2022 Best of | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Irish songs | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists | Best New Irish artists
10.
Julia Jacklin
PRE PLEASURE
Australian singer/songwriter and Nialler9 favourite Julia Jacklin’s Pre Pleasure (Transgressive), is filled with intimate lyrical insights we’ve come to know the artist for, as on 2019’s Crushing.
Explored throughout Pre Pleasure’s brittle and tender songs, are catholic guilt (‘Lydia Wears A Cross’), shame in intimacy (‘Ignore Tenderness’), a relationship between mother and daughter (‘Less Of A Stranger’), navigating the longevity of relationships ( ‘Be Careful With Yourself’ ) and closing the book on a failing friendship (‘End Of A Friendship’).
The album was largely recorded in Montreal with co-producer Marcus Paquin, with her Canadian touring band bassist Ben Whiteley and guitarist Will Kidman (both of The Weather Station); drummer Laurie Torres, saxophonist Adam Kinner and string arrangements by Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire), which were recorded with a full orchestra in Prague.
Of the songwriting process, Jacklin says “I wasn’t raised in an environment where language was used to express love and care, part of my songwriting process is me trying to rectify that, force myself to put words to those feelings.”
Pre Pleasure is Jacklin once again, offering us personal glimpses into her work on the good, bad, confounding and challenging parts of life, attempting to find meaning, understanding, comfort and pleasure.
9.
CMAT
If My Wife New I’d Be Dead
Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson is a ultra-talented writer of songs who has developed a sense of identity that presents her as fun-time country entertainer, but like all country music worth its scuffed cowgirl boots, there’s a deeper layer of melancholy just under the surface.
On the CMAT album If My Wife New I’d Be Dead (produced with Oli Deakin, released with AWAL) Thompson plays with that dichotomy throughout her instantly enjoyable alt-country pop debut, filled with catchy toplines, pop culture references, and verses that easily break the heart and crack a smile.
The “Honky tonk girl of the G.A.A” reveals herself in such memorable lines – “My daddy didn’t love me, so I guess I moved on to you” (‘Peter Bogdanovich’), “What has two thumbs and would not read your book If you begged her to?” (‘Groundhog Day’), “Ah why’d I have to co-depend upon another old man / I see how that has left me in the past” (‘I Don’t Really Care For You’), “Every barman is my best friend / Til he’s kicking me out” (‘Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)‘), “Baby, I’m the Mae West of wanting attention” (‘Groundhog Day’), or ‘ But who needs god when I have Robbie Williams? / And who needs boys with these voices in my head / That say I’m useless, I eat too much bread?” (‘Lonely’). And that’s not even mentioning ‘Nashville’.
Along with observational tales of being unlucky in love and self-humility, the through-line of pathos exists throughout CMAT’s brilliantly-constructed snarky songs, that soar with celestial pop choruses galore.
8.
Beyonce
Renaissance
Renaissance celebrates black queerness, its associated dance music and ballrooom culture through the use of carefully-chosen house music samples, as we discussed on a podcast episode this year.
It’s a marked break in the discography of Beyoncé Knowles, who ditches her pop stripes in favour of flying the progress pride flag, celebrating LGBTQ+ with house, disco, soul, bounce and black music of her progenitors. With a spate of recent queer club shootings in the U.S., the album’s themes and sound and feel like a deliberate disco-pointed elevation by the global pop star.
Played as a DJ mix, Renaissance is less careful than previous Beyoncé albums, revelling in the carefree, knocking bottles off tables, glittering party vibe, that through the use of aforementioned deep cut house music (and Donna Summer) has done its homework in its homage.
7.
Little Simz
No Thank You
A surprise December release from Little Simz who has things she wants to address, and releasing an album during the End of the Year list cycle is one way to signpost how done you are with the machinations of the music industry.
No Thank You is a course corrective, a get-shit-off-your-chest moment. Longtime producer Inflo with his band SAULT have showed Simz a way forward for her own art – drop albums on your own terms without losing the scope of what you’re trying to create. Case in point: the production on this is elegant and orchestral, possible made in the same room, at the same time as SAULT’s five albums they dropped in November this year.
No Thank You benefits from being looser and less grand than last year’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, with Simz detailing how wayward her career focus had become on ‘My Heart’s On’ and ‘Angel’ (“Yeah, I refuse to be on a slave ship / Give me all my masters and lower your wages”), dipping into generational trauma, set to shuffling marching drum beat on ‘X’ and mental heath on ‘Broken’ ( “Man, this week has been tough / I’ve been saying it for a year”).
“Fuck rules and everything that’s traditional,” is the mantra.
6.
Kendrick Lamar
Mr Morale & The Big Steppers
Kendrick’s fifth album with its themes of therapy, infidelity, black generational trauma, and the rapper’s status is a dense and at times, difficult listen.
Chiefly concerned with the internal over the external, there are no big obvious hit singles here, at at 78 minutes there’s plenty of indulgence and exploration.
You might not get anthems, but you do get a master rap linguist with bigger ideas than any of his peers, overturning his psyche and spilling his guts in search of becoming a better person for all the world to hear.
5.
Billy Woods
Aethiopes
Brooklyn rapper and Backwoodz Studioz label boss Billy Woods’ tenth studio album Aethiopes, produced by Preservation used Ethopian and jazz music as a backdrop, and the decision made this album feel spindly, spacious and supernatural.
Woods released two albums this year, but with work this opaque, I haven’t gone near Church as yet.
Aethiopes is an album to pore over lyrically, and it also features the likes of El-P, Mike Ladd, Despot, Boldy James and Elucid.
A master and complex lyricist, Woods takes us on an eerie and sustained journey populated by spectres of genocidal ex-leaders, the crack epidemic, colonialism, Papua New Guinea cannibalism, white privilege, the Doldrums (which I learned happens in the equatorial ocean where the lack of wind stifles the passage of ships), the slave trade in France and Stephen King’s murderous car novel Christine.
4.
Arctic Monkeys
The Car
The Sheffield band further mark their card away from the teenage kicks of their early work with further explorations into hi-fidelity on their seventh album.
Dispensing with the conceptual fulcrum of 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, but keeping its lush strings and retro stylings, The Car is a more sumptuous orchestral offering with Alex Turner’s more wilfully obtuse lyrics offering magpie delights with impressions of spy movies, jilted lovers, holiday sojourns and luxury travel, laden by emotional baggage.
These are highly sophisticated songs, rendered in a resource-heavy rich definition (anyone got an 18-piece string section lying’ around?). The Car is a triumph of sonics and grandeur – an elegant James Bond-esque tale told on scrunched up notepads left in a five-star hotel vestibule.
3.
Cate Le Bon
Pompeii
Pompeii, the sixth studio album from the Welsh avant-art pop artist Cate Le Bon is a breakthrough album for the artist for me personally. There have often been standout songs on Le Bon’s records, but Pompeii is a cohesive whole that benefits from long play.
The album has a smudged psychedelic hazy pop air, with bass (the album’s primary written instrument), sax and synth at the fore and wonderful off-kilter songs lead by Le Bon’s strong melodies.
The album was produced by Le Bon with co-producer and long-time collaborator and Samur Khouja and shimmers with angular chords and drippy notes, and an atmosphere of art-pop individualism.
2.
Big Thief
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
The fifth album from Big Thief is their longest at 80 minutes (as discussed on a Nialler9 podcast episode), but long-term listening has convinced me of the band’s stature as one of the best bands we have – a thought compounded by seeing them live earlier in the year, and that Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is their singularly best album.
Big Thief are unstoppable soft power force, with a dynamic songwriter in Adrianne Lenker at the centre who oozes great songs and a band in Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik and James Krivchenia who are on the same short wavelength of musicianship.
There’s a symbiotic telepathy to their playing at this point that few bands these days reach.
Dragon New Warm Mountain… is the most varied of their releases but it feels like the best distillation of their craft. There are 20 songs on this thing, and it luxuriates in its songwriting using folk, rock, country – wherever the song goes, while making time for smidgens of silly humour throughout, along with beautifully-realised brittle songwriting – finding beauty and meaning in small moments and things.
And what songs they are. Whether they are doing a country song (‘Spud Infinity’), a ‘90s college-rock soundalike (‘Little Things’), a unique percussive number (‘Time Escaping’), dusky folk-rock (‘Simulation Swarm’), a swampy ballad (‘Dried Roses’), a rock band jam song (‘Love Love Love’) or a textured Radiohead-esque song (‘Blurred View’), Dragon New Warm Mountain… is the sound of a band in close quarters at the top of the peak, still unfurling with sparkling newness on every listen.
1.
Rosalía
Motomami
From humble Flamenco singer beginnings to the R&B expanse of 2018’s breakthrough El Mal Querer to this current iteration exemplified in the any-genre kaleidoscopic third album Motomami, Catalan singer Rosalía is moving fast and breaking things.
On Motomami, the iconoclast singer and songwriter, Rosalía mashes together genres like reggaeton, jazz, dembow, champeta, bachata, electronic, flamenco with hip-hop and pop in one multi-faceted album, that flits between all of these sounds with a dexterity and ease that is astounding as it is natural.
These are globe-straddling brilliant experimental pop songs, with a central theme of transformation, that are future-facing, world-building and head-spinningly thrilling in their delivery.
To do all of this in a non-English language and still convey meaning and intent to an English speaker (it’s me, i’m the problem, it’s me) is impressive enough, but Rosalía possesses a voice that telegraphs a range of emotional nuance beyond language, a powerful instrument that harnesses this multi-genre melting pot with a pop aplomb that emanates invitation rather than alienation.
Nialler9’s Top 30 albums of 2022 – the list
- Rosalia – Motomami
- Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
- Cate Le Bon – Pompeii
- Arctic Monkeys – The Car
- Billy Woods – Aethiopes
- Kendrick Lamar – Mr Morale & The Big Steppers
- Little Simz – No Thank You
- Beyonce – Renaissance
- CMAT – If My Wife New I’d Be Dead
- Julia Jacklin – PRE PLEASURE
- Loyle Carner – Hugo
- Nilüfer Yanya – PAINLESS
- Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry
- The Mary Wallopers – The Mary Wallopers
- Gilla Band – Most Normal
- Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul – Topical Dancer
- Dry Cleaning – Stumpwork
- Sudan Archives – Natural Brown Prom Queen
- Earl Sweatshirt – Sick!
- Confidence Man – TILT
- ELIZA – A Sky Without Stars
- Khruangbin & Vieux Farka Touré – Ali
- Real Lies – Lad Ash
- The 1975 – Being Funny in a Foreign Language
- Wet Leg – Wet Leg
- Claude – A lot’s gonna change
- Danger Mouse & Black Thought – Cheat Codes
- Automatic – Excess
- The Koreatown Oddity – ISTHISFORREAL?
- Romance – Once Upon A Time
- Declaime And Madlib – In the Beginning, Vol. 2
- Gwenno – Tresor
- Panda Bear & Sonic Boom – Reset
- Ibibio Sound Machine – Electricity
- Mount Kimbie – MK 3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning
- Carla dal Forno – Come Around
- Jake Xerxes Fussell – Love Farewell
- Charli XCX – Crash
- Aldous Harding – ‘Warm Chris
- Gabe Gurnsey – Diablo
