best album to blast on aimless suburban joyrides (and other hyperspecific superlatives)
I'm back!!
I’m rarely late, but I’m always cutting it close. The holiday season was probably not the best time to start up a “weekly” newsletter, but I’ve at least made it to the “end-of-year list” party on the literal last day of the year. Hey, I’m just happy to be here (in your inbox). I’m shooting for more structure in 2023, so expect me in your inbox a little more consistently then. For now, let’s look back at 2022 and see what we can take with us into this next celestial rotation.
If the music criticism establishment is listening, I have just one thing to say to you: come up with better hyperspecific superlatives!
I’m a big fan of end-of-year lists for two reasons: (1) I like seeing which albums I completely missed, and (2) it’s interesting seeing how each publication tries to remain true to its brand (pretentious? exceptionally British?) while still hyping the same exact albums. Frankly, I eat it all up. If they have accompanying playlists? Incredible — I’m sold ten times over. But there’s something that is nonetheless so boring about these roundups! Far more than wanting to know which album NME found the most culturally significant or which songs Pitchfork thinks have the best production, I want to know what albums elevated breakups to works of performance art or got weepy anglophilic grandmas through Queen Elizabeth’s death. I want to know what each work has the capacity to make me feel and experience. So here we go, I’ve put together a little list like the ones I’d like to see:
Best album to contemplate your shortcomings to while mixing a late-night old-fashioned:
THIS IS WHAT I MEAN x STORMZY
I hope the person who scammed me out of $80 and a pair of Stormzy tickets in February 2020 is doing okay. After all, forgiveness is at the center of the London sweetheart’s latest album.
I struggle with what to call Stormzy after This Is What I Mean. He’s certainly shown that he’s much more than a rapper, and he seems to have little interest in limiting himself to the constraints of being a grime MC. When he first dropped the two singles from his third album, “Hide & Seek” and “Firebabe,” I was worried; I wasn’t a huge fan of the softer tunes he had included in previous projects and his new material seemed to swing even harder in that direction. He’s at his best when he’s spitting gritty and aggressive bars at other MCs like Wiley or politicians like Theresa May and Boris Johnson, I thought. But the full release hit just right, not despite his soft ballads but because of them. Stormzy’s gentle, velvety voice is truly the golden amber of an immaculate old-fashioned, asking listeners to reflect on the nostalgic notes swirling around their glass and what they say about our willingness to do right by the people we’ve wronged.
Best album for driving around the suburbs aimlessly (or filling a void left by your now-cancelled ex-favorite band):
HOUSEHOLD NAME x MOMMA
Listen, this album was one of my favorites well before Win Butler from Arcade Fire was canceled, but it really came through when it was time for something to fill the suburban-car-band void left by his indecency. Thanks for stepping up, guys.
I don’t really know what Calabasas is like, but it’s where Momma was formed. Something tells me it’s similar to where I (and Win Butler) grew up: an affluent suburb where kids who refuse to buy into the whole country club ideology simply drift until they manage to get out. I drifted to Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs all throughout high school, but I can see a version of myself born in 2005 that would have opted for Momma’s Household Name instead. “Motorbike” is the perfect example of this:
Outside
Let the neighbors hear the sound
You can take me anywhere you like
Your motorbike will wake up this whole town
For one night
Baby we could disappear
You told me if i'm down to ride
Your motorbike will take us away from here
I mean, come on. All I want to do is drive my car through an empty golf course screaming this song at 10pm on a sticky summer night.
Best album to make you consider soundproofing your apartment because you feel humiliated that your neighbors might hear you weeping at full volume:
WATERSLIDE, DIVING BOARD, LADDER TO THE SKY x PORRIDGE RADIO
This album came at a time when I needed angsty girl music the most. Being a hypochondriac in a very serious sense, I got it in my head this past May that my body couldn’t carry me past my 30s. What am I supposed to do when I know I’m dying, listen to male vocalists tell me how to feel? I’m good. Keep in mind I haven’t even made it to my 30s and also I very much am not dying.
Porridge Radio’s bread and butter is that same all-consuming existential anxiety that something, or maybe everything, will end suddenly and tragically. Perhaps no song embodies this better than “Birthday Party” from the Brighton band’s latest album. “A fear of death, a fear of dying, why won't the dog pick up the stick? Panic sweats you wake up crying, always feeling kind of sick,” Dana Margolin reveals with the urgency and discomfort of a climbing panic attack. Before seeing them live this year I was so anxious about the possibility that Margolin’s boundless wailing would fall flat and ring passionless on stage. Thank god that wasn’t the case, but you have to forgive me for considering it a possibility. It’s insane that a band can craft such a gorgeous kaleidoscope of raw, gut-wrenching emotions in a studio and then recreate it so earnestly for a live audience every night. Maybe next year I’ll find a cold and deserted English beach where I can scream these songs to myself shamelessly.
Best album for learning to back yourself (and boot the rats and snakes from your life):
NO THANK YOU x LITTLE SIMZ
There were several years in the late 2010s when the only genre I listened to was UK hip-hop. There’s something to be said about figuring out who the heavy hitters are in a scene you have zero prior knowledge about. Around 2018 it seemed like all roads led back to Little Simz as ‘your favorites’ favorite up-and-comer.”
But despite being one of the most exciting UK rappers to gain traction in the last few years, Little Simz has been through it on the come-up. Last year she ended up on virtually every “end-of-year” list you can imagine for her album I Might Be An Introvert. Then, in April, she announced she was too low on cash to go through with her North American Tour. In October, she won the highly prestigious Mercury prize and later that month broke up with her long-time manager. Lucky for us, Simz has channeled all of these ups and downs into a new album, which had such a low-key rollout you probably missed it. If No Thank You makes one thing clear, it’s that she’s no longer afraid of misstepping. She trusts her own judgment, and she’s doing things her way — energy I’d say we all need to carry into the new year.
Best album for finding freedom and radiance after you’ve burned every picture of your ex (which, curiously, led you to uncover joyous pictures from your youth):
CAPRISONGS x FKA TWIGS
This is technically a mixtape rather than an album, but nevertheless! This is my favorite project by FKA Twigs. Her past albums have been defined by a cosmic lust that CAPRISONGS continues to borrow from, but this mixtape feels more like an interstellar dancefloor suspended between Saturn’s rings (which, in astrology, symbolize wisdom and karma). If I were healing from a nasty breakup, this is the dancefloor I’d want my friends to drag me to.
This album is, at once, all about friendship and also about balancing solitary strength with the willingness to continue to love and let people in. Sampling voice memos in music has become a bit of a meme on Tik Tok, but it works so well here as a peek into who and what has driven Twigs out of paralyzing depression and into boundary-pushing greatness. I love this laughter-filled exchange in “meta angel” between Twigs and one of her friends:
Each year I'm like, ah, I'm gonna own my shit, and then each year I'm still so shy and so quiet.
This is the year. This is the year of greatness, bruv, and bein' free, I'm telling you.
No, I wanna be more confident, I really do —
"I really do," [laughter] The universe, fam, the universe is so powerful. You're gonna be more free and you're gonna love more and you're gonna have more fun.
Do you think so?
No, I don't think so, I know so.
I’ll leave you with that. This was an incredible year for music and those weren’t all of my favorites. I, for example, did not review gems like Beyonce’s Renaissance (which is probably the actual best album of the year) because I’m not sure I have much more to say about it than has already been said. Nevertheless, I hope you’ve enjoyed this small little list!
Happy new year, boys! See ya in 2023