As per usual, Stereogum has a good selection of the best albums that have been released so far this year. Waxahatchee keeps the top spot, whereas Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross are keeping the list's back (spot No. 50). However, there's quite a lot happening in between. A good tool to be updated about (some of) the best albums we've seen this year.
The season of best lists is over, but not at Dan Runcie's Trapital. He has segmented their best content - essays, podcasts, memos, and more - into different categories like fanbase, partnership, investing, ownership, labels, and streaming. Runcie promises that's just the start, and the page will be built out in the meantime. Find it - here.
Music writer Ted Gioia has made a selection of the best online articles and essays published in 2023, including ones on music topics. Goia, among others, recommends “I Started Playing My Sax Outdoors. Then the Fans Came” by Harvey Dickson from the New York Times, “The Origins of Creativity” by Louis Menand from The New Yorker, as well as “How Alice Cooper Cleaned Up and Became a Pop Star All Over Again” by Dave Everley from the Louder Sound.
The YouTube music critic Anthony 'The Needle Drop' Fantano also made a selection of the 50 best albums of 2023, with punk veteran Jeff Rosenstock's 'HELLMODE' coming out at the top. Still, a list of fresh, even some avant-garde music.
"...A document of a road-tested rock band riding high, a landmark of songwriting as world-building, and as a reminder that well-worn sounds can still be combined into something brilliantly, bracingly new" - Stereogum wrote about their choice for the best album of 2023. Check out all the 50.
"'False Lankum' defies genre while yanking classics into the 21st century... An undeniable work of scale and dynamic builds, with few songs ending sounding as they started" - Guardian points out in favor of their choice of the best album of 2023, released quietly by the Irish folk band Lankum. Check out all the 50 selected.
"This year, favorite artists like SZA, Sufjan Stevens, and Fever Ray returned with reliably stunning releases, rising artists like Nourished by Time, Amaarae, and yeule pushed the boundaries with breakthrough releases that set the tone for where music might go next, and some of the year’s biggest surprises also happened to be just the thing we needed (hello, André 3000 flute album!)" - Pitchfork points out introducing their selection of the best 50 albums of 2023. It's Pitchforky, of course, but still, worth checking.
"Do you remember when the guitar was a wild, unpredictable instrument? (...) Well, Daniel Champagne still plays the guitar in that bold, unconstrained way" - Ted Gioia recommends the Australian guitarist (now living in Nashville). "You feel as if he just invented the instrument yesterday and was discovering its possibilities afresh. And I haven’t even started telling you about his singing and songwriting—but go find out for yourself."
It's definitely not a definitive list, but rather an interesting perspective by the rock journalism institution on the history of heavy metal (which they believe started with 'Black Sabbath' by, ahem, Blach Sabbath). The list starts with Venom's 'Wellcome to Hell' at No. 100, and reaches the high-point with, well, guess which song!?! A great lead of the article by the way - "Thousands of years after the Bronze and Iron Ages, the true Metal Age dawned half a century ago"!
"The scene Def Leppard and Judas Priest helped consolidate 40-plus years ago has never had this much talent, or represented as many disaffected voices, as it does today" - Guardian argues in its piece about the current British heavy metal scene. Some of the important names the G is picking out are Bristol post-hardcore collective Svalbard, black metal trio Dawn Ray’d, masked prog-metal Londoners Sleep Token, noise-punk duo Nova Twins, anti-fascist metalcore fivesome Ithaca...
