Something about singer-songwriters grabbed me tightly in 2023. There were great pop records out over the past 12 months by artists I love, including Janelle Monae and Jessie Ware. Yet the music I kept coming back to was, generally, the quieter albums by musicians who seemed to have some particular insight into life, the universe and everything in a way that soothed the jangling nerves of an unsettled year. Here are the 10 albums I liked best in 2023:
Brian Dunne, Loser on the Ropes — Though he’s been grinding it out on the road for a while now, Dunne was a new discovery for me. Loser on the Ropes resonated immediately. As I wrote for the Boston Globe, “Dunne’s fourth album is a collection of sharply drawn sketches that he sings from the perspective of people who find themselves coming up short. With a smart aleck’s wit and a knack for clear-eyed lyrics ... Dunne brings a nervy energy and a generous supply of memorable hooks to songs including the heart-on-sleeve anthem ‘Rockaway,’ the punchy, propulsive single ‘It’s a Miracle,’ and the heart-bruising ballad ‘Sometime After This.’”
Rachel Baiman, Common Nation of Sorrow — The lure here was “Self-Made Man,” Baiman’s jaunty, scathing adaptation of a song fragment by John Hartford that undercuts the very concept of the title. As I wrote for the Boston Globe, “On the surface, most of the songs on Baiman’s latest sound like heartworn laments — and they are. Yet her anguish often stems from a sense that ours is a system designed to keep people divided and hopeless. Baiman isn’t polemical about it: She makes her point subtly, through a rootsy instrumental arrangement and sorrowful vocals.”
The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein — While the past few albums by the National had their moments, they weren’t as compelling overall as the band’s mid-2000s work. The group came roaring back to form with a pair of LPs in 2023, First Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track. They’re both excellent; First Two Pages of Frankenstein resonated more with me. It’s the group’s divorce album, and the emotion in Matt Berninger’s lyrics is potent and raw. The musical arrangements are taut and restrained, with occasional potent eruptions, and guest performers Phoebe Bridgers, Sufjan Stephens and Taylor Swift add depth and color. I went long on this album in a review for Paste, where I wrote that “the draw here is how the National, and particularly singer Matt Berninger, can create such a deeply absorbing world from the swirls and abstractions of an interior monologue.”
Sun June, Bad Dream Jaguar — A collection of songs about navigating uncertainty, the Austin band’s latest is “a subtle album, built around gentle, dream-like musical arrangements that belie the tougher sentiments underpinning these songs,” I wrote in this review for Paste. “The narrators here are often trying to figure out where they stand, in relation to a significant other, themselves, the past, the future.” They do it with elegance and artful restraint.
Son Volt, Day of the Doug — This one bucks my trend toward quieter albums. Day of the Doug finds Jay Farrar and Son Volt sounding more vibrant than they have in a while on this tribute to the late, great Doug Sahm. “Son Volt rolls out a dozen deeper cuts, capturing a sense of the energy and come-what-may attitude that underpinned so much of Sahm’s music,” I wrote for Inside Hook. “The band is locked in, summoning a hazy, California vibe on the jangly ‘Sometimes You’ve Got to Stop Chasing Rainbows’ and leaning into a sleek boogie on ‘Dynamite Woman.’ ‘Poison Love’ emphasizes a Tex-Mex feel with a quick-step beat and the sound of an accordion, while ‘Float Away’ — one of two songs featuring bassist Andrew DuPlantis on lead vocals — finds the middle ground between honky-tonk and rock ’n’ roll, heavy on the cowbell.”
The Felice Brothers, Asylum on the Hill — Released without advance notice on Dec. 15, I’ve been immersed in the Felice Brothers’ surprise album nearly continuously since. (It’s not embeddable, for some reason, but you can listen here.) The Catskill, N.Y., band’s ninth LP picks up where their 2021 release From Dreams to Dust left off, with mordant wit and a sort of ramshackle chic on songs that sound (to me) as if they’re chronicling a civilization in decline. Though Ian Felice’s lyrics are often oblique, they’re also deceptively surgical as he slices apart the pieties that have sustained our collective cultural delusions for generations. Combined with gorgeous piano parts that James Felice plays to anchor many of these arrangements, augmented with guitar, accordion and lush harmony vocals, the dozen songs here simultaneously bristle and ache, and the effect is rapturous and melancholy.
Caroline Polachek, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You — Another departure from the sad-bastard stuff, Polachek’s latest is big, bold and weird, in the best possible way. The former Chairlift singer wraps her voice around louche avant-pop arrangements full of synth-bass and clattering beats. Polachek is an inventive lyricist, and also a versatile singer, intoning the ominous lyrics to “Welcome to My Island” without inflection, sending her voice into sudden falsetto on “Bunny Is a Rider” and performing in an exaggerated, elongated accent on “Billions.”
María José Llergo, Ultrabelleza — Stints living in Spain in recent years have kindled my interest in flamenco, which is at the root of María José Llergo’s music. A native of rural Córdoba in southern Spain, the traditional home of a musical style of singing, dancing and guitar descended from the Romani, Llergo blends the music she heard growing up with cutting-edge pop on Ultrabelleza, her first full-length album. She’s singing for the underdog here, in a voice at once powerful and pure, expressive and emotional, as she blends the distinctive 12/8 rhythm of flamenco with synthesizers and electronic beats.
Julie Byrne, The Greater Wings — Byrne’s first album since 2017 is a meditation on grief, following the unexpected death in 2021 of her musical partner Eric Littman. She sings poetic lyrics in a low, somber murmur, accompanied by fingerpicked guitar parts that are intricate and graceful. As I wrote in this review for Paste, “Byrne’s songs on The Greater Wings are never short of being beautiful, and sometimes even sublime.”
Jeffrey Martin, Thank God We Left the Garden — Martin’s latest is a quiet, yet forceful album that mostly consists of Martin’s rumpled voice and acoustic guitar. He sings here about the loss of innocence and its aftereffects, and he creates rich, evocative scenes with lyrics that are plainspoken, but never plain. As I wrote in this review for Paste, Thank God We Left the Garden contains “songs that are stark in their simplicity, yet emotionally rich in a way that can catch your breath in your throat or leave your eyes suddenly damp.”