It’s difficult to judge the character of music in a year without some distance. Will 2022 be epic, like 1994 or 2015, or middling, like 2009 or 2017? Also, what have we yet to discover? Sam Fender’s 2021 release Seventeen Going Under (think Springsteen, but British) dominated my Spotify from February to July, but I didn’t know it existed a year ago. One reason for writing this list is to help me (and hopefully you) find treasure. Two years ago, Josh introduced me to Harry Styles. Last year, Nate introduced me to Billy Strings. Every year, Adam introduces me to something that brightens, blows, and befuddles my mind. Here is some music to brighten, blow, and befuddle, from our ears to yours.
Read below or listen on our Spotify playlist.
Caleb’s picks
albums
1. Weather Alive ~ Beth Orton
I forget whether it was Daniel Johnston or Tom Waits (or both) who preferred to write songs on instruments they were less familiar with. There’s something about the struggle and the strange that can breed beauty, and Beth Orton’s Weather Alive is pudding for the proof. Orton switched from guitar to a three-hundred pound piano that she played while her children were at school. The result is striking: a collection of songs that keep your feet inside lambskin slippers while your mind trespasses space and time. Weather Alive reminds me of Astral Weeks (Van Morrison), On the Beach (Neil Young), or Bloodflowers (The Cure), but for a different time and age. I’m 20 when listening to Astral Weeks, 30 when listening to On the Beach, and Venmoing the piper when listening to Bloodflowers. Weather Alive is an album for middle age. That sweet spot between weddings and funerals when you question if there had ever been a spring. When you throw your cards as far as you can but learn that California’s out of reach. When you learn your love will be forever young even though your body will not. When your only choice left is to bleed or rust in the rain. When you see how to see, waiting for the dust to land.
Song picks: Friday Night, Unwritten
Quintessential Lyric:
“When the sea comes in it’s hard to believe it will ever go out again.”
2. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You ~ Big Thief
It took me time to warm to Big Thief. I missed their first two albums completely. “Cattails” captured my attention in 2019, and I connected with a few other tunes on U.F.O.F. and Two Hands. But there was something about Adrianne Lenker’s voice and the occasional discordant guitar solo that left me unfulfilled before I heard Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. Maybe the music has become less edgy. Maybe I’ve warmed to Lenker’s vocals. Whatever the reason, I gave this album the time and attention I neglected to offer Big Thief’s previous work, and what a reward I reaped. Lenker is one of the few lyricists today in the same league as Craig Finn (see #9), although she is more a Dickinson or Frost to Finn’s Berryman or Bukowski. The band, who would sometimes compete with the Lenkerverse on prior albums, are in bloom as cinematographers adding texture, layer, and perspective like the leaves, like a butterfly.
Song picks: Little Things, Certainty
Quintessential Lyric:
“Could I feel happy for you
When I hear you talk with her like we used to do?
Could I set everything free
When I watch you holder her the way you once held me?”
3. Big Time ~ Angel Olsen
Angel released my favorite song of the year (“All the Good Times”). This 2022 record is more country and less distortion than her critically acclaimed work that I don’t love big time like I love Big Time. When the drums kick in at 2:36 in “All the Good Times”, you know that life is about to get better, even if the future is not what you were promised. Here’s to all the good times, both past and yet to come.
Song picks: “All the Good Times,” “Big Time”
Quintessential Lyric:
“Never thought the day would come
When I would find someone
To love me only”
4. Natural Brown Prom Queen ~ Sudan Archives
I love musicians who can only be categorized with a Vitamix, and Natural Brown Prom Queen is a smoothie of Beyonce (see #23), FKA Twigs (#20), Missy Elliot, Moses Sumney, Doja Cat, Sufjan Stevens, bananas, and kale.
Song picks: Yellow Brick Road, NBPQ (Topless)
Quintessential Lyric: “I’m not average”
5. Harry’s House ~ Harry Styles
Harry’s House was my summer aperitif. It goes down easy on a parkway, porch, lawn, bbq, bike, beach, or boat. It tastes like JT and Janelle Monae, but with floral undertones and a lighter aftertaste.
Song picks: As It Was, Cinema
Quintessential lyric:
“I bring the pop
You got the cinema”
6. The Car ~ Arctic Monkeys
Remember when the Arctic Monkeys were a punk band? They transformed from the sound of barfing on the bouncer while getting thrown into the Soho A.M. to the clink of Courvoisier in crystal over white linen and lamb so gradually that I struggle to remember their fake tales of San Francisco or the time they went all in on you looking good on the dance floor. To quote Andre 3000, they’ve come along way baby, like them slim-ass cigarettes.
Song picks: Body Paint, Jet Skis on the Moat
Quintessential Lyric:
“You do your time traveling through the tanning booth
So you don’t let the sun catch you crying”
7. Once Twice Melody ~ Beach House
Like Bob Marley or War on Drugs, Beach House subscribe to the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ approach to making music that sounds a lot like themselves but nothing like anyone else. Once Twice Melody dominated my 2022 Spotify Wrapped playlist courtesy a February release date, four discs, and offering a melody I could (literally) work with (more than once or twice).
Song picks: Superstar, Runaway
Quintessential lyric:
“If it hurts to love
You better do it anyway”
8. Cool It Down ~ Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Cool It Down accompanies last year’s Ignorance (The Weather Station) to illustrate that global cataclysm serves as potent a muse as love, loss, and little surfer girls. I’ll be content spitting off the edge of the world if this is the soundtrack.
Song picks: Spitting Off the Edge of the World, Burning
Quintessential Lyric:
“Oh, how the world keeps on spinning
It goes spinning out of control”
9. A Legacy of Rentals ~ Craig Finn
Finn’s band, the Hold Steady, sing about townie parties that sometimes go off the rails. His solo albums describe the same characters when the party ends. Instead of having massive nights and getting bent down at the party pit, they are improvising eulogies, dodging parkway barricades, botching drug deals, watching cavemen in cartoons, and sleeping off hangovers in superhero matinees.
Song picks: Messing with the Settings, Jessamine
Quintessential lyric:
“This probably isn’t where I see myself forever
But for now, it’s pretty much where we are”
10. Being Funny in a Foreign Language ~ The 1975.
Leave it to the 1975 to make yacht rock cool. And make no mistake, “Oh Caroline” and “Looking for Someone to Love” is yachtier than a Loggins, Hall-Oats, Steely Dan triple bill.
Song picks: Oh Caroline, Part of the Band
Quintessential lyric:
"I like my men like I like my coffee
Full of soy milk and so sweet it won't offend anybody"
11. Skinty Fia ~ Fontaines D.C.
12. I Walked a Way With You ~ Plains
13. Ashley McBride Presents: Lindeville ~ Ashley McBride
14. Bell Bottom Country ~ Lainey Wilson
15. Heartmind ~ Cass McCombs
16. Some of Us Are Brave ~ Danielle Ponder
17. In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow ~ Weyes Blood
18. Preacher’s Daughter ~ Ethel Cain
19. The Hardest Part ~ Noah Cyrus
20. CAPRISONGS ~ FKA twigs
21. It’s Almost Dry ~ Pusha T
22. Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers ~ Kendrick Lamar
23. Renaissance ~ Beyonce
24. Laughing so Hart, It Hurts ~ MAVI
25. PAINLESS ~ Nilüfar Yanya
26. Laurel Hell ~ Mitski
27. Farm to Table ~ Bartees Strange
28. Cave World ~ The Viagra Boys
29. All of Us in Flames ~ Ezra Furman
30. Surrender ~ Maggie Rogers
31. LIFE ON EARTH ~ Hurray for the Riff Raff
32. Hiding in Plain Sight ~ Drugdealer
33. Misadventures of Doomscroller ~ Dawes
34. Chloë and the Next 20th Century ~ Father John Misty
35. Rolling Golden Holy ~ Bonny Light Horseman
36. Lucifer on the Sofa ~ Spoon
37. Blue Rev ~ Alvvays
38. five seconds flat ~ Lizzy McAlpine
39. God Save the Animals ~ Alex G.
40. We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong ~ Sharon Van Etten
41. Remember Your North Star ~ Yaya Bey
42. Special ~ Lizzo
43. CRASH ~ Charli XCX
44. Dawn FM ~ The Weeknd
45. Gemini Rights ~ Steve Lacy
46. Give Me Grief ~ Titus Andronicus
47. Welcome 2 Club XIII ~ Drive-by Truckers
48. Palomino ~ First Aid Kit
49. Humble Quest ~ Maren Morris
50. Bronco ~ Orville Peck
Singles
Nightshift ~ Bruce Springsteen
Weird Goodbyes ~ The National feat. Bon Iver
BILLIE EILISH ~ Armani White
TO THE MOON ~ Jnr Choi feat. Sam Tompkins
Munch (Feelin’ U) ~ Ice Spice
Western Wind ~ Carly Ray Jepsen
From Austin ~ Zach Bryan
Coyotes ~ Bill Callahan
The Night (Part 2) ~ Morgan Wade
These Times Have Got Me Drinking ~ Flogging Molly
Adam’s picks
The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Omnium Gatherum (they also put out four other amazing albums in 2022 that should really be on this list too)
Black MIDI - Hellfire
Animal Collective - Time Skiffs
Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
Spoon - Lucifer on the Sofa
Guided by Voices - Crystal Nuns Cathedral
Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia
Built to Spill - When the Wind Forgets Your Name
Viagra Boys - Cave World
Does the new remix of Pink Floyd’s Animals count for this? Because that’s one of the greatest albums of all time.
Nate’s picks
KGLW [King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard] wins 2022 for quality and quantity.
Kendrick Lamar ~ Mr Morale & the Big Stepper
Father John Misty ~ Chloe and the Next 20th Century
John’s kids’ picks
John hasn’t nominated any new music for this post the past two years, so I asked his daughter Mary and son Joe. Most of their recommendations came out before 2022.
A few exceptions:
Mary nominated Zach Bryan (my single #7) but said she listened most to A$AP Ferg, who was on her gym playlist.
Joe nominated Pulse of the Early Brain [Switched on Volume 5] by Stereolab. He and his friends also told me that “Runner” (from my album #38) is overrated compared to Alex G’s old stuff, and that a friend who went to school with Steve Lacy (album #45) told them that Lacy was a prima donna even before he was famous.