JC’s Top Albums of 2023

JC Best of 2023 by JOSH CHESLER on Apple Music

This has been the longest shortest year in recent memory, and that includes the lost haze of the nearly inseparable COVID years. Somehow 2023 feels like both a decade and the blink of an eye. It’s not only that half of it was spent walking a picket line (although that’s certainly part of it). It’s not just that the speed of news, the disintegration of established media and belief systems, and the ever-growing instability of just about everything keeps us in a permanent state of uncertainty (although that’s a huge part of it). It’s also the fact that movies and music that came out in January or February feels five years old. I mean, it’s hard to even remember that BARBIE was this year. That’s the kind of year it’s been. And yet, when I sit back and take stock in my annual navel-gazing reckoning of the best albums of the year, I’m struck by the abundance of positive, propulsive, purposeful energy, both from 20-something women claiming their place in the world and 80-something male rockers who seem to have discovered the fountain of youth. My favorite albums were ones that provided comfort and inspiration in a storm (the aforementioned uncertainty). Maybe they’ll do the same for you.

1. Caroline Polachek — Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
   Utterly beguiling, fascinatingly idiosyncratic, beautifully layered, completely unique. Caroline Polachek feels permanently tuned into another frequency from another planet where Cocteau Twins jam with Soul II Soul beats, flamenco guitar gods shred on the beach at sunset, trip-hop never died, and volcanoes and geysers are less angry gods than sources of power from the goddess herself. If Caroline’s world were our own, this would have been the biggest pop album of the year. But we’re lucky to visit.
2. The National — Laugh Track +
   After waiting over four years for The National to put out a new album, this year they put out two. But nobody knew that at the time when they dropped First Two Pages of Frankenstein in April. So all of the music journalists breathlessly wrote about how “The National are back” when the album itself was only slightly more invigorating than a morphine drip. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge National fan, and I’ll listen to Matt Berlinger read a Google search, but… it’s depressing even for them, and it wasn’t an album I was eager to return to. Cue the surprise release of Laugh Track in October, an album that is warmer, weirder, wilder, more experimental, and more listenable than anything they’ve done in years, and points the way towards their future. If you’ve ever loved The National or never heard them, this is the album for you.
3. Boygenius — Boygenius
   Sometimes genius is truly rewarded in its own time. The tsunami of recognition that Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker have gotten for their debut album is beyond well-deserved and somehow only continues to grow (I’ll be shocked if they don’t win a Grammy for Album of the Year). And yet… this is an often-quiet album of folk-rock songs with thorny, literate and deeply emotional lyrics, at times so fragile it feels like it could shatter with a touch. Which is all the more amazing given that it also feels like the future of rock and roll.
4. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit — Weathervanes
   In 2020, Isbell put out “Reunions,” the album that got me through the pandemic. It’s a high bar to set, and maybe an impossible one to leap over. But damn if he and his band don’t get close with Weathervanes. Continuing his career-long excavation of the Southern male persona from personal, emotional, and political lenses, Isbell writes the kinds of albums that can sting your eyes with their blunt truths. But the songs are rich, undeniable, guitar-driven swirls drawing on everything from Neil Young to REM to the Allman Brothers, while updating all of those references with a sensitivity and awareness that can only come from living in America in 2023.
5. The Rolling Stones — Hackney Diamonds
   The fucking Rolling Stones, I know. I didn’t expect to have them on this list either. I didn’t expect them to even make another album, let alone the best straight-ahead rock album of the year, full stop. Filled with some of the tightest, hookiest songwriting they’ve had in decades, this album legitimately shreds, with a ferocity and energy that bands half their age could only hope to summon (check out “Bite My Head Off” if you think I’m exaggerating). And then there’s the penultimate song, “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” Mick’s duet with Lady Gaga, a slow-burning, explosively building gospel song that rivals anything on Exile on Main Street. If this is what a deal with the devil sounds like, sign me up.
6. Olivia Rodrigo — Guts
   As much as I loved Olivia’s debut album, I found myself at times reluctant to stand behind my fandom, a latent shame in being a 40-something dad rocking out to a Disney star-turned pop star. But with Guts, the shame is gone. Not only is Olivia Rodrigo a genuine artist, she’s written some of the catchiest, most incisive pop songs I’ve ever heard, with reference points that span everything from Hole and Bikini Kill to Missing Persons and Toni Basil — artists that most kids of her generation have never even heard of. Yet her sharp wit, blunt humor, and devastatingly honest introspection are all her own. Yes, I’m a 40-something dad, and I’m an Olivia Rodrigo fan. Glad to be here.
7. Peter Gabriel — i/o
   You can be forgiven if you had no idea that Peter Gabriel put out a new album this year. In decades past, this would have been a monumental event, filled with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, radio blitzes, and genre-defying music videos. But… well, his last album came out in 2002, and that was a different world. Olivia Rodrigo was just being born. MTV still played videos. And radio was still a thing. But now you know it exists, search it out. i/o is a deeply rewarding album, driven by purpose, warmth, humanity, and hard-fought optimism, with musical arrangements, melodies, and hooks that stand up to anything Peter’s ever made. Having seen him play these songs live a couple of months ago, I can attest that he hasn’t missed a step. Personal, global, inspirational, this is an album the world needs right now.
8. Arlo Parks — My Soft Machine
   Arlo Parks is a singular sensation, a young queer black British woman who sings in a high, whispery voice, but commands the power of a musical and emotional range that belies her age. Her debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams was a revelation, a singer-songwriter guitar-driven album that felt both of the moment and entirely out of time. “My Soft Machine” expands on her palette with moments of hip-hop, shoegaze, Phoebe Bridgers duets, and even shredding Deftones-inspired riffs. And yet it all fits into a gentle evolution of the sound that made me sit up and take notice from her first notes. There’s a long career ahead for her, and I can’t wait to see where she goes next.
9. Gorillaz — Cracker Island
   I know, I thought this album came out last year too. That’s how long this year has been. To be fair, the brilliant single “New Gold” did drop last December, but the album itself is so much more than that, a true 2023 affair that brings back everything that made Damon Albarn’s side band so joyfully compelling and irreverent and everything that makes his solo music and with his main band Blur so emotionally stirring. With the craziest guest list around (Stevie Nicks, Bad Bunny, and Tame Impala on the same album?), Cracker Island could have been a disparate mess like so many of their recent releases, but instead ends up being the tightest, most listenable Gorillaz album since their classic first two.
10. The Polyphonic Spree — Salvage Enterprise
    As I found myself in early December wondering if I had a 10th entry for this list, I turned on my favorite podcast, Rick Rubin’s “Tetragrammaton,” to hear an interview with Tim DeLaughter of The Polyphonic Spree, a band I had forgotten about roughly the same time as I stopped buying hipster skinny jeans. But to my surprise, the new music that he played on the podcast was deeply moving, cinematic and intimate, a dazzling blend of Pink Floyd scope, Thom Yorke fragility, and soaringly angelic, anthemic choirs. And that was just the first song. I immediately downloaded the album, which immediately became one of my favorites of the year. When Tim sings “hold yourself against the storm / keep the faith, you’re getting warm today / you’re on your way” I hear the words we all need to hear. And when the children’s choir joins him as the words repeat and repeat and soar up towards the rafters, you’ll not just hear them, you’ll feel them in every cell in your body. I can think of no better message to end the year on.

And if you’ve read this far, here’s a bonus playlist of my favorite songs of the year:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/2023-bangers/pl.u-dk9luW4lKM