This is where I talk about how I barely scratched the surface of new music releases this year. I seem to say something like that just about every year, but it’s especially true this year. I barely spent any time exploring beyond the realm of music I already knew. It feels like blasphemy against myself, but 2023 was an extremely difficult year for me, so it stands to reason that novelty that required active participation was going to get dropped. I was going for comfortable and easy and, unfortunately for past-me, quiet.
I’d like to be more aware of what’s going on in the stoner rock, doom, heavy, metal scenes, but for the moment I’m relying on end-of-year lists to let me know what I missed, and maybe later I’ll get back to things. It could be that I’m changing enough as a person in recent years that once-primary choices are becoming more of a side gig and the next thing hasn’t filled the gap yet, but I don’t think I’ll actually know what’s what until my life settles down long enough that I can comfortably relax with stray bullshit artistic opinions minus the screaming of “homelessness! poverty! death! pain!” constantly going on in the background. I would like to hope that that’s soon, but probably not. So here we are, with me escaping to things that appeal to mass populous and folks who have the musical exploration abilities of a trying to dig a 50ft hole with a single broken chopstick.
Here’s what Last.fm says I listened to a lot this year (via a recordable source, anyway):
Vitalic, Ashnikko, Idles, Fever Ray, Nine Inch Nails, King Buffalo, Monster Magnet, Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, All Them Witches, Goldfrapp, Black Cobra, Doja Cat, Goat, !!!, Meshuggah, Paramore, Black Sabbath, Domkraft, Kyuss.
If you’ve been following my musical journey for years, you know a lot of these bands are my personal elevator music. The only unpredictable oddball here is Paramore, who I never listened to before 2023.
As for albums that came out this year, in order of play frequency:
Ashnikko – Weedkiller
Fever Ray – Radical Romantics
Paramore – This Is Why
Alison Goldfrapp – The Love Invention
Domkraft – Sonic Moons
Stoned Jesus – Father Light
[does this count? It wasn’t finished when I posted 2022’s albums.] All Them Witches – Baker’s Dozen
Dozer – Drifting in the Endless Void
That doesn’t include youtube, which would mean including Doja Cat, raising Dozer and Stoned Jesus up a little, and singles for next year for Dua Lipa and Slift.
Habits don’t necessarily translate to recognition of total quality, so let’s talk about that.
As for heavy music, the above habits pretty accurately display my preferences in order for the year. Domkraft hit the spot with its novel familiarity. It immediately sounded like it already belonged and for perhaps that reason seems to be my stand-out favorite heavy album of 2023. Next is Stoned Jesus‘ new one, which seemed less talked about in my limited sphere than it probably should have been until I started seeing end-of-year lists. Who knew new Dozer album? I didn’t listen to it as much as the other two after the initial “yays” passed but I think it was bad timing mixed with just accepting that they’ve been a seed stoner rock band for me since I knew the term as a genre and not just a way to explain away Pink Floyd. After these three, I don’t really feel qualified to talk about what else came out this year.
The depth of I-hate-existence this year shifted my tastes musically to needing something a little brighter. I let space for me to try Olivia Rodrigo, an idea that would have annoyed if not offended me on a surface level years ago as I got more into metalisms. Just, WHAT? What am I doing here? Why? How the fuck? Where’d the Electric Wizard cosplay go? It’s still there. I just needed to know, and I found out, and here we are once again battling surface-level contradictions. My inner teenager is so annoyed with my lack of stick-to-it-iveness and appealing to popular bullshit.
I’m getting something out of it, at least. It’s not just background music, even when it is, because of the initial appeal. That sarcasm on the song “All-American Bitch” is fantastic and reminds me of the appeal of, well, “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks and “Criminal” by Fiona Apple some absurd number of years ago when I didn’t think too hard about music in general and cared more lyrics and surface presentation. On the surface I was expecting cry-about-love music or something otherwise simplistic to the existence of “girls”, forgetting that human experience doesn’t actually change that much after about 15 years old, give or take, and younger people are consistently devalued as dumb.
And same goes for Paramore, who are closer to me in age, but whose core audience has been on some other musical planet entirely from me until this point. Then I saw them do “This Is Why” on whatever talk show clip, and holy shit. What a performer. And way to take me right back to earlier pandemic times in a hurry, not just on that song. The front half of the new album feels like a cathartic therapy session… and then I remember I’m listening to Paramore and no amount of musical quirk or relatable lyrics are going to keep me static here.
Normally Goldfrapp has a stickiness to them for me, whether they were doing soft emotional poetry or dance music. It was curious to hear that Alison had a solo album coming, and initially it hit with “Love Invention” and “So Hard So Hot” but I think I overdid it. With roots in disco, that probably follows, since disco has its own expiration when satisfying turns repetitively annoying. I feel like this might be one of those albums that only works for certain mindsets. Also, I think I wanted more dance here, rather than a switch back and forth to more Piscean music.
Ashnikko and Fever Ray albums both aesthetically and socially remind of a lot of the same topics, with Ashnikko’s being more transparent and aggressive than the other – granted “I’m not a girl, I’m a swarm of bees” has stiff competition with Fever Ray’s threat to a bully on “Even It Out“. It’s not a competition, though; I’m a horror fan, please dole out more dark expressions of pretty violence. While Fever Ray is more subtle and hard to pin on album, the music videos play with gender expectations and sexuality in a way that feels very timely and important. Song of the year “Carbon Dioxide“, though, didn’t go there and instead appeals to the retro and geeky crowds on video and gave me a high dose of digital serotonin.
Ashnikko’s album doesn’t superficially have a flow to it because each song is so different, but I ended up listening to it more than any other specifically because of “Cheerleader” (not the beeeeees!), “Moonlight Magic”, and “Miss Nectarine” all working perfectly together and causing me to stick around longer. Initially I thought “Worms” and “Weedkiller” would annoy me a few weeks into the future, but I ended up with pieces of either stuck in my head for months. You may have missed the promo she did for the album, laying in a natural art installation expressionless for the album’s play while NPCs lingered stuck in the room with her. How to give me anxiety 101. I appreciate all the weird she’s throwing around, between her music and fashion/art, making me wish she’d been around in 2005 even though I don’t think the world was ready for her before recently.
I meant to write more, but at this point it’s the final day of the year, and the last time I decided to wait until January to finish an end-of-year post, I didn’t end up posting it at all. Other music has made a mark this year, but my hand (ow) and head are not into repeating myself or writing something over-detailed and epic that no one is going to read.
I haven’t scoured the internet for clues about what’s coming in 2024 yet. I do know Slift is coming in January, which I’ve already heard/seen in part and appreciate. Dua Lipa posted a new song recently, so if you like poppy dance bass with lyrics that rhyme with “peeny” to entertain your inner 12 year old, that’s a good’un. We’ve also got a new Ministry album coming in March, apparently Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is back to horrify us all with their chaos, and *omfg* new Whores album in 2024. We couldn’t finish this post without me working in that one.
Theories, too, come in like vaguely written Nostradamus threats of a future that never arrives. Will the OM album finally happen in 2024? Please do. I previously tried to oracle out a Tool album for 2024 but so far they haven’t said anything definitive. I saw lists of names in the heavy music camp – High on Fire and Nails included – but there’s a serious lack of sources attached, so who’s to say whether or not those bands or any other actually release anything at all. I did just see Idles has a new one, dated as February 16th, so get excite.
Until then, bitch, I, said what I said: