Best of 2023 | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists |
David Balfe is the creator of my favourite Irish release of 2021 for the For Those I Love album and project.
Dave has lists for 2022 and 2021.
I don’t know where the time goes. I’m convinced I wrote the 2022 list a week ago.
It terrifies me.
KARRAHBOOO
Running Late
I was late to the party with Karrahbooo, my introduction coming recently from her entrancing verse on the Concrete Cypher (if I could just include this, I would).
It’s this same hypnotic nonchalance that makes Running Late so addictive.
Colourful, provocative, and seething with confidence, it’s one of the most self assured deliveries I’ve heard all year.
Jordan Adetunji
GO
‘GO’ is a tremendous pop offering from Belfast’s Jordan Adetunji.
It’s two minutes of hammering kick drums, candy processed vocal chops, and mathrock-inspired guitar from RJ Pasin. This song consistently put a smile on my face, and I don’t need much more.
Black Country, New Road
Dancers – Live at Bush Hall
For my money, Black Country, New Road are one of the greatest live bands on earth right now, though with that, it’s so hard to contain and condense the exhilaration and exploration of those live shows into a single recording. Dancers takes this to task, capturing so much of what makes BCNR so exhilarating. Masterful playing, endless ambition, clever storytelling sung with heart.
I was reluctant to include a live recording here, but then I hear Tyler sing “Dancers stand very still on the stage”, and I feel the same excitement and unhinged possibility I felt when listening to music as a young teen, and I think, ‘yeah, this is it. This is what it’s all about.’
Brilliant.
John Francis Flynn
The Lag Song
Once more, John Francis Flynn has delivered a tremendous album, ‘The Lag Song’ being one of many standouts from it. His erratic playing stretches the fringes of melody, backed by a sonic bed from Caimin Gilmore and Ultan O’Brien, all masterfully captured by Brendan Jenkinson.
John’s honest delivery of Ewan MacColl’s words feel uncomfortably apt in today’s Dublin.
Young Fathers
Rice
Young Fathers’ ‘Rice’ is a sonic triumph, the sound of a chaotic victory lap for an act that truly deserves it. Pounding toms layer over warbled rumbling bass, held together by voices that stem from delicate lullaby to dissonant and distorted screams. It threatens to break apart into pieces, but always manages to colour in between the lines. What a picture it paints.
Armand Hammer
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Another year, another series of astounding releases featuring Billy Woods.
Armand Hammer’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strip follows 2021’s near perfect Haram. It is dense, it is harrowing, it is psychedelic horror, and it is pure urgency.
‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ is the closest we get to a casual entry point on the album. El-P’s bouncing 808s and dizzying vocal chops skitter around a direct and deliberate collection of verses from Elucid and Woods.
Lankum
Go Dig My Grave
I had an odd first interaction with this song. I am a lover of the music of Jean Ritchie. The week Lankum released ‘Go Dig My Grave’ was a week that I had been giving particular rotation and study to Jean Ritchie’s version. It felt like quite a shock for some reason. I told my old English teacher Mick, he seemed surprised too. Great guy, that’s besides the point.
Once more, Lankum have pushed the sonic palette of familiar song into expressive and enthralling territories. ‘Go Dig My Grave’ amplifies the horror of its story, wielding discomfort and beauty like sorcery. Masters at work, and all that. It’s a real treat live, too.
Car Colors
Old Death
Old Death by Car Colors is the result of two decades worth of waiting. It’s the spiritual sequel to The Wrens’ 2003 masterpiece Meadowlands. That album sparked an obsession in me as teenager when my uncle Darren urged me to listen, and we’ve spent the time since sending what little updates we could find about the rumoured follow up to each other (what was one Myspace bulletins about the recordings became Facebook updates and comments from Bissell which became backroom talk with PR agents), we took anything we could, and assumed the chase would be as close as we’d get to ever hearing anything.
It may have taken 20 years for Bissell to finally grace us with something new, but the wait was worth every second.
‘Old Death’ is a rapturous journey through all of that time. Touchstones of personal history, cancer, work, more work, and the journey of making the music itself. Mystifying composition bursts through a series of sonic vignettes which flow together like a confluence. Buried vocals tease to be understood and studied, while guitars layer and pinch with jagged abandon. I am still so overwhelmed by this song.
Caroline Polachek
Welcome To My Island
What Caroline Polachek achieves on ‘Welcome To My Island’ is nothing short of impossible.
A limitless exploration of narrative, time, place and jarring attitude, all trapped inside the most captivating and perfect pop song I have heard in recent memory.
From the entrancing opening vocalisations, to the just shy of gauche 80s styled guitar solo, it is flawlessly measured and endlessly listenable. Pure desire.
Hak Baker
Telephones 4 Eyes
No other song spoke to me in 2023 like ‘Telephones 4 Eyes’ did.
The spiralling paranoia across the track builds into rage and discomfort at rampant surveillance and big tech, all delivered in clever and timely prose.
Carey’s production pulls all of the aggression together without ever trying to tame it.
That “C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-TV”? Astounding stuff.
See all Guestlist of 2023 choices
Best of 2023 | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists |
