Season of the List
“I declare SOS by SZA the album of the year” - Martin Luther, 1517
Love it or hate it, it’s list season. They’re everywhere: Best Albums of 2023, Best Movies of 2023, Best Books of 2023, Best Podcasts of 2023. Like any early-career culture journalist, I’ve contributed to these lists and I’ve read them. Even now, as I start this piece, I’m currently putting off one end-of-year list I’m supposed to write and feverishly debating the order of another. As we look back on the year passing, above all else, we seem to yearn to count on our fingers.
But why lists? Around ten years ago, when online list-making really took off, a round of articles attempted to answer this question — many, in peak Ouroborean fashion, in the form of lists. The New Yorker took a psychological approach, linking lists to the brain’s process of interpreting information. NPR pointed to famous lists of today and yesterday: Ben Franklin’s lists of virtues and relationship advice, Hamlet’s “list of landlesse resolutes.” Umberto Eco explained it simply: “we love lists because we don’t want to die.”
Today, if you lurk in the comments section of any end-of-year list, you’ll find outrage. Readers are righteous about missing favorites or disordered entries, indignant about undeserved inclusions. This year, jokes about end-of-year lists coming out in November abounded, and (connectedly) SZA’s December 2022 album SOS topped Pitchfork’s Best of 2023 list and everyone had a take about it. As is often the case, in this public outrage, there’s community. When you challenge a publication’s list, you can be seen and endorsed for your opinion by others, argue for work that you think matters, and generally feel good for it. I’ve struggled with end-of-year lists for inverse reasons: I have a sneaking fear that my own desire to list with the noble goal of uplifting good art is also tainted by a baser desire to have people agree with me on the Internet.
Last year, because of this, I decided against making a list at all, instead just declaring Ghost Song by Cécile McLorin Salvant my album of the year sometime in the wake of Christmas. (It won’t be a surprise to find her 2023 offering among my favorites). This year, though, I felt moved by just how much great music I’d spent time with in 2023, and how much I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to sit with. I’ve seen some of my favorite 2023 albums in the lists I’ve contributed to and read this year, found new recommendations to tide me over into the new year, and — I’ll say it — felt like some of my own favorites had gone unsung. And I’ve realized that more than just reflecting our urge to catalogue and the annual winding-down of content possibilities, end-of-year lists fill a psychological and existential function — however angry they ostensibly make their reply guys. We want an agreed-upon narrative for the year, an understanding of a shared experience, a way to look back on 365 days of drinking from a media firehose and distill it into something digestible. We want, in short, a definitive and absolute list.
So, here’s mine!
I’m kidding, obviously. But in the spirit of the season, I’ll share a few albums that moved me this year, write about some, and link to where I’ve been lucky enough to write about some others. There’s no strict order here, and no particular rhyme or reason other than every album I mention being something I liked. Merry Listmas, everybody.
The List
Cecile McLorin Salvant - Mélusine
Jazz visionary Cecile McLorin Salvant weaves an intricate tapestry on Mélusine, incorporating medieval folklore, French chanson, and Haitian Vaudoo and Kreyole into a triumphant meditation on femininity, identity, and the power of the gaze. Like the mythical figure for which it’s named, this album is a shapeshifter. It’s melancholic and righteous on opener “Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent?”, enticing on “La route enchantée,” dizzying on “Fenestra.” Pair it with the Medieval Podcast episode about the 14th-century epic poem of the same name.
Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter - SAVED!
McKinley Dixon - Beloved! Paradise! Jazz?!
Wednesday - Rat Saw God
Wednesday were my top artist this year, and that revelation was no surprise. Their music feels like home to me, and Rat Saw God finds them at the top of their game. Karly Hartzman’s lyrics are episodic but often a little surreal — “a sex shop with a biblical name,” “violently came up in a Dollar General” — while the instruments bubble up and explode into the forefront, giving voice to our search for meaning in the comforts and horrors of everyday experience.
PJ Harvey - I Inside the Old Year Dying
Written entirely in the disappearing Dorset dialect, I Inside the Old Year Dying draws from the well of PJ Harvey’s verse novel Orlam. Within this dreamworld, Christ dances with Elvis as a child grows up, and the legacies of poisoned blood linger. Harvey echoes faerie bargains and Arthurian riddles in her storytelling here — I Inside the Old Year Dying is at once clarion and esoteric, wrapped in layers of language, feeling, and myth-making that beguile and entrance.
Butcher Brown - Solar Music
Richmond mad scientists Butcher Brown have a utopian post-genre vision on Solar Music, alchemizing their influences from jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop into a dynamic fusion that’s welcoming to all. As a result, these songs feel both cutting-edge and timeless. Solar Music’s fuzzed-out take on Roy Ayers’ “This Side of Sunshine” was my song of the summer, but its songs are nourishing year-round — the mellow, reassuring “I Can Say To You,” featuring rising vocalist Vanisha Gould, is perfect for a long nighttime drive.
Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
Javelin is marked by sudden ascendances. These begin on opener “Goodbye Evergreen,” striking the track’s acoustic slope with a jolt of noise and a pantheon chorus. They hit like a truck every time, including on “A Running Start,” which suggests the hit is coming but doesn’t betray its surprise. Through them, Sufjan evokes the dizzying heights of love, the Assumption, the crushing feeling of a sudden stop. For a long time, I’ll admit, I steered clear of this album for its heartwrenching real-life inspiration. When I finally sat with it, I was moved by the fierce uplift that it emphasizes time and time again.
Brandee Younger - Brand New Life
Brandee Younger’s work on Brand New Life is work of recovery and innovation. She brings to life the melodies of the endlessly-influential (and unjustly-underrated) jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby with a loving hand, pairing them with her own originals to illustrate Ashby’s influence — as well as a devotional cover of Stevie Wonder’s “If It’s Magic,” where Ashby famously accompanied him on Songs in the Key of Life. With production by Makaya McCraven and features from 9th Wonder and Meshell Ndegeocello, it’s an assembly of greats coming together to honor a legend.
Black Belt Eagle Scout - The Land, The Water, The Sky
Yussef Dayes - Black Classical Music
Fred Hersch and Esperanza Spalding - Alive at the Village Vanguard
Vagabon - Sorry I Haven’t Called
ANOHNI - My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
Mitski - The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We
Greg Mendez - Greg Mendez
Kara Jackson - Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?
Shamir - Homo Anxietatem
jaimie branch - Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))
Meshell Ndegeocello - The Omnichord Real Book
Geese - 3D Country
Runnner - Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out
Yo La Tengo - This Stupid World
Johnathan Blake - Passage
Squirrel Flower - Tomorrow’s Fire
Pearla - Oh Glistening Onion, the Nighttime is Coming
Skyway Man - Flight of the Long Distance Healer
Lakecia Benjamin - Phoenix
Joshua Redman - Where We Are
Miss Grit - Follow the Cyborg
Andre 3000 - New Blue Sun
Nation of Language - Strange Disciple
Bully - Lucky for You
Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily, Arooj Aftab - Love In Exile
Ragana - Desolation’s Flower
Joanna Sternberg - I’ve Got Me
A Giant Dog - Bite
home is where - the whaler
Young Fathers - Heavy Heavy
shame - Food for Worms
Tyler Childers - Rustin’ in the Rain