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.

We’ve witnessed the hard downfall of music titans, the rise of others, all bringing into focus one single, important question: can we separate art from the artists? Depends on who you are. Sometimes it’s doable. Sometimes it’s downright unforgivable. 2022 made us ask ourselves a lot of these questions, all while incorporating the act of questioning the artist into the music itself. This year, reggaton reigned supreme, lo-fi indie-rock suddenly became not so lo-fi, and electronic dance found ways to borrow and re-invent itself. Artists not only challenged themselves, but challenged audiences in how they thought about and perceived them, the result being the most modern approach to music production we’ve seen this millennium. Here are the 10 best albums of 2022.

10. KING HANNAH – I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me

Earlier this year, Liverpool duo King Hannah took to the stage at LA’s Moroccan Lounge. The air was incendiary, the crowd positive, and the sound unique. After ripping through their opener “Well-Made Woman,” vocalist Hannah Merrick quivered, “Wow, hi, sorry we’re nervous, we weren’t expecting so many people.” The house lights came on, to which there was only about 15 people in the audience.

There was something genuine about that show. It felt like the perfect live representation for the album’s intimate, delicate soundscape. Part Portishead, part PJ Harvey, part trip-hop, part acid jazz, I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me is a solitary album that takes you to a place as it uses its tools wisely. Unapologetic in its approach, the album title speaks for itself: it’s another way of saying, “You all don’t have to agree on me, but I’m gonna do my thing.” And when they conjure up that feeling like a kindle of fire, in performance, with everywhere to spread, they could be one of the greatest duos in the world.

9. BLACK COUNTRY, NEW ROAD – Ants From Up There

Georgia Ellery has had quite the busy year. Aside from fronting her other band Jockstrap, she also had a hand in Black Country, New Road’s sophomore (and rumored to be last) album, Ants From Up There. And on her main instrument no less, the violin. But it’s hard to pin down what’s really at the heart of this record. It flourishes with lush instrumentals that seem to drift and sway all around you until you feel like you’re in the middle of an instrumental cyclone. But that’s perhaps the best part of this record – you don’t mind getting lost in it. In fact, it implores you to get lost in it. Soon enough, woodwinds sound like brass, strings get mistaken for percussion, and keys take the place of vocal melodies. It’s a very complex, post-rock record: you can practically feel how much time was spent on it in the intricacies of its layers. But the best way to listen to it? Pick a song from random, loop the album, and just let everything wash over you.

8. HORSEGIRL – Versions of Modern Performance

Chicago’s Horsegirl made an impressive run up to their debut album, Versions of Modern Performance, via a good amount of international airplay. Having established a growing audience overseas, one could easily mistake them as British (even we could’ve sworn they were British). Low-end, clean electric guitars, lyrics that seem far more mature than they could reach, it’s like something straight out of Interpol. Chicago never really got their “post-punk” band in the early 2000s, no band that truly rang with the heart of the city. But that changed with this record, although 20 years after the phenomenon. They sing of young romance, quarter-life existential dread, making a resonance with a city attachment that hasn’t been felt since Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. And for the first time in a long time, the streets of Chicago felt romantic again.

7. STEVE LACY – Gemini Rights

Lacy has made quite the trajectory over the last ten years since his time in The Internet, going from working with Vampire Weekend and Kali Uchis to his now seminal three album run. But Gemini Rights shows more of a maturity while still keeping a foot in his youthful radiance. There’s not a single minute on Gemini Rights that doesn’t allude to fate. Do you ever wonder what it takes, all the little moments that have to happen at exactly the right time, for two people to fall in love? The mission makes it feel nearly impossible, and Gemini Rights paints this phenomenon on a celestial backdrop. It really does feel like outer beings are in command of us outside of our control. Why do the circumstances have to happen in such way? It feels as if we have to relinquish our fate to something of a higher power. But when it does, it really feels as if stars are aligning (“But I could be your girlfriend/’Till retrograde is done.”) But Gemini Rights restores our faith in self-trust. No one’s going to tell us everything will turn out just as we planned, but we just have to trust ourselves that it’ll all turn out alright. Because it always does.

6. HAAi – Baby, We’re Ascending

Australia’s HAAi quickly came up in the electronic dance scene this year, not only because of her collaboration with Jon Hopkins, but due to her unique blend of eclectic electronic music. Drum ‘n Bass, jungle house, and UK garage all surface on this record, amongst others, lending to a seamless sonic journey through a record that doesn’t quite end where it begins, a natural flow of what feels like bouncing around a multi-room club like London’s Printworks or Manchester’s Warehouse Project. But she finds the elements of each genre that complement each other. It’s an education through the history of electronic music in what feels like a brisk 60 minutes, and we should all be signing up for the course.

5. JOCKSTRAP – I Love You Jennifer B.

As the linear expanse of original music production continues, as we embrace new technologies, new techniques to express ourselves, we begin to leave behind new methods as well. Then, this pool of old tech will eventually come back into fashion. What begins to happen, is that we start to contextualize it: not see it as “old” or “new,” but instead see them as tool sets, different muscles to lean on, and use the “old” as an instrument itself.

I don’t think Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye knew what they were cooking up when they started jamming at London’s Guildhall School of Music. Ellery, a violin player, and Skye, a synth geek, were only using the tools they had available to them, but stood far away enough from the source material to arrange their placements where they saw fit. I Love You Jennifer B. has these, too. With an influence from Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell just as much as Aphex Twin or Squarepusher, the album takes elements of these varying sources and arranges them to live together peacefully. Theoretical musicians will be studying this album for years to come, which already feels like an ancient relic.

For an album that sounds so much like the future, it maintains a foothold in the traditional. Ellery’s lyrics elevate these stylistic grooves to actual formulaic songs, baring such elements that one can dare call them a singer/songwriter’s. But it’s not. This is electronic music used emotionally; the last brace of human touch before surrendering to an electronic world.

4. ROSALíA – Motomami

In all its glitch-poppiness, Motomami works best when you think of it in its different modes of apparition. In its chopped-and-screwed state, it feels like there could be many versions of each song on the album. Just like how one could argue the best version of a movie is all the dailies strung together, one could argue the same with this record with its varied takes in full strung together. But its choppiness is where it finds its rhythm. I honestly could not tell you what she’s singing or spitting about, but her aggressive delivery lets me know that it’s coming from a place. But within it, she paints a disjointed portrait of herself, asking us to put the pieces together. Motomami feels like such a futuristic modern art piece that some people won’t be able to relate to or interpret it (even for us it had to be an acquired taste). Some will be frustrated with it, or perhaps, she’s just building the foundation for something new.

3. ALVVAYS – Blue Rev

This album conjures up many images: the dissolve of a relationship, the smell of your first car, wind in your hair, the last summer before college. Alvvays has been on a steady rise the past eight years making their way around the college radio circuit early on, but nothing could have foreshadowed the sonic depth they would arrive at on Blue Rev. Its sound harks back to how a good an alt-rock band sounded like in the 90s – lots of guitars, lots of distortion, an analog shimmer, mixed in a way that doesn’t sound like mud nor does it sound like it can be achieved in any other fashion. Like the colored layers of technicolor film, the chemical reactions seep into each other to create a Kodachrome look for the ears: pastel, mosaic, light-trails across a screen that fade all too quickly but last long enough so we can cherish them, creating one of the best rock records of 2022.

2. WET LEG – Wet Leg

Wet Leg’s Wet Leg feels like a fever dream, a desperate longing to be somebody else: the perfectly flawed, unapologetic version of oneself. Hailing from the Isle of Wight, Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers took the rock scene by storm in 2022, easily becoming the most consistently talked about band ever since their first singles released earlier this year. Cheeky mumbled verses, epic guitar licks, undeniable charm, and British humor all fed into their rise regardless if you could relate to them or not (we didn’t even know what a chaise longue was until this year). But everyone should be able to relate to them, because Wet Leg is about becoming the best version of yourself you always wanted to be. And aside from all that, it’s just a phenomenal rock record from start to finish, each song better than the last.

1. BEYONCE – Renaissance

We could list the contributions made by the many collaborators on this album: Honey Dijon, Mike Dean, Giorgio Moroder… we could go into the specifics of the technological aspects or the complexities of these tunes. But more importantly, this album is a history lesson in dance music, a retribution in taking back your happiness and finding a way to fall back in love with yourself, time and time again. The weekend this record came out, one could hear it on just about every dance floor in every club in their city, a calling card to rally the troops and go into a zone where all time stops, biology ceases to age our bodies, no matter how brief (“Ass getting bigger…”). That’s what a dance floor can do to you, and if this record is playing – a seamless, constant 120 BPM – it feels as if everyone is the same age, all of our bodies in a race against time. This record doesn’t just use dance music as a genre, but as a vessel, an outlet to transport one’s mind into an ageless body, that thing we find ourselves to be so uncomfortable in most of the time that we forget how to love our flaws. It’s an opportunity to lose all inhibitions. We spend so much time trying to find a fictionalized version of ourselves within us, that we forget the key to finding our real selves has been on the dance floor all along. Go find it.

2021 had no shortage of musical events – another Kanye/Drake face-off, a new Adele record, and an ABBA reunion to boot. We even saw the return of live music, something we seemed to lose sleep over if we’d never heard the likes of again. And like the film world, music is forever evolving, which the pandemic seems to have expedited. But the music of 2021 tended to focus on the small and intimate. There weren’t any grand gestures or complex concept albums (save for Donda), but a resounding sigh of relief that the music world is cobbling itself back together after being knocked down. Here are the best albums of 2021.

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10. GOJIRA – FORTITUDE

Perhaps the best and most “accessible” metal band working today, Gojira has been putting out solid records for the past two decades, finally achieving mainstream relevancy with Fortitude, their seventh studio album. It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel – no math-metal breakdowns, odd time signatures, or noodling riffs that are tricked for self-importance. What we have here is straight-forward, undiluted metal, one not only for the mosh pits, but for the curious minded. Featuring perhaps the most anthemic metal chant to come out in the past 10 years, the more Fortitude is listened to, the more visceral it becomes.

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9. VIAGRA BOYS – WELFARE JAZZ

Sweden’s Viagra Boys spent the better part of the last two years making a name for themselves in the alternative punk world, and they seemed to have delivered: Welfare Jazz is an exploratory movement in art punk, mixed in with saxophone and synthesizers as components for improvisation. In fact, if their chord structures were just a little more complex, some of these songs could be mistaken for jazz. Despite having their guitarist Benjamin Vallé pass away this year, they’ve managed to trudge on with their best record yet while refusing to repeat themselves.

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8. IDLES – CRAWLER

On Crawler, IDLES take a note from Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven, or even something to the effect of Code Orange. It’s a more inverted punk approach as opposed to what we’re used to hearing from the Bristol band: half-time jams, off-beat rhythms, and counter intuitive structures. It’s a band testing the limits of what they’re capable of, subverting expectations of what punk can sound like.

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7. PARQUET COURTS – SYMPATHY FOR LIFE

Cutting in with the best dance/art punk of the year is Denton, Texas’ Parquet Courts. The Brooklyn-based band has been kicking around the festival and public radio circuits for years now, but it wasn’t until Sympathy for Life where they achieved real mainstream attention, gaining praise from Iggy Pop and Mark Reilly along the way. It’s also an evolution in their sound. In Sympathy for Life, they’re not afraid to slow things down and try different musical palettes their fans aren’t accustomed to. Taking notes from Franz Ferdinand and Talking Heads, if I had to point to one bad that’s pushing dance rock to its fullest, its Parquet Courts.

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6. ARLO PARKS – COLLAPSED IN SUNBEAMS

This year’s Mercury Prize winner ultimately became the self-help guide to 2021. Listening to these songs as a whole collection sounds as if they are working in service for someone else. Who could she be singing to? A friend? A foe? A heartbroken lover? Collapsed in Sunbeams actually feels like sunshine – light, clean electric guitars, E-piano hooks, gentle delivery of lyrics that don’t speak in the definitive – it’s an SSRI of an album if there ever was one, or like Vitamin D that soaks beneath your veins.

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5. LITTLE SIMZ – SOMETIMES I MIGHT BE INTROVERT

It’s true that we all live two lives: the one we choose to share with other people, and the one in our heads. Introvert straddles these two points of perception: the interior and subjective is characterized by pleasing, joyous orchestral pieces, and the objective with the gritty grime setting of South London. And sometimes the two meet in the middle, albeit rarely. But it’s a special occasion that occurs – proof that there is a way to bring your true thoughts out. London rapper Little Simz does this with delicate detail, where daydream-like instrumentals come into contact with the grit of living in South London. But the interiority is a stark magnifying glass: we spend our lives inside ourselves so much that it’s true when people say “we are born alone and we die alone, everyone else is just a bonus.”

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4. LOW – HEY WHAT

Low’s electronic a cappella reaches new depths with Hey What. It’s an album that doesn’t sound like an “album” in conventional terms. It’s more as if they start and stop whenever they please. The songs play like comets coming in and out of our orbit, and with a set piece like “Days Like These,” the harmonized vocals continually become more distorted, as if they’re a distress signal drifting farther and farther away. It’s a haunting record, no doubt, but one that shows proof of musical evolution by transmitting emotion through electronics.

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3. AROOJ AFTAB – VULTURE PRINCE

Sometimes a song’s emotional emphasis lies in between the notes. Saudi-born, Booklyn-based Pakistani artist and Berklee College of Music professor Arooj Aftab has spent enough time teaching that she’s been able to carve out her own space in music theory. And thanks to a shoutout from Barrack Obama, she’s now becoming a part of everyday music lingo with a grammy nomination to boot. Perhaps the most transcendental album of the year, Vulture Prince leaves you in a meditation accompanied by sounds that don’t really belong on this earth, acting on a near-unconscious level.

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2. DRY CLEANING – NEW LONG LEG

On paper, Dry Cleaning shouldn’t work. A girl rambling on about the mundanities of life as if they were coming from her own consciousness? I don’t think so. But it works. There are no frills to New Long Leg, only that it’s a proper step toward a new type of rock music. Sure, it’s been done before: the rambling stream of consciousness, the post-punk instrumentation, the bass taking over as the lead instrument… they’re elements that have been recycled. But Dry Cleaning assigns their own definitions. They claim a space that’s theirs. They’re called “Dry Cleaning” for a reason: you get your attire back but in a new and improved way.

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1. JAPANESE BREAKFAST – JUBILEE

Following up her 2017 album Soft Sounds From Another Planet, Michelle Zauner seems to have taken it up a notch. I couldn’t really tell you what Jubilee is about, but more so of what it feels like: a shot for cathartic release. Soft vintage synths (an evolution from the plug-ins used previously) give way to flying horns, as if they’re waves washing ashore causing one to deep dive into anxious self-reflection. This album’s about desperately wanting to be happy, and the neurotic state that comes with questioning if you are so. But what is happiness? It’s just a moment before you want more happiness. We all wish it could be this prolonged feeling, but it’s good to confront that thought from time to time. That’s what Jubilee feels like. And by the end of it, you’ll swear you felt something intangible.

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