→ December 27, 2023
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Sea of Tranquility.

Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven was a masterpiece, a beautiful novel of humanity set in the most despairing, hopeless setting – the onset and aftermath of a global pandemic that causes society to collapse. Her follow-up, The Glass Hotel, had the same sparkling prose and characterization, but the story fell apart at the end, undermining the entire work. Her most recent novel, Sea of Tranquility, brings back one of The Glass Hotel’s characters and the fictional town that served as its setting, with an entirely new story that delves further into science fiction than Mandel has ever gone – and this time, she sticks the landing with a conclusion that ties the entire novel together and brings the reader back to the sense of humanity that set Station Eleven apart.

Sea of Tranquility begins in 1912, as the disowned grandson of an English aristocrat arrives in Caiette, British Columbia, after his exile from his family. While there, he walks into the local forest, but has a mysterious experience where he hears a violin playing – despite there being no one else in sight – and the world around him seems to go black. Shortly afterwards, a visiting priest asks him about the experience, but it appears that the priest may be an impostor. The story then jumps ahead a hundred years, then nearly two hundred, then about two hundred more, and there’s very little in common between the stories except for that impostor-priest person, who appears in different guises in each story. What ties them all together is the mystery that guy is trying to solve.

Mandel’s previous two novels leaned quite heavily on her strength of characterization, but that’s the weakest part of Sea of Tranquility, which might only have one true central character who gets a three-dimensional rendering on the page – that guy, who at one point in the novel is known as Gaspery. Instead, Mandel’s exploration of humanity, both what it means to be human (and whether we have free will) and how we treat one another, comes through an inventive plot device that doesn’t reveal itself until at least halfway through the novel. (You might figure it out before then, but I’m trying not to spoil it.) Crafting a story like this requires a fine attention to detail and an ability to maintain plausibility in the face of automatic disbelief. Mandel couldn’t manage this with a simpler story in The Glass Hotel, where her main character made more than one irrational decision that didn’t sit well with me, given what had come before for her character. Here, her central character’s actions, while not always entirely rational, are at least believable, and thus don’t get in the way of the broader story.

So much of Sea of Tranquility recalled David Mitchell’s magnum opus Cloud Atlas, another book told in pieces separated in time by decades or centuries, leaving it to the reader to connect them. In Mitchell’s case, however, the connections were tenuous, and only there for the audience, while the novel succeeded because he wrote each of the six sections (five of which were then split into two) in a different literary style. He also loves to bring back characters from previous novels, even just for cameos, something Mandel did in The Glass Hotel with some minor characters from Station Eleven. Sea of Tranquility lacks the grandiose ambitions of Cloud Atlas, but it’s also far more focused on its core themes and more effective in asking its questions about them. I may not answer Mandel’s main mystery question in the affirmative, but I found it easy to go along for the ride as she explores it.

Next up: I’m about halfway through Nurrudin Farah’s North of Dawn.

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→ December 24, 2023
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The Mission.

If you’re like me and are fascinated by geography – I would pore over maps and atlases as a kid, always finding something new and interesting, as if they were telenovelas – then you may be familiar with North Sentinel Island and its residents, the Sentinelese, one of the last ‘uncontacted’ tribes on earth. The island is part of the Andaman archipelago in the eastern Indian Ocean, and is part of India, which patrols the waters around the island and prohibits anyone from landing on the island or trying to contact the Sentinelese, who have in fact been contacted, but very rarely, and in the last few decades only by sanctioned anthropologists … and one very deluded American.

John Chau was 25 years old and a rabid fundamentalist Christian who believed in the nonsense doctrine that anyone who had never heard the Gospel would be condemned to hell. He read about the Sentinelese people online – how he first learned about them isn’t entirely clear – and decided that God wanted him to go preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them. The Sentinelese are extremely hostile to outsiders, and a few years prior had killed two fisherman whose boat drifted ashore on their island. Chau made several visits to the Andamans and approached North Sentinel Island several times, making contact with its people, before they finally killed him too – sparking mockery online of this idiot colonizer breaking several Indian laws to go shout, in English, to people who wouldn’t understand him, about his own superstitions, even though these people are well known to shoot arrows at anyone who comes near their shores.

The Mission, a new documentary from National Geographic, tells some of Chau’s story, exploring his life to try to answer the question of why a seemingly intelligent young man, raised in some privilege, would do such a profoundly stupid – and likely suicidal – thing. It’s riveting and infuriating, a severe indictment of the evangelical circles in which John traveled and the various people who enabled him to do this illegal, dangerous, and frankly inhumane thing, but I don’t think it adequately answers that fundamental question of why.

The North Sentinelese have good reason to fear and loathe outsiders. They were targets for slavers who saw the Andaman peoples, many of whom appear to be descendants of African migrants from several millennia prior, as chattel. British colonial authorities would take a break from subjugating what is now India and Pakistan to treat the Andamanese as a sort of circus freaks, with one measuring the sizes of their crania and genitals in the name of “science.” Any contact with people from beyond the islands also introduced the Sentinelese to pathogens to which they had no immunity. Since Partition & independence, India’s government has largely protected the tribes of the Andamans, some of which have chosen, in a way, to assimilate with broader Indian society, while the Sentinelese remain apart.

Where The Mission succeeds is in its depiction of the history of Christian missionaries trying to convert these ‘lost’ tribes, including an endeavor in Ecuador in the 1950s where the Huaorani tribe killed five white missionaries, but further efforts eventually led to the conversion of many tribe members and the subsequent deterioration of their culture. One of the experts who talks on camera is the linguist and former missionary Daniel Everett, who went to the Amazon to convert the Pirahã with his wife and children, but after several years lost his faith and became an ardent atheist, giving him a unique perspective on Chau’s religious mania and willingness to ignore all voices telling him not to do this terrible, dangerous thing. The film also interviews several of Chau’s enablers, including one group that specifically targets these uncontacted or low-contact tribes to spread the Gospel, regardless of impact on the people involved or risks to the missionaries, coming off very much like members of a cult. (Their leader claimed he posed no threat to the Sentinelese because we have antibiotics.)

Where The Mission falls a little short is in depicting Chau as anything more than a very naïve evangelical who started down this missionary path and didn’t seem able or willing to stop until he hit the bottom. His father is a psychiatrist who nearly lost his license for reasons that are only hinted at in the film, while his mother was the evangelical parent yet is barely mentioned here. It’s clear that at least some of his fervor came from his time at Oral Roberts University, one of the most evangelical and also one of the most homophobic/transphobic colleges in America, including one man, Bobby Parks, who was “Missions/Outreach Coordinator” at ORU until 2016 and still runs a nonprofit that uses soccer as a way to indoctrinate kids in refugee camps and other high-risk areas around the world. Parks appears to have been a Svengali to Chau, yet he declined requests to appear in the documentary or speak to its makers, so his exact role and level of influence is only implied. So how Chau went from a good student with a strong interest in the outdoors to a stark raving madman who hatched an intense months-long plan to invade North Sentinel Island remains unanswered.

I suppose my views on Chau and such efforts are quite clear, and I think he was both an aggressor and a victim here. I knew Chau’s story from this 2018 Outside story, which appeared in my links roundup on November 24th of that year, and which I think goes a little more into his own personal journey and at least asks more questions about how he got to that kayak in the Indian Ocean. (This Guardian story has more.) I know the documentary just left me fuming at how willing others were to waste Chau’s life, and how easily he fell into this downward spiral, where even his Christian faith, one founded on respect and love for one’s fellow man, led him to disregard the significant dangers he posed to the very people he was trying to save.

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→ December 22, 2023
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Top 100 songs of 2023.

This year’s top 100 was more of a struggle than most years, although by the end of the process I was still about a dozen songs over the limit; I just had to go back over a number of my monthly playlists and revisit some tracks and albums I’d missed before I could reach that point. I’m pretty happy with the outcome, though, and I think the top of the list is strong even if 2023 wasn’t a peak year for great new songs. You can see my previous years’ song rankings here: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012. I posted my ranking of the top 23 albums of 2023 earlier this week.

If you can’t see the Spotify widget below, you can access it here.

100. Griff – Vertigo. Pure pop greatness from Griff, who just doesn’t miss whether she’s going for sunnier sounds (like this track) or melancholy ballads (like her song way farther up this list).

99. Del Water Gap – Quilt of Steam. I am now old enough that my daughter is telling me about artists that end up on my playlists; I hadn’t heard of Del Water Gap, who has been releasing music on his own for over a decade and put out his second album for Mom + Pop Records this fall, until she mentioned him to me, after which Spotify served me this track on my Release Radar. Sometimes the algorithm works.

98. Ghost of Vroom – Still Getting It Done. Mike Doughty’s latest project is the closest thing he’s done to Soul Coughing since the seminal drum-n-bass group called it quits after El Oso, driven by his sung/rapped lyrics and music that’s a little more ornate (and funky) than SC’s but still driven by percussion and heavy bass lines.

97. Beck & Phoenix – Odyssey. These two artists released a one-off collaboration to kick off their joint summer tour, and while I don’t think Beck exactly extended himself here, it’s similar to Phoenix’s musical revival on last year’s Alpha Zulu, and bouncy like a good summer hit should be.

96. bdrmm – It’s Just a Bit of Blood. These guys were about three years ahead of schedule for the shoegaze revival, ending up lumped in more with avant garde noisemakers black midi than with their true brethren. Their second album, I Don’t Know, came out this year and was similar to their first one but a little more upbeat, perhaps with more major keys than its predecessor offered.

95. Etta Marcus – Smile for the Camera. A sultry sophisti-pop track from this 22-year-old London singer’s EP A Heart-Shaped Bruise. I’d recommend this to fans of boygenius but if you like your singers to really sing.

94. Bully – Days Move Slow. The best song you’ll ever hear about a dog’s death. Bully’s album made a lot of top ten lists, but I find her nasal vocals hard to take for more than a song at a time. This had by far the best guitar hook on the record and I think justifies some of the musical comparisons and Nirvana.

93. Queens of the Stone Age – Paper Machete. The top track from In Times New Roman… has a heavy guitar riff appropriate to Josh Homme’s oeuvre, although I found the album as a whole kind of lacking in the rougher edge that characterized a lot of his earlier work.

92. Killing Joke – Full Spectrum Dominance. Jaz Coleman & company have undergone many iterations over their 44-year history, but their final act appeared to be their industrial-metal phase and their incredible swan song LP, 2015’s Pylon. They’re not quite done, however, and have returned with the occasional one-off single, including this one, which certainly would have fit well on Pylon, ahead of their 2023 tour.

91. Brooke Combe – Black is the New Gold. The title track from this Scottish soul singer’s newest album packs some clever turns of phrase and a driving bass line, along with a little flute interpolation that calls back to the genre’s 1970s heyday.

90. SENSES – Drifting. This Coventry four-piece first promised their debut album Little Pictures Without Sound in 2021, after over a decade working together, but the pandemic and other factors delayed its release until April of this year. This is the album’s strongest track, sitting somewhere between the Oasis end of Britpop and the spacier sound of Doves.

89. The Lottery Winners – Worry. I didn’t love their sophomore album Anxiety Replacement Therapy as much as I did their debut, which was absolutely packed with hooks and full of general cheer. This track had the most in common with their first album.

88. Seablite – Melancholy Molly. I was a big fan of Lush in their 1990s heyday and enjoyed member Emma Anderson’s solo debut album this year, so Seablite’s music is catnip to me. I also love that they call themselves “odd pop.” It is poppy, and they’d have every reason to jump on the shoegaze bandwagon, but they appear to have chosen their own path.

87. The Kills – New York. God Games marked this duo’s first album and first original material in seven years, although it was hit or miss for an album that in theory they’d had several years to work on. They’ll never top “Sour Cherry” for me, but if you liked “Doing It to Death,” this track is in that vein.

86. Everything Everything – The Mad Stone. I preferred this to “Cold Reactor” of the two singles EE has released so far ahead of their upcoming album Mountainhead, although both have elements of the band’s manic art-rock style, including Jonathan Higgs’ rapid-fire singing.

85. Folly Group – Big Ground. Speaking of Everything Everything, this track from Folly Group, whose debut album Down There! is due out on January 12th, reminds me quite a bit of early EE, mixed with a little early post-punk in the chorus.

84. Screaming Females – Brass Bell. Screaming Females announced their dissolution earlier this month, about nine months after they released their eighth and presumably final album, Desire Pathway. I don’t know their discography well at all, so I can only say this is a pretty great showcase of singer/guitarist Marissa Paternoster’s voice and guitar skills, enough that I’ll be watching to see if she releases another solo album.

83. Courting – Throw. I can’t place that opening riff, but it reminds me of some other track I liked from maybe 20-25 years ago; the rest of the song is like a smarter, snarkier emo track, and the whole song has a great bounce to it. New Last Name comes out January 26th.

82. swim school – delirious. “swim school” is not an SEO-friendly band name, but this song rocks very hard, bordering on metal, with singer Alice Johnson’s voice a perfect foil for the crushing guitars. They put out a four-song EP this year and ended up opening for the Amazons, a British band known for giant guitar riffs, to close out 2023.

81. Public Image Ltd. – End of the World. PIL’s return this year wasn’t a surprise in and of itself, but the content was – first a touching song, “Hawaii,” about founder John Lydon’s wife, who at that point was dying of Alzheimer’s disease and passed away a few weeks after the song’s release; and then this banger, with a swirling guitar riff and Lydon’s voice as potent and angry as ever.

80. SPRINTS – Adore Adore Adore. I’ve been on the bandwagon for these Irish punks for a few years now, and we’re finally getting their debut album, Letter to Self, on January 5th, including this track, “Up and Comer,” and “Shadow of a Doubt.”

79. Ratboys – Making Noise for the Ones You Love. Many people whose taste in music I respect, including Blake Murphy of Sportsnet/The FAN 590, love Ratboys; I think most of their songs sound like Waxahatchee singing over a shoegaze band and it doesn’t work for either. The combination does work on this track, in part because of how singer Julia Sterner sings between the verse and chorus. (I had a similar but more pronounced objection to Wednesday, whose singer sounds like she’s whining and deliberately goes off key so often I have never made it through the entire album.)

78. The Mysterines – Begin Again. I loved the early singles from Lia Metcalfe’s band, but their debut album, Reeling, didn’t include any of their best songs, so I felt a little let down by the LP. This song, their only new material in 2023, shows off her deep, smoky voice, and has a slow burn to the melody, so while it doesn’t quite rock like their pre-Reeling offerings it’s pretty compelling. Also, this track is part of a sort of Easter egg on the top 100, if you’re paying attention.

77. Arlo Parks – Impurities. My Soft Machine may be the moment that Parks broke out into mainstream success, at least in Europe, as she turned just slightly in the direction of electro-pop without losing her voice or the sparse approach of her debut album. I loved just about everything on the album, but there were two tracks that stood above the rest for their melodies. This was one.

76. Dexys – I’m Going to Get Free. It was a good year for ‘80s bands coming back around; PIL appeared above, Simply Red put out a solid album, Depeche Mode issued their Memento Mori to eulogize the late Andy Fletcher, and Dexys returned with The Feminine Divine, seven years after singer Kevin Rowland appeared to say he was retiring from music. This track brings back the sound of Philadelphia soul with big brass lines and a giant, catchy beat, while Rowland’s voice is still as distinctive as it was on “Come On Eileen” some 41 years ago.

75. Bartees Strange – Tisched Off. Strange issued two tracks as part of a singles series from Sub Pop, with this indignant rocker, ranting about posers in the industry, the better of the two.

74. Noname – Namesake. Picking any tracks off Sundial, my #2 album of 2023, for a singles list was difficult because the album as a whole is such an immersive listen, but I did have two that stood apart enough that I might listen to them on their own (rather than doing the entire album straight through).

73. CHVRCHES – Over. The Scottish trio released this one-off single to commemorate their signing with Island Records and, in their words, to serve as a bridge between 2021’s Screen Violence and whatever comes next.

72. Corinne Bailey Rae – New York Transit Queen. Rae’s genre-hopping on Black Rainbows extended to garage-rock here, bordering on punk, in a song with very little in the way of lyrics beyond Rae chanting the title.

71. Fucked Up – Cicada. The rest of Fucked Up’s latest album, One Day, is much more in their typical vein of hardcore punk, but my God does this sound like a lost track from Hüsker Dü’s Warehouse: Songs and Stories. This is part two of four for that Easter egg I mentioned above. I won’t tag the last two, though.

70. Bombino – Alwane. I admit to having no idea who Bombino was until I heard this track on one of NPR Music’s weekly new music playlists, but that’s on me, as the Nigerien (as in, from Niger) singer/guitarist was the subject of a 2010 documentary called Agadez, the Music and the Rebellion. He’s also the first artist from Niger to receive a Grammy nomination (Best World Music Album, for 2018’s Deran). This track is from his latest album, Sahel, a tribute to the region where he grew up and, on this track, to friends he’s lost in the area’s many armed conflicts.

69. Creeper – Sacred Blasphemy. The first track I heard off Sanguivore is bombastic, theatrical, and throws back to the earliest stages of glam rock (think Mötley Crüe’s Too Fast for Love). Needless to say, it’s right in my wheelhouse.

68. Sampha – Suspended. Sampha’s voice really soars on this track off Lahai, one of the year’s best albums, as he sings about becoming a father over a light piano backing, with some staccato call-and-response to the verses that add texture and a little complexity to the song.

67. Black Honey – Cut the Cord. Black Honey’s third album A Fistful of Peaches was a departure for the Brighton indie-rockers, with some harder-edged songs (notably the 2022 single “Charlie Bronson”), but fewer of the big melodies than they had on their first two albums. “Cut the Cord” was never released as a single, but it was among the 2-3 best tracks on the album.

66. Jungle feat. Erick the Architect – Candle Flame. Jungle’s Volcano was my least favorite album from the English soul-revival duo yet, between the lack of interesting melodies and some experiments that didn’t pay off. Erick the Architect’s verses here are the best stuff on the album, and outside of the slightly annoying falsetto in the chorus, Jungle mostly stays out of his way.

65. boygenius – Satanist. I’m not a huge fan of the solo output of any of the three talented women in boygenius, primarily because of their singing style, which is more undersinging – they just don’t let it rip very often – and their tendency towards melancholy rhythms. This was by far the strongest track for me from their newest record, called the record, which netted them five Grammy nominations (two for the album, three for specific songs).

64. Cloud Nothings – Final Summer. Dylan Baldi & company signed to the punk label Pure Noise and released this new single in November, which … sounds just like Cloud Nothings, with a big hook to open it up and a tempo that makes you want to get behind the wheel and hit the gas.

63. DMA’s – Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s the Weekend. After their first two albums earned them comparisons to Oasis (which Noel Gallagher shat on, but Liam later endorsed), DMA’s shifted to a more electronic sound on their third album, then veered back towards the middle of the two genres on this year’s How Many Dreams?, failing to hit on either cylinder. They’ll never get back to the heights of “For Now” or “Too Soon,” I fear, but this sunnier track gets somewhat close with a hook and guitar work worthy of the Britpop comps.

62. The Japanese House – Sad to Breathe. Amber Mary Bain’s album In the End It Always Does was one of the year’s best, with two songs from it that blew me away back when they came out as singles in the spring. This one starts out like a mournful piano ballad about a lost love, then jumps from first to fourth gear around the 1:15 mark (I think that costs you several Heat cards) with an electronic percussion line and guitar that completely changes the texture of the vocal melody.

61. Blondshell – Salad. Another acclaimed album that just didn’t do it for me, as I don’t think Sabrina Teitelbaum’s melodies or voice are strong enough to support some decent rock hooks and thoughtful lyrics. This track has the album’s best riff and it plays perfectly against the angry lyrics.

60. Peace – Happy Cars. Peace self-released their latest album, Utopia, in the spring via a password-protected website, then issued it on vinyl in November. This single is the only track available via streaming sites right now; to hear the rest you have to purchase it, which the brothers Koisser told NME was “career suicide” according to their mates. I don’t know what to think of that – isn’t streaming killing the industry slowly anyway? Anyway, I love the melody here and have had this song in my head on and off for a month now.

59. Protomartyr – For Tomorrow. Formal Growth in the Desert was one of my favorite albums of 2023 and is an excellent distillation of what post-punk sounds like in its current incarnation, similar to Ceremony and more recent Thrice.

58. Yard Act – Dream Job. Yard Act released three singles this year, with a new album due out in March, and there’s some evolution in their sound already from their 2022 debut The Overload, with more musical elements and some electronic/dance ingredients as well. I also liked “The Trench Coat Museum,” but it’s eight minutes long and even I felt like it wore out its welcome by the end.

57. STONE – I Gotta Feeling. “Shout out to the writers of Peaky Blinders/You inspired a new age of wankers.” There’s a lot of punk to STONE’s lyrics and spoken-sung vocals, but musically they’re somewhere between alternative rock and hard rock, showing some of that range on their latest EP punkadonk2.

56. Slow Pulp – Cramps. Slow Pulp can rock a bit, harkening back to mid-90s alternative rock, and when they do I’m a big fan. Their album as a whole was a little disappointing, as so many of the songs were quiet and slow … I don’t know what I expected, really.

55. Deeper – Glare. The best track from Careful! still has that late ‘70s post-punk vibe, but it’s brighter and catcher, with a real earworm in the main guitar line.

54. Siracuse – Saviour. I compared this track to peak Charlatans when I put it on a playlist in April, and I think that holds, even to some extent to the sound of the vocalist, while the opening guitar riff still gets stuck in my head every time I listen to it.

53. Brad – Hey Now What’s the Problem. Brad’s final album, In the Moment That You’re Born, seems to have landed almost unnoticed this year, which is a shame because it’s both a fitting coda to the band’s unusual and diverse catalog, and a tribute to singer Shawn Smith, who died in 2019. The remaining band members, including Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard, completed tracks where Smith had recorded his vocals, including this funk-rock track that recalls Smith’s work with Pigeonhed.

52. BLOXX – Modern Day. The title track from BLOXX’s August EP is the best thing they’ve done since their debut album, 2020’s Lie Out Loud, another great pop-punk track with a solid harmony in the chorus.

51. Drums – Isolette. Annoyingly catchy, but with a serious undercurrent – the entire album, Jonny, represents Jonathan Pierce’s efforts to reckon with his upbringing in a fundamentalist Christian church, abuse he suffered, and being gay in a community that wouldn’t accept him.

50. milk. – I Think I Lost My Number Can I Have Yours? This Irish pop band put out a few EPs this year, culminating in a seven-track release called 3, the EP, that included everything they’d released in 2023, led by this lilting pop gem that recalls some ‘70s soft-rock icons like 10cc.

49. Altin Gün – Rakiya Su Katamam. One of my two favorite tracks from this Anatolian rock band’s album Ask, along with “Su Siziyor;” this one gets the nod for the top 100 because of that swirling guitar riff that pops back up throughout the song in slightly different forms. Altin Gün’s blend of psychedelia and traditional Turkish music sounds like nothing else I’ve heard, and they have a great sense of melody on top of that to put the Turkish lyrics (which I don’t understand) in my head.

48. Squid – Swing (In a Dream). Squid’s experimental sound generally leaves me cold, even though I respect the ambition and risk-taking; O Monolith, their second album, saw them rein in the sound just enough to introduce some more traditional sense of melodies, particularly on this track, which has a strong hook in the chorus but sees Ollie Judge finish his vocal lines with a little upturn at the end to keep the listener off balance.

47. Nabihah Iqbal – This World Couldn’t See Us. I don’t use the subgenre term “cold wave” very often, but it sure fits here – Iqbal’s album DREAMER spans many genres, but this track, my favorite from the LP, has that detached lyrical style and electronic music that feels dark and gloomy, fitting the themes in her lyrics.

46. Pynch – Tin Foil. “I’m saving up for the apocalypse/Cause there are gonna be deals” remains my favorite line of the year from any song. This London indie-pop quartet put out their debut album Howling at a Concrete Moon in April.

45. Hotline TNT – I Thought You’d Change. As much as Hotline TNT earns the shoegaze tag with their production and heavily distorted guitars, you can still discern specific guitar lines on most of their tracks, and here they’re quite pronounced in a way that feels pretty timeless – these are guitar sounds you’d hear in many rock genres in almost any era of music from the 1970s onward.

44. Sundara Karma – Wishing Well. I need to listen to this band’s latest album, Better Luck Next Time, as I have always liked their brand of guitar-driven indie pop, which reminds me in several ways of early U2. I love the way this track builds to the big guitar distortion in the chorus, which recalls My Bloody Valentine’s “I Only Said” (my favorite song by MBV and one of the few of theirs that I like).

43. Belle & Sebastian – I Don’t Know What You See in Me. Belle & Sebastian aren’t a pop band, and they don’t often veer into poppy territory, but there are few bands in the world who do pop better than these Scots do.

42. Pastel – Your Day. Credit to MLB.com’s Matthew Leach for posting about this song and introducing it to me. It’s very Big Pink, a little Britpop, muscular throughout yet still deeply melodic at its core. It’s the only track they released this year, unfortunately.

41. Geese – Cowboy Nudes. Geese’s 3D Country isn’t an album of singles, but more of a complete experience that bounces across an absurd number of genres and styles. If there’s a ‘hit’ of sorts here, it’s this song, which has a proper hook in the chorus on top of the experimentation beneath it.

40. White Reaper – Fog Machine. Is this “Detroit Rock City?” Maybe a little “The Boys Are Back?” It’s very ‘70s, a little less Maiden/Mötorhead than the rest of Asking for a Ride, so it stands a little more on its own. I really need to see these guys live at some point because it seems impossible that they don’t put on a raucous show.

39. Momma – Bang Bang. Momma’s one original track this year is, uh, a banger, although I think last year’s “Speeding 72” was a little better. They seem like the direct descendants of Veruca Salt, with a little Breeders thrown in.

38. The Libertines – Run Run Run. I’m always surprised when the Libertines return because, well, I suppose that’s obvious if you’ve followed the band at all for the last twenty-odd years. They’ve put out two singles ahead of their upcoming fourth album, their first in nine years and just their second since 2004, including this and “The Night of the Hunter.”

37. Kid Kapichi – Let’s Get to Work. One of three new tracks from Kid Kapichi this year, along with “999” and the oddball “Tamagotchi,” which features some rapping that’s on the border of cringe for me but still has a banger of a chorus. They’ve become one of my favorite active bands over the last three years, a sort of working-class successor to the Arctic Monkeys for me.

36. Caroline Polachek – Blood and Butter. I liked quite a bit of Polachek’s work with Chairlift, including “Ch-Ching” and “I Belong In Your Arms,” but her solo work has been too weird for me, almost anti-pop in some ways, which often doesn’t do justice to her incredible voice. This is my favorite solo track from her so far, though, with several hooks in the vocals and the music to bring me back.

35. Corinne Bailey Rae – Erasure. If you saw CBR’s career detour into garage-punk that bordered on hardcore coming, well, hats off to you. I’ll be over here calling Paul Goldschmidt a platoon bat. Black Rainbows is a real tour de force, and “Erasure” shows her vocal range and gift for theatrics as well.

34. English Teacher – The World’s Biggest Paving Slab. That guitar line is just killer, and then you get to the wry, witty lyrics. English Teacher put out three songs in 2023, two of them strong (this and “Nearly Daffodils”), which I assume is a harbinger of an LP next year now that they’ve signed to Island Records.

33. Genesis Owusu – Stay Blessed. Eddie Murphy had a routine in Delirious where he referred to Teddy Pendergrass’s vocal style, mimicking him shout-singing “YOU GOT, YOU GOT, YOU GOT WHAT I NEED!” and saying he would “scare the (women) into liking him.” Owusu kind of sings like that, except here you feel his rage, and it is very effective.

32. Yves Tumor – Lovely Sewer. A great case of where critical acclaim led me to reassess an album; Yves Tumor has always been so hard to pin down musically that I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a good handle on his previous albums, but Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume grabbed me on a second (and third) listen. Even as he’s playing with genres and textures, there’s a foundation to most of his songs that compels you to keep going … and then he drops the drum machine for a brief piano interlude to throw you off the scene once again.

31. Slowdive – alife. Not the last Slowdive song on this ranking. I have become a bigger Slowdive fan in their comeback phase than I was in their original heyday around Souvlaki (a great album I appreciate more in hindsight).

30. Baby Queen – We Can Be Anything. Baby Queen’s album was a letdown after this strong lead single that recalls the avant-pop of Grimes’ Art Angels period.

29. The Joy Formidable – Share My Heat. That drum/bass opening gives you some indication of the pulse of the song, and then at the 45-second mark, the guitar riff arrives to knock you out of your seat. I gave you the radio edit here, not the 15-minute version.

28. Daughter – Swim Back. Daughter’s previous album was the soundtrack to the video game After the Storm, and you can hear some of that atmospheric influence here on this track off Stereo Mind Game in the layered synth lines.

27. The Last Dinner Party – Sinner. I couldn’t get on board with the praise for TLDP’s debut album, although it’s not about the excessive hype around the band – I don’t think their songs sound very finished, or their melodies polished. This is by far the best song on the album, and even in the chorus you can hear some of the cracks in the foundation. My glass-half-full side says they’ll produce something better with more time and experience.

26. Creeper – Teenage Sacrifice. They’re so gleefully over the top that it sells me, even though it sounds like Suede mashed up with Dokken doing a concept album about a modern-day vampire. “Can you live without your life?” is a funny one-liner, too.

25. Temples – Cicada. Temples will never leave the 1970s and I’m fine with that. The new album was less consistent than its predecessor, although this track with its spiraling synth hook is as good as anything they’ve done.

24. U.S. Girls – Tux (Your Body Fills Me, Boo). My friend Tim Grierson had U.S. Girls’ Bless This Mess as one of his top albums of the year, so I gave it a fresh listen earlier this month and while the album as a whole doesn’t work for me – I don’t think Meghan Remy can do slower material half as well as she does dance tracks – if the whole LP had been made out of (waves hands) this it would have made my top ten.

23. The Hives – Bogus Operandi. This is how you announce a comeback: With giant guitars and huge riffs bursting at the seams with bravado and testosterone. This track is right up there with peak Hives tracks like “Hate to Say I Told You So” and “Walk Idiot Walk.”

22. Speedy Ortiz – Ranch vs. Ranch. I like Speedy Ortiz for about three songs per album, which was true again for Rabbit Rabbit with this track, “Scabs,” and “You S02.” Sadie Dupuis’s songs always try to strike a balance between melody and their signature dissonant sound, thriving on the contrast when she gets that balance right.

21. Girl Ray – Everybody’s Saying That. Girl Ray’s album Prestige is a fun romp of disco/funk tracks that’s a little one-note, highlighted by this track and “Tell Me.”

20. Jorja Smith – Little Things. I love how this track starts out like it’s going to be a scat jazz song, then shifts into a jazzy R&B track without losing any of its energy. We had to wait a long time for her second album but it was well worth it.

19. Weakened Friends – Awkward. I wrote previously that I thought this might be a Sleater-Kinney track; the vocals here are obviously inspired by Corin Tucker, but it has a generally brighter vibe than S-K’s music.

18. flowerovlove – Next Best Exit. I think the 18-year-old flowerovlove is the youngest artist on the top 100 this year, and she’s already done some modeling for Gucci in addition to releasing an EP and a handful of strong singles, including this one, “Coffee Shop,” and the newest “Girl Like Me,” all of them warm, sophisticated electro-pop.

17. Noname feat. Common and Ayoni – Oblivion. Sundial is strong just about from start to finish on the power of Noname’s skills and incisive, brilliant lyrics, with this track the best on the album because of the beat and because Common isn’t hawking a free iPhone from T-mobile.

16. Grian Chatten – Fairlies. The lead singer of Fontaines D.C. surprised us all with his mostly acoustic, quiet solo album, highlighted by this trick with cynical lyrics over a shuffling Irish jig.

15. Griff – Astronaut. “You said that you needed space/Go on then, astronaut.” This gorgeous collaboration with Coldplay’s Chris Martin is Griff’s most intimate song yet, and I don’t know how it hasn’t become a huge viral hit already. It’s better than “Drivers License.”

14. Sampha – Spirit 2.0. Sampha’s second album, Lahai, is track after track of simple yet inventive music behind Sampha’s vocal acrobatics. This is my favorite song from the album, thanks to the contrast between the frenetic electro-beat and his softer vocals.

13. Charly Bliss – You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore. We got two new tracks from this Brooklyn power-pop band in 2023, their first new music since 2019’s Young Enough, and this is one of the best things they’ve ever done.

12. Slowdive – the slab. Everything Is Alive has been a triumph for these O.G. shoegazers, on par with 1993’s Souvlaki, boosted by the general revival around that niche genre from the early 1990s (so named because the musicians would seldom look at the audience, often looking at their effects pedals or, presumably, their shoes). And while their sound is still shoegaze at heart, there’s melody here, and production that keeps the various instruments and the vocals clear and distinct for most of the record.

11. Daughter – Be On Your Way. “So I’ll meet you on another planet/if the plans change” gets stuck in my head for days every time I hear this, and the various synth lines here come together to create a sense of vaguely unsettling sadness befitting the lyrics.

10. Cody Wong & dodie – Call Me Wild. I enjoyed Wong’s latest album, The Lucky One, with its panoply of collaborations, although Wong is nearly always the star of his own show with his guitar wizardry and genre-hopping. “Call Me Wild” is the one song here that’s a real pop single with funky guitars, a great hook, and vocals by English singer dodie.

9. Billy Porter – Children. A joyous, celebratory dance track about living your truth, from the Emmy & Tony winner’s first pop album, Black Mona Lisa.

8. Megan Thee Stallion – Cobra. Her only solo single of the year is a revealing look at her mental health struggles over the past few years – and an indictment of the hangers-on who didn’t notice or help her – followed by a killer guitar riff to wrap things up.

7. The Beths – Watching the Credits. I can’t remember the last time an extra track from an album’s deluxe edition was this good. “Watching the Credits” came out this spring on the deluxe version of Expert in a Dying Field, my #1 album of 2022, and it’s at least a top 5 track on the LP.

6. Arlo Parks – Blades. The perfect combination of Parks’s sweet, lithe vocals and her new shift into more electro-pop sounds on My Soft Machine.

5. Jessie Ware – Begin Again. Ware’s album That! Feels! Good! earned its way on to many best-of-2023 lists, and this samba-tinged track is easily the best on a record of unabashedly sunny pop material, although I will forever wish horrible things on whoever wrote the vacuous line “give me something good that’s even better than it seems.”

4. Pip Blom feat. Alex Kapranos – Is This Love? Not a cover of the Whitesnake song, fortunately, but a summer banger from this Dutch pop band and the lead singer/guitarist of Franz Ferdinand. It came out in May but has stuck with me all year, from the big arrangements behind “I wanna feel you in my dreams” to the disco/rock blend behind the two singers’ shared choruses.

3. Young Fathers – Rice. My #1 album of the year, Heavy Heavy, included this track and “I Saw,” which made my 2022 list but would be much higher if I re-ranked those songs now. (It’s an issue with songs that come out late in any calendar year – I actively try to avoid recency bias, and often keep those songs lower than they belong, or else I just haven’t had enough time to appreciate them.) I linked this in the albums post as well, but you have to see these guys perform both songs and two more live on KEXP.

2. The Japanese House – Boyhood. A lush, immersive dream-pop track elevated by Amber Mary Bain’s falsetto and her lyrics about the end of a relationship and the void that’s left behind.

1. Brittany Howard – What Now. The former Alabama Shakes singer/guitarist released this title track to her upcoming second album, due out February 2nd, and it is a lightning bolt of funk, blues, and righteous anger, culminating in the chorus’s final line, “If you want someone to hate then blame it on me.” I recognized Howard as a talented guitarist from her time with the Shakes, but this is another level of songcraft and a big shift from her first album, which was mostly blues rock and the odd synth-heavy track. With her follow-up single, “Red Flags,” it seems like she’s going in new directions with What Now. I can’t wait.

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→ December 20, 2023
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Top 23 albums of 2023.

This year turned out to be a very good one for albums, better than last year, but worse for individual tracks, which I’ll talk about a little more when that ranking goes up. I was afraid I’d struggle to keep up my gimmick of doing a ranking as long as the last two digits of the year, which I’ve had to abandon every once in a while, but I ended up with plenty of albums to consider and spent a lot of time listening or re-listening to albums to make some of these final cuts – and to decide on the actual #1, which was very much a game-time choice. Get ready to read a lot about shoegaze and post-punk, although the very top of the list goes in a different direction entirely. Some honorable mentions include Cory Wong – Rocket; Black Honey – A Fistful of Peaches; Emma Anderson – Pearlies; Queens of the Stone Age – In Times New Roman…; Speedy Ortiz – Rabbit Rabbit; Brad – In The Moment That You’re Born; and, of course, The Baseball Project – Grand Salami Time.

You can see my previous year-end album rankings here: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and my top albums of the 2010s. My top 100 songs of 2023 will go up in the next day or two.

23. Egyptian Blue – A Living Commodity. If I told you there was a band that cited Wire, Gang of Four, Radiohead, and Iceage as influences (which Egyptian Blue has), you’d probably imagine something a lot like this Brighton band’s debut album, which wears all of these influences but weaves them into something new enough that it avoids sounding derivative of any of them. There’s a tremendous energy here that powers the album, something I interpreted as the freshness of youth – but maybe that’s just because I’m old now – and that makes the album feel incredibly alive even though it’s underpinned by a sound that’s nearly 50 years old. Standouts include the title track, “Matador,” and “Skin.”

22. Deeper – Careful! The latest add to my list, Careful! only hit my radar a few weeks ago when WXPN music director Dan Reed tabbed it as his #1 album of the year. (His top ten was pretty solid overall.) Deeper’s last album, Auto-Pain, came shortly on the heels of the news that their former guitarist had killed himself, and the album’s darker content reflected that. Careful! is more upbeat, almost ebullient at times, which contrasts with the post-punk sound that they still maintain on this album – with a heavy dose of David Bowie, according to singer/guitarist Nic Gohl. Standouts include “Glare,” “Tele,” and “Build a Bridge.”

21. The Hives – The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons. The Hives’ first new album in eleven years found the Swedish band, down just one of their original members, rejuvenated, sounding as good as they did on their first couple of records nearly twenty years ago. They announce their presence with giant riffs on the opener (and best track) “Bogus Operandi,” and the whole album carries that same sense of bluster and grandeur. There’s plenty of the muscular rock we’re used to from the Hives, plus some diversions into hardcore (the one-minute “Trapdoor Solution”, or the slightly longer “The Bomb”), These guys can rock, and they’re not afraid to do so. I suppose the lesson is to lean into what you do well. Standouts include “Bogus Operandi,” “Two Kinds of Trouble,” and “Countdown to Shutdown.”

20. Daughter – Stereo Mind Game. This Irish trio’s previous album was the soundtrack to the video game Before the Storm, released in 2017, without so much as a single in the interim, to the point where I assumed they’d hung it up. (Bands come and go so quickly these days, and because I’m always trying to keep up with what’s new, I tend to forget even bands I liked.) Daughter’s sound was always ethereal and pensive, one of the few bands I liked who used mostly slower tempos, while here they expand their repertoire just slightly with some stronger melodies and even, dare I say, something a little upbeat like “Future Lover,” one of the standout tracks along with “Swim Back” and “Be On Your Way.”

19. White Reaper – Asking for a Ride. White Reaper’s first three albums were all pretty similar, hard power-pop records with a punk influence but an overriding sense of melody along with a good bit of obnoxious fun in the lyrics. On their fourth record, they actually go … metal. You can’t listen to the first two songs here and not think Motörhead or even some early Bay Area thrash, and even when White Reaper takes their foot off the gas a little bit on the album’s best track, “Fog Machine,” they just shift from early ‘80s metal to the late ‘70s metal sounds (think New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands like Maiden and Priest) from their previous records. Other standout tracks include “Pink Slip,” “Bozo,” and the title track. Also, if you’re into more serious metal, the best albums I heard this year in that genre were Wayfarer’s remarkable American Gothic, Horrendous’s Ontological Mysterium, and Myrkur’s Spine.

18. Grian Chatten – Chaos for the Fly. When I heard the lead singer of Fontaines D.C. would be doing a solo album, I assumed it would be something in the vein of his regular gig, something between punk and post-punk with a strong working-class edge … and Chatten instead delivered a thoughtful, meditative, acoustic record that’s mostly his vocals and a guitar. There’s a little rockabilly here in “Fairlies,” what I can only describe as lounge music on “Bob’s Casino,” and a mournful piano track on “All of the People.” Standouts include “Fairlies,” “The Score,” and “Last Time Every Time Forever.”

17. Belle & Sebastian – Late Developers. A surprise release from the Scottish icons, just eight months after A Bit of Previous, with their trademark wry lyrics along with sunny pop melodies with a dark undercurrent. I’ve been a little surprised to see it omitted from many year-end lists, to which I attribute its release very early in the year (January 13th) and the way we tend to take bands this consistent for granted. Standouts include “Juliet Naked,” “I Don’t Know What You See in Me,” and “Give a Little Time.”

16. Hotline TNT – Cartwheel. Hotline TNT’s second album hits during shoegaze’s big moment, a revival that I’m going to mention more than a few times in this list, and they’re one of the most authentic to the original sound, which dates to the late 1980s and early 1990s in England, led by bands like My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Slowdive, and Ride. Cartwheel borrows quite a bit from those last two bands, with a little Hüsker Dü thrown in for good measure, getting that shimmering wall of distortion sound that’s intrinsic to proper shoegaze. Standouts include “I Thought You’d Change,” “Out of Town,” “Protocol,” and “Spot Me 100.”

15. The Japanese House – In the End It Always Does. Amber Mary Bain wrote much of her second album in the wake of the end of a thruple that also included Art School Girlfriend (who is now in a relationship with Bain’s ex, Marisa Hackman). Anyway, In the End It Always Does showcases Bain’s lovely voice over a substantial amount of piano and keyboard work, grounding the record to support its little experimentations into electronica, dream-pop, and folk, although it always comes back to her vocals for me. Standouts include “Boyhood,” “Sunshine Baby,” and “Sad to Breathe.”

14. Genesis Owusu – STRUGGLER. The Ghanaian-Australian singer/rapper Owusu’s second album blends-hip-hop with sounds from the earliest era of new wave when that genre had just broken away from its punk origins, with songs that are rapped, shouted, and even sung in falsetto (the ironic “See Ya There”). It’s equal parts rage-rock and dance, buoyed by Owusu’s charismatic delivery. Standouts include “Leaving the Light,” “The Roach” (complete with Kafka references), “Freak Boy,” and “Stay Blessed.”

13. Protomartyr – Formal Growth in the Desert. This is actual post-punk, sometimes labeled post-hardcore, in 2023, and I’m being a little pedantic here because I think those labels have some real utility that’s lost when people just throw “post-whatever” on anything. (As opposed to Post Malone, whose music should just be thrown in the trash.) Vocalist and Tigers fan Joe Casey wrote some of the lyrics about his late mother and his grieving process, while other songs focus on existential dread or environmental crises, all over a stark, often detuned guitar-heavy backing. Standouts include “For Tomorrow,” “Elimination Dances,” and “Fun in Hi Skool.”

12. Altin Gün – Ask. I was not familiar with Anatolian rock, which blends traditional Turkish music with psychedelic rock from the late 1960s/early 1970s, until I stumbled on this Netherlands-based outfit and their fifth album, which had a similar effect on me as Mdou Moctar’s Afrique Victime: I was mesmerized by the translation of rock guitar into totally new sounds from other musical cultures. I can’t tell you much about the lyrics, but the music, which is always anchored by interesting and complex guitarwork, is enough to keep me listening even though I don’t know what they’re singing about. Standouts include “Su Siziyor,” “Leylim Ley,” and “Rakiya Su Katamam.”

11. Billy Porter – Black Mona Lisa. I knew of Porter from his work on Pose and at least by reputation from his stellar work on Broadway, but when this album appeared a month ago, it was one of the more pleasant surprises of the year, as Porter brings both his vocal talents and outsized personality to this record that mixes effusive dance numbers with lyrical introspection. The 54-year-old Porter had released four previous albums, but this is his first foray into popular music, a 12-song exploration of much of his personal history through dance, disco, and funk tracks – and it is just a blast to listen to. Standouts include “Children” (two versions), “Funk is on the One,” and “Baby Was a Dancer.”

10. Creeper – Sanguivore. Creeper’s second album, Sex, Death & the Infinite Void, was my #2 album of 2020, and while I think this one is a little less exciting overall, it’s still a very strong effort from this gothic post-punk act that, aside from one awful track, is the rare concept album that keeps you in its thrall from start to finish. (“The Ballad of Spook and Mercy” is just embarrassing.) There’s something extremely ‘80s about the whole endeavor – the opening bars of “Teenage Sacrifice” could easily be a hair-metal band circa 1987, while elsewhere they sound like they’d be on tour with Heaven 17 and the Blow Monkeys about five years earlier. Standouts include “Sacred Blasphemy,” “Teenage Sacrifice,” and “Cry to Heaven.”

9. Yves Tumor – Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds). Sean Lee Bowie’s fifth album melds psychedelic rock and shoegaze-esque guitars with electronica and funk for a record that’s theatrical, bombastic, and utterly compelling. It’s the album everyone thinks Lil’ Yachty made. Standouts include “Lovely Sewer,” “Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood,” “God Is a Circle,” and “Echolalia.”

8. Corinne Bailey Rae – Black Rainbows. Rae has moved a long way from the neo-soul sound of “Put Your Records On” and her acclaimed self-titled debut album back in 2006. Black Rainbows might be the most unexpected album of the year, inspired (according to Rae) by an exhibit on Black history she saw at Chicago’s Stony Island Arts Bank. Her voice is still strong and carries songs whether she goes loud or smooth, but the music here is all over the place, even veering into punk/hardcore and electronica, rather than the jazzy soul where she’s typically resided. It’s extremely ambitious and for the most part achieves its goals. Standouts include “New York Transit Queen,” “Erasure,” and “A Spell, A Prayer.”

7. Slowdive – Everything is Alive. Slowdive were darlings in the original shoegaze movement, with their 1993 album Souvlaki one of the peaks of the genre, but after they shifted their sound for 1995’s Pygmalion just as Britpop was exploding, they lost their record deal and broke up for 17 years. They returned to recording with 2017’s Slowdive, a majestic return towards their initial sound, and now have followed it up with an even better album that I think translates 1990s shoegaze through a 2023 lens. I’ve seen at least two stories on the current shoegaze revival from Pitchfork (which includes a lot of artists that aren’t really shoegaze) and Steregum, both of which highlight Slowdive’s place and the fact that they’ve reached new commercial heights since their re-formation. Highlights include “alife,” “the slab,” and “skin in the game.”

6. Sampha – Lahai. Maybe I just missed the boat on Sampha’s debut album Process, which won him the Mercury Prize in 2017, but I am all about this album, his long-awaited follow-up, which follows a theme you’ll see a lot in my top six albums – a real sense of restraint, with simpler and even minimalist arrangements that run so counter to contemporary pop standards. Sampha’s higher-register voice might be drowned out by louder or richer accompaniments, but the electro-soul sounds across Lahai tend to highlight and elevate his vocals instead. Standouts include “Spirit 2.0,” “Only,” “Suspended,” and “Jonathan L. Seagull.”

5. Geese – 3D Country. Geese’s debut album Projector felt like these then-teenagers had been locked in a room with nothing but records by Wire, Gang of Four, and Television for several months, so their follow-up record’s turn into an experimental mélange of post-punk, space country, hillbilly rock, screamo, and more genres that musicians this age have no business knowing so well was a huge surprise. Even more of a surprise was how well it works: 3D Country could have been one big joke, but even when you can hear Geese having fun, they’re still serious musicians and the craft here is evident. They get a lot of “jam band” labels, but I think that’s more about critics who don’t know how to categorize them. Standouts include “Cowboy Nudes,” the title track, and “Mysterious Love,” although I don’t think any three tracks could give you an accurate sense of the overall sound here.

4. Arlo Parks – My Soft Machine. Parks’s follow-up to her Mercury Prize-winning debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams sees the English singer-songwriter expanding her sonic palette to include more electronic elements and richer instrumentation, but her voice and lyrics remain the heart of her music. (She even credited some surprising influences, including shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine and the 2022 album Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.) Standout tracks include “Impurities,” “Weightless,” “Devotion,” “Bruises,” and her cover of Jai Paul’s “Jasmine” for the album’s deluxe edition.

3. Jorja Smith – falling or flying. Jorja Smith is a god-damned treasure. The English chanteuse got a Mercury nomination with her 2018 debut album Lost & Found, then teased with an eight-song EP in 2021 called Be Right Back before returning this year with her triumphant second LP. Often miscategorized as just an R&B singer, Smith moves seamlessly across styles from soul to jazz to blues to trip-hop, but the unifying forces here are her vocals and her minimalist approach. Everything she does puts her voice front and center, and even when you know there must be myriad instrumental tracks, it sounds spare, giving the sense that you’re witnessing an intimate performance – a welcome antidote to the overproduced sounds of most popular music today. Standouts include the title track, “Little Things,” and “Try Me.”

2. Noname – Sundial. Noname appeared to have quit the music industry in November of 2019 and cancelled her sophomore album, Factory Baby, but returned to live performances in the summer of 2022 and released a new second album, Sundial, this past August. It’s a tour de force of modern hip-hop, with some of the most intelligent lyrics you’ll hear from any MC and a style that reflects the influences across rap’s fifty-year history, while the music over which she drops her rhymes ranges from R&B to jazz to alternative electronic. Standout tracks include “Oblivion” with Common and Ayoni, “Namesake,” and “Black Mirror.” I couldn’t put this album at #1, however, given the guest appearance of antisemite Jay Electronica, who even drops a reference to the Rothschilds in his verse and claims the Ukraine war is a hoax; Noname said she didn’t care what people said about his inclusion, but I don’t think there’s ever a good reason to platform someone who expresses hateful views.

1. Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy. I loved this album when it came out, then set it aside for much of the year, then revisited it for this list – and because of their stunning performance on KEXP – and fell in love with it again. It’s experimental, exuberant, explosive, and full of great hooks. “I Saw” made my top 100 songs of 2022, and would be in the top 10 this year if I hadn’t already included it last year, while “Rice,” “Geronimo,” and “Drum” are all standouts. The Scottish trio started out as primarily an alternative hip-hop act, but have expanded their sound over the past twelve years to include more elements of soul, indietronica, dance, and Afrobeat in their style. They won a Mercury Prize in 2014 for their debut album Dead, but that is now, at most, their third-best album after this and 2018’s Cocoa Sugar. Nobody sounds like Young Fathers because nobody could.

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→ December 19, 2023
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The Ghost Map.

Our current understanding of the ways in which diseases spread goes back to a little-remembered cholera epidemic that devastated a London neighborhood in 1854, when a physician-scientist and a minister began working, first on their own and then together, to trace the outbreak’s origins. In a time of superstition and errant beliefs in “miasmas,” these two men realized through hard work, going door to door at one point to ascertain where each household obtained its water, that the agent causing the disease was spread through human waste that contaminated a particular water supply. In The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, author Steven Johnson tells this story in the fashion of a medical mystery – until a pointless epilogue full of speculation about the future of epidemics and treatments that has aged very poorly in the 16 years since its publication.

Cholera today is a disease of extreme poverty, and even more so of the lack of infrastructure that accompanies it; nearly all cholera outbreaks occur in desperately poor (or desperately corrupt) countries, or in those ravaged by war. Large outbreaks occurred in Syria during the early part of its civil war and Yemen during its endless civil/proxy war. In the third quarter of 2023, the hardest-hit countries, measured by cholera cases per capita, were Syria and Afghanistan, followed by Haiti, Bangladesh, and several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The disease, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, first emerged in India in 1817 and then spread around the world, killing over 35 million people, with multiple pandemics affecting Europe and North America, until advances in sanitation and public health helped eliminate the disease in more affluent countries. Those advances, and the lives saved, all came about because of the work of physician and scientist John Snow and Anglian priest Henry Whitehead.

Snow was an avid researcher and experimented with ether and later with chloroform, developing more reliable methods of anesthetizing patients that brought him significant renown, to the point where Queen Victoria called on him to assist her with chloroform during the birth of her eighth child, Prince Leopold. He took a general interest in cholera’s spread during the pandemic that first reached England in 1848, publishing a paper that argued that the prevailing theory that it was spread via polluted air, the “miasma” theory, was wrong. That outbreak eventually petered out, but cholera returned to England in 1854, leading to a horrific outbreak near Broad Street in London’s Soho district. Snow created a dot map to track cholera cases in the neighborhood, gaining help from Whitehead in going door to door to ask families about cases in the house – including houses where the majority of family members had died – and, after Snow’s initial research identified the Broad Street pump as a possible link between nearly all of the cases, where they got their water.

When Johnson tells this history, which takes up about 80% of the book, it’s fantastic. He balances the historical details, the science, and the biographies of the two main characters in the story well enough to maintain the interest level without ignoring the significance of the effort or the context in the history of science. He also has quite a bit of detail on some of the families destroyed by the outbreak, and on the quotidian lives of the inhabitants of this overcrowded part of what was becoming a massively overcrowded city. It’s a great, brisk history of science book.

If he’d stopped there, around page 200, I’d be raving. Unfortunately, there’s a long, tacked-on epilogue that goes well beyond the scope of the book in both its historical and scientific aims. Johnson couldn’t have known that we’d have several epidemics and one global pandemic before 20 years were up, but the larger point is that this book is about history, not predictions, and his don’t hold up particularly well. I read the epilogue wondering if an editor had asked him to add it, because it’s so out of character with the rest of the book.

That’s not a reason to skip The Ghost Map – you can always choose not to read the last bit – and the story it’s telling remains extremely relevant. The work the CDC and the WHO did to track SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, or that they’re doing right now to track current epidemics like chikungunya in Burkina Faso or Mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a direct ancestor of the work that Snow and Whitehead did in 1854. If the field of epidemiology has an origin point, it’s their efforts, and we have them to thank for all of the outbreaks of highly infectious diseases that never reach our shores.

Next up: I just finished R.F. Kuang’s Babel and started Tana French’s In the Woods.

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→ December 18, 2023
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Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse.

I was one of the few skeptics when it came to the first Spider-verse animated film, the Oscar-winning 2018 film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which I thought got too much credit for interesting animation and some great cameos but still adhered too much to the traditional superhero fight scenes to resolve its plot. However, this year’s sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, is a banger. Not only do I think it’s going to end up the best animated film of the year*, it might be one of the best of all time.

* I haven’t seen The Boy and the Heron yet, and that’s already won some best-of-2023 awards as well.

We return to the story of Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino boy bitten by a radioactive spider, who discovers there’s a whole multitude of spiderpeople and even spideranimals throughout the multiverse, including Gwen Stacy, who we saw in the first film, along with some new characters who have formed a sort of transdimensional guild to try to maintain the various timelines and prevent the multiverse from collapsing. This film, like the first one, doesn’t worry too much about the cosmological implications and focuses on the story and characters – actually, it does better with the characters than the first film did – and plunges Miles right into a complex story that has some fight scenes but relies far more on character development. There’s a villain, The Spot, who of course has a very personal beef with the titular hero, although as the story progresses he fades somewhat into the background of the plot. If anything, it’s more of a mystery than a typical superhero plot, as something is wrong with the timelines and Miles is in a unique position to find out what’s going on.

The animation in the first Spider-Verse film was different from that in most animated films, mixing some hand-drawn elements with CGI, dubbed “2.5D” animation because it combined the 3D style of computer animation with the 2D style of traditional hand-drawn work. The innovation didn’t go beyond that, however, and at times it became a little tiring to watch because my eyes would struggle to figure out the perspective. This film really perfects the method, though, and both enhances it to give it that comic-book-plus feel while also exploring different artistic styles – each instance of the multi-verse, and each Spider-entity that hails from it, gets its own unique look and feel, making the entire endeavor a visual feast unlike any animated film I can remember. It’s not the ultra-realism of Pixar’s computer wizardry, nor the artistic marvels of Miyazaki’s work, but a cornucopia of colors, styles, and textures that would alone make the movie worth watching.

The story, however, is miles ahead – pun intended – of its predecessor. That film set up the main character, but the plot was garden-variety superhero stuff. We’ll have to see if the writers stick the landing in the sequel, but the story here is much richer, with more complexity to Miles’ character, some more depth to Gwen’s, and a plot that doesn’t depend on beating the bad guy up – in fact, they try that and it doesn’t work terribly well. I didn’t see the ending and cliffhanger coming, although I may be unusual in that bit, and even so I don’t think it would have altered my appreciation of the plot up to that point anyway. There’s some “how will he ever get out of this?” to it, but that part is uninteresting – of course he’s getting out of it – relative to the broader stories of how they’ll repair the timeline and stop the Spot. (An aside: Jason Schwartzman voices the Spot, and might have the best performance among the voice actors in the film. On top of his strong performance in Asteroid City, he’s fighting to change the opinion I’ve held of him since turning off Rushmore 20 minutes into it.)

My daughter, who has been a big MCU fan for years (although that’s tapering off), absolutely loved this movie other than the cliffhanger and long wait for the final installment, for almost all of the same reasons I did: the clever story, the two interesting characters, and the wildly innovative animation. I assume it’s going to win the big Best Animated Feature prizes this winter, although The Boy and the Heron might get a boost as Miyazaki’s farewell film (maybe), and I can’t argue with that. It’s at least a lot more deserving of the honors than the first film.

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→ December 16, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 12/16/23.

We’re getting busy over on the hot stove front, and this week I wrote about the Shohei Ohtani signing, the Lee Jung-hoo signing (plus two Royals signings and the Yanks-Dodgers trade), the impact of the injuries to Ronny Mauricio and Endy Rodríguez, and the Tyler Glasnow trade for subscribers to the Athletic.

At Paste, I ranked the ten best new boardgames of 2023. It was a hard list to make, with probably 20 games I played this year that I liked enough to include, and at least five more I know that I would probably like enough but haven’t played yet. To give you a little more context, a game like Emerge, which I mentioned in my PAX Unplugged writeup, is absolutely fine and I think a lot of casual players would enjoy it. It didn’t stand a chance of getting on this list.

My free email newsletter is alive and well, and more than a hundred new subscribers have joined the list in the last three weeks since I switched platforms, so thank you and welcome. I’m hoping to keep this up as a weekly endeavor again.

And now, the links…

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→ December 14, 2023
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Hanamikoji.

I’ve owned the small two-player game Hanamikoji for probably seven or eight years now, and played it maybe twice when I first got it, but I set it aside and did what I unfortunately do with a lot of games I own but didn’t get as a review copy – I forgot about it. It popped up recently on Board Game Arena, so I got to play it a bunch of times, since a full game takes less than ten minutes, and I was reminded how elegant and great it is. It’s a capture-the-flag game, like Battle Line or Riftforce, with a simple scoring method and a strict set of possible actions that forces you to try to figure out what your opponent might be trying to do.

The theme of Hanamikoji isn’t that relevant except for the art, mostly by the wonderful Taiwanese artist Maisherly, who has also provided art for Walking in Burano, Realm of Sand, and Mystery of the Temples. The game itself is so simple you could make your own version with a bunch of index cards, although I would say just buy the game since it’s only about $17: The game has a deck of cards numbered 2 through 5 in seven different colors. The 2s come in purple, red, and yellow; 3s in blue and orange; 4s in green; and 5s in pink. A card’s frequency matches its value, so there are 21 cards in the deck.

Before each round, you shuffle all cards, remove one without showing it to either player, and then deal six cards to each player. The first player must draw one card and then take one of the four possible actions, which they will then not be able to take for the rest of that round. The second player does the same, and the play goes back and forth, with each player drawing one card and taking a previously unused (by them) action, until each player has had four turns.

In between the players sits a row of geisha cards, one in each color, and players will play cards to their side by the matching geisha to try to win each geisha’s favor with gifts. The four possible actions are to reserve a card to be played to the table at the end of the round (so a final, secret move); to discard two cards from your hands so they’re out of the round entirely; to present your opponent with three cards, where they choose one to play to their side, leaving two for you to play to your side; and to present your opponent with two pairs of cards, where they choose one to play and you then play the other. At the end of the round, you see who has more cards on their side of each of the geishas. Whoever has more cards on their side gains that geisha’s favor, and if the players have the same number on both sides, the favor doesn’t move. If one player gets the favor of four geishas, or gets the favor of three geishas worth a total of 11 or more (for example, the 5 and both 3s), they win.

If, as is most common, you complete the first round and neither player wins, the start player switches and you play a new round, but you retain the favor you won in the previous round, so if, say, you had the favor of the purple 2 geisha, and each player plays a purple card to the table, you would keep her favor. Play continues until someone meets either victory condition. If both conditions are achieved in the same round, the player with the 11+ points is the winner.

There are two tremendous strategic bits to Hanamikoji – when to use which actions, and predicting what your opponent might do. The order of your actions is entirely up to you, and in some sense depends on the cards you get. You may want to save the discard action until second or third, when you might already know some cards are worthless to you either way (e.g., the blue 3 geisha is already decided either way with two cards on one side, so the last card won’t change anything), but saving it till last might cause you to discard a card that would help you. Many players like to use the three-card action with three cards of the same color, since no matter what you get two and your opponent gets one, but that cedes the possibility of gaining control of two geishas rather than just one. The little decisions here go on and on in a way I find incredibly satisfying – like chess, but on a smaller scale.

Anticipating your opponent’s choices is, of course, inherent in lots of games with direct interaction, and here it comes into play in two ways. One is just trying to infer what geishas they might be trying to win, so you can choose where to parry and where to put cards to win your own geishas. You also need to understand their thinking, or at least try to do so, when choosing which cards to present to them in the three-card and two-pair actions, so that they’ll choose what you want them to choose. You can’t do this perfectly, since the card draws are random and you don’t see the cards they reserve or discard, but you can at least think about the odds of different scenarios. I love this part of the game, because, again, it’s a bit like chess, but with smaller trees of possible outcomes and a little randomness to help balance out small gaps in skill levels.

I’m due to revise my list of my favorite two-player games, and I have at least two newish ones in the basement to try (The Hunt & Broken and Beautiful, both from 2023) before I do so, but I think Hanamikoji has earned its way (back) on to the list. It’s so easy to teach, highly portable, has lovely art, and seems to be highly replayable, everything I’d want in a true two-player experience.

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→ December 13, 2023
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Nashville eats, 2023 edition.

Lyra was by far the best meal I had on the trip, serving “modern Middle Eastern” food along with a solid menu of wines and cocktails. I followed my server’s suggestions and ordered the hummus with roasted jalapeños, the octopus with big-ass white beans (not the actual name) in tomato broth, and the cabbage fattoush. The hummus was actually the best dish, in part because it came with a very warm, soft pitta that I carefully parceled out so that I wouldn’t end up with either pitta or hummus left over at the end. The octopus itself was perfectly cooked and had that flavor of the grill top that I think octopus is uniquely able to capture, but the astringent broth didn’t work well with it and the beans were just unnecessary. (I realized I just don’t love shellfish with tomato sauces or broths. They fight each other too much.) The cabbage fattoush was excellent, served with a date vinaigrette, feta, caraway seeds, and walnuts, a cold dish that worked well with its balance of saltiness, acidity, and a little sweetness in the dressing, although the toasted pitta on top of it, which you crush into the dish, never softened because there was just enough dressing for the vegetables. It’s located right next to the Pharmacy and across from Mas Tacos, two of my other Nashville favorites.

Joyland is a fast food-inspired spot from Sean Brock of Husk and Audrey, serving burgers and fries in a sack along with breakfast sandwiches on massive, buttery biscuits. I did indeed get a breakfast sandwich, which came with some sweet/peppery bacon and a brick of eggs scrambled with cheese that stood out as the one part of the sandwich that wasn’t freshly cooked. I’d go back for the biscuits, though.

I went with a basic tuna salad sandwich from Eastwood Deli, as this trip promised to have me eating about twice as much meat/poultry as I usually would, and it was … a solid tuna sandwich, just on very good sourdough bread. It’s in a whole complex of restaurants and such where you’ll also find the great izakaya Two Ten Jack and an outpost of Jeni’s Ice Cream.

HiFi Cookies has two locations, serving a handful of large cookies with interesting ingredients and flavor combinations, named after legends of rock, soul, and jazz. I went with the Etta, a peanut butter cookie with peanut butter chips and Cap’n Crunch peanut brittle; and the Johnny, a fudgy cookie with dark chocolate chips and a Cocoa Krispies/cacao nibs topping. These are good, rich cookies, and both screamed their core flavors; I think in the end I’d pick the Etta, because it was more than just a peanut butter cookie in flavor and texture, while the Johnny was just a chocolate chocolate chip cookie with crunchy but flavorless stuff on top.

Zulema’s Kitchen is buried among office buildings and hotels quite close to the airport, but does a perfectly cromulent lunch, although I would concede that here it was much more about taste than anything more hifalutin – I got a “chipotle chicken” sandwich that had chopped, grilled chicken, grilled peppers and onions, and a mildly spicy mayo on ciabatta bread. I don’t know what cuisine it was supposed to be, and maybe I was just famished after the flight but it was delicious – just the right amount of salty and spicy. I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat here, but if I worked in one of those buildings I’d be there pretty often.

I went to Hattie B’s for the second time and went with Hot, which I think might be my limit. I’m ¾ Italian and the rest is Irish and English, none of them cuisines known for our heavy use of capsicum. I think it’s an achievement that I’ve gotten this far. Damn Hot! might be beyond my capabilities.

Two duds from the trip: Sky Blue showed up on some list of the best breakfast spots in Nashville, but it was kind of a big disappointment; the home fries I got were cold and the “omelette” was nothing more than a scrambled egg folded over some barely cooked fillings. I also grabbed take-out on the first night of the meetings from a Thai place called Bit-a-Bite that was similarly underwhelming, as the pad see ew didn’t have a lot of flavor and came with more carrots than anything green (broccoli or gai lan would have worked, or even bok choy).

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→ December 12, 2023
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The House of Silk.

I’ve loved much of the work of Anthony Horowitz, who created Foyle’s War, one of my favorite TV series of all time, and wrote the book Magpie Murders and the authorized James Bond novel Forever and a Day. He’s also written two authorized Sherlock Holmes novels – Moriarty, which was well-written but relied too much on a gimmick; and The House of Silk, which, unlike Moriarty, actually features Holmes as the main character. It’s also well-written, and moves along well, but falls into the trap of so many authorized continuations, where the author is trying so hard to be true to or respectful of the characters/settings that the story itself ends up suffering.

The House of Silk builds slowly to the first of multiple murders that all seem to tie to some mysterious entity by that title, although it’s unclear to whom or what it refers. Holmes enters at the behest of an art dealer whose shipment of paintings was destroyed by Irish gang members and whose client is later found murdered. When Holmes uses his Baker Street Irregulars to look for evidence, one of them ends up murdered himself, spurring the detective to continue his investigations even when others, including his brother Mycroft, warn him away from anything involving the House of Silk. Holmes finds himself framed for murder, and Watson has to find a way to spring him before they can solve the case.

Horowitz’s Holmes is the one you expect. He repeats his catchphrase “The game is afoot!” which actually comes from Shakespeare’s Henry V and just made me roll my eyes for its obviousness here. He does his parlor trick of glancing at a person and immediately coming up with a lengthy biographical sketch or a rundown of everything that person might have done that day, which has very little to do with the actual mystery here and didn’t happen nearly as often in the original Conan Doyle works because nearly all of them were short stories. He’s actually less disdainful towards Watson and the police in The House of Silk, where authenticity ends up lost to make him a kinder, gentler Holmes, and nobody asked for that. Watson, meanwhile, is even more of a cipher of a character here than he is in the original stories, retreating mostly to observer and chronicler status outside of the scenes while Holmes is in prison.

That’s one of my two main problems with The House of Silk – the characters are just not very interesting, including the man we all know and love. If you enjoy this sort of fiction, you likely have a favorite detective character; I’m a Hercule Poirot fan, and never enjoy the Miss Marple stories as much because she’s just not as interesting to me. Horowitz’s Holmes feels flat on the page, and none of the side characters are anything more than stock figures, some there because the reader might expect them (Lestrade, Mycroft), some there for the new plot, but none memorable at all once they leave the page.

The other is that the resolution to the story here is exceptionally lurid, and thus out of character with any of the original stories. Such things do happen in the real world, and did during the era of the novel, but putting Holmes into such a story is not only a break with the novel’s otherwise overzealous effort to stay authentic to the original material but requires a huge tonal shift for the character that the author can’t manage. It’s jarring in the wrong way, and Horowitz shows he’s a better craftsman than artist, able to frame and write the story but not to give it the panache or appeal of Conan Doyle’s works.

Next up: I’m currently about a third of the way through R.F. Kuang’s Babel, the most recent winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel.

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