Speedy Ortiz returned this year with their first album in five years, Rabbit Rabbit, and they've got some shows before the year comes to a close, including NYC's Bowery Ballroom on Saturday (12/16) with Foyer Red and Grocer and New Year's Eve in Philly. Given the season, band leader Sadie Dupuis has made us a list of her favorite albums of 2023. Last time I wrote a BV year-end list I enlisted the help of a randomizer to choose ten albums since I was too indecisive to winnow down my much-longer list of faves. That time and the time before that I included a bunch of qualifiers excluding any artists I'm BFF with, work with, cohabit with, or have toured alongside. In 2022 I gave up on the whole practice of numerical lists and instead wrote a song pillorying the concept of ranking albums at the end of a year (especially when a streaming service helps you wrap it up). It's 2023, I'm older, slightly less wise, and it's time to return to the caveat-less superlatives biz. Here are ten of the records I sang and/or air drummed along to a lot in the last twelve months.
"Oops" is the first word we hear from Maryam Said on poolblood's LP debut, an un-self-conscious mutter before cassette hiss gives way to graceful guitar arpeggios, post-chromatic vocal hums, and resonant piano. Tape machines shut off and rewind with noisy rebellion throughout this record, a showing-of-seams that lends stunning immediacy to a living document that recalls the Microphones, or even Jeff Buckley's rawer demos. Horns, strings, and Maryam's laid-back harmonies bring occasional sunniness to a heartbreaking sound, perfect in its 'flaws'.
Sweeping Promises' latest is a balancing act of expertly-paired contrasts: cavernous reverb documents precise rhythms, improvisations give way to mirrored grooves, classical vocal vibrato swells into sneers and screams. The Kansas duo write spacious post-punk with snug hooks, speakin
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