2023: Twelve Months or Fifty-Two Weeks of Three-Hundred Sixty-Five Days In The Life
This year, we move from fashionably late to just plain late because having two weeks off when your 3-year old also has two weeks off is actually negative two weeks off. Somewhere, somehow, I am owed a fortnight.
So last year was, I guess, the first “normal” 12-month stretch since 2019, and certainly the first since I’ve been a parent. It coincided with my son becoming quite a loud, opinionated, and confident little guy, always singing and dancing and asking questions I have no answers to and making me wonder how on earth he came from my gene pool.
Travel was kept small-scale in anticipation of a big trip this year. There were a couple jaunts to New York City, my first visits in four years which is a lot considering I used to go several times a year, just because. The first was a short, adults-only weekend to see Melody’s Echo Chamber in Brooklyn that tried to cram as much into a couple days as possible, and the second a few weeks later was a full, week-long family trip where we covered very little ground from moving at a toddler’s pace. Both very different, but satisfying in very different ways. And my first solo trip in a decade to see Velocity Girl reunite at The Black Cat in Washington DC as well as catch up with some old school blogger buddies. Otherwise, there was a little bit of cottaging in the Winter and Summer, my first time in almost 50 years of life partaking in this type of getaway. Pretty fun, except for being devoured alive by mosquitoes.
Live music returned with a vengeance, probably too much so in hindsight. It took me a while to realize that just because I could, in theory, go see bands, I didn’t actually want to a lot of the time, and standing around clubs between sets wasn’t much fun. I am not a bored 30-year old anymore, sadly. Still, there were a lot of great gigs — I was able to cross The Cure and Depeche Mode off the bucket list, as well as the aforementioned Melody’s Echo Chamber and Velocity Girl shows. Plus, any year that Slowdive is back on the road is a good year. But for this year, I’ll be more selective about what I buy tickets for in advance. “Ah shit I have to go out” is probably not the right mindset for going to a gig.
For recorded music, it’s very much worth noting that the record that most shaped my listening for this year missed out being on this list by less than three weeks — For Tracy Hyde’s Hotel Insomnia came out on December 14, 2022, and made it onto my radar in the early part of this year and is solely responsible for my mad descent into the world of Asian shoegaze and dreampop, and by extension seeking out music from more non-English speaking countries. Truly it’s been eye- and ear-opening. But the calendar is the calendar and it doesn’t count, so I will give it the most honourable of honourable mentions. But one to file under “life-changing”, no mean feat at my age.
As for the ones that did qualify…
A new AmAnSet album wasn’t something I’d ever expected, or even absent-mindedly hoped for, if I’m being honest, but their announcement that they were back — if just for a single album built gradually over years of jamming and recording — was enough to remind me how much I loved this band two decades ago when they were a regular ongoing concern, and the new record does nothing to tarnish that legacy. And I never thought I’d ever hear Andrew Kenny sound pissed, but here we are.
I long accepted that Blonde Redhead didn’t have, or would never allow, another 23 in them, and after the muted reception to 2014’s Barragán I accepted that they might not have another album in them of any sort. And, again, I was happy to be proven wrong as the trio regrouped for a richly textured and emotionally resonant album that I didn’t fully appreciate until seeing it performed live this past Fall. Then, it was like, I get it, man.
Sensing a trend here? Blur’s first album in eight years might have come with a simple brief — put something new out so their Summer reunion gigs didn’t look like just a cash-in — but they ended up putting out a record that ranks among their very best. They wear their middle age well, and Darren is arguably their loveliest record.
I will admit to loving Echo Ladies’ debut Pink Noise as much for the purity of their aesthetic — icily synthetic drum machine-driven shoegaze — as any of the actual songs but the Swedish trio leveled up their songwriting so much on the follow up that it’s not even funny. Their manifesto remains the same, but there’s so much more dynamism and emotion in their songs, the fact that pretty much no one seemed to care about it is a crying shame.
There’s something to be said for grafting shoegaze onto great, straight pop songs and that’s something Aussies Flyying Colours excel at. Previous releases showed they could do trippy with the best of them but their third records focuses on lush, melodic songs that strikes a perfect balance between prickly and polished. It’s not going to change any lives but it will make some better in 35-minute doses.
A downside of delving into the world of Japanese rock bands is discovering that many of them have a short lifespan, and any list of recommendations consists largely of now-defunct acts. Tokyo’s Hitsujibungaku is a happy exception, releasing their fourth and most-anticipated full-length at the start of December. The trio are frequently listed as shoegaze or dreampop, but I disagree — while frontwoman Moeka Shiotsuka certainly knows her way around her pedalboard and there is ‘gaze in their DNA, there’s no downcast eyes here — her up-front vocals and emotive lyrics (at least via Google translate) don’t hide behind any kind of sonic gauze. And lead single “More Than Words” — a domestic hit for soundtracking a popular anime — is an absolute jam.
The Newcastle Upon Tyle outfit are pretty much a fixture on my year-end lists, despite the fact that they rarely repeat themselves from album to album. Here, they’ve recruited Radiohead drummer Philip Selway to man the kit and crafted a record that backs away from the apocalyptic worldview of their last few releases and pivots back to beauty and optimism, despite everything.
There’s an irony to feeling like I’ve outgrown The National just as I enter my “sad dad” years, but perhaps it’s because I don’t need them the way I used to that I can just enjoy their music more now than I have over their last couple records. Yeah, they’re kind of formula now but what a thing it is to be able to just take their distinct sonic brew for granted? That said, companion album Laugh Track isn’t included here because despite some good moments, it’s a record that proves those who say everything The National does sounds the same correct.
If Ratboys had only released the title track of their fifth album — hell, if they’d only released the chorus and the bridge — it’d be on this list. Frontwoman Julia Steiner wrote it about her grandfather saying goodbye to her grandmother while physically separated by COVID protocols, and it’s heartbreakingly sad and soaringly beautiful at the same time. And the rest of the album totally rocks as well.
It’s a new Slowdive record. Of course it’s going to be here. They’ve basically taken the title of my favourite band of all time, as I’ve somehow been able to enjoy them as a musical archaeological discovery, having gotten into them shortly after they split in the ’90s, was able to love their adjacent and solo projects in the ’00s, and now, improbably as an ongoing concern still at the peak of their creative powers for the past decade. Can I fully separate loving this record from loving the band? Not sure, don’t care. It’s beautiful.
