Ranking 10 albums to sum up the year in music feels pretty daunting if not impossible. How does one define a year in music with such a brief amount of material? You look at not just the albums themselves, but the lore, atmosphere, and external world they conjured with them. Hundreds of great albums were released this year, all deserving a spot on this list. But these are the ones that didn’t just introduce game-changing music, but created an environment as an extension of themselves. Here are our top 10 albums of 2023:

10. Nakibembe Embaire Group, ‘Nakibembe Embaire Group’

Hailing from Nakibembe, a village in one of the four remaining constitutional monarchies in Uganda, the Nakibembe Embaire Group are one of the last bands to play on an Embaire – essentially a giant marimba made out of tree logs laid across a trench that requires 6-8 people to play it. Made loud enough so it can be heard over the cheers and screams of gathered folk in town squares, the Nakibembe Embaire Group was made for parties in communal gatherings. One could also argue they’re one of the last true traditional traveling jam bands. Originally traveling from village to village, the project has taken them far beyond their homeland to the most unlikely venues where you’d least expect to find them. Performances at Berlin’s Berghain and other international festivals have only heightened their popularity via word of mouth and further spread their psychedelic rhythms across waters. Although not a live album per se, the record gives off a block party feel to it, one that feels like you could stumble upon it in your own neighborhood. And everybody’s invited.

9. Liturgy, ‘93696’

Part Opeth, part Behemoth, part Stockhausen, Liturgy delivered a black metal opera to the tune of entering hell. Progressive in its nature, 93696 borrows from different sonic palettes to the point you completely forget you’re even listening to a metal record. Sure, it’s not metal in the “traditional” way we talk about the genre, but that’s what the genre has always been meant for: it’s an attitude, it’s about the definition one assigns it. The sonically deep soundscape provides the Brooklyn outfit a further outreach, an attempt to grasp onto something traditional metal has rarely been able to do. To redefine a genre is already a difficult task to accomplish, but to totally transcend it? It’s nearly impossible. Thankfully, Liturgy manages to at least eclipse that mission.

8. JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown, ‘SCARING THE HOES’

One would think that a JPEGMAFIA-Danny Brown album would be like a glazed donut dipped in an orange 7-11 Big Gulp. And at first, that’s pretty much what it is. But after a moment, you discover it doesn’t actually taste that bad. SCARING THE HOES is exactly that: an onslaught of all treble and little bass that immediately goes from zero to 100 and doesn’t stop. The title speaks for itself: the album is supposed to be cumbersome, supposed to be hard to get through. But instead of an intimidation, the album acts as a dare – it doesn’t so much “scare” the listener away as it does invitingly taunt them. It’s more of a, “Yeah I dare you to try and take us on,” rather than an assault. But once you’re on for the ride,and get the hang of its flow, you’ll find it hard to hop off.

7. Oneohtrix Point Never, ‘Again’

Returning to the sounds of his early works like Replica and Returnal, Oneohtrix Point Never has not only revisited his early studio roots but incorporated such lush symphonic sequences to provide stark contrast. Leave this one on loop and you’ll forget you’re listening to an OPN record, and more so something from Wagner or Mahler. But is it MIDI? Is it subtractive synthesis? Or are they actual strings? What makes OPN’s music so great is that he’s one of the last “blurring of the line” artists: we can’t tell what was made in a bedroom studio and what was made on a scoring stage. But in the end, does it matter? OPN has proven that these resources have become obsolete. Anybody can record anything anywhere in the world now. We all have the same tools. Another world’s orchestration is just within our reach, and Again is a perfection summation that, just like singular instruments, genres themselves have become musical tools as well.

6. Model/Actriz, ‘Dogsbody’

Every year, there has to be at least one post-punk album that breaks into this list. And from a year that gave us plenty to choose from, none were as infectious and idiosyncratic as Model/Actriz’s debut album, Dogsbody. Brooding drum machines serve as a cold reminder that they can bring just as much attitude as any string instrument, and basses can serve just as much as a lead as any treble line. With low end clean electronic guitars that feel like the cold empty pit in your stomach a la Interpol, it’s punk rightly turned inside out – a deconstruction of the attitude we’ve become so aptly familiar with. And yet, it still moves, it still rallies against some sort of ideals. Gone are the simple guitar, bass, drum lineups, and in are the scathing soundscapes used as instruments themselves. I do not know who this album was made for. I do not know where the center or heart of it is. I do not know why its esoteric-ness precedes it. But that’s precisely why everyone should listen to it.

5. PJ Harvey, ‘I Inside the Old Year Dying’

Perhaps our earliest choice for one of the top 10 albums of 2023, I Inside the Old Year Dying returned PJ Harvey to her solace roots. It’s tender, self-effacing approach to songs about redemption and closure are reflected in the album’s choice of instrumentation: folk strings modulated by effects and non-distracting percussion. She herself even mutes her vocals at times on the record, adding to an already restrained approach to what seems like an attempt at growing comfortable with an older version of herself. These songs do, at their heart, sound like aged Irish folk tunes, long before Shane McGowan added his punk edge, and echoing most eerily Sinead O’Connor. Sounds of nature break through as if the record tries to scale back its human carbon footprint. And then when the human does try to leave their mark, she sings of earnestness, isolation, but no song is too long or too short. On perhaps her most sensitive album to date, PJ Harvey refuses to be the center of this record. Rather, she lets the sounds around her naturally breath and support her.

4. Sufjan Stevens, ‘Javelin’

Needless to say, it would be hard to name someone in music who’s had a tougher year than Sufjan Stevens. Along with going through physical rehabilitation relearning how to walk after a bout with Guillain-Barré syndrome, Javelin almost sounds precisely like that: a reintroduction to his music. His return to “full singer/songwriter mode” since 2015’s Carrie and Lowell, Javelin sounds like getting a giant eraser and starting over again. Containing pockets within pockets, each song is layered with instrumental and literary dimensions as seamless electronics blend in with acoustics. One can’t help but feel that he couldn’t have written these songs if he hadn’t experienced them himself, a testament to his 20+ year career as one of the greatest singer/songwriters on the planet. And at some points in this record, it feels like his entire career has been building up to this album. Aware that he has bigger fish to fry before returning to the stage, one can’t help but wonder the live outlet he’ll choose to exhibit this work.

3. Young Fathers, ‘Heavy Heavy’

Borrowing from what sounds like early Animal Collective and African tribal music, Scotland’s Young Fathers took a left turn this year with Heavy Heavy, their sixth studio album. Veering from electronic trip-hop structures to avant garde jams, Young Fathers ventured into a different instrumental palette. They’re songs that could be produced with little more than a synth and drums. And if they were just slightly more conventional, you might even hear them on the radio. And yet, they are, at their heart, pop songs: sporadic instrumental sequences give way to soaring harmonized vocals, and loped percussion serves as a vessel to carry melodies. One might take a moment to find exactly where these songs are coming form, but with repeated listens, their influences and inspirations become apparent.

2. Caroline Polachek, ‘Desire, I Want to Turn Into You’

Arguably the best pop album this year, Desire I want Turn Into You finally brings to fruition Polachek’s best work to date and finds the two singles she’s been teasing for the past two years a proper home. Filled with drum n’ bass break beats (a common theme among pop music this year) and soaring melodies that just take off with wings of their own, no pop album this year has ever felt so seamlessly “pop.” Every element feels like it’s in its proper place no matter how eccentric (bag pipes and mandolins included). Perhaps there aren’t many pop artists nowadays that actively challenge what pop music can mean. Yes, it may be short for “popular,” but that doesn’t mean it has to always pander to the greatest common denominator. Because even if this album did, we wouldn’t love it as much. And we’ll always have Caroline Polachek to thank for that.

1. Boygenius, ‘The Record’

This writer would be hard pressed to find a better musical combination this year than Julian Baker’s vocals, Lucy Dacus’s lyrics, and Phoebe Bridgers’s, well, Phoebe Bridgers-ness. And after finally releasing their debut album after what seemed like five long years since their formation, Boygenius fully reached their true potential and took the world by storm with The Record.

Never have three singular identities come together as a “side project” and felt like a naturally, sporadically formed garage-rock band. But that’s exactly what this feels like; it feels as if they’ve been playing together their entire lives, a harmonization of vocals and musicianship that easily compares to the Bee Gees, a reminder of when music used to be a songwriter’s medium rather than a producer’s. With lyrics so vivid that they get etched into your brain (“Spray paint my initials on an ATM”), their melodies sink so deep they beg for repeat listens, accompanying you on whatever youthful journeys that make, and encourage, you to feel young again. A brisk 42 minutes eventually turn into a longtime partner – an aid, a mirror, to provide you for self-reflection, song after song.

This year, we had the atom bomb vs. the Barbie doll, simultaneous writer and actor strikes, and oh great, now artificial intelligence. The toughest year on the industry in a generation served as a wake up call to those who thought it couldn’t get any worse. Stingy CEOs, a “vacuum in leadership,” and the burst of the superhero movie bubble seem to mark a tough future ahead for the industry, one that will test just how “true” of a relationship there is between the studios and the labor force. Nonetheless, quality cinema prevailed in 2023, with or without promotion from its crews and stars. Here are our top 10 films of 2023:

10. Talk to Me

O.G. Youtubers Danny and Michael Philippou made their long awaited jump to the big screen this year. Having moved to Los Angeles specifically to get this film made, the brothers took their spin on psychedelic horror not with VFX, but with ingenious filmmaking techniques. The plot of an embalmed hand conjuring seances serves as an outlet to further explore the theme of connection. After discovering she’s able to communicate with her dead mother via this seance, Mia (Sophie Wilde) treads too deep only to put the ones closest to her at stake. As insane practices lead to insane prosthetic gore, Talk to Me doesn’t use horror flash for the cheap scare. Rather, it uses its techniques to pull you through an actual engaging story one thread at a time, setting the Philippou brothers on a trajectory that will put them among the same ranks this decade as Ari Aster and Robert Eggers.

9. The Zone of Interest

More art installation than narrative, The Zone of Interest dares to answer an age old question: how do we depict an atrocity? Do we add a narrative thru-line to convey a character amongst it? Do we follow a conflict at the risk of fetishizing or sympathizing with a character? The answer is: we don’t. Instead, we invoke complete objectivity. Holocaust films have become a genre in and of itself. They seclude themselves to a specific, sensitive kind of film category. There is no real conflict in this film, there is no real story (director Jonathan Glazer has even said so himself). For with it, the film runs the risk breaking through the wall of subjectivity. Following Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, and his family, the film predominately takes place in their home just at the edge of the camp, as they go about their daily lives in blissful repression of what’s going on just on the other side of that wall. In each scene, we hear, not see, screams, gun shots, hounds, commands in German, with merely a smokestack in the background to convey any visual emphasis. We can close our eyes, but we can’t close our ears. How does someone find it so easy to kill people? Sadly, the answer is in front of our faces the entire time: you don’t see them as human.

8. Past Lives

Celine Song’s autobiographical debut film isn’t necessarily one that harkens back to an old love so much as it does an ulterior narrative that runs parallel to the one happening now. It’s not the “the one that got away”-type film. We already know he’s (Hae Sung, played by Teo Yoo) gotten away. Rather, it’s a film that deals with the phases of ourselves that come with it. With each new partner that leaves, we are forced to become a different person. This film’s about learning how to say goodbye – an acknowledgment of the past so that you can enter this new phase of yourself, and knowing that, in time, this new self will also require a goodbye. And then that will lead to another goodbye, and another… all leading up to the greatest goodbye of all. So how do we say goodbye? We administer the word in a breath of mercy and simply say it. Goodbye.

7. Return to Seoul

A Cambodian production, spoken in French, but set in Korea, Return to Seoul disguises itself as one thing only to seamlessly transform into another. When Freddie (Park Ji-min), a French national born in Korea but adopted by French parents, goes to find her birth parents when her flight from Japan is “cancelled,” she discovers that they are not what she was promised. Strained with guilt and desperation, her father pleads for her to stay, as she discovers the life she could have led is not what it seems. What at first starts out as lighthearted curiosity which turns into a thriller, Return to Seoul is a film about riding assimilation between cultures and identities, and how each one can take you in a radically different direction.

6. May December

Boy that guy from Riverdale can really act huh? Todd Haynes’s latest feels like a Lifetime movie in the first half and then makes you realize you’ve been watching a psychological horror film in the second. Following an actress (Natalie Portman) as she studies an ex-tabloid frenzied mother (Julianne Moore) who had an affair with an underage kid (Charles Melton) years ago, May December shows that we truly remain the same age in which we experienced our trauma. Complete with a kitschy score and ridiculous zoom-ins to convey emphasis, it feels and plays like a TV movie (perfect for Netflix), only to unfurl into a psychological drama of repressed emotions that rise to the surface. Our trauma from then on shapes us who we are (physically and mentally), tells us how to act, tells us how to treat others, to the point where we never truly grow out of it, to the point where we feel we’ve been robbed of an authentic adolescent experience. Others know how to compartmentalize, properly digest, so much so that they don’t feel like they’re doing anything wrong at the expense of others. But hey, that’s just what adults do.

5. Anatomy of a Fall

This year’s Palme d’Or winner didn’t really supply any answers, only raised more questions. When Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is put on trial for pushing her husband off of their ski chalet, the film dives into ethical and moral dilemmas that traverse far beyond any answer to the question of “did she do it?” Whether that answer is actually given or not is beside the point. But the better question is, did she “kill” her husband? Yes, entirely possible. But even if it was a suicide, could she still have done it? Could her constant suppression of emotions and emotional discourse be enough to drive her husband to his death? This film goes far beyond any reasonable CSI forensic explanation, because when the culprit is emotional, intangible, what is there to be proven? Pornography for dialogue, Anatomy of a Fall explores the gray area in forensics and proves that the legal system does not account for human emotions.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon

Packed with everyone’s favorite rockstar, Killers of the Flower Moon ambitiously sets Scorsese’s sprawling gangster epic taste on the Osage Indian Reservation, serving as new territory for his often crime/gang-riddled stories. Standing at a daunting three and a half hours, the film is best digested, of course, in a theater. Some people will check their phones periodically, others will undoubtedly have to get up to visit the restroom. And that’s totally understandable. But the best way to experience this film is to let it just wash over you. The Robbie Robertson posthumous score and the towering performances remind us why cinema can just take over you, where your gut instinct and overall first impression take over intellect which becomes secondary. It’s one of those epics that instantly commands your attention. Featuring perhaps the best performances Scorsese has ever elicited from De Niro and DiCaprio, the casting choices take on lives of their own as they soar over you. Yes, the runtime seems overwhelming. Yes, the film’s brutality is hard to watch at times. And yes it does feel like “a lot” happens. But as the pendulum swings from long content to short content, where the two extremes grow further and further apart, a longer runtime becomes an indication of what can challenge you. And no other filmmaker alive right now is more dedicated to challenging their audiences than Martin Scorsese.

3. Poor Things

Is there any filmmaker who’s had a better trajectory in the new millennium than Yorgos Lanthimos? From small, low-budget Greek arthouse films to major studio deals, his films have never lost their true independent touch. Following Bella (Emma Stone), a Frankenstein-like experiment who after a suicide was brought back to life with her infant’s brain (yes, you read that right), Poor Things takes up a battle against proper, polite society. All viewed from Bella’s objective point-of-view, every major and minor bit of production design pushes her toward a higher enlightenment of thought, from the discovery of sex and pleasure, to ethics and philosophy. We see animals who couldn’t possibly exist, architecture that couldn’t possibly hold, and gadgets that couldn’t possibly function. Like every Lanthimos film, it’s a study of human behavior under a magnifying glass, an unbiassed view as to why we behave the way we do.

2. Oppenheimer

The year’s most anticipated film ultimately delivered upon a string of important factors: appearances by everyone’s favorite actor, the ever-present looming threat of international war, and, of course, a release date with Barbie. Unfortunately, what we will remember is not the story of Oppenheimer. What we’ll remember is the “idea” of Oppenheimer. A massive, epic summer blockbuster that debuted head to head with another pinnacle of American capitalism – the nuclear bomb vs. the Barbie doll. We’ll remember the IMAX 70mm roadshow release, and the film’s epic climax, the “event-ness” of it all. All of this, however, is precisely what will get in the way of how we’ll remember the film’s true theme of temptation. Oppenheimer feels like the film Christopher Nolan was born to make: a gripping two and a half hour biopic that constantly makes you feel you’re on the precipice of something. As J. Robert Oppenheimer stared down a void of no return, one couldn’t help but feel there was a possibility to do something just because it was within our grasp, a chance to evolve the way humans portray their past. Or maybe we are the instigators of our own fate. Maybe we do lack the intelligence to ensure humanity’s progress. The film speaks echoes of how we’ll view ourselves generations from now, and how we ourselves will be the source of our own destruction.

1. The Holdovers

This publication has never been one to tell you how to feel. At its best, it merely recommends or invokes thought within the spectator, to get the reader out of their conventional taste or mindset to try something new, or at least inquire. The Holdovers isn’t anything new. If anything, one wouldn’t be wrong if they were to say this film was plucked right out of the 70s. Because if this was the 70s, films like these would be much more commonplace. But it’s 2023, a cinematic year that’s been filled with the nuclear bomb, toy dolls, and labor strikes. But only one film this year, with its lack of ego, corporate sponsorship (and money), and celebrity shine, captured what feels like a shadow finding its soul.

Within this humility is precisely what makes The Holdovers so cinematic. It’s sheer lack of magnitude makes the film hold its weight. There are no set pieces, musical numbers, nor are there any points of self-interest to draw attention to itself. The story of tolerance via an asshole boarding school teacher (played by Paul Giamatti) forced to watch over the students who can’t go home for the holidays isn’t one that particularly fills seats. But in this intimacy, this self-effacing approach with performances, is precisely what makes its cinematic power shine through.

And I’m sure in the 70s, films like The Holdovers were a dime-a-dozen: sincere portrayals of flawed characters, intimate conflicts, stakes… movies! And it’s all right here, emulated in a chemical change. The character relationships change. They move: flawed characters being pushed toward change based on the cast of characters they’re surrounded by, a change that’s as deep as its emulsion. And for a moment, when the projector light illuminates these souls and shines through their glowing, fluorescent, flawed shells, we’re able to see what truly is the most cinematic phenomenon of all: people.