A great year for music culminates with my selections of the very, very best 2022 had to offer:
21. Animal Collective TIME SKIFFS:
with its inviting ambiance, unhurried vibe, and ebullient group harmonies, Time Skiffs readily conjures warm memories of AnCo’s late-2000s halcyon days. But the album possesses a personality and methodology all its own. Over the years, Animal Collective’s free-flowing aesthetic, lovey-dovey sentiments, and fondness for tie-dye have garnered any number of Grateful Dead comparisons, but this is the first record where they sound like an actual jam band. While Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) has traditionally used his drum kit to heighten the clamor of the group’s most chaotic moments, here, he plays the steady timekeeper governed by a dubby discipline. (PITCHFORK)
22. Nilufer Yanya PAINLESS:
once again traverses a variety of genres, mixing soulful smoky vocals with art rock, trip-hop, and pop. On occasion, Yanya effortlessly inhabits that indie, soul-jazz hinterland once occupied by Everything But the Girl, at other times, there are moments that would give Radiohead a run for their money. PAINLESS is a body of work that sees Yanya opening up about her feelings in a much more direct way than on her debut. There is no obfuscation, no cloaking of emotion behind concepts, this time she confronts her feelings head-on. (UNDER THE RADAR)
23. Big Thief DRAGON NEW WARM MOUNTAIN I BELIEVE IN YOU:
there is a jubilance to these performances, even a joyousness. A wailing fiddle, played by guest member Mat Davidson (aka Twain), loosens up the country stomp of “Red Moon” and the gorgeous, blue-eyed harmonies of “Dried Roses.” “Spud Infinity” is the most striking departure, an unabashedly goofy singalong, with lyrics about elbows and potato knishes that Lenker nearly rejected for their uncharacteristic irreverence, and the most conspicuous use of a Jew’s harp since Leonard Cohen jauntily deployed one in the middle of a song about 9/11. It is the kind of song that defies the band’s downbeat reputation, that stares at you with a wild glint, daring you to resist its giddy revelry. (PASTE)
24. Alvvays BLUE REV:
flooded basements and stolen hard drives prolonged the album's genesis but gave them time to tinker and refine nearly every aspect of their sound. The result is sharper hooks, noisier guitars and more plaintive stories about love and heartbreak. Nostalgia has always been a key arrow in the Alvvays quiver. Yet, even as they shout out Tom Verlaine and Belinda Carlisle, there's nothing backward-looking about Blue Rev. Instead, they boil down elements of power pop, shoegaze, dream pop, jangle rock and any other indie rock subfield you can think of into an alcopop-charged rush of guitar rock joy. (EXCLAIM)
25. Amber Mark THREE DIMENSIONS DEEP:
the album is structured in three acts mapping Mark’s journey at different stages: identifying her own insecurities, working through the messy parts of self-discovery, and finally reaching a solid sense of self-worth. Three Dimensions Deep’s secondary, figurative throughline is inspired by Mark’s love of sci-fi and interest in heady astrophysics theories, a theme that pops up through celestial metaphors in her lyrics that amplify human concerns to galactic size. In Mark’s world, romance hurtles her to another planet, kisses are astronomical, and searching for her place in the world is posed as an all-consuming, cosmic question. (PITCHFORK)
26. Benjamin Clementine AND I HAVE BEEN:
despite Clementine’s insistence that this is his “light” album, on And I Have Been he grapples with nothing less than life’s cyclical nature. On “Delighted,” he lobs a ball upward and then watches gravity snatch it back down. “We lean, we learn, we earn, we turn, we burn/Then start again” he observes. Violin and a multi-tracked soprano surge in the background. The strings nearly clot the song with their filigree, but they are tempered by Clementine’s earthy, rust-worn voice. (PITCHFORK)
27. Weyes Blood AND IN THE DARKNESS, HEARTS AGLOW:
Natalie Mering further cements her status as a sort of millennial Karen Carpenter, her rich alto a warming bonfire, and her ear for timeless, shag-carpet piano melody still unmatched among her peers. Here, she applies the reedy 70s singer-songwriter aesthetic she has acquired over her last couple of records to matters like contemporary alienation. (CRACK MAGAZINE)
28. Perfume Genius UGLY SEASON:
conceived as the soundtrack to 2019’s The Sun Still Burns Here, a dance project with choreographer Kate Wallich, and will soon receive an accompanying music film by visual artist Jacolby Satterwhite. But while it’s structurally somewhat of an outlier in his catalog, it also taps into Hadreas’s enduring lyrical themes of queerness, embodiment, and movement and is another dazzling display of his experimental ingenuity. (SLANT)
29. Jean Dawson CHAOS NOW:
is simply redefining what a ‘guitar album’ can be. Fuzzy riffs over trap-tinted beats, 80s chicken scratch guitar, blistering power-chord choruses, picked acoustic… it’s all here. Never once is Jean Dawson restricted by any instruments or styles. Instead he crafts a nostalgic, and sometimes aggressive, world, matched beautifully by the well-thought-out visuals. It took everything that made ‘Pixel Bath’ so incredible and just elevates it. (CLASH)
30. Scott Hardware BALLAD OF A TRYHARD:
fraught with inner turmoil but contrasted by soaring, uplifting music and rare moments of contentedness, Scott Hardware spends Ballad of a Tryhard trying to relish in tranquility while bracing himself as the world crumbles around him. When it comes to developing as a songwriter, though, Ballad is one more stepping stone to achieving an artistry that's as indefinable as it is unpredictable. (EXCLAIM.CA)
