#23From2023 - #Lankum – False Lankum (Rough Trade, 2023).
Lankum is an Irish folk group interpreting traditional songs through a dark postmodern lens. Not for the faint of heart, this relentlessly bleak album rarely lets in the light. If a doom metal band suddenly began interpreting Steeleye Span on a steady diet of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, it might come out sounding like Lankum’s foreboding, cinematic take on traditional folk. Find it on Bandcamp.
#23From2023 - #WITCH – Zango (Desert Daze Sound). 40 years after this Zambian “Zamrock” collective made its last studio album, the revived group (two original members backed by musical allies from Europe) returns with a scintillating fusion of rock, funk and Afrobeat. Most of the original members (WITCH stood for “We Intend to Cause Havoc”) died during Zambia’s devastating AIDS epidemic. This new album rekindles their spirit to reclaim the Zamrock crown and rock your world.
#23From2023 - #Wednesday – Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans). This Asheville, North Carolina outfit creates an off-kilter hybrid of rootsy Americana, urban noise and shoegaze sounds. Karly Hartzman brings her Lucinda Williams-style drawl to more conventional numbers like “Chosen to Believe,” after screaming bloody valentines on longer excursions like “Bull Believer.” Guitarist MJ Lenderman released his own “live and loose” set a few months after Rat Saw God took off.
#23From2023 - #JohnScofield – Uncle John’s Band (ECM). The jazz guitar legend teams with double bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Bill Stewart for a double album that grooves and contemplates on a range of material. Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Neil Young’s “Old Man” and the Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band” get a modern treatment through Scofield’s fluid lines with a touch of amplifier breakup. More typical jazz fare like Miles Davis’s “Budo” fills out a diverse and lively set.
#23From2023 - #AlexandraStréliski – Néo-Romance (Secret City). Playing against the conventional neo-classical tag, this Montreal pianist-composer channels the likes of Friedrich Chopin on an all-original set of modern romantic pieces. Dark and emotionally charged, the music highlights Stréliski’s fluid and often sparse piano lines, embellished with chamber strings for added atmosphere. Like #RyuichiSakamoto, Stréliski makes meditative music for a winter’s night.
#23From2023 - #SufjanStevens – Javelin. Stevens returns to singer-songwriter mode on a set of ballads exploring life lessons and resilience in the face of tragedy. “Everything That Rises” turns a Flannery O’Connor trope into a haunting spiritual quest. “Javelin” is a wry meditation on chance and circumstance. The interpolation of “There’s a World” revises one of Neil Young’s lesser-known tunes. Stevens works mostly alone with guest turns from his folk and indie compatriots.
#23From2023 - #Slowdive - Everything is Alive (Dead Oceans). Seldom does a band on a second career run match the quality of their work 30 years earlier. I'm not saying this release tops Souvlaki, but Slowdive's deeper plunge into billowy dreampop is a natural progression from 2017's comeback effort. I miss the Cocteau Twins so damn much, and while "Alife" and "Kisses" aren't that, Neil Halstead and company bring a similarly keen melodic factor to their new work.
#23From2023 - #SleepToken – Take Me Back to Eden (Spinefarm). Metal needs another clan of nameless ghouls like it needs a hole in the skull. But this UK combo sustains the year’s biggest metal buzz by mixing up raging riffs and apocalyptic screams with Anathema-like progscapes (“Ascensionism”) and Depeche-influenced technopop (“Aqua Regia”). Refreshingly free of Ghostly arena pomp, Vessel and his masked crew deliver enough epic crunch to offset the album’s Edenic ambitions.
#23From2023 - #RyuichiSakamoto – 12 (Milan/ Commmons). Japanese composer and classical/ electronic innovator Sakamoto lost his battle with cancer in March of this year. This final cycle of twelve pieces, identified only by date of composition (2021-22) is a meditative set with stark, minimalist beauty channeled through Sakamoto’s piano with electronic textures. Its late-night ambience makes it perfect for those evenings when you feel like dialing down the noise of the world.
#23From2023 - #Riverside – ID.Entity (InsideOut/ Mystic). Poland’s Riverside are one of the few bands still making prog without an overlayer of extreme metal to summon appeal on the festival circuit. That makes them an acquired taste, but Mariusz Duda’s vocals add melodic richness (think Peter Gabriel by way of Guy Garvey) over the group’s knotty riffs and extended peregrinations on “Friend or Foe?”, the timely “Post-Truth,” and Kansas-like centerpiece “The Place Where I Belong.”
Great_Albums