This list was very hard to make. For once, I admittedly didn't listen to that much new music for large portions of the year. I still kept up with artists I liked, bought their new albums, but then often listened to them only once or twice and then forgot about them. I was going through some shit for a little while there, not sure if that's what put me off of new music, if I was depressed or distracted, but in any case, I had to play a lot of catchup in the last 2 months. The other thing is, I noticed myself getting increasingly wordy whenever I would successfully bring some words to the page, which in return set a new standard for myself that I had to match. No more of that "yeah this slaps, listen to it" shit. Nah, I can do better than that. I ended up picking 14 albums that felt meaningful to me, that I felt like I had something to say about. Once again a weird amount for a list, but I play by no rules here. My post.
I started writing honorable mentions, albums that I enjoyed but that didn't particularly get to me or that I felt like were important to mention, but I decided to scrap that cause I noticed it quickly getting out of hand. There's so many albums all the time, I gotta draw a line somewhere, and I don't have that many words in me. Just the albums that really had an impact on me. Similarly, there were a couple of generation defining releases this year, stuff that were the talk of the town, and by town I mean like everywhere I looked online. Charli XCX, Magdalena Bay, The Cure, Kendrick Lamar. I listened to all of these even if they wouldn't have otherwise popped up on my radar, I do have the desire to hear different things and to give myself the chance to expand my horizon. And sometimes, these kinda albums do end up sticking with me. But I'm not gonna lie, I am feeling a little insecure about being relatively limited in the music that I actively engage with, so there were parts of me that were trying to make myself like Imaginal Disk or Songs of a Lost World more so I had a reason to put it on my list and seem like a more sophisticated, more serious music person. But no, that's silly. You don't need me to talk about Magdalena Bay, and I also don't see the point in making myself believe that it was more meaningful to me than it really was. I liked all those albums, but not so much that I would say they had some sort of special impact on me. Enough now. We're keeping it at 14 albums. That's enough, I don't need to flex my sophisticated tastes to anyone or pretend that I'm "with it". Deep down I know I'm not, and that's fine.
On my last two AotY posts, I always said that they were unordered, that I didn't actually have a top album of the year, but I have to admit, I was kinda lying. I sort of had a top 3, and I just pretended I didn't, to cover my tracks. But this year, I really don't. I promise. I have no clue. And to make a point that I don't, the albums that I have picked will appear sorted by the third letter of the second song's title (please don't double check this). Have fun.
Fucked Up - Someday
God damn, what are they putting in the water up there in Toronto? How do they make this much music? This is the 4th full length release in under 2 years, not to mention several EPs and limited live releases. While I generally get some enjoyment out of most things this band puts out, the recent series of albums has moved away from the genre-defying progressive experimentation of Dose Your Dreams or the Zodiac series that originally got me fascinated by them to a more down to earth indie hardcore garage rock approach. In the current series of albums, they each limited themselves to a single day for its recording, which naturally makes them lean into a much leaner and straight forward musical approach. While I enjoyed the first two albums in the series, they didn't super stick with me, as to me they just seemed like stripped back versions of what I had already known from them. Someday though, the third album in the series that they just got dropped on us completely by surprise, sees a very interesting change in the formula, which is that the majority of lead vocals are taken up by guitarist and songwriter Mike and various guest vocalists as opposed to the usual frontman Damian Abraham. And don't get me wrong, I like Damian, I don't necessarily want to hear less of him. However, with how much this band has experimented with their format and approach, I think it is appropriate that they also experiment with vocals more. They've done a little bit of this in the past, but this really feels like they're finally picking up this idea and expanding upon it more. I will say though, I always have a bit of an issue with Fucked Up, which lies in their sound mixing. I find them a fascinating band musically, but all their stuff has really odd mixing that makes it sound very noisy and muddled. This is still the case here, and in the grand scheme of things I wish it wasn't. However, given the change in vocal approach, I feel like it might actually work in their favour here for once. The much gentler sounding vocals in front of the noisy backdrop makes for an almost dreamy approach to their otherwise quite rough style that I really appreciate. It's a joy to listen to, it's noisy but also melodic and catchy. It sounds different but it fits in with their discography. I'm not sure how good this album would be as a standalone with no further context, but I absolutely love this as an addition to their expansive catalogue.
Glass Animals - I Love You So F***cking Much
Did I fall in love and got extremely attached to the scenes of down to earth domestic bliss in Creatures in Heaven when my partner showed the song to me? Yeah, that's exactly what happened. The song is yearny, cute as hell and extremely catchy. I don't usually pick up on songs that quickly but I found it continuously popping back into my head after having listened to it only two or three times. Is it really that catchy or am I just this lost in the sauce? I don't know. It doesn't matter cause there's no objective measurement for the emotional response you get from music, all I know is what this song did with me. When I eventually got around to listening to the whole album, I was really surprised just how much I also enjoyed the whole thing on just a musical level and not just cause I'm gay and embarrassingly in love. The album explores all sorts of emotions related to love, from the cute, to the complicated, to the dark and uncomfortable, all of which is reflected in the musical variety. Particularly the run from track 2 to 5 is absolutely incredible, with each of these tracks having such a unique own musical identity and exploring their own sets of emotions. The new wavy faster tempo of whatthehellishappening? with its theme of falling victim to your emotions, the catchy, gentle cuteness of Creatures in Heaven, the dark, destructive crunch of Wonderful Nothing to the incredible catchy chorus and brooding, anxious beat in A Tear in Space. Admittedly, the album slightly loses its punch for me in the second half, but I find another highlight in On the Run, which explores the theme of wanting to run away from complicated feelings, something I connect with a lot, which is represented musically through very nifty tempo changes. The closing track Lost in the Ocean also really grew on me with its sweet, dreamy sound and its productive confrontation with self-doubt. I don't know. I really like this album a lot. I'd like to think that I'm going through one of the most important periods in my life right now and even if it's not always easy, it'll be worth it in the end and that one day I can look back to this time and this album as something that made everything to come possible. Thank you for sharing this with me, dear. I love you.
Call Me Malcolm - Echoes & Ghosts
Call Me Malcolm have really tied down their style on the predecessor Me, Myself and Something Else with their grand, powerful ska punk, and now came back even tighter and even more energetic. The album is a little slimmer now, making it a smooth listen front to back, without ever growing tired of their highly emotive, explosive sound. Horn lines have an incredible ability to stir up all the suppressed emotions and bring me back in touch with what it means to be human, and they're managing to harness all that emotional impact here. They don't have to just rely on horn lines though, which is something frontman Lucias Malcolm has already proven on last year's fantastic solo record Past, Present and Future Regrets. Tracks like cheers and self-loathing convince with passionate, powerful vocals and driving, crunchy guitars, and especially the closing track 154bpm completely melts your face off with an absolutely pummeling guitar riff. The aforementioned vocals, which Lucias shares with saxophonist Mark, are powerful, soaring and passionate, melodic and highly catchy. They bring a very worthy delivery to the highly emotive and introspective lyrics, which, in classic Call Me Malcolm fashion, delve into the darkest depth of the own mind, facing own mental health struggles, and the process of overcoming those, which although certainly not lighthearted or comfortable, but paired with the music create a great feeling of catharsis. The compositions show an incredibly love for details, bring in tons of unique flourishes that create various short-lived, but special moments on the album that break up the song structures, a personal highlight being the descending guitar run after the first chorus of dahlia, but there's just so many more cool little details to find on this record.
Jhariah - Trust Ceremony
Leading "no genre all drama" artist Jhariah's new album appears to be going bigger, harder and more energetic than any of the already radiant previous work they've done. They're taking a lot from 2000s emo, which was already known to be very theatrical, but they're bringing such an extra maximalist queer theater kid energy to it that it feels bigger than the sound of the music itself is able to contain and bursting from the seams. There's so much going on in these songs and at times it kinda gets difficult to hear everything and not just have it blend into noise soup. To be honest, this one was a bit difficult for me. It ended up being quite a sensory overload experience, so it's not an easy listen and requires my full attention for it to not just blend into exhausting noise, but god, when I do pay attention, it's so fun, engaging and energizing. I've often heard their music being described to be very anime intro, which I don't have a strong frame of reference for, but I do get the sense of old Panic! At the Disco or Black Parade MCR, revved up to 300% and with a good extra shot of big band and video game soundtracks thrown into the mix. Jhariah has quite a range in their voice, but at the higher, louder registers, it often sounds like they're going quite a bit over their and just barely being able to hold it together, which adds so much authentic emotion to the experience, but at the same time contributes a little bit to the noise density problem. Still, if something being difficult to listen to for me reveals itself to be this fun, I don't mind that. The individual songs sound very different from each other, and even within the songs is a lot of variation that never makes it sound boring or repetitive. Fire4Fun starts with a very Sonic-the-Hedgehog-esque intro, into a thumping dance beat, and then continues to bounce back and forth between different intensities between each of the verse and bridge sections and the chorus. The song then beautifully transitions into the single Risk, Risk, Risk!, which starts with a little piano flourish and continues with more Sonic energy for the intro, a bouncy verse and a fast, melodic chorus that sounds like it has the vocals falling over each other. Everything is connected with sick bass breaks, and for a bridge you get an insanely cool horn line, a short reduced extra verse as a breather, an intense noisy double time guitar solo, right before exploding back into the final chorus. These two tracks really got me catching my breath afterwards. Luckily, we do get some more space in the middle section of the album. Pin-Eye gives me more R'n'B big band energy, before it starts playing around with different textures and vocal distortion effects and with a hard hitting beat coming in at the end over a reduced but crunchier version of the chorus. Control Baby picks up the dark mid-tempo crunch sound again and comes to a climax in a powerful scream during a completely dropped instrumental to really hammer in the emotional impact of its contents. Hitting the final third of the album, we get again blasted with energy by the trio of Eat Your Friends, supported by the powerful punk crunch courtesy of Nim AotY list alumni pinkshift, with amazingly complementing back and forth between Ashrita's aggressive and Jhariah's theatrical vocals, an full on chaotic punk energy continued on Re:Concerns, and then of course the lightning fast Sasuke. As we get to the end of the album, we get a beautiful, forward thinking and hopeful but emotional ending with the title track Trust Ceremony that easily gets me teared up if it hits me at the right moment. I know this album is a lot, perhaps a little too much, but if you can take it, listen to it. It's very much worth it. If you need it a little lighter, all their previous work is also fantastic. Jhariah is such a standout new artist and deserves all the praise they can get.
Bob Vylan - Humble as the Sun
After the very commercially successful The Price of Life, the grime punk duo Bob Vylan is back, bringing the new experiences with mainstream attention with them into their writing and making a more colourful and diverse album than ever. The album starts out with its two longest tracks. The title track Humble as the Sun is probably the most compositionally beautiful track the duo has done yet, with a strong sense of narrative through its long, winding verses and the gradual building of intensity. Reign, on the other hand, with its angular synthetic dance beat, feels like a celebratory dance on the face of the record industry. You don't really hear much of a guitar at all in the classic Bob Vylan fashion, loud, punchy and aggressive, until a little bit into the record, though. The first prominent appearance of the instrument is on track 3 GYAG, a song dealing with the violence caused by economic inequality, but only muffled and more for texture than punchy. The title Makes Me Violent might suggest a rager similar to Bait the Bear from the previous album, but it's actually the calmest song on the album, being a very moody and melodic garage rock track. For what it's worth, I actually do enjoy the instrumental focus being shifted away from guitar noise on this album, as they evidently have a lot of other great ideas here as well that allows them for a more rich sounding sonic bandwidth, and it also fits better to their live appearance, where they also perform without a guitar player present on stage. We do get more classic Vylan tracks in Dream Big, Hunger Games and He's a Man, but they're less raging and have more of a very refreshing, confident ease to them. Despite dealing with a lot of seriously dark topics, the album tends to bring things to an uplifting note and a celebration of overcoming adversity, like the spoken word ending of Hunger Games, or the closing track I'm Still Here that musically sets itself apart with a high-energy, driving punk beat.
Kill Lincoln - No Normal
Stylistically, Kill Lincoln really don't reinvent the wheel here. Their style of ska punk is largely comprised of the same elements that the US ska punk canon of Less Than Jake and the likes have been doing for 30 years. Fast, melodic pop punk, ska beats during the verses, infectious horn lines, loud anthemic choruses, lots of woah-ohhs. But I think where Kill Lincoln really set themselves apart is the absolute overflowing energy that they bring to the table. Like yeah, the style itself is nothing new, and honestly, it usually doesn't really excite me all that much anymore. But Kill Lincoln do it more energetic, faster, heavier and more fun than anyone else. They need just shy of 26 minutes to smash through their 11 songs at an absolute mind boggling pace, but without sacrificing any of the typical accessible catchiness of the genre. Even when they get very heavy and thrashy, it's still fast, it's always energetic and it always pumps you up. I do want to specifically point out how brief all the songs here are, because on the band's earlier material, this was always something that put me off of them. Up until their 2018 record Good Riddance to Good Advice, their tracks would frequently exceed 4 minutes, which frankly, feels to long for this style of music. However, on the fantastic Can't Complain from 2020, they tightened up all their song structures and cut the average song length nearly in half, which made them just so much more enjoyable to me. Can't Complain was already extremely high energy, catchy and fun, and I feel like No Normal at least matches, if not surpasses that energy some more.
Perennial - Art History
Perennial are a band that I've legitimately never heard a single person talk about ever but that I'm absolutely ride or die for, since at least their 2022 album In the Midnight Hour which landed in my top 4 that year. Compared to that album, the tempos got a little more modest and the focus shifted a little more to dance and garage punk, but it still has everything I loved about this band. They give me all the unhinged catharsis of a more uninhibited noisecore band without sacrificing any bit of catchiness or accessibility. The beats are airtight and the guitar noise and keyboard ambience carefully crafted, yet there is an unmistakable sense of raw expression coming through the distortion and yelling. Speaking of guitar, this band doesn't have a bass guitar and I don't even miss it. I didn't even notice there was no bass in there, it just sounds so full and is just this much fun. Another strength this band has is their extremely efficient use of space. At just 21 minutes this album goes by in a breeze, but without ever feeling rushed or underdeveloped, while still leaving space for plenty of room and ambience between the bursts of noise. Please listen to this band.
Plasma Cutter - Wolves and Power Lines and Oranges and Waves and Guitar Fights and Some Songs
Plasma Cutter is one of the many projects of the very versatile solo musician Steve Hyenablood, whose output reaches all the way from blackened metalcore to ambient post-rock and seemingly everything in between. As Plasma Cutter, however, he explores emo pop punk with a heavy load of chiptunes. Even though Wolves and Power Lines... is the second Plasma Cutter album released in a span of just six months (the previous one having a similar long title listing various elements one can supposedly expect to find on the album), much has changed between the two. While Plasma Cutter has existed and worked extremely well as largely an instrumental project for three albums now, Wolves and Power Lines... finally gives the vast majority of the songs lyrics. What was implied on previous albums mostly through very descriptive song titles like Get in Loser, We're Going to Fight for Someone We Don't Know from the previous album, can now be made explicit through its lyrical themes, and oh boy, are there themes. It's not that I can't connect emotionally to a vague theme implied by an evocative title onto an otherwise abstract instrumental, but it is much easier for me to latch onto songs when there is a vocal performance as an additional layer my brain can hook onto and find emotional connection in through its very literal human expression, so this album is naturally the one of Plasma Cutter's I would latch onto. The music itself continues familiar paths with bright but riffy and crunchy guitars, punchy drums, and of course the sparkly chiptunes to give everything its very unique charm with an additional layer of lead melody and of course a great deal of rhythmic and textural variation, but where this album really convinced me is the lyrics. This is very much an album about being queer, uncertain, anxious and angry, but also about fighting back, living your truth and being fulfilled. As it's simply put in the bandcamp description, "don't go down without swinging". Especially the ending of the album comes to an absolute brilliant emotional climax, with the powerful BECOME INVINCIBLE, a title which I possibly could not have written in anything but all uppercase due to all the sheer positive fighting energy it radiates. Solanum, possibly the most emotionally hard hitting song on the album, deals with death, endings, and the fear of running out of time before you get to experience life and your loved ones to the fullest. The album ends on the beautiful slow, anthemic Wild Mountain Thyme, that, in a gentle lullaby melody, paints a beautiful picture of just existing and taking in life and nature out on the meadows in between herbs and wildflowers. There's a lot of anger, fear and desperation out there, but ultimately, we're beings of love, and this album just expresses so much unfiltered heart and passion that I just can't resist its emotional pull.
K.I.Z - Görlitzer Park
I had been tangentially aware of the Berlin rap group K.I.Z for most of my life, but only the buzz around this album made me go out of my way to listen to them for the first time ever, so I'm a complete newbie here. On one hand, rap isn't my domain, but also, there was always something about them that made me not want to engage. Although I had picked up on the fact that their political engagement had been a positive one and they collaborated with other artists I liked and respected, I always kind of thought of them as juvenile edgelords. Again, all my prior experience with them had been through cultural osmosis, so I don't know if that's fair, but regardless, I'm glad that this album broke through to me. Given my preconceptions, I was immediately very impressed with how genuine, engaged and personal this album felt. The most notable song to me is Frieden, being a scathing critique of liberal war fetishism dressed up in progressive values. Sensibel talks about experiences with racism and the double standards of a majority white society that prides itself on tolerance, the title track Görlitzer Park about poverty and human misery witnessed on the streets in the city, both tracks with very pointed concessions aimed at themselves and the conflicted feelings about having escaped these circumstances. Aside from racism, drugs and poverty, a common topic is toxic masculinity, which comes up in its juvenile form on Sommer Meines Lebens, and gets especially heavy on Lächel doch mal with its discussion of male emotional repression and suicide. But it's not all doom and gloom, Geld wie ein Magnet is a welcome change of pace into more lighthearted, and satirical territories, mocking business grindset influencers. Musically, the album is fairly mellow, but it has a good share of fun and memorable hooks and occasional driving, new wave inspired beats. As a supplement, I can also recommend giving the bonus album Und der Anschlag auf die U8 a shot, which is much more lighthearted and satirical, from what I heard, closer to the style the band used to perform. It's a good album to counterbalance the heaviness of Görlitzer Park, although it does not quite have the same weight to it, despite some really sharp lines here and there.
Melted Bodies - The Inevitable Fork
Avantgarde metal band Melted Bodies' second full length album The Inevitable Fork is the accumulation of 3 EPs that have been released over the course of the last 2 years, the first of which had already shown up in my AotYs of 2022. In the transition from EP to double LP format, the tracks have been rearranged and garnished with various shorter interludes, giving this the love and care worthy of an album and not just a compilation of three smaller releases. All this also puts the play time at a whopping 68 minutes, which is way out of my usual comfort zone for album length. With music as intense and chaotic as that of Melted Bodies, going into this one seems intimidating and exhausting. Luckily, this whole behemoth goes by pretty swimmingly. The manic intensity that dominates the sound of the band is very much at play for the vast majority of the album, including anything from wild thrash and blast beats, blood curdling growls and heavy, groovy industrial riffs, bouncing back and forth through stops, chaotic song structures and tempo changes, but it never pummels you for so long at a time that it would get too much. My only criticism for the album, primarily aimed at those really heavy sections, is that often the production makes some of the songs sound too busy at times, to a point where a lot of the noise mushes together. In a way, I'm sure the overwhelming wall of noise effect is intended, but on music with this much interesting shit going on I can't help but feel I'm missing out on things that end up getting buried under layers of noise and distortion. Regardless, the noise is very varied and broken up frequently thanks to the wide array of sounds on the album, ranging from new wavy synths that often accompany the heavy guitars, industrial dance beats, or more minimalist, mellow and atmospheric pieces. The short transitionary tracks are also helping to give breathers in between the heavy tracks and preventing them from blending together. The singer's voice and performances are especially noteworthy here, as his very expressive, at times almost goofy delivery, that ranges from vicious screams to theatrical, melodic pop hooks, often switching at a moments notice, could give Serj Tankian a run for his money. And honestly, I don't like recommending a band just based on their similarity to another, more established artist, but if you miss System of a Down in their wildest moments, you will not be disappointed by Melted Bodies.
Green Day - Saviors
I have to admit it, I think this album is here not because it is necessarily that good, but more because of what it represents to me. Green Day were a band I had grown up with, American Idiot being one of, if not the first, albums I ever owned, and I quickly moved back through their back catalogue, making them my favourite band for a considerable period of my teenage years. American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown came out during my peak impressionable years and therefore had a massive impact on me. However, throughout the 2010s, my enthusiasm for this band wore off. Once the honeymoon period with the ¡Trilogy! was over, I rarely ever returned to those albums, Revolution Radio, despite usually being looked on favourably, felt hollow and didn't win me back over either, and then of course the dreaded Father of All was the nail in the coffin and I had become full on cynical about this band. Yeah, there was the old stuff that I probably still thought was decent, but I rarely ever bothered listening to any of it, as to me this band had become a shell, a joke, an embarrassing gentrification of faux dangerous street punk aesthetic. So where does this leave Saviors? Well, to make it short, this album reminded me that I love Green Day after all. After this album dropped, I went back on a Green Day streak and started listening to many of their stuff that I hadn't really revisited in a long time. Saviors, too, I listened to many times, and although it may be on paper not as strong as the classics, I always had a great time with it. Some issues it carries over from the "dark ages", like Billie Joe trying to write angry political songs that harken back to American Idiot but lyrically not doing much more than chaining random dangerous sounding words together. As a whole though, the music is super solid, delivering many great classic pop punk tunes, and having a large variety of sound and vibe over the course of the album, all with a very nice, genuine down to earth feel that makes me feel at home listening to it. The album gives me a similar overall feeling as Nimrod does, that still had the charme of early Green Day, but started started introducing more gentle and folky sounds into the mix, which I think is a direction that suits them extremely well now and that they would be better off pursuing in the future than the highs of American Idiot. I especially love many of the mid-tempo and slower pieces on here, like Bobby Sox, Dilemma and Suzie Chapstick, and some of the silly songs like One Eyed Bastard are just fun as hell, even if they're a little cringe. But sometimes being a little cringe works, and I think Green Day finally struck the right balance here. I am glad that I remembered I love this band.
WHSPRS - Sad, Drunk and Needy
Admittedly, there were some initial anti-cheese defenses I had to consciously deactivate before I could really get into this. I'm going through some shit, I'm trying to better myself, I've been trying to learn how to feel and be cringe again. I seemed to have stumbled upon Austrian VR furry musician WHSPRS as just the right time when I was just perfectly receptive for this type of emotional expression. WHSPRS makes music strongly inspired by 2000s emo pop punk with a strong bend of vulnerable queer self-expression. This album is full of all the messy feelings that come with being a queer online weirdo that falls in love with other queer online weirdos over the internet. It's a lot of yearning, heartbreak, jealousy and frustration, some of it feeling very juvenile, but in a very endearing and honest way. Musically, he really shows his skills as a songwriter and composer with songs that are not only extremely catchy but also feel very well developed creatively and all have their strong separate musical identity. The wistful opener How To Get Over Somebody hits especially hard with its slow, heavy buildup and loud, atmospheric chorus. An unlikely favourite of mine is the unsuspecting Revenge Dress, that with just 100 seconds is the shortest song from the album (except for the lost bet Piss...). The slick, menacing atmosphere it builds, the guitar lead, the short triplet breakdown, or the harmonies in the final verse. Absolutely incredible track, I'm tempted to say that I wish it was longer but you know what? Actually I think it's just right. Just a short moment that, by the time it takes you to realize how good it is, it is already over. I love that. Further songs to highlight the versatility are the beautifully aching Snow in Sweden and the more traditional ballad Candy Store that both work wonderfully. But also the more straight-forward pop punk that this album primarily leans on is very worthwhile, catchy and well-written, most notably the single Fox Boy that tells about a parasocial crush, but also Night in the Woods that laments feelings of missed opportunities and wasted time. Also, while it's not actually part of the album, I'd be amiss not to mention the single Falling for Americans that came out about half a year later. While as a song I don't actually like it quite as much as most of the tracks on the album (although the guitar texture on the second verse is super sweet and crunchy), it was the first WHSPRS track I had come across and it hit me just at the right moment, right when I myself was in the process of coming to terms with my feelings about my then future partner, with whom I've since been dreaming every day about how to finally bridge the Atlantic. So I guess you could say I have some personal investment in this.
Shoreline - To Figure Out
Shoreline from Münster in Germany exist perfectly at this intersection between pop punk, emo, indie and hardcore music and come in with a beautiful, varied blend of all these adjacent styles. They're not exactly reinventing the wheel here, but there was just something incredibly likable about this band to me right from the beginning, something so down to earth and vulnerable and honest about their sound that clicked with me, that made some of these songs so addicting and made me want to see this band succeed. I love Hansol's voice, from his soft, melodic singing (even if it sounds a little thin, that just makes them seem more personal and approachable to me) to his highly emotive, raspy screams. The average sound of this album revolves roughly around beautifully crafted indie pop punk, energetic, melodic and incredibly catchy, like the opener Needles, Pen Name, or Cold Feet. Green Paint serves as the perfect connector between this sound and the hardcore that is sprinkled throughout the album, with melodic, pop punk verses that go straight into a powerful, screamed chorus. Darius similarly wins you over with more of the raw hardcore punk energy and great atmospheric guitar work. Tracks like Workaround and Health are the more dancy indie rock tracks, with the former with a great driving post-punk beat and the latter with some really pretty keyboard flourishes during the chorus. Reviver also plays in similar domains with really groovy verses, before exploding right into an infectious, heavy, screamed chorus, perfectly mastering the soft vs. heavy dynamic, similarly to the single Seoul. Even with very explicit political topic-songs, it is framed through a very personal angle. The aforementioned Seoul deals with personal feelings of alienation and insecurities as a result of growing up in an overwhelmingly white community, Green Paint unleashes all the frustrations against insincere greenwashing, and Yuppie Kids paints a picture of self-righteous defensiveness that one is faced when advocating for causes. If there is one downside to the album, it's that the vast majority of the most noticeable standout tracks, the ones you latch onto right away, are on the first half the album, but that doesn't mean any of the songs on the second half are bad or forgettable. The music and songwriting is still as catchy and personal as ever, and particularly the track Loose Contacts won me over with an especially beautiful, emotional chorus. The album has a strong sense of standing up for yourself and fighting in what you believe in, and working through all the personal and interpersonal issues related to getting to this point. It deals with heaviness, but is never hopeless, always looks forward, and ultimately feels very uplifting. To quote the inside sleeve of the CD packaging: "You can be desperate and hopeful at the same time. You don't need to have an immediate solution. You have to figure it out. You will figure it out."
Shellac - To All Trains
It's difficult to just view this album on its own and not take it in with the weight of Steve Albini's sudden passing just a mere few days before its release. But really, when does music ever exist in a vacuum? Everything we feel about music is informed by something happening in our lives, or something we know about the artist. So really, I don't think I need to overthink this. I love this album. Full of hypnotic, angular riffs and mechanical drum beats. Although this description might bring up feelings of cold, industrial calculatedness, this could not be further from the truth. Despite its jaggedness, there is an almost youthful exuberance and a deep humanness to it, which comes through lyrically in the misery and decay of Wednesday, the infectious "We'll be pirates!" shouts of freedom and independence in Scrappers, or just the expression of passion for noisy music in Chick New Wave. The sound and feeling of the album is warm, personal and passionate. After all, we're talking about Steve Albini here. If there was anyone that knew how to make fucked up noisy guitar music sound good, it was him. The clear highlight here though, given the circumstances of this album's release, is the closing track I Don't Fear Hell, which is defiantly looking into the face of death itself, and leaves you with a final catharsis and quite a pit in your stomach.
Live shows this year
I took it a little easier this year. The sheer amount of shows in the second half of 2023 really wore out my wallet and me physically. Very happy with the picks I made though, not a single show there that wasn't 100% worth it. The highlight here was undoubtedly Hans Gruber and the Die Hards. They were opening for Tsunami Bomb, for whom I couldn't even stay for cause I had to catch a train back home, cause this was also the first time I ever took a long distance intercity train to see a show, and I went there entirely for the half hour set of the opening band. I do like Tsunami Bomb, I would've liked to see them, but yeah, I'm not gonna lie, I was there for Hans Gruber, can't pass up that chance. Oh, and on the way back, I missed my connecting train and sat for 4 hours at the train station at night. Was still worth it. The Grubers have the most insane live energy I've ever seen. Go see them if you get the chance. Aside from this, Die Goldenen Zitronen also felt particularly special, as I very much enjoyed experiencing their avantgarde oddball energy live. Hypnotic post-punk with lots of rotation in musicians and lots of different instruments on stage. First time I've seen a live show that had a big ass harp on stage.
Jeez. So glad this post is finally done. Note to my future self, please start working on next year's post earlier. Please.