Doug's 2023 Music Recap! The Best New Music Of The Year
It’s that time! Time to recap a year of really fantastic music - 2023!
It was a crazy year for me musically mainly due to the dominance of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard over my listening time. At its peak this year I’d say there were times where over half of what I was listening to was them, at the expense of some of my other favorites. I was completely addicted. I’m still obsessed but it’s gotten back to a more healthy mix even if it’s still slightly lopsided. I’d say if a genre suffered the most overall as a result it would be hip-hop. I didn’t listen to much new hip-hop this year at all, and that wasn’t by design per se, it’s just me following where the music leads me and I’m sure when it comes back it will come roaring back.
Album of the Year
Smashing Pumpkins - ATUM: A Rock Opera In Three Acts
Yep I said it. ATUM is a remarkable achievement for Billy Corgan and the reunited Pumpkins (minus D’Arcy and plus Jeff Schroeder who just left the band in October) who appear to be an entity that’s here to stay going on over 5 years now. 33 tracks, almost 2 1/2 hours long with an ambitious rock opera concept that is positively Corgan-esque but if there’s a dude capable of grasping this type of reach it’s Billy with all of his quirks for better or worse. I’m pretty sure no one has ever attempted anything like this with a weekly podcast revealing each new track telling the story and releasing the 3 CD set 1/3rd at a time over several months. I have to admit I tapped out. I didn’t have the time or the patience to follow it in real time - it was too much - like drinking from a firehose. I just need more time to digest it all with all the other stuff on my plate (and with my little King Gizzard problem). But I’m getting to the point where I am indeed prepared to make this my album of the year as a long time Pumpkins fan going back 30 years now. This behemoth is a masterpiece. It rocks, it floats, it dreams, it sparkles, it’s mythical, it’s visceral, and everything in between. And yes, the songs are there - in abundance. I have a loose understanding of the story and I am interested in going back and putting it together. It’s actually the third in a trilogy that loosely includes Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Machina/The Machines Of God following the character first known as Zero, then Glass and now Shiny. I know he has a spaceship and he sets out on a suicide mission to the sun and…. well I’m not prepared to summarize the story yet - there’s just so much going on…. There’s plenty of shiny synth but there’s plenty of growling guitars throughout as well. The opening single Beguiled made it into last year’s recap and was one of only two songs from ATUM they played when I saw them live last November along with Empires - both of them ROCK and are worthy heirs to the early Pumpkins sound. The Pumpkins have always done gorgeous as well as anyone too and Embracer and Every Morning carry on that tradition - just sublime. Intergalactic is a great multi-stage epic and Jimmy Chamberlain showcase who is one of the all time great drummers in the game. Other highlights include That Which Animates The Spirit, Where Rain Must Fall, Moss, Avalanche, The Good In Goodbye and the epic Sojournor. This one is worth taking the time - go ahead and attack it a third at a time - that’s how it was released so you clearly have permission.
Runner-Up
Metallica - 72 Seasons
Who knew if they still had this in them? And they even released it with an album cover generator that you could use to personalize it for fun like I did with M10 Social above! It works too since the first letter is still M. Hehe… As for the album - no lame ballads, minimal cheese, all killer, no filler. This is Metallica putting their best foot forward without sounding like they’re trying too hard. The songs are there, the riffs are there, the playing is tight and James Hetfield sounds great. More growl, less croon and he sounds like part of the band again to me as opposed to the featured vocalist accompanied by the band which is a complaint I’ve had about a fair amount of latter day Metallica. And it’s not like I can measure how far forward he is in the mix to prove that, it’s just how it comes across to me. They sound like a kick ass unit again, here to just kick ass like they’re supposed to and let the chips organically fall where they may without forcing another Unforgiven on us for example. The last album I felt this way about was Death Magnetic and that was really the only one I truly did since …And Justice For All, but I think this one is a little better. The only advantage Death Magnetic had if we’re comparing is the incredible instrumental Suicide & Redemption. There are no instrumentals on 72 Seasons and I love me a good Metallica instrumental. But as I said there are so many strong tracks here and I think this album is better overall. Take You Must Burn! for example. It doesn’t have to be fast to be killer - Harvester of Sorrow is one of the all time heavy tunes in the catalogue and this reminds me of that a bit in its effectiveness. It’s not always easy to pull off super heavy at mid tempo without it just turning out….mid. But the thrash that is here is legit as well without sounding labored. The opening title track is fantastic - awesome changes, great riffs and a total epic at 7:39 long. The lead single I mentioned in last year’s recap LuxÆterna is still great - and was great live when I saw them last month.
The Rolling Stones - Hackney Diamonds
LOVE!!! I feel like this could be the best Stones album since Steel Wheels. Don’t get me wrong, I love Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon, but A Bigger Bang wasn’t as consistent and Blue And Lonesome I’m not counting since it’s a blues covers album. Hackney Diamonds just sounds like classic Stones to me - okay maybe classic 70’s Stones anyway which is my personal favorite decade of Stones albums, and Mick is in fine voice here - he’s 80 by the way. One of the cool things about this album is there are several full circle moments and plenty of guests, but none of these are distractions. This is a STONES album. Not a Stones “celebration”, farewell, or all-star money grab of any sort. And while it’s sad that Charlie Watts passed, it’s beautiful that he still appears on two tracks, and one of those tracks includes Bill Wyman! Yep - the track Live By The Sword has the classic Jagger, Richards, Wood, Wyman, Watts lineup from 1975-1993 with Elton John on piano for good measure. I don’t know that it’s the strongest track on the album per se, but as a fun loose track with that personnel it should be a special one for anyone who has ever been a fan of this band. The last song to feature a classic five Rolling Stones lineup on it. But going back to the start of the album it kicks off with the instant classic Angry and the next two tracks Get Close and Depending On You are both fantastic… Other highlights are the wonderfully obnoxious Bite My Head Off (with Paul McCartney on bass), Keef’s obligatory lead vocal on the mellow and worn Tell Me Straight, the reminder of how great the Stones do country with Dreamy Skies featuring Ronnie Wood’s tasty acoustic slide, Driving Me Too Hard has the obvious Tumbling Dice lead-in which feels good, and the epic duet with Lady Gaga Sweet Sounds Of Heaven with none other than Stevie Wonder on keys. The only head scratcher for me is the closer - it’s always great to hear the Stones play the blues, but why call it Rolling Stones Blues? It’s a cover of Catfish Blues. Either call it Catfish Blues or come up with an original called Rolling Stones Blues - right? Is that a little goofy or am I splitting hairs? Oh well - no matter, the album is a classic and vital entry in the Stones catalogue and it apparently won’t be the last either.
Queens Of The Stone Age - In Times New Roman
QOTSA returned after their longest break between albums that included a ton of turmoil in leader Josh Homme’s life to reclaim all of the iconic and wonderful weirdness that makes them them. Every band is unique right? But some bands are uniquely unique and this is one of them - if you know, you know. Overall I find this album to be slightly tighter than usual - there is only one song that barely crosses the 5 minute mark until the epic-twisted-Rocky-Mountain-Way-esque stomp of Straight Jacket Fitting that closes the album at 6:45 before the 2 1/2 minute acoustic outro that closes the proceedings, but it doesn’t suffer as a result. And the whole album generally rocks which is great. There are no bad QOTSA albums (Era Vulgaris is close) and much of their creepy mellow material is fantastic, but it feels good to hear the energy here and the songs are really solid - the first single Emotion Sickness is the 9th track of 10 which is kinda cool in and of itself and I love the soaring “Baby don’t care for me - had to let her go-ohhhhh!” chorus. Lots of autobiographical lyrics throughout from a guy who went through divorce, rehab, mutual accusations of domestic abuse and restraining orders with his ex, and cancer… Dude has been through the ringer and some of it certainly self-inflicted. But he seems to have come out the other end in one piece - at least creatively that’s undeniable.
Public Image Ltd. - End Of World
Another crazy frontman who has been through the ringer since the last album is John Lydon, but don’t worry he’s still plenty Johnny Rotten and I love this new PIL album. After taking time to be the caregiver to his wife of 44 years who passed away from complications due to Alzheimer’s he included one of the more beautiful and touching tributes you’ll ever hear in the lead single and closing track Hawaii - a song written for Nora to soothe and place John with her on a beach there… if you didn’t think rotten and gorgeous could go together you would be wrong. The rest of the album is about liars, fakes, cheats, frauds and other assorted idiots being stupid (again). Plenty of sneering, jeering and vitriol - but as usual the music is great - in fact all three of the PIL albums in the last 11 years are fantastic after a 20 year break. The opening declaration with John welcoming us to Penge (not sure what that is) just feels….big. Plenty of other highlights along the way, and yes if you pay close enough attention you could get offended - and isn’t that part of the charm? It’s Johnny Rotten after all - he’s supposed to be an a-hole.
Psycho Death Punk
Full disclosure - these guys are my friends and my former bandmates from the Detroit Stimulus Package - and they are kicking ass. I last jammed with these guys just after the initial lockdown a few years ago and knew they were on to something different as Greggy Loukmas stepped forward with his own batch of tunes playing guitar and singing along with Jake Mannino on bass and Jim Kacanowski on drums. Their debut has had a bunch of streaming success online - in Europe especially - as they play live gigs at some venerable venues around Metro Detroit such as PJ’s Lager House in Corktown and The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor. The album is really good with opener Down To The Letter and Subdivided being a couple of highlights. It rocks with some punk influenced energy but I wouldn’t say they are a punk band per se… sort of a punk/grunge hybrid of sorts. There’s also a great instrumental that closes the album called Undetermined that reminds me of the riff in the Prong classic Unconditional. Give this album a listen!
The Murlocs - Calm Ya Farm
This is the first appearance The Murlocs have made on this blog and it most certainly won’t be the last. Ambrose Kenny-Smith and Cook Craig’s (both of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard) other band is really good and this album has some songs that are just plain catchy as can be, starting with the infectious opener Initiative and it doesn’t let up from there. Amby provides plenty of lead vocals in KGATLW but he’s not THE lead vocalist - he’s a great high pitched change of pace and counterpoint to Stu Mackenzie over there, but you always want a little more, so this is where you get it, and of course there is plenty of harmonica which is Amby’s typical weapon of choice.
Gov’t Mule - Peace…Like A River
The mighty Mule returns with a new set of originals after the blues album Heavy Load Blues in 2021 which I should have loved on paper but it didn’t quite hit me like I thought it would. So for me it’s great to have a new classic Mule album and Warren Haynes as usual brings the triple threat of vocals, guitar and songwriting which he still does better than anyone on the planet. Some highlights for me so far are the tasty guest spot of Billy Gibbons on Shake Our Way Out, the groovy Peace I Need, Dreaming Out Loud and the Billy Bob Thornton spoken word-ish The River Only Flows One Way, but the whole album is fantastic. Oh, and so is Time Of The Signs - the add-on EP they also released which is more of the same (awesomeness).
Foo Fighters - But Here We Are
For this one I’m going to defer to my son Tony who wrote a perfect review of this album: An album that is really deep being the first one after the loss of Dave Grohl’s mom and the beloved drummer Taylor Hawkins. The album hit Tony pretty hard so I’m letting him tell it.
Depeche Mode - Memento Mori
Another album following the tragic loss of a band member, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore returned without the late Andy Fletcher and gave us the wonderfully dark and dense Memento Mori with all the hallmarks of the great DM albums that have been on display since they went more organic way back on Violator. The first single Ghosts Again is an instant classic and there seem to be plenty of themes of mortality mixed with some that sound specifically like tributes to Fletch such as Wagging Tongue with the lyrics “I’ll meet you by the river, or maybe on the other side. You find it hard to swallow when you watch another angel die.” Before We Drown and (the sequel to People Are People?) People Are Good are a couple of my other favorites but the whole album is awesome.
The Church - The Hypnogogue
The first Church concept album with yet another lineup change? Steve Kilbey the only original member left? Sounds like a recipe for disaster right? WRONG. And like any great Church album and any great concept album this one is a grower, revealing layers upon layers of musical magic. More on the concept and the story of Eros Zeta - a musician in the year 2054 who travels from his home in Antarctica (a “prime piece of real estate in 2054” according to Kilbey) to the Hypnogogue which can pull songs right out of his dreams - in my recent concert review of The Church. The epic and mysterious title track, C’est La Vie, Aerodrome, Albert Ross - all highlights of an awesome collection of songs. This album is a must.
The Church - Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars
Oh hello - here we are again with The Church with the other half of Eros Zeta’s story, and dare I say I may even like this one better? I actually really can’t say but this is NOT some batch of leftovers from The Hypnogogue and there are really important chapters of the story (which Kilbey also released as a novella which in his words is just a short novel lol) here. Highlights here include 2054, The Immediate Future, The Weather, Korea, and the epic A Strange Past, but the whole album is really amazing frankly and might even sound more like a Church album than The Hynogogue in the best way. Man I love this band.
Brad - In The Moment That You’re Born
A real gift to get another Brad album recorded before Shawn Smith’s untimely and tragic death in 2019. This caught me by surprise. Shawn hardly sounds like himself on the haunting, weary and poignant opening title track, but no less beautiful. Just like the best Brad albums there are rockers here which guitarist Stone Gossard obviously knows a little about like Hey Now What’s The Problem, but there are also moments of the most tender beauty like the closer Simple Subtraction. A fitting coda for one of the most amazing voices of all time.
Secret Machines - The Moth, The Lizard, and the Secret Machines
This album was actually mostly recorded in 2010 but left unfinished and the band was on hiatus for a decade until they returned with the great Awake In The Brain Chamber album. What’s really cool here is that their label had already folded when they started working on this in 2010 so they weren’t bound by any record company expectations, deadlines etc. and they went in some new experimental directions - and wow did they. There is some really weird thrilling stuff here, and the late great Ben Curtis (the original guitarist in the band and brother of singer Brandon Curtis who tragically passed away after a battle with cancer in 2013) has his fingerprints on this album. He had already left the band well before he got sick but they used material that he either wrote or recorded - I’m actually not sure which. Either way this is still very much a Secret Machines album which you know a minute and 6 seconds in when the building intro to There’s No Starting Over is interrupted by the big crashing boom of resident-stage-left-drumming-madman Josh Garza reminiscent of First Wave Intact from 2004’s Now Here Is Nowhere. Highlights on this one include Even Out The Overflow, the hypnotic and somehow emotional instrumental Last One Out which comes just before the back-to-back ominous and wonderfully weird tracks The Answer and Crucifixion Time. I’ve been a fan of this band for 20 years and I’m pretty happy they’re back.
Steven Wilson - The Harmony Codex
Steven Wilson must never sleep. He’s everywhere - from being the most in demand remaster-er in the business to churning out new material with multiple projects that never seems to stop, guys like him and perhaps my favorite Steve (Kilbey) just ARE music. Fresh off of the successful reconvening of what I would call his musical home of Porcupine Tree he returns with another complex, challenging and amazing solo LP The Harmony Codex. Israeli pal Ninet Tayeb is also back to lend her amazing vocals to the song Rock Bottom which she wrote and plays guitar on as well. The rest of the album is what you would expect from Wilson with virtuoso playing and plenty of wild time signatures but still with amazing songs. It’s not just a clinic even though it could serve as one with plenty of top notch session musicians such as freelance guitarist Niko Tsonev who contributes a gorgeous guitar solo on Time Is Running Out. The title track is a beautiful instrumental theme with voices by Wilson’s wife Rotem. I’m still absorbing this album - it’s going to take a while and it will be worth it.
Wilco - Cousin
I am still not done figuring out Wilco’s 2022 album Cruel Country, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to totally get there with that sprawling double length LP - we’ll see. Cousin seems to be hitting better for me early on. Sometimes less is more - not always (as evidenced by the Pumpkins triple LP Atum being my album of the year), but sometimes. If I was going to come along for another Wilco album this soon it had to be digestible and this one is. The opener Infinite Surprise is pure Wilco and other highlights include the self-aware resignation of Evicted (“I’m evicted. From your heart. I deserve it.”) and the fun romp (albeit with cryptic lyrics) of the title track.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation
Okay yes, KGATLW made the list - they actually put out two albums in 2023 but I’m not quite sure The Silver Cord makes the cut - I do like it but I’m not totally sure how much. But “PDA” is worthy - and it’s their second thrash album. As usual when they shape shift to a different genre they go all in and this album is pretty legit. It’s not perfect but the song Gila Monster is - could be the best single song of the year. It kicks SO much ass. The whole album is damn good but the other highlight worth mentioning is the closer Flamethrower - oh yeah….. It also has the best album cover of the year….
Honorable mentions:
Albums that sound really good so far by artists that are generally can’t miss include: Peter Gabriel - I/O Filter - The Algorithm Pretenders - Relentless Stephen Marley - OId Soul - I just haven’t gotten through them enough yet to properly review them…
Other albums I like include: Bass Drum Of Death - Say I Won’t Goat - Medicine Inhaler - Cuts & Bruises Greta Van Fleet - Starcatcher Dirty Honey - Can’t Find The Brakes
Singles:
I’m sure hoping all of these will be followed by new albums in 2024… Beck - Thinking About You The Jesus and Mary Chain - jamcod King Princess - The Bend Wolfmother - Stay A Little Longer Ty Segall - Void Death Cab For Cutie - An Arrow In The Wall
Thoughts? What did I miss - let me know in the comments!
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here. You can also visit our other business Detroit Jerky at the website www.DetroitJerkyLLC.com!
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Tune in to the 📷Doug&Ally📷Morning Show T-F between 8:30 & 11 EST UTC-4 on Heckle by following them on Heckle or Twitter at @frameablefaces! Also check out the Doug & Ally Morning Show podcast at anchor.fm/frameablefaces and everywhere you listen to podcasts! Doug also tweets at @dougcohen10 and @M10Social!