2022 Best of | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Irish songs | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists | Best New Irish artists
20.
Floating Points
Vocoder
‘Vocoder’ is typical of Sam Sheperd’s penchant for creating memorable dance and electronic tracks with a minimal sonic palette, and is markedly a hugher BPM than most of his usual work. Floating Points also spoiled us with ‘Problems’ and ‘Grammar’ this year, so it was a return to the dancefloor after last year’s Pharoah Sanders album Promises (RIP).
19.
Kae Tempest; Kevin Abstract
More Pressure
Kae Tempest enlists Brockhampton’s Kevin Abstract for a verse on The Line Is A Curve highlight, the yearning heady ‘More Pressure’.
18.
Dry Cleaning
Anna Calls From The Arctic
“Should I propose friendship?”
Dry Cleaning’s second album Stumpwork, does enough to not feel like a carbon copy of the vibe of the brilliant debut New Long Leg.
Case in point: opening the album with this vibey rhythmic track that dispenses with the band’s M.O of guitars from the off. Also, delighted that Florence Shaw’s spoken lyrics have new shades and continue to allude to things greater than their parts.
17.
Black Star
So Be It
Mos Def (Yasiin Bey) and Talib Kweli came back and made their first album as Black Star for the first time since 1988, but most of us haven’t heard No Fear Of Time as it was released exclusively on the Luminary subscription podcast platform. Hence I forgot it existed for months until recently.
Just as well they shared ‘So Be It’, a track with classic rap duality over a Madlib beat.
16.
Jessie Ware
Free Yourself
Jessie Ware won a big part of festival summer at events like Primavera Sound and Glastonbury. ‘Free Yourself’ is the crown to make sure you all know for good, that Ware is the pre-eminent disco diva of the moment. It’s got big string and piano with floorfilling production from Stuart Price and Dua Lipa collaborator Clarence Coffee Jr.
15.
Gilla Band
Post Ryan
The closing track from Most Normal, ‘Post Ryan’ is a song from Gilla Band that brings together the best of what they do in terms of sonics and lyrics, with a fresh directness utilising an electro lobotomy pedal and drums inspired by an ’80s classic – ‘I Ran’ by Flock of Seagulls, as Dara Kiely’s discombobulating lyrics hold up a mirror to reflections about perceptions of his personality and character.
14.
Joy Orbison
pinky ring
Joy Orbison went on a fine run of loosey productions to follow last year’s Still Slipping Vol.1, whether it’s ‘Blind Date’, his collaboration with Overmono, ‘2M3 2U’ or the bass throbbing post-dubstep-garage of ‘Pinky Ring’.
13.
The Mary Wallopers
Building Up And Tearing England Down
A highlight from Dundalk trad trio The Mary Wallopers’ self-titled debut album, ‘Building Up And Tearing England Down’, a Dominic Behan song was popularised by The Dubliners, and tells of the hardship of the Irishmen workers who literally built many of England’s buildings after emigrating from Ireland in search of work, working in hazardous and dangerous conditions, thanklessly building a monarch state infrastructure.
The Mary Wallopers’ version slows things down and imbues their version with an emotional heft that feels appropriate for the devastation inflicted on men like them historically, largely forgotten to an industrial past, swept into concrete and stone.
It made me think of modern parallel, the apparent thousands of migrant workers who died in Qatar building the World Cup stadiums, whose cause of deaths and legacies, was to a fleeting flurry of problematic sportwashing.
12.
Beach House
New Romance
I didn’t vibe with the overly-long Once Twice Melody album from the Baltimore band this year, but ‘New Romance’ is classic Beach House shoegaze, that feels like it might take flight into the stratosphere.
11.
Kendrick Lamar
N95
Kendrick’s fifth album, Mr Morale & The Big Steppers, with its themes of therapy, infidelity, black generational trauma, and place in the world is a dense and at times, difficult listen.
‘N95’ is perhaps the best single song on the album, thanks to Kendrick’s rapid-fire cadence and DAMN-esque production by Boi-1da, Sounwave, Jahaan Sweet and Baby Keem.
10.
Cate Le Bon
Remembering Me
‘Remembering Me’ approaches you with a rhythmic sulk, a knowing wink, and beckons you into the unique world of Welsh avant-art pop artist Cate Le Bon’s sixth album Pompeii.
“It’s a neurotic diary entry that questions notions of legacy and warped sentimentalism in the desperate need to self-mythologise.”
9.
Pusha T
Just So You Remember
It’s rap perfection like this that gives him the name King Push. An inspired-choice of sample of Colonel Bagshot’s ‘Six Day War’ punctuates the verses on the Ye-produced ‘Just So You Remember’.
You may remember the song as sampled on DJ Shadow ‘Six Days’.
8.
Julia Jacklin
I Was Neon
Australian song bopper Julia Jacklin’s Pre Pleasure gave us a lot this year, like ‘Be Careful With Yourself’, but ‘I Was Neon’, for my money, is the single best guitar pop song of the year, compounded by that earworm refrain of ‘am I gonna lose myself again’.
6.
Two Shell
home
The anonymous London duo Two Shell would be trolls of dance music in 2022, if it wasn’t for the high-calibre of their tunes, with strong sound design, and fizzy atmospherics. ‘Home’ is glue for the senses, a high-tempo breakbeat bass bootleg-style track that samples a song featured on this website in 2015 from Danish alt-pop band Chinah – ‘Away From Me’.
See also, the pair’s EP Icons, and their never-cleared Sugababes remix.
5.
Loyle Carner
Georgetown (feat. John Agard)
The placement of ‘Georgetown’ as track three on Loyle Carner’s excellent album Hugo, accentuates its power, but it also stands alone. From the John Asgard half-caste poetry that flanks the track, to the classic Madlib production to Carner’s words, it’s a hit. Doesn’t hurt that it sounds like something off Madvillain.
4.
Overmono
Gunk
Overmono, the Welsh brothers Tom & Ed Russell are adept at creating huge dancefloor tracks, with the weight of their experience creating music as Truss and Tessela, respectively, preceding them. Broken beats, dubstep, dubby techno inform their productions.
‘Gunk’ from the Cash Romantic EP XL, and is a rush, the pair’s version of hyperpop rave, with just a hint of Underworld magnificence, and was easily one of the biggest tunes in my world this year.
We found this box of old tapes we’d recorded when we were kids where we’d basically try and mashup old records of our parents with whatever records we were buying at the time. Gerry Rafferty mixed with London acid techno, Dr. Hook mixed with old weirdo trance tracks, and that sort of thing. The tapes are a proper mess but there was always something about trying to get two totally different worlds to collide that stuck with us. After listening to some of these old tapes, we wrote this record and realised our heads are still pretty much in the same space as when we were kids”
3.
Confidence Man
Holiday
‘Holiday’ was my pop song of the summer 2022, and Confidence Man were my band of the summer, and both the Australian band’s Dublin shows in National Stadium and Vicar Street this year only confirmed it. ‘Holiday’ is just electronic pop perfection, with a nod to baggy dance music.
There’s a great Erol Alkan remix too – the OOO remix with the vocals.
2.
Big Thief
Simulation Swarm
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You has become since the start of the year, my favourite Big Thief album, and easily one of my most liked records of 2022.
We talked about it on the podcast in February, but the 80 minute 20-track song album is one of those in which the favourites switch around on every listen. ‘Simulation Swarm’ is dusky layered folk-rock, with that telepathic magic that the band seem to increasingly display, along with Adrianne Lenker’s quiet melodic majesty.
The track was inspired by Lenker’s personal experience of a four-day hospitalisation in Brooklyn in 2020.
1.
KH
Looking at Your Pager
Kieran Hebden appeared to be in flow state this year with his dance productions under the KH moniker, rather than his Four Tet name.
The sample on ‘Looking At Your Pager’ is from R&B girl group 3LW’s 2000 hit ‘No More (Baby I’ma Do Right)’ and brought some much-needed crunchy wobbly dance dynamic joy since it arrived in May, after many fan track ID requests.
It was the actual song of the summer, and year, and the song whose wub-wubs and lustrous chimes soundtracked a summer of festivals returned all over.
Nialler9’s Songs of 2022 Playlist
2022 Best of | Best albums | Best songs | Irish albums | Irish songs | Best Of Podcasts | Guest lists | Best New Irish artists
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Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the cohost of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, event curator and producer of gigs, parties & events.
