2023 was year of little miracles. The Rolling Stones, Depeche Mode and Julie Byrne defied the Reaper. Jamie Branch’s trumpet reached us from the great beyond. Ian Hunter and Everything But The Girl rolled back the years. Folk flexed. Blur remembered to be Blur. As such, it was – as ever – a hard task to whittle 2023’s releases into a top 50, but having collected the votes from across MOJO’s team of experts, we think we’ve cracked it, and here present the definitive guide to the year’s best albums. Enjoy…
50.
JANA HORN
The Window Is The Dream (NO QUARTER)
If the Texan singersongwriter’s 2020 debut, Optimism, seemed adjacent to acid-folk, this second album provided a clearer angle on her spectral, literary art. The Window Is The Dream was no less subtle, but its spare and considered moves emphasised a closer affinity to art-pop than folk tradition: the vocals unforced, uncanny; the guitar lines a precise needlepoint. A candlelit Cate Le Bon, perhaps, or even a Lana Del Rey raised on Smog albums.
Standout track: The Dream
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49.
OSEES
Intercepted Message (IN THE RED)
“A pop record for cruel times,” was John Dwyer’s sell for his 28th Osees album and, after the gnarly fundamentalist hardcore of 2022’s A Foul Form, he’d at least reorientated his main band towards new wave. Devo sounded like a core influence on the frenzied synth-punk, as well as echoes of an old Dwyer side-project, Damaged Bug. Also noted: Dwyer’s other 2023 wheeze, a percussion improv outfit called Posh Swat.
Standout track: Goon
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48.
DEXYS
The Feminine Divine (100%)
A game of two halves, this first album of new Dexys songs since 2012, as The Feminine Divine dramatised Kevin Rowland’s changing attitude to women, and his own ideas of masculinity. Side one: punchy, expansive soul-pop, including It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023), first attempted in 1993. Side two: a stylistically divisive “saucy, synth-heavy cabaret”, said Rowland, that took his penchant for unflinching self-examination to taboo-busting new heights.
Standout track: I’m Going To Get Free
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47.
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Isn’t It Now? (DOMINO)
Animal Collective’s fervid creativity has sometimes felt like sensory overload in the years since 2009 high-water mark Merriweather Post Pavilion. But their 12th LP, a more organic production than 2022’s remote file-sharing endeavour Time Skiffs, found them channelling the iridescent psychedelic ideas into something mellower and more baroque, if no less inventive, as songs emerged out of the disorientating murk and into radiant Beach Boys/motorik hybrids.
Standout track: Genies Open
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46.
RICKIE LEE JONES
Pieces Of Treasure (BMG)
The Duchess Of Coolsville dusted down her old beret and reconnected with her jazz roots on this elegant saunter through the Great American Songbook. Jones’s approach to the standards on this, her 15th studio album, was respectful but full of character – check the late-night, scatting loucheness of One For The Road – and framed in classy settings by her original producer Russ Titelman. An exceptional singer, reasserting her canonical bona fides.
Standout track: Just In Time
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45.
SUSANNE SUNDFØR
Blómi (BELLA UNION)
Almost certainly the only album in this list with titles in Old Norse (Blómi meaning “to bloom”), Sundfør’s first in six years was a widescreen meditation on family, spanning her linguist/theologian grandfather, Kjell Aartun, to her own daughter. Often ethereal, sometimes folk-inflected, at the heart of Blómi was a classical take on the piano ballad, with a gravitas that sat halfway between Kate Bush’s Aerial and Rufus Wainwright’s Want One.
Standout track: Leikara Ljóð
Listen/Buy: Amazon/Rough Trade/HMV/Hive/Spotify/Apple Music
44.
IAN HUNTER
Defiance Part 1 (SUN)
“This is what I’m here for/Might as well enjoy it,” noted Hunter, a hale 84, on his first album for the equally venerable Sun imprint. DefiancePart1 was one of those rare all-star affairs – Ringo, Slash, Billy Gibbons, Jeff Tweedy, Mike Campbell, the late Taylor Hawkins and Jeff Beck – that transcended the sum of its parts. A crunchy reiteration of rock’n’roll’s foundational allure, from one who’d been there, done that and, of course, written the book.
Standout track: I Hate Hate
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43.
KASSA OVERALL
Animals (WARP)
Jazz and hip-hop have intersected for decades (see A Tribe Called Quest), but LPs like this and Shabaka Hutchings’ Kofi Flexxx project only made the boundaries more porous in 2023. Overall’s second solo album united his complex beat expertise as a jazz drummer with his developing chops as a confessional rapper. Guests including Laura Mvula, Vijay Iyer and Danny Brown emphasised the range, but ultimately this was Overall’s trip, strikingly frank about his mental health history.
Standout track: The Lava Is Calm
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42.
LLOYD COLE
On Pain (EAR MUSIC)
While a welcome reissue programme in 2023 brought the first three Commotions albums back into circulation, Cole’s new music was located in a very different space to those Dylanish ramalams. On Pain was rooted in his latterday synth experiments and collaborations with Hans-Joachim Roedelius, to create a pristine electronic pop that was still freighted with the smart, erudite passion that had made his 1980s records so appealing in the first place.
Standout track: The Idiot
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41.
GINA BIRCH
I Play My Bass Loud (THIRD MAN)
Forty-six years after she’d co-founded The Raincoats, painter/ video-maker/post-punk pioneer Birch’s solo debut was a vigorous low-end manifesto, a celebration of feminist energy and bass moves (Youth co-produced, with heavy reggae accents). The vibes were righteous throughout, as Birch hymned Pussy Riot, denounced stilettos, roped in Thurston Moore for the Breeders-ish anthem Wish I Was You, and corralled five female bassists for the suitably rousing title track.
Standout track: Wish I Was You
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40.
THE TUBS
Dead Meat (TROUBLE IN MIND)
The elevator pitch for this debut album by Welshmen in London The Tubs was a tantalising one: Richard Thompson’s withering folk rock aligned to The Feelies’ torrential jangle. A great idea, perfectly executed, as these nine tightly wound dispatches from the snarkier, grottier end of capital life rushed along at irresponsible speed; Bob Mould was another clear antecedent. Listen out for some impeccably Linda Thompson-ish harmonies, too.
Standout track: Round The Bend
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39.
SLOWDIVE
Everything Is Alive (DEAD OCEANS)
Shoegazers might be suited to playing the long game, but the 21st century vindication of Slowdive, after their first act was snuffed out by Britpop jollity, was still immensely satisfying. Everything Is Alive built on the stately glories of 2017’s self-titled comeback, recorded in part at the same Oxfordshire studio – Abingdon’s Courtyard – where they started in the early ’90s. “What guitar effects were used on the album?” MOJO asked Neil Halstead. His response: “All of them.”
Standout track: Shanty
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38.
GAZ COOMBES
Turn The Car Around (HOT FRUIT)
Like Slowdive, Coombes is another survivor from the Oxford and Reading indie uprising of the early ’90s. Unlike them, though, the Supergrass frontman travelled substantially further from his roots in 2023. Supergrass reunions postponed due to the pandemic, Coombes hunkered down to create this rich, artisanal LP of mid-life rock. Edgy funk resembled his Home Counties contemporaries Radiohead; elsewhere, epic balladry placed him on a similar trajectory to Arctic Monkeys.
Standout track: Feel Loop (Lizard Dream)
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37.
SLEAFORD MODS
UK Grim (ROUGH TRADE)
“Personally, I’ve never been happier,” Jason Williamson told MOJO, but his herculean annoyance at UK life – “on this melting tyre of depression” – was as pointed as ever on the Mods’ 12th electropunk tirade. Guest appearances from Perry Farrell (So Trendy) and Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw (Force 10 From Navarone) only added to the endlessly quotable ragefest, Williamson taking aim not just at his rulers, but his “white bloke aggro band” contemporaries.
Standout track: Force 10 From Navarone
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36.
SHIRLEY COLLINS
Archangel Hill (DOMINO)
The empress of British folk claimed to MOJO that Archangel Hill would be her last album, at 87. But given the unexpected nature of her return to recording with 2016’sLodestar, promises of retirement may again be premature. That said, Archangel Hill worked beautifully as a farewell, Collins revisiting traditional songs she first tackled 50 or 60 years ago, a voice of fathomless experience now poignantly shifting their tone and meanings.
Standout track: Fare Thee Well My Dearest Dear
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35.
DEPECHE MODE
Memento Mori (COLUMBIA)
Out of Andy Fletcher’s passing, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore grasped a strange new imperative for Depeche Mode: after over 40 years in a band together, Gahan told us, “We had to find a way of becoming friends.” Strengthened by shared grief and renewed purpose, Memento Mori became the best Depeche LP in years, a monumental reassertion of core electro-rock values, with cathedral-sized tunes and stainless engineering by 2023’s go-to producer, James Ford (Blur).
Standout track: My Favourite Stranger
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34.
CORINNE BAILEY RAE
Black Rainbows (THIRTY TIGERS)
Those who still had the Leeds singer-songwriter pegged as a mainstream pop artist were robustly corrected by her fourth album (and first in seven years), a sprawling and eclectic response to an exhibition on African American history by the artist Theaster Gates. Black Rainbows encompassed aquarian soul, cosmic jazz and even Jack White-style punk (New York Transit Queen), knitted together into a whole that felt simultaneously challenging and satisfying.
Standout track: Before The Throne Of The Invisible God
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33.
SBT
Joan Of All (OCEAN OMEN)
In a year of auspicious comebacks, the return of American singersongwriter Sarabeth Tucek – now operating as SBT – was an easy one to miss. But the first album in 12 years from the former Bill Callahan backing vocalist and Bob Dylan support act was a stealth classic. Tucek’s a Los Angeles resident, but it was her Manhattan, New York upbringing that often informed the epiphanies of double album Joan Of All, its skinny, grimy chugs indebted to Lou Reed.
Standout track: 13th St #1
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32.
BILL ORCUTT
Jump On It (PALILALIA)
The San Francisco guitarist and noise rock vet (once of ’90s miscreants Harry Pussy) was placed high in last year’s MOJO Underground chart with his heavy minimalism opus, Music For Four Guitars. This year, Orcutt cracked the main MOJO chart with this uncharacteristically gentle venture: nine solo acoustic workouts where his avant-garde and improvisational skills were channelled into something less prickly, and even pretty, without losing any of their radical, John Fahey-ish intent.
Standout track: New Germs
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31.
SUFJAN STEVENS
Javelin (ASTHMATIC KITTY)
A tough year for Stevens, as he continues to recover from Guillain-Barré syndrome and learns to walk again, with Javelin dedicated to his partner Evans Richardson, who died in April. Stevens’ tenth solo LP leaned hard into his singer-songwriter smarts, privileging the chamber-folk of 2015’s Carrie & Lowell over more conceptual tricksiness. Mostly played and assembled by himself, Javelin was nevertheless a many-layered, ineffably moving masterpiece.
Standout track: Will Anybody Ever Love Me?
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30.
SPARKS
The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte (ISLAND)
Among the highlights of Glastonbury 2023, few will forget Friday’s Sparks set on the Park Stage, enhanced by guest dancer Cate Blanchett for the title track of this 25th studio LP. Well over 50 years into a spectacularly odd career, the Mael Brothers’ vision and cult charm only seemed to intensify, their gilded art-synth-pop and peculiar worldview – Skrillex and Kim Jong Un in the same song – prompting the accurate deployment of an overused term: unique!
Standout track: The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte
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29.
BILLY NOMATES
Cacti (INVADA)
“I didn’t come here to try to put things right,” announced Tor Maries, AKA Billy Nomates, on Spite, one of many uncompromising highlights of her second album. Cacti was a raging, dynamic upgrade of her DIY synth-pop-gone-punk MO, accommodating diverse sounds – a little LCD Sound system here, a heap of lonesome country there – even as her own character shone brighter. Billy Nomates’ future is currently unclear, with Maries quietly releasing new music on Bandcamp as Tor.
Standout track: Vertigo
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28.
FATOUMATA DIAWARA
London Ko (WAGRAM)
Born in Mali, resident in Italy, recording in Paris and London, hungry for Cuban and US soul influences, Diawara remained the definition of a truly global artist. Her third solo LP’s title reflected the presence of one key collaborator – old Gorillaz compadre Damon Albarn, who co-composed and produced six out of 14 tracks – but London Ko’s energy united multiple disparate strands (including a brilliant Angie Stone cameo) into one cohesive, boundary-smashing musical celebration.
Standout track: Somaw
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27.
MOZART ESTATE
Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! And The Possibilities Of Modern Shopping (WEST MIDLANDS)
An LP first announced five years ago, when Lawrence (ex-Felt, ex-Denim) changed the name of his latterday vehicle from Go-Kart Mozart to Mozart Estate, Pop Up! Ker-Ching! suggested the great British eccentric’s pop ambitions remained rooted in a ’70s youth club disco. His devotion to creating novelty hits out of time remained unerring, peaking with fuzzy belt-buckle boogie Record Store Day, and its chorus: “John Peel! Mark E Smith! Rough Trade!”
Standout track: Record Store Day
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26.
ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONS
My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross (ROUGH TRADE)
While 2016’s Hopelessness soundtracked politically intense songs with dystopian electronica, the settings on Anohni’s fifth LP were softer, more organic, soulful and constructed with the aid of pop producer Jimmy Hogarth (James Blunt). Her subject matter, however, remained unflinching: torch songs of protest, guilt and mourning for both the planet and for individuals, so that Sliver Of Ice was inspired by Lou Reed’s final words to her.
Standout track: Scapegoat
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25.
YO LA TENGO
This Stupid World (MATADOR)
2018’s There’s A Riot Going On responded to global conflagrations with introversion and quietude. Its follow-up proper, however – Yo La Tengo album number 17, roughly – was a more varied, often noisier proposition: one of those cherishable Yo La Tengo albums (like 1997’s I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One) that covered all their bases: epic feedback vistas, punchy buzzpop, hushed lullabies, strafed motorik hums for the New Jersey Turnpike, and much more.
Standout track: Fallout
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24.
LISA O’NEILL
All Of This Is Chance (ROUGH TRADE)
The adventurous avant-garde of Irish folk finally broke cover in 2023. At the forefront, alongside Lankum and John Francis Flynn, was County Cavan’s Lisa O’Neill, whose wise, bewitching fifth album focused on humanity’s flawed relationship with the environment. O’Neill made traditional music that understood and honoured its roots but was at times shocking in its contemporary resonance. A fearless moderniser, who could sound as ancient as the days.
Standout track: If I Was A Painter
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23.
TEENAGE FANCLUB
Nothing Lasts Forever (PEMA)
If 2021’s Endless Arcade was permeated by melancholy – Norman Blake’s divorce, Gerard Love’s departure – the 12th Fannies album presented something of a mature fresh start: “It’s time to move along/ And leave the past behind me,” began Blake on Foreign Land. Much, though, remained reassuringly constant, the quintet continuing to finesse the warm, harmonious jangle-rock that had served them so well for so long. An object lesson in growing older gracefully.
Standout track: Tired Of Being Alone
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22.
JOHN CALE
Mercy (DOMINO)
Alongside Ian Hunter, Shirley Collins, Paul Simon and Mick Jagger, Cale was another octogenarian making vital music in 2023. His 17th solo album was often saturated by memories – of NYC nights with Bowie; of “moonstruck junkie lady” Nico – even as they were soundtracked by modernist, crepuscular electronica. Weyes Blood, Animal Collective and Fat White Family provided unostentatious support; wholly integrated collaborators rather than hip accoutrements.
Standout track: Night Crawling
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21.
BILLY WOODS & KENNY SEGAL
Maps (BACKWOODZ)
An under-the-radar New York rapper for the past two decades, the secretive and independently-minded Woods edged a little closer to the spotlight in 2023 with two exceptional albums. This collaboration with producer Segal was the pick – a torrential, erudite treatise on travel and dislocation with support from Danny Brown and Future Islands frontman Sam Herring – but don’t sleep on album two, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, a similarly gripping testament from his duo, Armand Hammer.
Standout track: FaceTime
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20.
PRETENDERS
Relentless (PARLOPHONE)
Like Sparks, TV coverage of Glastonbury reminded the general public of the Pretenders’ enduring brilliance – and like Sparks, Chrissie Hynde’s band also had a fine record (their 12th) to back it up. Aided byguitarist/ co-songwriter James Walbourne, Relentless was a classic Pretenders album: punchy, swaggering, rueful, imbued with rock’n’roll romance, great ballads, unfussy virtuosity and, at its heart, the magnetic presence of Hynde, in spectacularly good voice. Their best in years.
Standout track: A Love
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19.
NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS
Council Skies (SOUR MASH)
The cover of Gallagher’s fourth post-Oasis LP told its own story: the roundabout in Manchester where the Maine Road football ground once stood. Musically, Council Skies was a similarly mature, often emotional, trip back to old territory, with recent disco forays mostly sidelined in favour of heartland anthemics. Still room for new directions, mind, in the shape of the Cure-like Pretty Boy and Dead To The World’s John Barry-ish cinematics.
Standout track: Easy Now
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18.
JAMES HOLDEN
Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities (BORDER COMMUNITY)
Holden has been exploring various psychedelic states for over 20 years, his electronic productions tipping into spiritual jazz, Moroccan gnawa and more. His fourth solo album, however, zeroed in on the ecstatic possibilities of techno, packed with the endless arpeggios and utopian hippy vibes that had powered the UK’s outdoor rave scene in the early ’90s. At once nostalgic and progressive, in 2023 Holden sounded like he was in a field of his own.
Standout track: Contains Multitudes
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17.
BOYGENIUS
The Record (INTERSCOPE)
A celebration of friendship and communal creativity, the first Boygenius album also allowed Phoebe Bridgers to give mates Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker a lift on her rapidly ascending trajectory. The resulting record was an object lesson in how to retool vintage college rock for the 2020s, the attendant self-analysis and wisecracks judiciously updated, too. Best quote: Dacus’s “An old man having an existential crisis at a Buddhist monastery/Writing horny poetry”, from Leonard Cohen.
Standout track: Emily I’m Sorry
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16.
AROOJ AFTAB, VIJAY IYER, SHAHZAD ISMAILY
Love In Exile (VERVE)
Another triple threat, as the exceptional singer and composer Aftab developed her silvery hybrid of Pakistani Ghazal, ambient music and jazz in the company of garlanded pianist Iyer and multi-tasking bassist Ismaily (last spotted backing Dylan on Shadow Kingdom). A single day in aNew York studio birthed this 75-minute marvel, where the improvisations were so subtle, so organic, the resulting songs felt like they’d been crafted over years rather than hours.
Standout track: Haseen Thi
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15.
BC CAMPLIGHT
The Last Rotation Of Earth (BELLA UNION)
While John Grant busied himself with his Creep Show side-project, Bella Union’s supersub Brian Christinzio brilliantly seized his chance. New Jersey-born, Manchester-resident, Christinzio’s sixth BC Camplight LP presented a litany of trauma – most recently, the end of a long-term relationship – as a kind of tragicomic, self-deprecating musical, its memorable showstoppers delivered by an unreliable narrator in a Kermit onesie who could claim, audaciously, that It Never Rains In Manchester.
Standout track: The Last Rotation Of Earth
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14.
GRIAN CHATTEN
Chaos For The Fly (PARTISAN)
A title borrowed from Morticia Addams suggested the Fontaines D.C. frontman was skewing closer to 2023’s pervading goth currents. Chatten’s solo debut, however, was more faded glamour than graveyard chic, an evolving singersongwriter trying on baroque new styles – a frisson of Bacharach? – in a declining seaside town. Like Alex Turner before him, Chatten seemed to be searching for a life beyond the indie crowdpleasers – though, happily, Fontaines D.C. are scheduled to return in 2024.
Standout track: All Of The People
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13.
THE NECKS
Travel (NORTHERN SPY)
Connoisseurs of jazz, post-rock, ambient and various other manifestations of avant music have long raved about The Necks. Thirty-six years into their career, their cult is still growing (predecessor Three ranked Number 33 in our 2020 chart) with LP number 22 another keeper. Travel consisted of four intuitively switched-on improv sessions, around 20 minutes each, demonstrating how the Australian trio could locate infinite musical variety in apparently simple keyboard/bass/ drums intersections.
Standout track: Signal
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12.
THE CORAL
Sea Of Mirrors (RUN ON)
No strangers, like Grian Chatten, to the allure of seaside resorts (see 2021’s Coral Island), Wirral visionaries The Coral ventured further afield on their latest meticulously conceptualised LP. Sea Of Mirrors was cinematic in scope, with particular focus on spaghetti westerns, and starrily cast; Cillian Murphy cameo’d. Beneath the set dressing, however, James Skelly and co’s psychedelically-tinted songwriting brilliance was a powerful constant – as it was on a second, companion album, Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show.
Standout track: Oceans Apart
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11.
WILCO
Cousin (DBPM)
For Wilco album number 13, Cate Le Bon stepped in as the Chicago institution’s first external producer in 16 years – “To have someone else keeping an eye out for my maudlin tendency,” Jeff Tweedy told us. If 2022’s Cruel Country privileged a singular take on roots tradition, Cousin was informed by chillier art-pop, by new textures, as Wilco gradually melded them with their own experimental instincts and their finely-honed songcraft – and with Tweedy’s imperishable humanity.
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Jeff Tweedy makes surprise new connections on Wilco’s 13th LP... Read MOJO's review in full.
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Wilco live in London: The enduring brilliance of Jeff Tweedy and co.
Standout track: Meant To Be
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10.
JULIE BYRNE
The Greater Wings (GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL)
As with this year’s LPs by Sufjan Stevens and Depeche Mode, the third by Buffalo singer-songwriter Byrne was underscored by grief, following the death of her longtime collaborator Eric Littman. But while The Greater Wings was an undeniably sad record – its fragile folk constructs given ethereal heft by co-producer Alex Somers – it was also one that worked movingly through valediction towards transcendence. “Just doing it shows [it’s] about resilience and living,” Somers told us.
Standout track: The Greater Wings
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9.
EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL
Fuse (BUZZIN’ FLY)
Musical hiatuses can rarely have been as amicable as the 24-year gap between the 10th and 11th EBTG albums. Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt’s return to making records together began as a tentative private endeavour and flourished in this artful maturing of the EBTG sound; grown-up, suitably reflective songs with cutting-edge beats and nightlife settings. “There’s definitely a vibe of that celebratory club experience,” Thorn told MOJO, “but the lyrics also go very deep internally.”
Standout track: Run A Red Light
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8.
PAUL SIMON
Seven Psalms (OWL/SONY)
A 33-minute continuous piece of music, with a title that came to him in a dream and a prevailing spirituality that remained questing rather than resolved, Simon’s 15th solo album also looped back to his first, 1965’s Londonset The Paul Simon Songbook. The resonances ran through Seven Psalms’ dominant sound – Simon’s solitary, adroit fingerpicking, the influence of Davey Graham still reverberating. “This is me 58 years older,” Simon told MOJO. “I’m still that person.”
Standout track: The Lord
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7.
JAIMIE BRANCH
Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War)) (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM)
Calling the late trumpeter Jaimie Branch a jazz musician was an unfortunately reductive way of describing a colossal talent – one showcased in all its exuberant complexity on this final LP, recorded four months before her death in 2022. Branch’s third FlyOrDie LP straddled carnival hardcore, a Meat Puppets cover, protest ballads and her free and joyous rethink of jazz orthodoxy. A landmark album, tragically pulsating with life.
Standout track: Baba Louie
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6.
LANA DEL REY
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (INTERSCOPE)
A plea for brother Charlie to quit smoking. A song titled Grandfather Please Stand On The Shoulders Of My Father While He’s Deep-Sea Fishing. Another called The Grants. The artist born Lizzy Grant’s volatile mix of mythography and confession got tricksier on her ninth, the blasted Hollywood ballads self-referentially turning in on themselves as Taco Truck sampled 2019’s Venice Bitch. Release by release, the discography only gets more rewarding, the story more complex.
Standout track: A&W
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5.
YOUNG FATHERS
Heavy Heavy (NINJA TUNE)
The fourth Young Fathers album hardly made the job of categorising them any easier, but it did emphasise how the Edinburgh trio had stealthily become one of the most important bands in the UK. Heavy Heavy was a densely layered grid of influence, as soul, rock, chants, handclaps, frictional electronic soundscapes and even a touch of glam (I Saw) fed into something constantly shifting, constantly dynamic. A career high, that promised much more to come.
Standout track: Drum
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4.
ROBERT FORSTER
The Candle And The Flame (TAPETE)
Forster’s most famous partnership was with Grant McLennan in The Go-Betweens, but it would be another long-term relationship that informed his eighth solo LP – his marriage to Karin Bäumler, who was fighting cancer as she played on the album alongside Forster and their two children. TCATF, then, was family bonding ritual as universal solace: songs of love, memory and resilience that were just as moving even without knowing the backstory.
Standout track: Tender Years
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3.
LANKUM
False Lankum (ROUGH TRADE)
From squat punk outliers to the most acclaimed folk band in years, the journey of this Dublin collective was miraculously navigated without compromise – hence the imposing landmark of their fourth LP. False Lankum, with its gothic shanties and glowering noise, located a space where avant-doom met traditional song and somehow made both more accessible. Modern folk’s OK Computer or The Dark Side Of The Moon, pronounced MOJO’s reviewer.
Standout track: Clear Away In The Morning
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2.
P.J. HARVEY
I Inside The Old Year Dying (PARTISAN)
P.J. Harvey’s recent activity seemed to be moving away from music, with 2022’s epic poem Orlam in arcane Dorset dialect. In fact, it was all part of a bigger project manifested in this tenth LP, that redeployed sections of Orlam for skeletal, seasonal, magically inclined songs of her home county’s countryside. I Inside TheOldYearDying was Harvey at her earthiest and most spiritual, creating a powerful new mythology out of simple elements.
Standout track: A Child’s Question, August
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1.
BLUR
The Ballad Of Darren (Parlophone)
Perhaps it’s too early to tell where Blur’s ninth album should fall in a rundown of the band’s greatest work, but The Ballad Of Darren certainly sounds like the record Blur should be making in 2023. With the group themselves playing two nights at Wembley Stadium shortly before the record’s release, Britpop nostalgia is clearly a booming business still, yet the looking back that takes place here isn’t a cheery hark back to past glories, but a sadness for what’s been lost as the band navigate middle age together. Despite its glammy guitar stomp, and even an ‘Oi!’ from Albarn, St. Charles Square paints a picture of the singer broken by fame, hiding from success and succumbing to the fear (and worse), and when Coxon joins Albarn to sing of travelling around the world together on The Ballad it’s a bittersweet acknowledgement of their shared lost innocence. As Coxon told MOJO recently: “It sounds like Blur, but men.”
Standout track: St. Charles Square
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