....And More Lists

The year-end ritual continues....

The lists feel glib next to the work.

Especially when there are rankings, or points assigned by some weird equation, or any kind of Metacritic style groupthink-reflecting aggregation. Arriving at a list that purports to sum up a year’s worth of artistic activity takes some individual effort, but then all this scorekeeping adds an unnecessary layer. Or ten. Plus “best” is an idealised notion given the neverending torrent of releases. Plus who has time to impose a heirarchy where one doesn’t belong? Plus….

Sometimes lost in all this is the very real miracle that each new release represents. As we all seem to say these days: The art of music is fine, the music business is a rotting carcass in a snakepit of opportunistic hoarders of dollars and data. That artists are able to navigate the broken avenues they must travel — the ones involving distribution of the work, and marketing, and all the speciousness that comes under the heading “brand awareness” and on and on — is itself a mammoth task set. Let’s stop pretending any of those responsibilites are part of the normal job description of an artist. And then there’s the separate, equally intractable problem of attention: The intended audience for any recorded music arrives at the Play button overstimulated and with limited patience, now measured in milleseconds not minutes. Forget about the slow-building grandeur of a Pink Floyd introduction: Anything that doesn’t captivate the listener with aural fireworks in the first ten seconds is likely to be abandoned. (Unless it’s something coy and subterranean like this:)

OK, that’s enough ranting for today. Below are ten records that elevated 2023 for me, works that I returned to multiple times and expect to puzzle over again.

Ambrose Akinmusire: Owl Song (also the solo trumpet Beauty Is Enough).

Mitski: The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We

Ryuichi Sakamoto: 12

boygenius: the record

Arooj Aftab / Vijay Iyer / Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile

Lana Del Ray: Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd

Olivia Rodrigo: GUTS

Wilco: Cousin

Laurel Halo: Atlas

Alfa Mist: Variables

And since here at Echo Locator we’re all about the reclaiming of overlooked/underloved recordings (and recording artists, and performance practices, etc.), here are records from 2023 that according to my crystal ball will find zealous audiences and champions in the years ahead.

I’m tempted to include the Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds, first because so (so!) much of the discussion about it was of the lazy “Best since Some Girls” variety, and second because very few reviews mentioned the thing that continues to flatten me about it: The guitars. All of the guitar elements on this are brilliant — the rhythm parts erupt with dirt and skank for days, the leads are sneakily melodic — and, incredibly, they’re often mixed to bring the visceral savagery forward. There was reason to worry about the general health status of rock and roll in 2023, but not on this. The old men brought it.

Awaiting future rediscovery

Diego Raposo: YO NO ERA ASÍ PERO DE AHORA EN ADELANTE, SÍ  

The National: Laugh Track/First Two Pages of Frankenstein

Paul Simon: Seven Psalms

Matthew Shipp: The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp

Daniel Villareal: Lados B

Kassa Overall: Animals

Meshell Ndegeocello: The Omnichord Real Book

Surya Botofasina: Everyone’s Children

Gretchen Parlato/Lionel Loueke: Lean In

Jeremiah Chiu: In Electric Time