in the future there will be a terrible cost for all that we've left undone

My 23 favorite songs of 2023

I can’t remember exactly when but at some point this year, probably springtime, I got really grumpy about the lack of good new music that I had heard. Up to that point I had probable been lazy or too busy to pay attention, but I was obviously mistaken; something did happen in music this year that feels different than at any other time, though. The monoculture really is dead, for better or for worse, and the tried-and-true record labels just aren’t pouring as much money into projects the way they used to. This was the year musicians took to social media to lament merch cuts and to speak about how hard it is to make a living in music right now and the response was kind of a collective shrug in agreement. Choosing a career in music right now feels feels like a calling akin to the priesthood.

And then amid all of these big changes in how we consume culture, some of the best music came trickling out of the most unsuspecting places. By year’s end there really was a hefty stack of truly great records released this year and even more really really good ones. Below are my 23 favorite songs from those records, all of which can be found on my bigger playlist, which I assembled on Spotify and will plug into this thing right here.

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So anyways, here are my 23 favorite songs from 2023, and why they made it on here:

Greg Mendez – Shark’s Mouth

Because music needs Sad Guys. When there are too few Sad Guys in music, it creates a vacuum and music overall tends to get really bad. We need the Sad Guys to keep everyone else in check. They’ve been there the whole time, even if you haven’t noticed them. Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, Jason Molina, David Berman, Alex G, that type of Guy. Greg Mendez is a newer iteration of this musical format; he’s a perfect torch-bearer for the genre and is a more-than-adequate apostle of Elliott and Co. His songs and his poetry are spare and short; he doesn’t toy with you, he gets in and makes his cuts and gets out of there. For instance, here are the complete lyrics to Shark’s Mouth:

If you wanna be caught in some shark's mouth

Spill a bucket of blood in the water

Or take the Chinatown down to your old house

And spend a lonely night up with your father

He'll deck the halls with blood red and gold

You never felt so scared to be alone

'Til now

Ernest Hemingway gets a quote misattributed to him often about writing a six-word story about for-sale baby shoes and it drives me crazy when people bring the quote up and credit him; but it is true that Hemingway was notoriously stingy with words, which of course helped create his laconic, percussive prose. I think Hemingway, one of literature’s Sad Guys, would really appreciate Greg Mendez’s writing. There somehow is a lot there and also very little. And on top of that, much like the entire album, this song is just really pretty.

Yo La Tengo – Aselestine

Because on their seventeenth studio album, YLT rocks per usual, in their stolid, workmanlike manner. And while I will always be a sucker for their brand of rock n roll, the wry humor and the crunchy guitars and the noise, what I loved the most about this album were the moments of stillness they managed to produce. In Aselestine you can almost hear a hiss of the tape. If you listen to the record loud enough (which you should), you can hear your ears ringing during this track. Georgia Hubley’s vocals are perfect for this track; patient, graceful, light. 

Cusp – My Two Cents

Because songs that sound like they were In Utero demos will always matter to me. What I loved about Cusp’s entire album this year was the constant oscillation from these bright, jangly guitars to chunky, shoegazey fuzz. This song happens to have both and when the fuzz washes over you, it’s pure catharsis. This is a brand-new band from Chicago and are a must-watch as they continue to develop.

Sufjan Stevens – Shit Talk

Because one of the great artists of my lifetime just can’t stop making stuff that is so great it feels like it permeates the dividing membranes of this existence. Sufjan had a very well-documented turbulent year and, if his music wasn’t so damn whimsical, he’d probably qualify as a Sad Guy. This album, which has been hailed as a “return to form” (although I hadn’t noticed a deviation from which he needed to return), has some of the year’s best-sounding music on it. I am surprised by how few reviews note that this song is the album’s best - I think it should be undisputed. I love the opening of this song, with its rhythmic acoustic arpeggios building up and up and then  drawing down again before all the instruments, the horns and the electronic drums and the strings and the synths and the guitars and the vocals all crash back in, the repetitive line “I will always love you, I don’t wanna fight at all” finally diminishing back into nothingness, back to emptiness, the echo of the entire ecosystem of this song holding on like a frosted fingerprint on a car door, like breath fog. A whole life is lived in this song, the entire cycle of it all. It’s beauty on a different plane of existence, intangible.

Heem – Same Ole G

Because, in the year of rap’s 50^th birthday, there is truly something for everyone in this genre. Ironically I think 2023 was one of the weaker years for rap music, but the style itself has splintered so spectacularly that each little pocket, each subgenre, each local scene is so idiosyncratic and unique that at this point I generally don’t trust people who say that they don’t like rap. In rap songs this year I heard emo, I heard dream and bedroom pop, I heard trap, and I heard the classic gangster music I grew up obsessing over. There is a greater emphasis on lyrics and poetry; production and beatmaking have become a skilled trade, and the masters of the art are making some of the best music on the planet. There is a spectrum of rap now; there are extremes like on any spectrum but there is truly room for everyone on it. Some, but not as much, rap made it on my bigger playlist but this song, by Buffalo rapper Heem, stuck with me this year because it felt like such a callback to the classic boom-bap style of rap I grew up on. Even the cover harkens back to a Game album that was extremely formative for me.

Heem is younger than me and younger than he insinuates in this song, but as he spins the tales in his verses of a life lived hard, of experiences that should have rocked him to his core, of scenes they only could dream up while they made the gangster movies that influenced the earliest rap songs, he always comes back to the chorus of, essentially, “I’m still here and I’m still me.”

Kirk Douglas once said (I am paraphrasing here) that maybe as we age we don’t change so much as we become a boiled-down-to-the-essence of the stuff we are truly made of, like we begin life a block of marble and don’t become a complete work until our final days. What we become as we age is the concentrated form of our essence. Heem knows exactly who he is, his rapping persona fits him like a tailored jacket, and it’s going to fit him until they put him in the box. Or so he says.

Militarie Gun – Do It Faster

Because Hardcore Guys know how to make the best music, it’s been scientifically proven. And there’s something to that “OOH OOH” he does in the vocals. This whole album is just pure mindless fun and I love it so much.

Saturdays at Your Place – Tarot Cards

Because a power pop-adjacent emo song will always be catnip to my ears. Song like this one will simply always make my best-of lists; it feels like this one was made specifically for me. And this one also happens to be just a really well-made song.

Chris Farren – Cosmic Leash

Because “I love to reap – I hate to sow” is one of my favorite lyrics of the year. Because all I needed from Chris Farren were some loud, reverby drums and I would finally “get” him and he would become one of my favorite artists. And because the hook on this one – Lordy, the hooks on this album – is so big that it sounds like it might never end.

Cut Worms – Living Inside

Because rock n’ roll has always had a gentle side. There are plenty of faster and catchier Cut Worms songs than this one, but with this song (and really with this whole album) Max Clarke has created an entire atmosphere of sound. His melodies sound so familiar and new at the same time, it’s almost as if he is chasing the moment when rock and roll was born, like he is tumbling backwards in time, searching for the sprouted seed that started it all. I half expect his next record to sound like something Fats Domino or Chuck Berry would make. And that would be wonderful.

Superviolet – Locket

Because Rivers Cuomo isn’t writing songs like this anymore but, miraculously, they still get made. You just have to know where to look.

Cory Hanson – Housefly

Because this entire album is one of the coolest things I’ve heard in a long time and this song is a perfect distillation of what Cory Hanson does so well. Housefly is a song every rock n roll band wishes they could write, from the smart melodic choices to the absolutely blistering guitar work. I remember seeing this album come out and thinking “huh – that’s a really unfortunate album title” and while I still don’t really get why he named it what he did, this is one of the technically best albums I’ve heard in a long while. This guy can play guitar.

Joanna Sternberg – I Will Be With You

Because everything in this arrangement sounds so simple but is so meticulously put together, from the bone-dry piano which opens this song up all the way to the accompanying strings that carry this song along to the ending, the lyrics a prayer of longing and devotion and persistence, I will be with you I will be with I will be with you some day, you’ll see. I just know it. It’s a feeling we’ve all felt before. All the best folk music makes something like this look so easy and this entire album does exactly that. Stereoactive Media did a great feature on Joanna Sternberg that kind of blew my mind when I watched it. They are just such a fascinating person and a clearly gifted multifaceted artist and I just am so excited to see what they do next.

Slow Pulp – Slugs

Because the skill of knowing how to write a good melody is like rhythm: you either have it or you don’t. I have been listening to this album a lot lately and daydreaming of long sunny days and the smell of grass and mud and air pouring into a car through the sunroof. I love the undertones of longing in this song, the acknowledgment of the familiar kind of love that might not be particularly welcome but is there always, like a summer song that you can never get out of your head. “Perfect,” sings Slow Pulp frontwoman Emily Massey, “all the ways I know we fit together, I think I want back in / Oh, when it all ends again what if I tell you that you'll be playing in my head? / 'Cause you're a summer hit, I'm singing it.”

Sometimes the way you remember something is even better than the real thing, or maybe you tell yourself that so you don’t go back to a well you know is either dried up or just not a great choice. Either way, when it’s good it’s good and there’s nothing you can do about it. Like a summer hit.

Indigo De Sousa – Younger and Dumber

Because this is the saddest song I’ve heard in a long, long time. The first time I heard this song I held my breath the entire time. It belongs in the pantheon of devastatingly beautiful sad songs, a modern day Nothing Compares 2 U. The choices De Souza makes on this song – the pedal steel, the muted bass drum and cymbal that finally kick off the percussion at almost two and a half minutes into the song, the way she ends up letting her vocals absolutely blast off; all were just so deftly made. A masterful song, one that only comes around once a generation.  

Jeff Rosenstock – FUTURE IS DUMB

Because the year of the NFT sucked. Because Crypto makes me want to throw my phone into the Allegheny River and run, unbridled, into the woods and never be seen again. Because AI is trash. Because we got a billionaire obsessed with space who loves The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and he turned out to be a red-pilled internet tryhard who ruins every company he buys with this spoiled-brat apartheid emeralds.

Because we spent our whole lives dreaming of what the 21^st Century would look like, we longed for a new age in the sort of science fiction utopia our parents’ generation dreamed about and what we got was a year where basically everything that happened in the global news was incredibly stupid. Because Jeff Rosenstock is one of the great songwriters of our generation and did it again with this one. Because this sounds like a punk song that I would have loved so much in 1998 and I love it just as much in 2023, this very stupid year.

Wednesday – Quarry

Because the hype is real – this band is legit. Guitarist MJ Lenderman has had himself a couple very good years, but what I like about Wednesday aside from their slouchy, scuzzy southern alternative rock is the Daniel Woodrell-esque writing of singer Karly Hartzman. She would be a great noir crime writer in a second life. In this song, she paints these little vignettes that could be Flannery O’Connor short stories instead of song verses. The Wednesday song that is making a lot of the best-of lists is “Chosen to Deserve” which is terrific as well but what I like about this one is the tug-of-war between the verse and chorus, a balancing act between melody and dissonance and order and disarray. This band is like if Ditch Trilogy era Neil Young made an album with Butch Vig. There’s something special happening in the music scene down there in Asheville and if these guys keep their noses clean I think they could be one of the biggest rock n roll things going.

Worriers – Trust Your Gut

Because Lauren Denitzio is one of the great punk rock songwriters of my generation. Worriers has been sneaky great for a very long time and this has been a pretty prolific year for them. This song reminds me of early R.E.M. songs in the way that it sounds like a hook on top of a hook on top of a hook. Add a truly great guitar riff in there and you’ve just got a perfect formula for a song. Lauren Denitzio’s guitar tone is one of the best in the biz; their guitar on this track sounds like the amplifier is embedded in my cochlea. Just a perfect little song.

Ratboys – Morning Zoo

Because this entire album is a revelation.

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain

Because I think Meek’s other band, Big Thief, is overrated and so this album, his third solo LP, snuck up on me. He has said in interviews that this album is a series of “love letters from the road,” but to me this sounds like an album written by someone who finally feels settled down and at home. Originally from Texas, Meek moved to New York during the peak Big Thief years, and recently moved back to the country, settling down in rural California. Meek sings like a guy who needs to have a patch of woods nearby, and it’s clear that the move has done him quite a bit of good.

Maybe Haunted Mountain is a little song about an actually-haunted mountain, and the narrator isn’t actually Meek. Maybe it is him and this song is about the new peace he has found out there in the country. “Every dewdrop on this haunted mountain,” he writes, “is like a tiny crystal ball. Early in the morning, I peer into the living leaves, and prophesy with the light of dawn.”

It really doesn’t matter what it’s about; it’s like being in love. We all have a haunted mountain out there, and once we find it, we never want to come back down again. I’m so glad Meek has found his.

Geese – 2122

Because my friend Patrick put it this way and he’s right: this song is like if Black Sabbath had a sense of humor. I had a theory that Geese made this album as loose as it is to screw over the jam band Goose and the music writers who confuse Geese for Goose and vice versa, but after listening to it probably a hundred times this year, I think this is just the album this promising young New York band wanted to make. It’s purposefully-weird, it’s audacious, it’s rock and roll, man.

Washer – Not Like You/The Itch

Because this was my favorite album of 2023, from a band totally new to me before this release. And I know that I picked two songs here, but this band’s songs are so short that this sequence on the album feels like one song. The propulsive post-pandemic freewheeling joy of Not Like You moves right into the apocalyptic uneasiness and ennui of The Itch, where the narrator asks, “Do we even meet our aspirations, or will we just be content to live?” This entire record walks that existential edge between looming dread and shrugging puerility, sometimes going back and forth in the same song. It’s one of the great records for this exact moment.

Also, I saw this band live this year and I just think it’s awesome that a) they’re a two-piece band and they tour as a two-piece and b) singer-guitarist Mike Quigley switches from a normal six-string guitar to a bass guitar with effects for some songs. In a just world this band would be huge.

Liquid Mike – American Record

Because this band, the rock band I’m most excited about right now as I write this, has not written one bad song, and this one is an apt summation of what they do best. This band was my favorite find this year. The Mike in Liquid Mike is a like a power-pop John Prine, delivering mail in a snowy midwestern town by day and writing perfect songs by night. Another band I just can’t wait to witness in the coming years.

Protomartyr – 3800 Tigers

Because Protomartyr did it again. These fellas from Detroit do nothing but make great post-punk rock n roll with a consistency that is adding up to become one of the most serious runs of well-made albums this side of the classic rock heyday. This song, with an absolute all-time fuzzed out bass riff introduction, makes me want to run through a wall the second I hear it. “There’s 3800 tigers in this world but there’s far too many of you fools,” scolds frontman Joe Casey; and just when you think this song might serve as the furious death rattle of a dying species on a dying planet, it morphs into a mediation on…advanced baseball statistics? By the time the band crashes into the ending and Casey is repeating the line the crowd is screaming “yeah eat ‘em up now, tigers!” I don’t know if he’s referring to some kind of Roman coliseum or the baseball stadium in Detroit or if he is just referring to the notion of nature reclaiming what belongs to it and wiping out the scourge of humanity, and it doesn’t really matter. It’s everything and nothing to Protomartyr, they exist in that duality. Every song is both a joke you’re not in on and the most serious thing you’ve ever heard.

This album should have made more best-of lists. I think people take Protomartyr for granted. There’s the usual fare here, sure, but there’s an extra layer of depth thanks to Casey’s very uncharacteristically reflective writing as he grieved the loss of his mother while making this album. Casey’s presence is undeniable and unflinching and the band, who have always provided the perfect background for his words, is sounding better than ever. This is a band just completely locked in, and this song was the mightiest one I listened to all year.