50-31 | 30-11 | 10-1

50. The National – Laugh Track

[Official site] // [Spotify]

At the start of this decade, The National went through a rough patch, struggling with the new material they were working on. Perhaps those difficult times led to the placidness of First Two Pages of Frankenstein, but in hindsight, it was a necessary step in order to shake things off. As a result, Laugh Track, whose songs were mostly finished and recorded on tour at a much faster pace, ended up more diverse and energetic. The album doesn’t carry the heavy load its predecessor got almost crushed under. It’s the most alive The National have felt in years, and it feels like the members are excited again to work together on new music. –insomniac15

49. Fossilization – Leprous Daylight

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Frenetic tremolo picking, shotgun-sounding snare alongside cataclysmic blast beats, and guttural malevolence are ubiquitous throughout Fossilization’s premier LP. A logical progression from the Brazilian duo’s first EP and subsequent split release with Ritual Necromancy, those favoring the ‘death doom’ side of the spectrum will enjoy “Once Was God”‘s hostile opening deluge and the equitable balance of melody and malice found in “Oracle of Reversion” and Leprous Daylight‘s title track. Meanwhile, listeners preferring a ‘doom death’ alignment will appreciate the sludgy dissonance heard in “Eon” and especially “Wrought in the Abyss”‘ closing moments. An auspicious debut that immediately brings to mind Dead Congregation while serving as a venomous complement to Incantation’s Unholy Deification this year.

48. Jason Isbell – Weathervanes

[Official site] // [Spotify]

I have a bad habit of comparing everything Jason Isbell does to his poignant masterpiece, Southeastern, then calling it a day. Weathervanes has me questioning why, which is likely the best praise I could give it. Within this collection of fuzzed-out guitars are colorful bursts of experimentation and shapeshifting tendencies that will keep you guessing. Even as a longtime fan, Isbell and co. get under my skin in new and exciting ways here: the haunting “Miles” is as eerie as it is expansive, leaping back a few decades in time before the curtains close. As far as I’m concerned, Weathervanes is more than deserving of its position on this list for that track alone — a stone-cold 5/5 crooner — but that’s just me on my subjective bullshit again. It’s becoming more and more clear that Isbell is a songwriter with the determination needed to define our messy generation, and it has nothing to do with any particular album or song. –Atari

47. GridLink – Coronet Juniper

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Nine fucking years. It’s been nine years since GridLink’s sulphurous Longhena showcased the band’s impeccable technique: amid a grindcore scene eminently known for its brutish riffs, GridLink offer an unparalleled technicality from which emerges a hyper-melodic quality that would make job-creator Taylor Swift jealous. Not that we’re dealing with great pop choruses here: screamer Jon Chang (previously from grind legends Discordance Axis, whose The Inalienable Dreamless remains a pinnacle of the genre) alternates between piercing screams and cavernous growls that resemble my neighbor’s cat when I accidentally stepped on its tail. Still, Coronet Juniper is, dare I say, even more compositionally audacious than its predecessor, proving that GridLink cram more ideas in twenty minutes than most fifty-minute records, all the while blasting more stupid power and hair-raising speed than the rest of the “fast guitar music” competition. –dedex

46. Sprain – The Lamb As Effigy

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

And the award for most ambitious candle-burnt-at-both-ends scuzz+fuzz+feedback+buzz album of 2023 goes, unsurprisingly, to the people holding the aflame organ carcass like maracas (yaaaaay!). Doing a Black Country, New Road and disbanding after releasing the distilled manic perfect essence of being a.k.a album of the year, Sprain have left a rather large crater to fill. At least they were kind enough to drop one final solid gold piss nugget — sufficient, I hope, to satiate the drowning among us in need of such a fix — before doing so. In a while, crocodile. –AsleepInTheBack

45. Gezan with Million Wish Collective – Anochi

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

GEZAN hate war, hate organised religion, hate the destruction of our climate, hate our political class, hate how the internet has stolen our attention span, and (perhaps if a single unifying thread is to be plucked here) hate the mass depersonalisation of human society brought on by late-stage capitalism and compounded by advances in AI technology; Anochi is their way of sticking it to all this as loudly, colourfully and creatively as possible in a polyphonic, unflinchingly impassioned art rock manifesto that can only conceivably be worth anything if it lands as a Record That Will Change Your Life.

Convinced? I wasn’t at first — it’s been years since my preferences relegated that kind of record from teenage jet fuel to a distant myth — but Anochi sticks the landing on sheer collective vim. Inspired by the communal music of the Ainu peoples, GEZAN back themselves up with the so-called Million Wish Collective, a billowing mass of voices that supercharges every one of the album’s post-hardcore firestarters and hymnal rock larger-than-lifes with raging mantras and resplendent choral harmonies galore. They’re a torrent of vitality coursing through Anochi — and vitality is key to every facet of this thing. For GEZAN frontman Mahito the People, the goal wasn’t so much a coherent ‘statement’ as a brazen display of humanity in the face of a world gone to heck: he cites singer-songwriter Ayano Kaneko’s lyrically apolitical performance at his label’s anti-war rally as an inspiring example of facing an overtly political context without allowing it to dictate the terms one uses to confront it. When Anochi wraps up in closer “Linda ReLinda”, it has boiled down to a wholesome series of nonsense-chants, as though the sheer energy behind the album’s collective voices has outgrown any fixed utterance; take this cynically as proof-of-concept if you will, but this record’s spirit is so pronounced and so vibrant that it just about succeeds in its mission to affirm everything ecstatic about life itself — and if all of that is a bit much to handle, well, here’s one instance where you’re better off killing the part that cringes. –JohnnyoftheWell

44. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – PetroDragonic Apocalypse…

[Official site] // [Spotify]

There’s a high chance that, by the time I’m done typing my definitive thoughts on Petrodragonicprtrpoporotpof…, the fathers of the creature, certain reptile monarchs of ever-shedding names and shapes, will have written another three albums, recorded another two, and released an EP, a compilation, a live album, and several collaborations with themselves — all while touring. The output of the bifid collective is unmatched, ridiculous, but it’s a fact that transcends quantity; the real phenomenon here is how the hell do they achieve all this while keeping things comfortably above a fairly decent quality bar? The material contained in this… aaah, let’s just say PDA;ODOEN:AAOPEATBOMD for short, feels to me like King Gizz at their very core, bouncing between Judas Priest, Hawkwind, this year’s Anatolian rock top charter in Kazakhstan, and the sound of a galactic parade interrupting a weather report in Venus. It’s an album committed to proving a point, a riff fuckfest that constantly feeds back like a proverbial snake eating its own tail. Seven cuts, to which I’ll admit a shameless personal bias for the unbelievable goodness of “Witchcraft”, that prove that you may as well be a master of none, but you can still be pretty damn good at everything you do. Blink and you’ll miss it; yawn and you’ll choke on it. Witchcraft! –Dewinged

43. Nondi_ – Flood City Trax

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Flood City Trax was designed to give listeners the feelings of the “isolation of poverty,” and it masterfully succeeds in doing so by weaving a quilt of moods and genres together. Clearly the work of a very experienced producer and open-minded listener, one track might be primarily somber ambient only to be followed by glaring Jana Rush-esque footwork or a bubbling meld between Boards of Canada and Nmesh. Consistent throughout any of these songs is a personal, thoughtful kind of introspection, showcased by overcast beauty and fantastic drum programming, ultimately centered despite their variety. In a dark year full of systematically deployed cynicism that has led to many of us knowingly ignoring the people who need our support the most, it means a lot that there is music as striking as this: music that asks us to stop the denial and look inward to remember those around us. –granitenotebook

42. Svalbard – The Weight of the Mask

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Compared to other male-fronted core projects, Svalbard’s intensity is different, mainly coming from the feminism that emanates from the lyrics. They testify of emotions, pains, and traumas that the scene and its audience are not accustomed to — even though their last record When I Die, Will I Get Better? went even harder in that aspect. Here, the combative lyrics serve dual purposes. On the one hand, they add to the soundscape’s violence, being only matched by the frenzied riffing and intense drumming, incorporating blackgaze elements and epic guitar leads to ensure the band deserve their “post-metalcore” descriptor. But they also serve a more hopeful undertone: combined with the bright tones and ear-candy guitar melodies; they carry resilience and the confidence that, in the end, the forced positivity they touch upon on tracks like “Faking It” will not be forced anymore, and that there won’t be any need to wear a mask hiding their true emotions. The combination of distorted melodies and clean passages elevates The Weight of the Mask. Though it riffs, it never really is crushingly heavy but rather upbeat and hopeful-sounding. The bright chords and soaring leads accentuate the screams in a beautiful way, providing a contrast full of emotion and passion. Whether embracing the tranquil soundscapes like in “November” or engaging in upbeat heaviness like the opener, Svalbard continue to expand their sound and showcase their intensity through not only their instrumentation, but also their lyricism. –tydex (tyman128 x dedex)

41. Invent Animate – Heavener

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

In their second full-length effort with Marcus Vik, Invent Animate continue to dive deeper into their beautiful ambient soundscape accented by intense riffing, driving drums, and fierce screams mixed with soaring clean vocals. From the blistering pace of “Shade Astray” to the catchy earworm chorus of “Without a Whisper” to the unrelenting heaviness of “Immolation of Night”, the band continue to showcase their talents in a manner that highlights both the tranquil and the aggressive. Not to mention, “Elysium” may very well be one of the best metalcore closers in recent memory with its seamless transitions between slow verses and crushing breakdowns. –tyman128

40. Nicole Dollanganger – Married in Mount Airy

[Official site] // [Spotify]

While Nicole Dollanganger’s music has always been explicitly haunting, there is something genuinely and confusingly comforting about Married in Mount Airy. It’s a record brimming with tales of heartbreak, abuse and neglect, but insists on revealing its disturbing character through ethereal swells, gorgeous melodies and delicate songwriting. For the very first time, Dollanganger’s unique voice feels like assurance of a stable constant amidst gloom, rather than a reinforcement of destruction — the album as a whole may not fully comprise a statement of perseverance, but it is already proving its longevity on its own merits. –JesperL

39. Kostnateni – Úpal

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Preconceptions of disso-death projects fall to pieces when facing Úpal. It’s an album that seeks not to bludgeon; this is a disorienting, rapid unfurling of microtonal hellscapes, odd textures, and psychedelic-leaning realms that attempts to trap the listener, ensnaring them within a circus of zany black metal antics. It doesn’t seek to clutter needlessly; there are certainly plenty of gaps filled by an unrelenting dissonance, but there’s a distant, spacey ambience that reigns above all, clearing the room for winding riffs to swirl about and cause bedlam. Most importantly, it maintains an enticing urgency; D.L., the one-man-guitar-wizard behind Kostnateni, wastes no time dragging motifs beyond their expiration date, instead constantly experimenting with sounds in a thrillingly fresh manner. Úpal entirely rejuvenates a stagnating movement all on its own, and it doubles as one of the more rewarding listening experiences of the year. –MarsKid

38. Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist – Voir Dire

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

At the end of the immensely moving gospel-piano cut “Mancala”, toward the middle of Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist’s Voir Dire, the rapper Sideshow, in a spoken-word interlude, suddenly begins speaking to Earl in the car at the drive-through: “Don’t even trip on, like, whether you gon’ do a good job or a bad job or all that other shit, man. You just gotta — you just gotta be there, man. You just gotta pull up. You just gotta be there. You gon’ fuck up if you not.” The two of them then opt to order a chicken sandwich and a carne asada burrito.

And so it is that Earl shatters the backboards of syllables like Shaq, dominant as the situation requires, but also like he just rolled out of bed, not wanting to be here due to a congenital desire not to be anywhere as a person, but as an artistic personality still powerfully, irrevocably there. Producer The Alchemist, suddenly even-more-everywhere these days, cleans up the “drumless” soul-sample sound rendered liquid poetry by 2018’s Some Rap Songs and gives Earl the bright, lightly humorous, highly cinematic backdrop he requires to issue forth his mix of deep intellect and stylistic indolence. “Loose change rattlin’ around in my pocket / Threw it back to the block where I found it,” Earl raps on the sprightly and spectacular “Sirius Blac”, perhaps a reference to the cycling ecosystem of artistic and intellectual influence, perhaps a red herring of a modified concrete detail from a couple days ago. Either way, the line clearly demonstrates the ambitions of Earl’s lack thereof: the silver chain will snap, and the golden lamp will fall and break, and the rope at the well will break, and the water jar will be shattered, and Earl reveals to us that all we have to do to see it happen is pull up. –robertsona

37. Oxbow – Love’s Holiday

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

I tend to romanticize night walks in my mind as strolls under the neon lights, millions of colors glittering while the city embraces me as a brand new fluffy coat that loves me as much as it loves the rats that dwell in the sewage system under my steps. But the truth is that the coat is wet with rain and worn out, and the city reeks of urine, sweat and cheap alcohol while Love’s Holiday is all I can hear. When the piano in “All Gone” speaks its first notes, I feel like a boxer after having kissed the mat following a bribe: face bruised, spirit crushed. Eugene Robinson is a prophet of despair; his voice the gentle words of a fuzzy dream that I can’t barely remember. Love’s Holiday preaches a dead gospel, shrouded in celestial murk, and it’s executed with methodical grace, spiraling down from the bravado of the first two tracks into the broken promise of a “Million Dollar Weekend” until reaching top bottom. But there lies the comfort. After all, what’s the point of living and withering in the golden cage of routine? Only the brave will choose to tip-tap and tumble to Love’s Holiday, pissing on the grave of their misfortunes, and walking the city until the night sends them to wherever they belong. –Dewinged

36. Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good!

[Official site] // [Spotify]

In which Jessie Ware leans into outright camp (and saucily vamp!) territory, commandeering disco as a means to celebrate her rightful triumphs, and while it falls far short of being liberating — the brash sexuality of this album, in which it is posited that pleasure is a human right and that Matthew may have excessive love for his truck but he sure can [bait and switch] — leans into fan service, evincing the music her fans want her to make and sounding less than convincing in the process. It’s the littler (in scale) moments that hit: the utterly gorgeous “Hello Love” coos its way into the heart, taking the “You find it when you’re not looking for it” phenomena and capturing the soaring elation. And the genuine spark in her voice when she tells me I’m beautiful! That! Feels Good! It may only be a charming work by an artist we know is capable of ravishing us, but this is a perfectly lovely and warm-hearted album to keep company with. Come on lil’ baby. Let’s stay high. –WinesburgOhio

35. Fall Out Boy – So Much (For) Stardust

[Official site] // [Spotify]

The year is 2023 and a Fall Out Boy album is more well-liked among Sputnikmusic dot com staff members than, uh, probably quite a few metal albums with riffs and stuff. Joke’s on you, though, because this Fall Out Boy album in 2023 provides riffs, too! Moreover, So Much (For) Stardust also offers up catchy choruses, pleasant melodies and only a handful of questionable moments — a far cry from the band’s fairly awful output of the past decade or so. Perhaps that’s the best thing about this album: it allows even the most cynical and jaded (ex?) pop punk fans (hi) to rejoice and, yes, enjoy Fall Out Boy again. Hell yeah. –JesperL

34. MIKE – Burning Desire

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

MIKE’s personality as a rapper and instincts as a curator of production are so powerfully appealing that it hardly matters that 2023’s LP Burning Desire, probably his best since 2017’s beautiful May God Bless Your Hustle, seems at first to be all parts and no whole, all stylistic perpendicular lines and nonchalant shifts in mood. Oddball instincts that produce pleasure mesh with those which bring light confusion; the only thing weirder than “Zap!”‘s indefinite yet solid time signature, offbeat horn blasts and all, is its placement in the tracklist after the mysterious intro track and the lethargic “Dambe”. Riding the subtle keys-and-horns undulations of his preferred “drumless” soul-sample sound, MIKE remains simultaneously cryptic and open to us, always confessing a secret and keeping it at the same time. Burning Desire, pleasant from the get, pays surprising dividends when you play it more than a couple times, allowing its listener to discern structure where once they saw chaos, which I figure the oft-depressive and oft-therapeutic MIKE sees as inherently valuable. After listening to albums like this one, it’s certainly easy to feel the same way. –robertsona

33. DreamWeaver (JP) – blue garden

[Bandcamp] // [Spotify]

Back when blue garden dropped and was sold to us all as the record of the summer for people who hate sunlight, I bravely took the hype at its word, bought up the record along with a budget flight to Corfu, and lounged around on a shaded terrace slurping tzatziki for as long as it took to confirm that, yes(!), it really was exactly that. ‘Comfort music’ is a fair, if unglamorous descriptor for much of this record’s icy atmosphere and featherweight breakbeats, yet it fails to do justice to the likes of “last eden”‘s heavenly vocal layerings or the liminal p a n g that sustains “blue sun” — both of these perfectly illustrate the difference between circumstantial chill and meticulously-crafted refreshment. So far, so uncontroversial! Anyone could have written as much months ago, but as it transpires, blue garden also boasts a remarkable (and quite unexpected) compatibility with frostier modes of sunlessness than a summertime retreat alone can illustrate. Writing and reappraising in the most darkest, most miserable window of the year, it’s a joy how, say, “winter wing”‘s fragile weave of melodies or “cloud 9 hypnotics”‘ catatonic netherspace directly play into seasonal gloom — this thing sounds just as fantastic if you approach it for its outright chilliness as for a cool balm against whichsoever heatwave. Two meaningful lessons for us all here! #1: seasonal over-reliance is for lazy writers who brought you the same cut-corners as the artwork really does speak a thousand words or proofreading is actually seriously detrimental to my relationship with language; #2: bliss-outs as exquisite as blue garden do not go out of season! Enjoy this record peacefully and always. –JohnnyoftheWell

32. McKinley Dixon – Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?

[Official site] // [Spotify]

Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? is a dream-conscious jazz rap release. Of course, that means that the technique is top-shelf: rapologically and musically, it alternates between introspection and urgency without putting the songs’ construction at risk. But its true quality lies in how it packages this impeccable craft.

First, the record sports a tight runtime that’s very zeitgeisty — apparently, the youth have no attention span anymore (have they ever) — that, coupled with clear POP elements, overrides the genre’s traditional nebulosity — that “Run, Run, Run” chorus is the kind of catchy the whole jazz rap genre has to strive for to conquer the charts back.

Then, its consciousness strikes a good balance of vivid details that never feel too much. It’s the best kind of conscious when the protagonist’s personal experience feels universal — it’s not only you, McKinley: we all have become better liars because our tongues got sharper and our hearts got colder. These lil street knowledge snippets fill to the brim Beloved!, whose overall genuineness can only be discarded by cynics. That sincerity aligns with the record’s most important characteristic: despite its ultimately optimistic perspective, Beloved! never backs away from acknowledging the system’s inherent struggle.

Dixon is not naive: he does not only hope the future will be better, but he will fight for it. –dedex

31. Danny Brown – Quaranta

[Official site] // [Spotify]

The day Danny Brown woke on his 29th and 364th day, I doubt he was prepared for — or even expected to make — his 30th birthday. I suspect too there did not exist a plan for surviving through to 24 at 23; at 31, 32 must have been unimaginable, beyond comprehension. I am fairly confident Brown has heard the “one day at a time” stricture, and often. This kind of day-to-day is not what that means. And suddenly This Is 40. The rollercoastering, churning mania of XXX is behind him, as is the defiant (and utterly enthralling) ugliness of Atrocity Exhibition, but the same compulsions and behaviours that motivated those two masterpieces remain. Bummer.

Quaranta reveals Brown at his most subdued and introspective, which latter quality he has always excelled at, somehow coupling skyscraping braggadocio with remarkable insight. Little of the former here; 40 as an age is an existential torment, as a) continued patterns fail to yield pleasant dividends and offer neither salve nor succour, but do result in the dissolution of a relationship, b) in a similar quandary as Earl Sweatshirt, the impulse to perform hip-hop is complicated by a desire for a new form of expression (“… back in the days, it weren’t ’bout no clout / n***as made music ’bout what they really ’bout” — perhaps tellingly, a refrain from a Geto Boys classic is repurposed in a kind of croon) and c) the unspoken anxiety, rendered through accumulated implications and inferences, that the sex drugs and rock ‘n roll may be integral, and not incidental, to his craft.

There are familiar beats in tracks which explore gentrification (“Jenn’s Terrific Vacation”, rather; Sophie would be proud) and BLM and rampant horniness and etc., but he’s mostly downcast and morose. “Celibate” (whose constituent syllables gain a surprising amount of mileage), cunningly placed in the back third of the album, reduces him to an anhedonic, sexless shell. But, a note of optimism: hearing a song from youth engenders Proustian reverie on his most beautiful and lovely song, like, ever. “Bass Jam” recalls moments of fondness and love in Brown’s youth, mediated through music that seemed genuine and unfiltered. So he was at an age he never thought he’d get to and in a place that he never thought he’d be, but as of time of writing — two years later — Brown is fresh out of rehab and sounding cautiously optimistic. I hope when he wakes tomorrow he’ll wonder if he can still sound authentic, and Great, at 100. –WinesburgOhio

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