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My 100 favourite songs of the year, in one place, with playlist below…
100.
White Denim
Bounce Back
Dip into the work of Texas rock band White Denim any time or year and you’ll hear some fine retro classic rock stylings to love. Like this new one which sounds like Steely Dan, so you know, I’m a fan.
The album the song features on – Relaxed – was due to be released in 2021 but wasn’t at the time. It’s on streaming now.
99.
Sweeping Promises
You Shatter
Sweeping Promises are the Kansas duo of Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug, who released their second album Good Living Is Coming For You on Sub Pop in June.
The band make 80s-indebted new-wave post-punk with a lo-fi tone that sounds like it’s playing off a cassette at times and it’s a lot of fun, as heard on ‘You Shatter’.
98.
Squid
Undergrowth
Squid are one of the more interesting of the English batch of wiry post-punk bands, and recent album O Monolith showcases a band colouring outside those lines.
97.
Lisa O’Neill
Old Note
The Cavan singer-songwriter Lisa O’Neill’s‘Old Note’ from the 2023 album All Of This Is Chance is an orchestral swirling song, featuring Colm Mac Con Iomaire on accompaniment. The song is inspired by traditional musician Tony McMahon, and is described as a sad lullaby, and is an exaltation of nature.
“Feathered friend, dig up and resurrect me, I long to live among the song of birdies, A lawless league of lonesome, lonesome beauty, Skies and skies and skies above duty.”
96.
Two Shell
Love Him
Stay weird Two Shell.
95.
baby___asl
Hostile City
The sparse opening track from Londoner baby___asl’s Snakeskin EP, ‘Hostile City’ immediately recalls and channels the alternative electronic vocal vibe of Tirzah, and that’s a great thing, that’s hard to replicate through inspiration, and make your own.
The EP is on a label more known for drill – AP Life (ran by Bok Bok, a sister label of Night Slugs), so this is a curveball all round.
94.
L’Rain
New Year’s UnResolution
Brooklyn experimental genre-fluid artist Taja Cheek aka L’Rain’s third album I Killed Your Dog features this closing track.
The record, which thematically “considers what it means to hurt the people you love the most,” or an “anti-break-up” album.
93.
Queens Of The Stone Age
Paper Machete
Josh Homme’s Queens Of The Stone Age has had a mini-renaissance since the release of eighth studio album In Times New Roman…, for my money, the band’s best record in ten years.
‘Paper Machete’ recalls early Kyuss and Homme’s penchant for writing ballasted rock’n’roll bluesy songs.
92.
Natalia Beylis
Afloat In Fog And Feathers
The Irish musician and sonic artist Natalia Beylis released Mermaids on September 1st, an album inspired by a CRB Elettronica Ancona keyboard salvaged from a Leitrim recycling centre and an old family photo of her mother and two friends (which is also the cover for the record and informs the title).
‘Afloat In Fog And Feathers’ is the record’s opening gambit, a transportative slow dive into a subaquatic ambient world, rich with detail and tone.
“The sounds that come from her when I play always move me like water; swimming in rivers and floating in the murk beneath the surface,” Natalia said.
91.
Peggy Gou
(It Goes Like) Nanana
The South-Korean DJ and producer’s ‘(It Goes Like) Nanana’ was the first to be released on XL Recordings, and there’s a big ATB ‘Til I Come’ Balearic sunkissed-vibes to the track with the bendy synth throughout the piano-house and Peggy’s own vocal song. It features on a forthcoming debut album.
It is “inspired by the eclectic house and pop classics that defined the Balearic sound, alongside 90s and 2000s dance anthems and Peggy’s own contemporary club production.”
90.
Water From Your Eyes
Out Here
The Brooklyn duo of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos debut album on Matador Records is fizzing with experimental sonic fun, and is one of our albums of the year.
The band reminds me of Jockstrap, in terms of how it fizzes with an eclecticism, it’s not guitar music, not post-punk, not electronic music necessarily, but it could be filed alongside Dan Deacon and Gang Gang Dance.
‘Out There’ is an album highlight – erratic and polychromatic – lead by sonics and sounds rather than traditional song structure.
89.
Mac DeMarco
Proud True Toyota
Mac Demarco released an 199-track album One Wayne G which features chronological songs Mac worked on from 2018 to 2023, and follows the instrumental album Five Easy Hot Dogs in January. While it’s nine and a half hours of music, there are ones with vocals, like ‘Proud True Toyota’, which is a thoroughly pleasant and very Mac DeMarco song.
88.
Mandy, Indiana
Drag [Crashed}
Manchester band Mandy, Indiana came through with one of May’s most intriguing albums, with I’ve seen a way.
The experimental noise quartet’s music is a reminiscent of the band Health, in that it’s music played by a rock band which often sounds nothing like it.
“We wanted to alter textures, create clashes, and craft those moments when what you’re expecting to happen never comes,” said producer/guitarist Scott Fair.
Adding to the discombobulation, is Valentine Caulfield’s French language vocals, whispered, growling, seeking and on ‘Drag [Crashed]’, addressing a lifetime of misogyny.
“‘Drag [Crashed]’ is a collection of things that were said to me or about me because I’m a woman. From middle-aged men saying I would ‘pop some fly buttons’ to my dad and that he would need a gun to fend off the boys when I was a literal toddler, to educators telling me my shoulders would ‘distract the boys’ and I therefore needed to cover myself, and romantic partners trying to control my body, ‘Drag’ is a personal exploration of what it means growing up a girl.”
Valentine Caulfield
87.
Gurriers
Sign Of The Times
The Dublin punk band Gurriers’ second single shares a title only with Prince and Harry Styles if nothing else, the tune is a wiry punk track with rolling guitar and bass riffs and marquee vocals from Dan Hoff.
“’Sign of the Times’ examines the human obsession with violence, and how we have all become desensitised to the horrors we witness online through the growth of social media.”
86.
Future Islands
The Tower
Classic Future Islands vibes to coincide with the announcement of a new album People Who Aren’t There Anymore.
85.
Pretty Girl
I Could (Look Inside Mix)
Melbourne producer Emilia Predebon’s aka Pretty Girl put out this dreamy pop track in April on Steel City Dance Discs. There’s a clubby version too.
84.
Quantic
Stand Up
New York-based musician Will Holland aka Quantic’s ‘Stand Up’ an encouraging anthem drawn from disco, gospel, soul and jazz music.
“‘Stand Up speaks to the everyday person, the everyday struggles for everyday people. It is celebratory but at the same time about pushing forward, standing strong in what you believe in and creating power through love and dedication.”
83.
Peter Gabriel
Road to Joy (Dark-Side Mix)
I went to see Peter Gabriel live in the 3Arena in June, and it cemented my respect and love for an artist still striving and creating interesting work into his seventies.
‘Road To Joy’ is a case in point, a brand new song to feature on his forthcoming i/o album, which was released in two slightly different mixes – ‘Bright Side’ and ‘Dark Side’.
It’s a brilliant track, just one of a good few released from the album that match it for quality, that bridges his experimental side with his pop sensibility through its big singalong chorus.
‘Road to Joy’ is from the record I/O which was released in December, and was produced by Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno, and features the Soweto Gospel Choir.
82.
Octo Octa
Late Nite Love
Producer Maya Bouldry-Morrison aka Octo Octa’s latest EP Dreams of a Dancefloor holds the a bleeping tension from the off with the opening track ‘Late Night Love’ designed to bring a dancefloor together under a trance house 12 minute sojourn.
81.
Kneecap
It’s Been Ages
Distilling what makes the Belfast rappers Kneecap so good at what they do, Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap move effortlessly between Gaeilge and English referencing generating controversy and humour, on ‘It’s Been Ages’ featuring a simple piano rap instrumental from Willhouse.
The Irish language raps slap hard.
80.
Benny Sings
Young Hearts (feat. Remi Wolf)
A sweet melodic synth-funk ditty from Stones Throw-signed Dutch artist Benny Sings, from the album of the same name, his eighth, this time with producer Kenny Beats on the boards.
79.
Sarah Crean
Wasted Youth
Dublin singer-songwriter Sarah Crean has made some impressive strides since last year’s ‘2:00am’, which after we featured it went big on the US Spotify viral chart garnering over 4 million listens.
‘Wasted Youth’ is a highlight on the recent Death By Laundry EP released on AWAL, along with recent single ‘What Do I Know?’, and ‘The Subtle Art of Past’.
“Wasted Youth is very much an ode to the ups and downs of my childhood/teen years. The song itself goes back and forth between acceptance and rejection of the fact while processing as the song progresses – almost like I’m trying to reach out to my younger self from my current state as an adult. I myself have (and always have had) a hard time forgiving people and letting things go and this song feels like an accurate representation of the fact that sometimes I’m ok with things from my past, other times I’m not.”
78.
Nailah Hunter
Finding Mirrors
Los Angeles-based harpist and composer Nailah Hunter has signed to to Fat Possum, and introduced her new album Lovegaze with this gorgeous alternative R&B pop song.
It’s stilll got elements of Hunter’s ambient and folk sound from before, but will in focus elements contributing alongside for more immediate songwriting.
“This song began with a bass line, which is not usually how I approach writing. Of all the tracks on the record, it is the most purposeful departure from the comfort I found in making ambient music in the past. Letting the song exist in the form that it came to me was a healing reminder that I can make anything I want to. The song is about seeing yourself without warning.”
Lovegaze is out out January 12, 2024 on Fat Possum Records
77.
King Krule
Pink Shell
I don’t think Space Heavy, the fourth album from King Krule is any form of radical of a departure for the record from Archy Marshall but it is his best for a good while.
Marshall recently became a father four years ago and a lot of these songs were dreamt up travelling on trains between Peckham and a place Seaforth, (which is a song on the record but also, the name of a seaside town outside of Liverpool) where city where Marshall has been living part time for the past two years.
Where most of the songs have a pensive daydreamy quality to the songs, there are blasts of the post punk energy he has shown before with ‘Pink Shell’ and ‘Hamburgerphobia’.
76.
FIZZ
Close One
Fizz are the new band made up of friends Orla Gartland, dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown
‘Close One’ is a markedly emotionally-driven song than the band’s main melodic psych pop music. Orla Gartland takes lead vocal on a song looking back at a past relationship.
75.
Jorja Smith
Little Things (Nia Archives remix)
Big garage beats, Crystal Waters and Jorja Smith’s voice? A great match.
74.
Feist
Hiding Out In The Open
It was seeing Feist’s surprisingly calculated and artful Multitudes show in the National Stadium in Dublin earlier this year, that elevated this song to the end of year list.
72.
Cartin
Smasha
Derry producer Cartin’s latest tune ‘Smasha’ barges in with a rush of euphoria and a Lone-esque synth build. A big fizzy tune for the dancefloors that writes “OOF” in big capital letters as it goes.
71.
Lil Yachty, J. Cole
The Secret Recipe
It’s a long time since a 14-year-old Lil Yachty was blasting J Cole on the internet, and here they are offering up one of the best rap songs of the year together.
68.
John Francis Flynn
The Lag Song
‘The Lag Song’ is a song written by folk singer Ewan MacColl and performed by Luke Kelly and The Dubliners, and as the penultimate song on Dublin folkie Flynn, it is the penultimate song on the album Look Over the Wall, See the Sky.
The album marks a shift from his 2021 debut I Would Not Live Always, in that it takes recognisable trad and folk songs like ‘The Zoological Gardens’ and ‘Mile In The Ground’ and wraps them with an experimental cloth, a trick beautifully repeated on ‘The Lag Song’ as banjo and Flynn’s higher register lead the way over a dip into creaking stringed instrumentation.
65.
H31R, Quelle Chris
Down Down BB
Wavey alt-hip-hop with a similar vibe to Shabazz Palaces from H31R (pronounced heir / air), who are the duo of New Jersey producer JWords and rapper maassai. This featured on the Big Dad released album Headspace.
64.
ØXN
Farmer In The City
Whereas the pre-release singles from the Dublin doom folk band of ØXN featured more of the sound of member Radie Peat’s other band Lankum, ‘Farmer In The City’ from the album CYRM, takes it queue from Katie Kim’s atmospheric songwriting, and across nearly 13 minutes brings the synthy sound of Samhain noise-rock magic to proceedings.
58.
Heartworms
May I Comply?
London artist Jojo Orme aka Heartworms came through with post-punk theatricality on the spiky ‘May I Comply’ on Speedy Wunderground.
“When I wrote this track I just wanted to get over an ex and to tell my little brother he’s good enough… turned out to be a lot darker than I thought.”
57.
Floating Points
Birth4000
Sam Sheperd is in fully-fledged dancefloor ripper mode on his only single of 2023. Oof.
It follows recent singles from 2022 – ‘Vocoder‘ ‘Grammar’ and ‘Problems’ which are similarly dancefloor-facing.
54.
Danny Brown
Tantor
The Detroit rapper and now, podcast host Danny Brown seventh studio album Quaranta was released in November, and most of it sounds nothing like this.
The Alchemist-produced ‘Tantor’ is among his finest work, a weird psychedelic rock-infused blast.
53.
Django Django, Yuuko
Don’t Touch That Dial (Earthworks Acid Hip-House Remix)
Django Django’s 2023 album Off Planet arrived in four parts throughout the year and features some highlight collaborations with Self Esteem, Jack Peñate and Stealing Sheep.
Django Django co-founder and producer Dave Maclean said the album’s open construction was “a way to go beyond”, to bring new voices, new rhythms, new experimentation into play.
I absolutely loved the Yuuko-featuring ‘Don’t Touch That Dial’ but the Earthworks Acid Hip-House remix is one I found myself gravitating towards.
50.
English Teacher
Nearly Daffodils
My dog passed away last year. Her name was Daffodil and she rocked. I already loved UK art rock band English Teacher a lot this year, but that’s an extra personal serendipity tick for me to love them a bit more.
“It’s a song about heartbreak and acceptance of unfulfilled potential. How, no matter how much you may want something, no matter how much effort you may put into something’s growth or development, no matter how beautiful you can envision its fruition; life is a bitch and about as unstoppable as a freight train.”
49.
Casisdead, Desire
Venom
After ‘Matte Grey Wrap’, Desire and Casisdead team up on a cinematic highlight from the Casisdead debut record FAMOUS LAST WORDS.
‘Ye Spooky, ye spooky’ has been my mantra from this song.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS is London-based rapper, producer and director’s debut album on Warp Records, “as much a sci-fi film as it is a rap record, a labyrinth of vice, crime and faded glamour.”
46.
DJ Seinfeld & Confidence Man
Now U Do
Confidence Man continued their collab series after a track with Daniel Avery with this bouncy rave hookup with DJ Seinfeld from their new era.
45.
Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar
The Hillbillies
The PgLang touring family cousins dropped a wavey rap loosey this year, and the video features the pair rapping to the song in Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre of all places.
44.
Earl Sweatshirt, The Alchemist
Heat Check
The Voir Dire album is one of the best of the year and this is a highlight on the collaborative album, with a beat that sounds like something MF DOOM would absolutely slay.
41.
Sufjan Stevens
A Running Start
Sufjan’s solo album Javelin features a clutch of songs that return to his most loved sound – the richly arranged and acoustic music of 2005’s Illinois, as heard on this album highlight ‘A Running Start’, that moves from gentle guitar to full-throated soar.
Sufjan has just been discharged from hospital and is learning to walk again after contracting Guillain-Barré syndrome. He also dedicated the album to his late partner.
39.
Sofia Kourtesis
Vajkoczy
There’s an interesting backstory to the Berlin-based Peruvian DJ and producer’s debut album Madres, and it involves the titular neurosurgeon Peter Vajkoczy, who the album is dedicated to, after he successfully operated on her mother.
Vajkoczy became a sounding board for the album, and the pair even went to Berghain together.
37.
Turnstile, BadBadNotGood, Blood Orange
Alien Love Call
From a surprise three-track EP release featuring Canadian instrumentalists reimagining Turnstile’s visceral American punk as heard on 2021’s Glow On.
All three work well, but my favourite arrives 2 minutes 20 in on the video above.
36.
Fever Ray
Kandy
Fever Ray’s album Radical Romantics was a return to form, and ‘Kandy’ features the Swedish artist’s trademark steel pan and synths backing alongside brother Olof Dreijer on vocals, so basically it’s a new song from The Knife.
35.
billy woods & Kenny Segal, Samuel Herring
Facetime
A stand out from raooer Billy Woods and producer Kenny Segal on a geographical tour of duty album Maps, featuring Samuel T. Herring of Future Islands on the lush chorus.
Herring has form in the collab (with the likes of BadBadNotGood) and rap stakes (as Hemlock Ernst).
Of the song Herring says: “It was late summer 2022 and most days I was stuck in my hotel room wondering what was happening with my life…. All of that being on the road and living remotely, feeling alienated, alone, missing people back home, but also feeling at home living that way – I understood it deeply…. That song is my life and I was living in it.”
33.
Aluna, Tchami, Kareen Lomax
Running Blind
One of my personal contenders for song of the summe 2023 was from Aluna’s solo album MYCELiUM.
‘Running Blind’ is effervescent electronic pop with a thudding piano-house beat, just good vibes only.
26.
Mitski
Bug Like An Angel
‘Bug Like an Angel’ is a stark return brandishing the artist’s trademark intensity, that feels like a suitable introductory track to an album that will feature a 17-piece choir on it, which can be heard here celestially underscoring Mitski’s voice and chugging acoustic guitar.
References for The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We album include Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Western, Carter Burwell’s tundra-filling Fargo soundtrack, Arthur Russell, Scott Walker, Igor Stravinsky, Caetano Veloso and Faron Young.
25.
Kojaque, WIKI
Johnny McEnroe
After the release of the breakthrough mixtape Deli Daydreams and debut album proper Town’s Dead, the Cabra rapper Kojaque came back with the best-featuring Phantom Of The Afters.
‘Johnny McEnroe‘ featuring NY rapper hero Wiki is Kojaque vibing on a highlight from the record.
“I was in New York in May 2022 on my first US tour, and had been trying to collaborate with Wiki for a while. I was booked in to work with Tony Seltzer the day after my headline show, and right beforehand got a text to say Wiki was going to come through. It was a surreal experience cutting the track with two guys I’ve been a fan of for 8 years. I’ll never forget it.”
21.
Joanna Sternberg
People Are Toys To You
Idiosyncratic folk is the order of the day on New York songwriter Joanna Sternberg’s second album I’ve Got Me. Their voice has drawn comparisons to Kimya Dawson, Joanna Newsom, Adrienne Lenker and Daniel Johnson.
The whole LP was on our albums of the year so I’m singling out the charming simplicity of ‘People Are Toys To You.’
16.
Big Thief
Vampire Empire
Big Thief marked a big US TV performance by playing a new song (which is so Big Thief), and the recording of that song ‘Vampire Empire’ was finally released in July.
‘Vampire Empire’ has had Youtube commenters in a spin since it was first aired (“im on the knees in the middle of walmart please drop this already” / “Literally the best songwriter since Elliott Smith died”), and it’s not had to hear why. This band, and this songwriter Adrianne Lenker are at a pinnacle of musicmaking, with lyrics about the exasperation of loving someone who doesn’t know what they want.
Well, I walked into your dagger for the last time
It’s like trying to start a fire with matches in the snow
Where you can’t seem to hold me, can’t seem to let me go
So I can’t find surrender, and I can’t keep control
You turn me inside out and then you want the outside in
You spin me all around, then you ask me not to spin
You say you want to be alone, and you want children
You wanna be with me, you wanna be with him
Recorded and produced by Dom Monks at Guissona, Spain’s Teatre de cal Eril Studio during a recent tour, the song addresses “the beautiful complexity of gender identity and breaking destructive internal cycles”.
“For me, it’s about getting out of toxic internal patterns – leaving the empire of energy drains that obscure pure essence, learning about what healthy boundaries are, and finding the power to implement them for the possibility of giving and receiving (both inwardly and outwardly) unbroken and infinite Love.”
Adrianne Lenker
14.
Mustafa
Name Of God
Toronto singer Mustafa Ahmed ruminates on the Islam faith and the death of his brother over the summer on this quietly devastating song from his forthcoming album that has been co-opted as a song for those struggling in Sudan and Palestine.
The song was produced with Simon On The Moon, Aaron Dessner and Rodaidh McDonald.
The artist’s statement accompanying the song:
I never felt like the Nubian prince my father seen in me through his tinted lens. I try their dance, their prayer — I always fall short, & God’s name wasn’t always related to beauty for me, but to hopelessness, this Islam we share and Allah we call for while witnessing a constant violence that continues to bind us, I don’t think I ever felt completely Muslim among other Muslims.
All these sub-beliefs like borders. My aunts in all their wisdom and narrowness-one Sufi spinning into remembrance, one refuting the taking of a photograph.
When my big brother was killed in what will always feel like yesterday, knowing the suspected murderer was someone he held as a friend, someone he prayed with- it led me to believe that maybe his love was his end? Maybe where there is no love, parting from love keeps us alive? Maybe ending in love is the only way to actually begin? I don’t know.
The only clear memory from the days of his death were my parents reciting in unison, “oh Allah, we accept his passing, we accept what you ordained.”
I’m desperate to love God like them.
Our faith and our hearts are too often our demise- I know a field of young niggas dreaming that can testify to this. For better or worse we’ll uncover every bone beneath our hollow laughter, our confused affection; maybe its revealed in our final gasp for meaning.
Until then.
Bismillah, In the Name of God, 10.17.23
10.
CMAT
California’
Like CMAT’s debut album opener ‘Nashville’, CMAT’s second album Crazy, Mad For Me ‘California’ opens with a song continues the trope of naming her first song from the album about a mythical American place.
Where ‘Nashville’ was an escapist metaphor for ending it all, ‘California’ is CMAT escaping a relationship and its deluded crescendo where CMAT imagines a life story on celluloid as the strings and chorus rise is truly a heavenly music moment of 2023.
California, oh-woah (I’m writing up a book about us)
California, oh-woah (They’re gonna make a movie of it)
California, oh-woah (They’re gonna cast Jake Gyllenhaal)
California, oh-woah (And I’m Kristen Schaal)
California, oh-woah (They’re gonna do it with a Coen brother)
California, oh-woah (Set it in Wicklow with your mother)
California, oh-woah (Oh no, it won a Razzie)
California, oh-woah (It’s all for nothing, should’ve just tried being happy)
I could also have picked ‘Rent’ or ‘Stay For Something’ on this list.
9.
Noname
Namesake
From Sundial, the first album in five years from the Chicago MC Noname, ‘Namesake’ typifies the tougher questioning lyrics and music that features throughout the recommended album.
She’s an artist who isn’t afraid to throw bombs at Jay Z, Rihanna, Kendrick, Beyoncé for playing the Superbowl, referencing the NFL’s ties to the US Military but she’s also not afraid to throw grenades in the mirror at herself (Noname once declared she wouldn’t want to perform in front of a majority white audience but played Coachella this year).
Go, Rihanna, go
Watch the fighter jet fly high
War machine gets glamorized
We play the game to pass the timeGo, Noname, go
Coachella stage got sanitized
I said I wouldn’t perform for them
And somehow I still fell in line
8.
Kwengface x Joy Orbison x Overmono
Freedom 2
UK drill meets UK garage as Kwengface, Joy Orbison and Overmono bring some serious sub-bass heat on ‘Freedom 2’, a newer take on the Zone 2 collective drill rapper’s original that dropped on his mixtape The Memoir.
‘Freedom 2’ has a big classic UK Garage bassline that echoed on repeat all year.
Joy Orbison and Overmono previously collaborated on ‘Blind Date’.
6.
Rachael Lavelle
Big Dreams
Gratitude, ever heard of it?
Big Dreams was one of my favourite albums of 2023, and the title song is Joni Mitchell-esque perfection with one of the best opening lines of a song this year:
“I came for the comedy / I left for the bus / That is nothing new to me / I have a lot of feelings.”
The song features the voice of the Luas announcer Doireann Ní Bhriain “who narrates the inner monologue of the millennial mind; the ever-wondering-ever- doubting, the contradicting and the aspiring” modern mind.
“Big Dreams is an existential ballad; a meditation on love, expectations, failure and the passing of time. When I wrote the melody, it was as if someone was dying. I was thinking about how, when you die, you experience a flashback of your life. That you are flooded with all the memories of love and people who impacted your life. I was inspired by this idea. That despite all the stress and attempts at success, to live is to be open to the possibilities of life and connection.
1.
Lankum
Lord Abore and Mary Flynn
False Lankum, the fourth album from the Dublin trad-folk band offered doomy gloomy folk informed by metal and darker music textures as heard on ‘Go Dig My Grave’, yes, but the greater surprise were the new shades included on the album, which was partly why it is my number 1 release of the year.
‘Lord Abore and Mary Flynn’ is a case in point, a beautiful rendition of an ancient murder ballad (also known as ‘Prince Robert‘), with Cormac MacDiarmada’s soft vocal (and Radie Peat’s supporting vocal) leading this gently-spun tale of a Romeo And Juliet-esque filicide. ‘Lord Abore and Mary Flynn’ is a love story spun with heart and a tragic softness.
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Nialler9’s Top 100 songs of 2023
Listen also on Tidal, Youtube.
- Lankum – Lord Abore And Mary Flynn
- Lana Del Rey – A&W
- Kara Jackson – dickhead blues
- Kieran Hebden & William Tyler – Darkness, Darkness
- Tensnake, Jessy Lanza – Keep It Secret
- Rachael Lavelle – Big Dreams
- Caroline Polachek – Welcome to My Island
- Kwengface x Joy Orbison x Overmono – Freedom 2
- Noname – namesake
- CMAT – California
- Yves Tumor – Lovely Sewer
- Young Fathers – I Saw
- The Last Dinner Party – Nothing Else Matters
- Mustafa – Name Of God
- Lankum – Go Dig My Grave
- Big Thief – Vampire Empire
- Nabihah Ibqal – This World Couldn’t See Us
- Overmono – Good Lies
- Yaeji – For Granted
- Lil Yachty – Black Seminole
- Joanna Sternberg – People Are Toys To You
- Men I Trust – Ring of Past
- Young Marco – What You say?
- Rozi Plain – Agreeing For Two
- Kojaque – Johnny McEnroe
- Mitski – Bug Like An Angel
- Wiki, Mike, The Alchemist – Stargate
- boygenius – Satanist
- Unknown Mortal Orchestra – The Widow
- JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown – Burfict!
- Jam City, Wet – LLTB
- Aphex Twin – Blackbox Life Recorder 21f
- Aluna – Running Blind (feat. Tchami & Kareen Lomax)
- Benefits – Warhorse
- Fever Ray – Kandy
- billy woods & Kenny Segal, Samuel Herring – Facetime
- Turnstile; BADBADNOTGOOD; Blood Orange – Alien Love Call
- Youth Lagoon – Idaho Alien
- Sofia Kourtesis – Vajkoczy
- Jessy Lanza – Don’t Leave Me Now
- Sufjan Stevens – A Running Start
- Bricknasty – ducks ina row
- Blawan – Toast
- Earl Sweatshirt, Alchemist – Heat Check
- Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar – The Hillbillies
- DJ Seinfeld & Confidence Man – Now U Do
- Everything But The Girl – Nothing Left To Lose
- Five To Two, Jar Jar Jnr – Song 50,000
- Casisdead, Desire – Venom
- English Teacher – Nearly Daffodils
- Lean Sen – Dragonfly
- Faye Webster – But Not Kiss
- Django Django & Yuuko Sings – Don’t Touch it That Dial (Earthworks Acid Hip-House Remix)
- Danny Brown – Tantor
- Glasser – Vine
- Eyes Of Others – One, Twice, Thrice
- Floating Points – Birth4000
- Heartworms – May I Comply
- James Blake – Big Hammer
- Jessie Ware – Freak Me Now
- Kelela – Happy Ending
- Skrillex – Leave Me Like This
- Barry Can’t Swim – Sunsleeper
- OXN – Farmer In The City
- H31R – Down Down Bb
- Julio Bashmore – Bubblin’
- Ice Spice – Princess Diana
- John Francis Flynn – The Lag Song
- Julie Byrne – Summer Glass
- Roisin Murphy – CooCool
- Lil Yachty, J. Cole – The Secret Recipe
- Cartin – Smasha
- NUOVO TESTAMENTO – Heat
- Feist – Hiding Out In The Open
- Jorja Smith – Little Things (Nia Archives remix)
- FIZZ – Close One
- King Krule – Pink Shell
- Nailah Hunter – Finding Mirrors
- Sarah Crean – Wasted Youth
- Benny Sings – Young Hearts
- Kneecap – It’s Been Ages
- Octo Octa – Late Nite Love
- Peter Gabriel – Road to Joy (Dark-Side Mix)
- Quantic – Stand Up
- Pretty Girl – I Could (Open Up Mix)
- Future Islands – The Tower
- Gurriers – Sign Of The Times
- Mandy, Indiana – Drag [Crashed}
- Mac DeMarco – Proud True Toyota
- Water From Your Eyes – Out There
- Peggy Gou – (It Goes Like) Nanana
- Natalia Beylis – Afloat In Fog And Feathers
- Queens Of The Stone Age – Paper Machete
- L’Rain – New Year’s UnResolution
- Baby_ASL – Hostile City
- Two Shell – Love Him
- Lisa O’Neill – Old Note
- Squid – Undergrowth
- Sweeping Promises – You Shatter
- White Denim – Bounce Back
Every week, the Nialler9 Spotify Weekly Playlist is updated with new music.
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