Dark Night, No Soul. This year, the playlist is upfront. I want you to hear these songs; they shake me. They all live on great albums. Truth is, 2022 was a good year in music for me. There were dozens of albums released this year that I’d recommend you hear. I played them plenty often. I like them quite a lot. But the albums that made this list were the ones that carried me and my household this year. A few of them have snuck in, recent surprises. I suspect they’re seasonal crushes, but maybe it’s more, and anyway, a seasonal crush is very representative of this year. The playlist just leans heavy on the fall.
Daniel Tashian’s Night After Night is a slickly produced country affair. My first thought was that it might be too smooth and go down too easy, but I keep putting it on. My kid has gotten really into music this year. His obsession with John Prine is mostly charming and only slightly concerning. What do you make of a kid who sings, “I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve”? Anyway, he’s got a sensibility, and he’s loving Night After Night. When it’s on, he steals the speaker and takes it into his room. I consider that an endorsement. Night Shop’s Forever Night (a theme emerges!) only recently caught my attention. I listened to it when it came out, but I must have been in some mood, but now in another mood, I’m in love with the Los Angeles power pop. The song on the playlist works in some brilliant Dante references. What more could I want? Kevin Morby’s This Is a Photograph is stellar. It wears its Dylan influence without shame, but – and this is too rare – it lives up to it. Lyrically brilliant and frequently moving. You can’t complain when you have Erin Rae sing with you; her Lighten Up from this year was also a fine listen.
If I have an album of the year, it is Plains’ I Walked With You A Ways. The duo is Jess Williamson and Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee). They spin out a direct country album with flawless songwriting. I adored Waxahatchee’s St Cloud, and this builds on that. It’s the clear favorite in the house. My kid sings all ten songs, fully committed. I don’t think you could do any better than learning songwriting from “Abilene.” The moves it makes are perfect. The rest of the album is just as good.
I think Noah Kahan’s Stick Season is a fling. I’ve been pulled in by this vibe before. Occasionally it leaves its mark, as with the glorious Langhorne Slim, but usually it fades away. Kahan is witty; he’s got bite. He isn’t afraid to go all-in on the feelings. And it works.
Bonny Light Horsemen’s Rolling Golden Holy was eagerly anticipated in my house. There were quite a few records I was looking forward to – the singles were promising and I was excited – but they, more often than not, didn’t deliver as an album. Bonny Light Horsemen delivered. A great record (once track 2 is removed) that feels like a continuation of what they started on their first album without merely repeating themselves. The chemistry of these three is something truly special.
I have arrived at middle age. I listen to quite a lot more jazz than before. But how could you not listen to more jazz when Makaya McCraven’s In These Times was released? McCraven is a drummer, and you can hear the care and complexity of the beats, often layers deep. But they don’t overpower the whole thing — they establish the ground on which the songs live. This one feels classic on its first listen and keeps getting better.
Nick Mulvey’s New Mythologies touches on a mystical spirituality. The first track, “Prayer of My Own” has been my own personal meditation this year. The rest of the album more than holds its own. Kae Tempest’s The Line Is a Curve hits me in an interesting way. I love some of their work more than pretty much anything in both poetry and music. That unreserved love has made it hard for me to connect with some of their other work. On first listen, I didn’t feel this one as a whole. My friend sent me a Song Exploder episode that gave me a way to understand the album. The vocals are recorded live in front of a small audience of generations – the youth, the adult, and the elderly. You can feel the intensity in this setting. You can feel their effort to connect in the delivery.
The proof of my middle-agèdness is my hard turn toward ambient music. It started last year with Jon Hopkins’ Music for Psychedelic Therapy. Then, Erland Cooper’s Music for Growing Flowers deepened it. The Scottish artist crafts landscapes in sound, equal parts ambient, post-rock, and classical. In the midst of all the things, this calm reflective piece has kept me grounded. It was the only thing I could listen to when I was working through covid in July in Scotland.
What to say about Paolo Nutini’s Last Night in the Bittersweet? Well, I only listened to it because I was in Scotland, and the local record shop seemed pretty hyped on its release in July because he’s a Scottish artist. I was blown away. I now understand that I should have known about him before – he’s not “under the radar” or anything, but new to me. I adopted this album wholeheartedly. I’ll never hear it and not think of the Meadows in Edinburgh where we stayed this summer. It’s a huge sprawl of an album. It’s overstuffed, but that is counted among its charms. A great songwriter whose muse takes him in a few directions, and all with great rewards.