement could be lost in the shuffle. That notion was put to bed when The Murder Capital returned with this year’s Gigi’s Recovery.
Bouncing from trip-hop and ska influences to dense waves of guitar overdubs, Gigi’s Recovery sprawls and sings in ways that The Murder Capital had never done before. The album takes its time getting around to all of its different musical ideas, but patience turns out to be a virtue with a band as in-the-zone as this.
7. The Record – Boygenius
It didn’t seem as though Boygenuis was ever going to be anything more than a lark. Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus all had acclaimed solo careers that were hitting their peaks in recent years. A one-off EP was a wonderful treat back in 2018, but this supergroup seemed too good to last. And then came The Record, one of the best albums in any of the three’s discographies.
The Record finds all three singer-songwriters working at the apex of their abilities. The one-two-three punch of ‘$20’, ‘Emily I’m Sorry’ and ‘True Blue’ is the best three-song run on any album this year, and the momentum on The Record never lags for a second. There were some mighty high expectations for Boygenius, and somehow, they were able to exceed all of them with one of the most stirring LPs of the year.
6. Mushroom Cloud – A.S. Fanning
Strangely, not a great deal of art in the last few years has dealt with Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns head-on. Too massive to comprehend, perhaps, it has been largely reduced towards nebulous reflections like press releases stating an album is ‘introspective’. However, A.S. Fanning fantastically points out with a sort of dark comic sincerity the absurdity of an apocalypse pertaining to staying indoors with endless boxsets.
At times, Mushroom Cloud feels humble and small, as though you can see beyond the studio to Fanning working out his tracks in his flat, but then with neither warning nor a notable transition, you will find yourself caught up in a swell of words and booming musicology akin to how Phil Spector producing Leonard Cohen could’ve been in more brooding times. Beyond that beauty, it is a record that puts its finger on things—for instance, “cos living young is getting old” sounds like a lyric of the age.
5. Praise A Lord… – Yves Tumor
With a full title like Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds), you certainly get the impression that Yves Tumor (Sean Lee Bowie) is positively brimming with ideas. The album is a perfect reflection of that. Blasting off like a Roadrunner from a cartoon rocket, the fifth Yves Tumor album could give wings to a can of Red Bull.
Pitching itself somewhere between electronica and post-punk, this unique album assembles tones and textures like an art supply shop, but then it perfectly splatters them on the same canvas, metamorphosing a barrage in something close to an energised balm of ambience. All the while, it is Bowie’s performance that continues to wow with its near-perturbing brooding moodiness. Sometimes the vitality of the performance behind everything can be lost when things get as busy as this, but Bowie boldly stands amid the swirl like a monolith of artistry.
4. Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd – Lana Del Rey
Surely you didn’t count out Lana Del Rey, right? The already-iconic singer-songwriter always seems like she’s on the verge of quitting music, retiring to a beach house, and spinning Joni Mitchell records while the world burns around her. That time will inevitably come, but Del Rey isn’t done with us yet, as she showed on her sprawling Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
For 77 minutes, Del Rey brings you back into her world of shitty boyfriends, dense literary allusions, genre-blending ballads, and a whole bunch of classic one-liners that could only come from one person. Releasing two albums in 2021 might have been a bit of an overdose, but Ocean Blvd proves that we never want to be away from Lana Del Rey for too long.
3. Everything Harmony – The Lemon Twigs
Everything Harmony is a very clever title. This is, indeed, The Lemon Twigs’ most one-track record to date, using a single acoustic echo chamber throughout and keeping the music light and lilting. Alas, there are comic subversions to this rule. We’re dealing with harmony in the equilibria sense rather than pure saccharine sunshine and sweet rainbows. The D’Addario brothers are, after all, unreliable narrators, casually glossing over sinister undertones with smiles, pairing serene pillow-propped melodies with the comic disgruntlement of ‘Every Day Is The Worst Day of My Life’, all making for a unique world of beauty and dark comedy masquerading as a single force of upbeat folky gems.
It’s this quirky style of songwriting that truly soars on the album. Throughout, The Lemon Twigs project sorrow through comedy with such a light touch that it’s like stepping on a loose paving slab on a rainy day and having pocket change and confetti slosh up onto your sock. This adds idiosyncratic depth to the album, while the luscious melodies ensure that Everything Harmony will be a timeless fixture of your next 1000 summers.
2. Chaos For The Fly – Grian Chatten
With grit-glistening streets described as seasoned to taste and tales of the big boss man’s fall from macho grace, Grian Chatten certainly hasn’t lost his knack for crafting an immersive picture in his solo guise, forever placing the listener in some corner of a foreign field with the familiarities of cultural touchstones and universal moods there to make us feel at home. With Chaos For The Fly, he expands his horizons towards waltzy Bond themes, decadent baroque numbers, and simple hard-strummed winter warmers, but the record’s triumph is that it sustains a certain colourful through-line throughout.
With the tried and tested Dan Carey on production duties, Chatten’s album sounds nothing like an opening solo effort. It confidently careens around coupled genres, helping to craft a patchwork collage of Chatten’s passions that provide a level of sincerity to the wayfaring moods, sounds and styles that tesselate just about imperfectly enough to create something invigoratingly new and interesting, while also warding off the danger of dissonant mishmashes.
1. Milk For Flowers – H. Hawkline
Of all the albums released so far this year, H. Hawkline‘s sounds most like one you’ve never heard before; and yet, its true triumph is that it achieves this without straining a sinew towards enforced originality, evidenced by just how easy the whole thing is to enjoy after merely a few listens. Within the muddied musicology lie timeless melodious traditions that Hawkline happily uses to muse, with the poetic precision of a modern Raymond Chandler, on the oddities and tragedies that crop up as you try to live a happy and virtuous life.
With a tonally different repertoire that wavers from grief set to crooked Americana to pleading forgiveness riding home on jazzy pop, the album is simultaneously a simple comfort and a decadent delight thanks to its opulent compositions and finely filagreed truths. Purring with moments of humour and endearingly drawled in luscious Welsh tones, Milk For Flowers is content enough with its own quirks not to overstate them. Flourishes like letting you wait for the chorus longer than most would dare and wavering from spacious arrangements to crowded ones on a whim define the record as unique, but it’s the way these compositional tweaks merely subvert great grooves that adds the magic to the music; Hawkline completes the character of Milk For Flowers with his jaunty-hatted prose.
