Jacob’s Top In 2023
For most of my life, music has been the main way I’ve marked time. It’s going to shows, and committing release dates to memory. It’s going on long walks with a new album and then spinning it on the turntable (and maybe flipping it over one more time). It’s making lots of lists. That historical context makes 2023 kind of weird for me. I don’t know if it’s going to feel like one of my most consequential years in the long run, but it was certainly the busiest I can remember, and that made it a little harder to obsess over music in the way that I like to. It wasn’t until I sat down to work on this post that I really wrapped my head around the past twelve months, and that’s why it’s so important for me to take the time to reflect through this lens: it feels good to remember how much I loved the things I heard and how much they soundtracked this specific part of my life. I went to fewer concerts and spent less time with my vinyl collection than 2022, but also got to do a little more listening to new things when working on home projects, getting between meetings or doors to knock on, or while on a road trip. I’m glad to still have the music grounding these memories, even if it didn’t quite feel like that was happening in the moment. And, I appreciate that the new music we got this year was so good.
In my last post, I promised to be more proactive about discovering new artists in 2023, and, for most of the year, I simply wasn’t (see: the thing I said about being really busy). With that said, I tried hard to make up for it at the end of the year, and found more than a handful of things that I anticipate listening through the rest of the winter and for years to come. It was too late to add most of this to these written lists, but there are at least a few things that are worthy of recognition and would probably shake things up with more time. I want to be deliberate about not just returning to the artists I already know I like, and plan to check out new things more regularly in 2024. Please send me things you think I should hear (I’d love to do the same in response)!
Below, you’ll find my favorite albums and choices for a bunch of other categories I’ve done over the years. There are two primary playlists to go along with this post: my Top 25 Songs of 2023 and the much more expansive What’s Good In 2023 (I’m currently still getting this set up in Spotify, but wanted to publish this now instead of waiting). Longtime Fans will appreciate that I’ve also developed the fourth annual version of the Empowered Wallowing playlist to let you have the best bad time throughout the early part of 2024.
Thank you for clicking my link. I hope you find something new to love.
1. The Japanese House — In The End It Always Does
On July 1st, I gave In The End It Always Does an honorable mention in my midyear Facebook post, saying I hadn’t spent enough time with it to bump something else out of my top 10 for the year so far. I probably didn’t need to be so cautious. This is a special record, and it was one of the ones I reached for most often in the back half of the year. Good At Falling and Chewing Cotton Wool made this one of my most anticipated albums, but I don’t know that I was quite expecting such a thoroughly moving and cohesive set of reflection on relationships (I was expecting it to sound as good as it does). It perfectly balances incredibly timeless, universal songs (“Sad To Breathe,” “Sunshine Baby”) with more specific, contemporary ones (“Touching Yourself,” “Friends”); the magic is that the latter set of songs manages to feel every bit as accessible and relatable as the former. I love the range of instrumentation and how the more driven pop songs fit so well with the restraint of “Morning Pages” or the devastating intimacy of “One For Sorrow, Two For Joni Jones.” The whole thing has this sense of scope and perspective, scaled in and out enough to feel the complexity and change expressed in the lyrics while putting you into the feeling of a specific moment. There’s not another album this year that feels quite as artful, deliberate, beautiful, and heartbreaking. Try to enjoy it as long as it lasts.
Even though this record just barely missed the top spot here, The Maine (and The Maine) owned my year as much as anything else. I already knew I’d be into more or less anything the band put out at this point, but I didn’t know quite how much I needed an album like this until they gave us the one-two punch of “How To Exit A Room” and “Blame” at the start of the summer. They’ve been pushing and refining their sound in this direction over the past decade or so, and it’s paid off incredibly well; it’s rare that a band can so consistently make this genre sound fresh and exciting. The opening run of this record is absurd, just hit after hit after hit. If you can get to the seventh song of an album before getting to one that I’m not immediately jazzed about, you’re doing a lot of things right (and “Thoughts I Have While Lying In Bed” is even a solid single! It could just be that “I Think About You All The Time” is so superlatively excellent! Maybe they get to the eighth song before it stops being 100% bangers!). That opening stretch in particular is incredibly dense in the best way, packed with hooks on every level, with production designed to pack the most punch. The lyrics hit the right points, with John’s performances doing a lot of work on top of that to maximize their impact. This is as easy a record to listen to as any on this list, but that doesn’t mean that doesn’t pack some emotional heft; this band manages to make pop rock feel like it has stakes better than any other. The only real downside to seeing their Sweet Sixteen tour last month was that the retrospective approach meant we only got to hear four of these songs in the set. It’s so cool that this neon band I started listening to in 2008 is somehow this vital and compelling all these years later.
3. Ruston Kelly — The Weakness
If I had to make a ranked list midyear, The Weakness probably would’ve been right at the top. I don’t know if I even like it more than Dying Star or Shape & Destroy, but it’s one of those records that just I haven’t been able to stop coming back to. As someone who listened to more or less only country music as a kid and has been steeped in the emo diaspora in the time since, Ruston’s music hits my ears particularly well, and it’s nice to hear him broaden his sound in the way he does on this album. There’s a lot of dynamic range here, from the big, jangly build of the title track to the beautiful acoustic guitars on “Holy Shit” and the ethereal ambiance built into the end of “Better Now.” “Breakdown” could’ve been right at home on 90s radio with R.E.M. or Goo Goo Dolls, and it faithfully channels all of that era’s energy into one of the best songs of this year. This isn’t a divorce album on the whole, but the moments that dwell on that subject are about as mature as any you’ll find (Ruston calling it an “honorable” approach is apt). Songs like “Cold Black Mile” and, especially, “Let Only Love Remain,” stand in stark contrast to the sort of “FTGHJAPOS” sentiment he’s pushing back on in the title track. There are countless examples of negative or vengeful post-relationship songs, so it’s refreshing to have something like this (or even the self-deprecatingly funny “St. Jupiter”) as a foil to that. I like the way he balances the weight of moving on with the anecdotes, mantras, and humor; it makes the overall feel more genuine and endearing. There’s probably a version of this album that highlights his vocals a little better (I’m still holding out for a cleaner version of “Mending Song,” in particular — I probably prefer the live video I took from before we got the album to this one), but the record we do have is plenty good as-is.
4. Spanish Love Songs — No Joy
Brave Faces Everyone has been my favorite album of the decade more or less since the moment I heard it, so there was nothing I was anticipating more going into 2023 than hearing what came next from Spanish Love Songs. As expected, No Joy is a worthy next step forward, moving from the the brash bleakness of its predecessor to a more nuanced and diverse set of sounds and topics. This still isn’t a conventionally fun record; Dylan simply paired the despair in the lyrics with a few more points of care and connection. The growth means that No Joy lacks the immediacy and some of the overall thematic cohesiveness of Brave Faces Everyone, but this album makes up for that by building in more layers and rewarding you with the things you’ll find on repeat listens. Some hooks here are obvious from the first time you hear them (“Clean Up Crew,” “Here You Are”), but others sneak up on you a bit (“Pendulum,” “Mutable”). The writing is as memorable and hard-hitting as anything this year, ruminating on death (and life) in a way that lets you wallow without getting too low. You’ll see “Haunted” at the top of this year’s list of favorite songs, and it’s the best example of the ways that the band has expanded its sonic palette and shifted the lyrical framing ever so slightly — those synths grab you in the opening seconds and just slowly build until the big climax of “when you’re feeling like a ghost, would you come haunt me, please, come haunt me?” It’s those slivers of hope through the people you’re close to that makes this record stand out. It took a while for me to fully come around on this one, but I think it’s probably a better starting point for anyone who’s never listened to the band before. Let me know.
5. Hot Mulligan — Why Would I Watch
There was a long time when my year-end lists would be full of pop-punk records, but I’ve gotten away from the genre more as the years have gone on (some of this is probably age; I’ve never felt older than I did in the middle of the crowd when I saw this band open for The Wonder Years in March). I casually liked the past few Hot Mulligan releases, but it still took me a while to even give Why Would I Watch a real shot. When I did, it just kept slowly growing and growing on me over the course of the year. It would’ve been so easy for the band to just make a record full of cool, memorable parts (which this one is), but what really helps this make the leap forward is that they have all of those moments paired with blunt, candid writing about a variety of topics that aren’t exactly standard for the genre. If you just scanned the track list and saw titles like “Christ Alive My Toe Dammit Hurts,” “Cock Party 2 (Better Than The First),” and “John ‘The Rock’ Cena, Can You Smell What The Undertaker,” you probably wouldn’t expect the album to get into family trauma, substance abuse, or body dysmorphia, but that’s all there in a way that’s serious and impactful while somehow still being plenty fun and catchy. The vocals might require some acclimation (the abrasiveness of the album opening is probably the main thing that kept me from putting it on more earlier in the year), but these songs are sticky, with no filler to be found. It’s fun to be excited about a band like this again.
11. Paramore — This Is Why
12. The Aces — I’ve Loved You For So Long
13. Sufjan Stevens — Javelin
14. Overcoats — Winner
15. Sydney Sprague — Someone In Hell Loves You
16. Fall Out Boy — So Much (For) Stardust
17. Lana Del Rey — Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
18. Petey — USA
19. Field Medic — Dope Girl Chronicles
20. Movements — RUCKUS!
It felt odd to try to rank them against new music, but I also spent a lot of time listening to the variety of things Richard Edwards released in 2023, especially Two Sad Little Islands Drift Together, Two Lonely Little Monkeys Find A Tree (his cover of “Beautiful Boy” was the first song off of my Top 25 playlist), The Devil Is A Dog Sessions (Which Were Scrapped) , and Sling Shot To Heaven — Director’s Cut. I love hearing all of the b-sides and alternate takes, but the new versions of the Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s songs breathe new life into a record that was already pretty great to begin with. That one in particular is worth your time.
Top 5 EPs:
1. Origami Angel — The Brightest Days
2. Bad Suns — Infinite Joy
3. Anberlin — Convinced
4. Manchester Orchestra — The Valley Of Vision
5. Maybe Aliens — Maybe Aliens
We also got the final three Bright Eyes Companion EPs (which surprisingly included a Noise Floor companion instead of one for Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was). I don’t think these are quite as good as the middle bunch from last year, but they’re still plenty interesting, if you’re a fan of the band.
Top 10 Songs:
1. “Haunted” — Spanish Love Songs
2. “Never Let You Go” — Overcoats
3. “Kintsugi” — Lana Del Rey
4. “We’re In Love” — Boygenius
5. “Few And Far Between” — Origami Angel
6. “Sunshine Baby” — The Japanese House
7. “I Think About You All The Time” — The Maine
8. “City Song” — Gia Margaret
9. “Breakdown” — Ruston Kelly
10. “Shit Talk” — Sufjan Stevens
I listened to about 2,500 new songs this year. Here are the Top 25.
Best Album Art: Boygenius — The Record
Favorite Live Show: John Mayer at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, PA 3/18/23
There’s a very good chance that I’ll never have as good as a live music year as I did in 2022, but the lack of quantity in 2023 didn’t mean that I didn’t get to experience plenty of great concerts. I got to see some longtime favorite artists performing at maybe their peak (The Maine, The Spill Canvas), things I never really expected to happen (The Postal Service, the Sufjan Stevens Illinois dance adaptation), and a handful of comedy shows (Anthony Jeselnik, Depths of Wikipedia). The Wonder Years and Joywave put on compelling shows, the Re:Set concert series was a cool group of headline-length sets from Boygenius, Clairo, Bartees Strange, and Dijon, and the Nanna show at Colony in Woodstock was about as intimate and magical as anything I’ve seen.
With that said, it felt really good to make the trip home to see John Mayer with my mom (and brother). The seats weren’t quite as close as the ones we had in 2006, and there was one annoying guy behind us talking through the whole show, but it was still really good to go to a concert together again after all these years. That it was such a unique, career-spanning show on top of that was just a bonus. There are always things to nitpick in a setlist, but I’ll never not be excited at the opportunity to hear songs like “In Your Atmosphere” or “New Light,” and it was really special to hear “Love Soon” for the first time in over a dozen years and “St. Patrick’s Day” for the actual holiday. I’m always going to be amazed at how well John plays any kind of guitar, but that’s especially true for acoustic guitar, so it was cool to hear a whole set in this solo format. JP Saxe was a solid opener, too. I don’t know for sure whether this was the “best” show I saw in 2023, but it was definitely my favorite.
Biggest Surprise: Boygenius — The Record
There were a few moments this year where I found out about an album right before it came out (including great ones from Gia Margaret, Field Medic, Claud, and Al Menne), but there was nothing like the excitement of hearing the rumbling of a follow-up from Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus after they dominated my year-end lists with their solo records in 2020 and 2021. I wouldn’t have ruled out the group putting out new music (they had worked together plenty in the time since their debut EP), but I definitely wasn’t expecting it to happen when it did. When we got the first taste of this album with “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry,” and “True Blue,” it was so exciting and almost felt surreal to have the songs in my ears. The Record didn’t quite live up to my absurd expectations for it (which is more or less my own fault), but it was still one of the year’s best albums and worthy of every bit of success the band saw from it. Good surprise.
Biggest Disappointment: Whatever’s Happening With Anberlin
Honestly, there wasn’t much new music in 2023 that I’d firmly call a disappointment, but the weird new configuration of one of my favorite bands is a bit of a bummer. I get that they have to do whatever it takes to survive and wish them success, but everything I’ve heard of Matty Mullins as a lead vocalist so far indicates that this probably isn’t for me. It’s been great having new music recently in Silverline and Convinced, and it was a treat to get to see the main lineup of the band play Never Take Friendship Personal, Cities, and New Surrender live in 2022. I’m still going to at least check out whatever new music happens (especially hoping that Stephen Christian remains the primary vocalist in the studio), but the shows are probably going to be a harder sell for me moving forward. The old records aren’t going away (and I’m glad to have seen the band live as much as I have), but I was hoping for a longer tail to this reunion. We’ll Live Forever.
Best New Discoveries:
1. Petey
2. Cub Sport
3. Girl Scout
4. Dad Hats
5. Holly Humberstone
Most Anticipated:
1. From Indian Lakes
2. Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties
3. Bleachers
4. Speak Low If You Speak Love
5. Maggie Rogers
6. Lucy Rose
7. Many Eyes
8. Adult Mom
9. Phoebe Bridgers
10. Punchline
Again, if you ever need to fill a bunch of hours with good songs, here’s almost everything I liked this year, all in one playlist (it’s in alphabetical order by artist, so I recommend just shuffling): What’s Good In 2023
Thanks again for reading, and thanks even more for getting all the way to the end. Let’s talk about music more online or in the real world.
P.S. I also started an Instagram account a couple of years ago to document my vinyl collection, and, even as little as I’ve posted in the past year, it’s still the most consistent music writing I’ve done in years (I’m hoping to do more now that I’m mostly back to not doing major home renovations and running for reelection — starting with my favorite albums and EPs from this year). Even if you don’t want to read the big paragraph captions, you might have a good time looking at all of my beautiful things. There’s still lots of great stuff to come.