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voodoochili · 2 years

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My Favorite Albums of 2022

The story of the 2020s–the years keep getting harder, the music keeps getting better. There's nothing I get more pleasure from these days than exploring the vast universe of new music that we are so lucky to be able to access with just a few keystrokes. Keeping up with everything can be overwhelming, but it's so so rewarding.

Here are my favorite albums from a very deep year–there's probably a smaller gap between my #1 and my #25 than ever before. But unranked lists are for cowards!

Check the bottom for the full list and a Spotify playlist with selections from every album.

Onward we go!

10. Fievel Is Glauque - Flaming Swords: Perhaps no album released in 2022 was as jam-packed with seemingly contradictory musical ideas as Flaming Swords. Fievel Is Glauque songwriter/bandleader Zach Phillips aims for sensory overload, cramming complex chords, modal key changes, free jazz freakouts, and hyperactive drum beats into his miniature prog-pop masterpieces. Nearly each one of these 18 songs has a moment of unexpected virtuosity, whether in the composition or the performance. The song that best represents the album’s messy ideal is “Save The Premonition,” a one-minute forty-six second sprint through moments of harmonic inspiration, never settling down for more than a measure at a time.

From my description, it might seem like Flaming Swords is a difficult listen, but though it takes some time to get used to the hyperactivity, these songs are targeted missiles aimed directly towards the pleasure centers of the brain, with sonorous saxophones and liquid keyboards augmenting the dulcet Francophone tones of lead singer Ma Clément. This is pop music filtered through a prism, separating the traditional elements of sound into their essences and reconstituting it into something entirely new.

9. Caracara - New Preoccupations: Philadelphia emo band Caracara isn’t afraid to mine the “embarrassing” sounds of the past in its search for catharsis. If you told the 2005 version of me that one of my favorite albums of 2022 would crib from bands like Snow Patrol or Relient K, I would’ve told you to buzz off before cranking up the volume on “Stay Fly” by Three 6 Mafia. But New Preoccupations won me over with its aching sincerity, its full-throated realization of the melancholy behind mundane moments (“I was listening to the Dirty Projectors in a Volvo by the freeway funeral pyre,” singer Sean Gill exhorts in highlight track “Colorglut”), and some powerhouse performances by the band. Producer (and Memory Music label head) Will Yip keeps things interesting, finding a guitar sound that would’ve fit nicely into WPLJ’s Hot Adult Contemporary lineup in the mid-90s and adding contemporary touches like programmed drums and rolling pianos. My favorite moments on New Preoccupations happen when the band grows tired of midtempo rockers and goes balls to the wall. They bust the door down early on the dissociative anthem “Hyacinth,” and put a bow on the proceedings with the achingly raw “Monoculture”: “I’M FINALLY FREE TO LET GO.”

8. Cash Cobain & Chow Lee - 2 SLIZZY 2 SEXY (Deluxe): 2 Live Crew changed the game in the late 80s by combining the compulsively danceable Miami bass sound with some of the raunchiest songs known to man. Luther Campbell and crew were so gleefully horned-up that they changed America’s copyright laws forever. Nearly 40 years later, NYC duo Cash Cobain and Chow Lee are bravely following in 2 Live Crew’s footsteps, providing a fresh spin on the dominant dance music of their region (in this case, Jersey/Philly club) to further their noble mission to make the horniest music of all time. So yes, Cash and Chow are sex-crazed to the point of obsession, but they’re making some genuinely game-changing shit. Cash is one of the best producers on the planet, a master of flipping a familiar sample into something fresh and unrecognizable. He saves his best beats for himself, from the ethereal and speaker-slamming J. Holiday flip on, um, “JHOLIDAY,” to the audacious Stevie Wonder sample on “SLIZZY LIKE,” to the absolutely beautiful “FREAK OF DI WEEK.” Cash and Chow combine their otherworldly instrumentals with an energy that mirrors teenagers at their first sleepovers after learning all the curse words, bouncing off each other in a competition over who can be the most out-of-pocket (Chow usually wins that competition). Don’t sleep on the deluxe edition, which brings even more brilliant beats and shamelessly lowers the bar X-rated bars even further, inviting some of the best rappers in the Tri-State area to meet them on their libidinous level.

7. Cloakroom - Dissolution Wave: Cloakroom exists on the bleeding edge between shoegaze and stoner metal, overwhelming with punishing soundscapes and entrancing with spectral melodies. Their 2022 album Dissolution Wave is lean and mean, clocking in at 39 minutes (Cloakroom hadn’t previously made an album shorter than 60 minutes), delivering a confident complement of space-age rockers. No album this year was better synthesizing such an intense beauty, its crushing walls of sound enhancing the heartfelt songwriting. On a few songs, including the midtempo “A Force At Play” (featuring keys from Matt Talbott from Cloakroom’s stylistic influence Hum) and the devastating countrified ballad “Doubts,” the band proves that they don’t need fuzz to make a major emotional impact. My favorite headphones album of the year.

6. billy woods - Aethiopes: billy woods is an astonishing wordsmith, crafting bars that can collapse hundreds of years of traumatic history into a single couplet. He’s at his best when he’s shining a light on the grimiest aspects of our society, and our society is grimy enough for multiple albums per year, all of them good, usually created in tandem with a producer. Aethiopes, produced in full by underground hero Preservation, is woods’ grimiest and greatest yet, packed with an array of industrial instrumentals that grind like the gears of a lurching, lumbering, ill-intentioned contraption.

The beat for “Wharves” clinks and clacks like a skeleton playing its own ribcage like a xylophone, a fitting backdrop for woods' story that touches on cannibalistic tribes and the Atlantic slave trade. “Heavy Water” invites Breeze Brewin and El-P to tag team an unbearably tense slice of boom-bap, as woods calls himself “the multiverse Benzino.” “No Hard Feelings” swirls with detuned woodwinds and ethereal synths, sounding like the warmup anthem for a closer on Hell's favorite baseball team, providing a bed for woods to show out in his trademark style–he rhymes with escalating intensity, his booming voice rising along with the music. The tension built in the first three quarters of the album dissipates with the final run of soul-samplers, but those outwardly gorgeous songs contain some of woods’s ugliest bars. From “Remorseless”: “Three rooms filled with Incan treasure/Still strangled the king cause it's now or never/It's a freedom in admitting it's not gonna get better.”

5. Naima Bock - Giant Palm: Naima Bock’s Giant Palm gleams like a greenhouse during golden hour, organic and synthetic elements operating in harmony to create an album unlike any I’ve heard before. The album is a spiritual successor to Mort Garson’s horticultural synth music and Vashti Bunyan’s insular, pastoral ballads, with strains of folk from Brazil and England mixed in for good measure. Created in collaboration with co-producer/arranger Joel Burton, the former Goat Girl bassist’s solo debut is structured like the tree of its title, a variety of frilled fronds emanating from a knotty heart–in this case, everything stems from Bock’s endless wonder at the marvels of our natural world, which she expresses through plaintive, immersive, and unpredictable ballads. Some of my favorite moments: the psychedelically eerie call-and-response that begins “Every Morning”; the whimsically bluesy piano in “Instrumental”; the dissonant waltz that undergirds the haunting “Campervan”; and the beautiful harmonies that adorn the Portuguese-language bossa nova ballad “O Morro,” which ends the album on a nostalgic note.

4. Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You: Big Thief is in a special kind of creative groove right now. Frontwoman Adrienne Lenker has a seemingly bottomless arsenal of amazing songs, and her band has the adventurous mindset, telepathic chemistry, and ace musicianship to execute any of her ideas. The natural next step for a band on this kind of run: dropping a double album to show off the breadth of what they can do. The unwieldily-titled Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You fits that bill, packing in some of their best songs while pushing their sound forward. You want classic Big Thief ballads? They’ve got them, including the immaculate “Change” and plaintive “No Reason.” Prefer the hard-rocking side of the band that they perfected on 2019’s Two Hands? Take “Little Things” or the cathartic “Love Love Love.” They even unveil some new tricks, like the trip-hoppy “Blurred View” and the minimal Magnetic Fields-meets-Springsteen experiment “Wake Me Up To Drive.” My favorites on here, though, channel what the music critic Greil Marcus called “The Old Weird America,” an energy that powers the cosmic hoedown “Spud Infinity,” the slinky and percussive “Time Escaping,” and the joyous, countrified “Red Moon.”

3. Earl Sweatshirt - SICK!: Earl Sweatshirt has been famous since he was sixteen years old, something that must feel particularly strange to the self-professed introvert. On his latest album SICK!, the now-28-year-old rapper seems to open up, inspired by his newfound fatherhood and embracing his role as the leader of a rising wave of left-of-center lyricists. The song sketches that populated 2018’s Some Rap Songs have (mostly) been replaced by fuller statements, its grainy, drumless loops giving way to slicker sounds.

The beats on SICK! are spectacular, from Theravada’s sorrowful and operatic “Tabula Rasa,” to The Alchemist’s menacing and cinematic “Old Friend,” to the multiple soundscapes crafted by Black Noi$e (especially the jazzy closer “Fire In The Hole”). Earl doesn’t rhyme over the instrumentals as much as he inhabits them, his resigned sigh painting contours and filling negative space, and effortlessly unfurling assonant and tangled bars like (from “Tabula Rasa”): “The calcium on my teeth fade/Streets are blazed with the anger complacency and deceit create/Ice sheet break, I couldn't weave weight/All I could say to the times that I couldn't freeze-frame, bleak fate.”

2. Makaya McCraven - In These Times: Producer, drummer, composer, and bandleader Makaya McCraven creates his albums like a mad scientist, laying down hundreds of hours of improvised live sessions and piecing them together to create wholly unique compositions. His music thrives on the moments of brief inspiration that come from a group of brilliant musicians playing together, creating an indelible atmosphere by stretching out and looping sections to form a new groove. Inspired by the legendary output CTI Records in the early ‘70s (home to George Benson, Hubert Laws, Bob James, and many others), McCraven curates a sound that combines the smoother side of fusion with complex, odd-meter rhythms. His percussion work is usually unflashy*, providing a bedrock for his collaborators to express themselves to the fullest. “So Ubuji” finds McCraven laying down a boom-bap style drum pattern as vibraphonist Joel Ross and harpist Brandee Younger elevate the song to the stratosphere, while the tangled polyrhythms of “High Fives” benefits from the virtuosic guitar playing of Jeff Parker. The album climaxes with penultimate track “The Knew Untitled,” a devastating composition that begins with swirling piano-led chaos before guitarist Matt Gold lays down one of the best guitar solos of this young decade. The most transportive and mesmerizing album released in 2022.

*with a notable exception coming on the thrilling “This Place That Place"

1. They Hate Change - Finally, New: They Hate Change (Vonne and Dre, both of whom rap and produce) operate with supreme confidence, creating a singular sonic blend informed, but not defined, by their omnivorous musical influences. Vonne and Dre are both great emcees–Vonne has a style that occupies the unlikely convergence between Big Boi, Ish Butler of Digable Planets/Shabazz Palaces, and Sonny Cheeba of Camp Lo, while Dre's drawling rhymes evoke both E-40 and Pimp C. Though they're clearly in love with hip-hop, the two Tampa natives are equally obsessed with dance music of all stripes, and Finally, New explores the unexpected connections between UK breakbeats and Florida’s club tradition, incorporating notes of Miami bass and Tampa jook alongside UK garage and DnB. The result is an album built for both head-nodding and ass-shaking. It's in constant motion even when it slows down, the two rappers brashly projecting an attitude that makes their flexing hit as hard as their evisceration of societal norms. A key track is “Some Days I Hate My Voice,” a defiant missive from Vonne that explores the nonbinary emcee’s inherent contradictions: “Some days I hate my voice, some days I feel like I'm the Metratron/Some days I'm basic, some days I'm dolled up like pageant debutantе.” I waffled for a long time about what to put at number one. I listened to hundreds of albums this year, and adored many of them, but for the top spot on this year’s list, I decided to just go with the album that sounded the freshest. Bursting with invention and bracing in its fearless experimentation, Finally, New is like nothing I’ve ever heard.

The rest of the list (playlist HERE): 11. 454 - Fast Trax 3 12. Bad Bunny - Un Verano Sin Ti 13. Asake - Mr. Money With The Vibe 14. Duval Timothy - Meeting With A Judas Tree 15. Animal Collective - Time Skiffs 16. DaBoii - Can’t Tame Us 17. The Soft Pink Truth - Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? 18. Obongjayar - Some Nights I Dream Of Doors 19. Sessa - Estrela Acesa 20. Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers 21. Babyface Ray - FACE/MOB 22. Ron Trent - What Do The Stars Say To You 23. Hagan - Textures 24. WizKid - More Love, Less Ego 25. Smino - Luv 4 Rent 26. SZA - SOS 27. Duke Deuce - CRUNKSTAR 28. Alex G - God Save The Animals 29. Cate Le Bon - Pompeii 30. Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - Reset 31. Arctic Monkeys - The Car 32. PLOSIVS - PLOSIVS 33. Real Lies - Lad Ash 34. Rema - Rave & Roses 35. Drakeo The Ruler - Keep The Truth Alive 36. Beth Orton - Weather Alive 37. Tony Shhnow - Reflexions/Plug Motivation 38. Rosalía - MOTOMAMI 39. Beyonce - RENAISSANCE 40. Shabason & Krgovich - At Scaramouche 41. $ilkMoney - I Don’t Give a F*ck About This Rap Sh*t… 42. Quelle Chris - DEATHFAME 43. Dazegxd - vKISS 44. Phelimuncasi - Ama Gogela 45. Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn - Pigments 46. Björk - Fossora 47. Roedelius & Tim Story - 4 Hands 48. Valee - VACABULAREE 49. NBA YoungBoy - 3800 Degrees 50. Toro Y Moi - MAHAL 51. Ethel Cain - Preacher’s Daughter 52. Brent Faiyaz - WASTELAND 53. Boldy James - Fair Exchange No Robbery (w/ Nicholas Craven)/ Mr. Ten08 (w/ Futurewave) 54. quinn - quinn 55. Rachika Nayar - Heaven Come Crashing 56. Junior Boys - Waiting Game 57. Friendship - Love The Stranger 58. Saba - Few Good Things 59. Silvana Estrada - Marchita 60. Rauw Alejandro - SATURNO 61. Ralfy The Plug - Skateboard P (Deluxe)/Pastor Ralfy 2 (Deluxe) 62. Sudan Archives - Natural Black Prom Queen 63. Kikagaku Moyo - Kumoyo Island 64. Young Slo-Be - Southeast 65. Death’s Dynamic Shroud - Darklife 66. Mr. Fingers - Around The Sun Pt. 1 67. RealYungPhil - Dr. Philvinci 68. CEO Trayle - HH5 69. Lil Poppa - HEAVY IS THE HEAD 70. Los - Kareem From New Orleans, Vol. 2 71. Fred Again - Actual Life 3 72. Gunna - DS4EVER 73. The Comet Is Coming - Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam 74. Ka - Language Arts/Woeful Studies 75. The Beths - Experts In A Dying Field

NOTE: This albums list could’ve gone on for at least another 75, and rest assured it would’ve included your favorite album from 2022! But I’ll make a special shout out to albums that just missed the cut: Luna Li, Nu Genea, Tears For Fears, Bartees Strange, Shawny Binladen, Little Simz, Oso Oso, Hikaru Utada, MAVI, BONES, Central Cee, BlueBucksClan, and Jay Worthy, Larry June & LNDN Drugs. Songs from those albums are included in my Spotify playlist.

#they hate change #makaya mccraven #earl sweatshirt #billy woods #big thief #naima bock #cloakroom #cash cobain #chow lee #caracara #fievel is glauque #454 #duval timothy #Spotify

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