My favorite albums of 2022
I don’t think it’s too dramatic to say that 2022 has been the most monumental year of my life, so far. It’s the year where I graduated college and moved halfway across the country. It’s also the year where I found love and experienced dear, dear loss. //
My emotions throughout 2022 have been felt deeper and wider than any year before.
Thank the Lord for music; I’m not sure what I’d do without it. //
I cheated again on this year’s favorite albums list, this time so I could include a live album. Yes, that’s right! A live album! Call it a result of going to my first music festival; there’s just something exceptional about a live performance. //
Anyway, these are the 11 albums that walked with me through 2022. A good year for music? Surely. Maybe even one of the best.
1.) Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You - Big Thief
“Change,” the first track from Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, is, without a doubt, my favorite song of 2022.
Its four verses and repeating chorus echo what, for me, has been the definitive theme throughout the year. The questions the song asks in its choruses — “Would you live forever, never die?/While everything around passes?” or “Would you walk forever in the light?/To never learn the secret of the quiet night?” — touch on this theme of change beautifully. It’s a lovely, if not somewhat sad, opening.
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is a long one. One hour and 20 minutes, in total. That length initially made me wary to jump into Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (I’m not abbreviating it) when it first came out in February. But the wonderful thing about Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is that once you digest it, once you give it one thorough listen, it’s nearly impossible to pick out a song that you’d want to drop. Each is so distinct, both musically and thematically. Big Thief tries out a whole bunch of different sounds on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, but they all come together seamlessly.
Yet the main appeal of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is Adrianne Lenker’s singing and songwriting. I think her solo record, “songs,” was a definite snub from my music writings in previous years. I adore her lyrics and her raw, never overpowering but somehow always gutsy, voice. Those shine through on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You.
It’s a jingly-jangly record that dives into all sorts of potent themes of universality and collectivism, of intimate relationships between folks and connections to nature. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You has the longest — and by far the most unique — title of any album on this list. I can’t think of a better one to get us started.
Favorite tracks: Change, Blurred View, No Reason
2.) LOUIE - Kenny Beats
J Dilla’s Donuts is probably the most acclaimed instrumental sample record of all time. It’s surely one of my favorites and really stands distinctly all by itself. But it’s hard, when listening to LOUIE by Kenny Beats, to not at least give a passing thought to the legendary Detroit producer.
Now, I’m not saying LOUIE is on the same tier as Donuts. Again, Donuts is a standalone legendary record that created a whole new sound in hip-hop production. But the way that Kenny Beats fuses all sorts of different samples with hypnotic beats of his own, punctuated by light horns and swirling up-and-down keys, certainly evokes Dilla’s 2006 album.
I normally don’t love comparison-based reviews. But because Dilla came to mind almost immediately when listening to LOUIE for the first time, I had to start this little review with a light comparison. More of an evocation than anything, really.
What to say about LOUIE? The album, released in August, is the solo debut of Kenny Beats. You may remember Kenny from last year’s favorite albums roundup. He handled the production behind Vince Staples by Vince Staples. (The California rapper released another album this year; find it in my honorable mentions below) He’s also produced for Denzel Curry, 03 Greedo and, somewhat surprisingly, IDLES. (Again, honorable mentions) This solo project fully embodies Kenny’s distinct production style. It’s got a sharp high-end and a pretty deep and bassy low-end. It’s accented by horns and keys and irresistibly smooth throughout.
LOUIE walks through a ton of instrumental ground. Some might say that it tries to do a bit too much and, for that reason, pulls itself apart a bit. That’s true, I think, to an extent. It does do a lot. But it packs it all into a 33 minute run time, so it doesn’t feel like too long. In fact, it seems just about right. Each song brings its own unique sound, and what LOUIE might lack in cohesion it more than makes up for in inventiveness and novelty.
Simply put, Kenny Beats is on fire.
Favorite tracks: Hold My Head, Still, Last Words
3.) Aethiopes - billy woods
billy woods is remarkable. I think many would consider him the most potent and prolific underground rapper producing at the moment. He released two records in 2022, Aethiopes and Church. I did listen to both, and I do think Aethiopes is a better representation of woods than is Church.
Aethiopes is heavy and claustrophobic. There’s a certain intensity and pain that comes through in all of woods’ lines on any project, but there’s some distinct sense that Aethiopes turns that intensity up a notch. If opening tracks set a tone for what albums are going to bring, then Aethiopes’ “Asylum” is a clear example. It eptimozies this intensity, bursting to life with a slammed piano chord and off-kiltered, rapidly descending strings. Then woods enters with a ton that sounds serious yet at the same time bored, or at least a little tired and lethargic.
There are too many excellent lines and turns of phrase on Aethiopes to start listing them here. Yet the first lines on the album do give a good example of the record’s tone and themes of familial strife and postcolonial reconstruction:
“I think Mengitsu Haile Mariam is my neighbor,
Whoever it is moved in and put an automated gate up.
Repainted brick walls atop which now cameras rotated.
By eight the place dark, one light burn later.
Razor wire like a slinky.”
According to a Genius annotation, “Mengistu Haile Mariam was the head of Ethiopia’s socialist government from 1977 to 1991. He fled the country at the end of his reign and sought asylum (hence the song title) in Zimbabwe, where he still lived as of this song’s release.” woods spent most of his childhood in Zimbabwe and returns to the African nation a lot in lyrics throughout the record.
Aethiopes features the likes of EL-P of Run The Jewels fame, Boldy James and frequent E L U C I D, a frequent billy woods collaborater. (See: Armand Hammer) It’s a somewhat intense listen, but it is what I’d consider billy woods’ best project. And among all the various hip-hop records I’ve heard this year, it’s the one that I keep coming back to, over and over.
Favorite tracks: Asylum, Sauvage, NYNEX
4.) Hysteria - Indigo Sparke
Sometimes an album finds its way into your life at just the right time. So it was with Indigo Sparke’s Hysteria, a record that came out in early October but that I didn’t really fall into until about a month later. Sparke’s melancholic acoustic sound provided much the soundtrack for my autumn in Albuquerque. There’s even a line that makes reference to the state on the song “Real”:
“Warm afternoon/Spend the day thinking of you;
New Mexico dream/All the colors scream.”
At its core Hysteria is a pretty simple singer-songwriter record. It echoes Joni Mitchell’s Blue — quite a lot now that I think about it. It’s stripped back instrumentally and covers themes like perceived alienation, hopeless passion and lost dreams. It’s an album that doesn’t do anything extraordinarily well, but sometimes that’s all okay when you’re dealing with a singer-songwriter record. In the end it’s simply a collection of really well written songs that all string together into a cohesive near-hour-long project.
I’m not saying you have to be sad to really pull the most out of Hysteria. But I’m not saying it would hurt, either.
Favorite tracks: Hysteria, Pressure In My Chest, God Is A Woman’s Name
5.) God’s Country - Chat Pile
There are always a couple records that sneak into my favorites of the year from other year end lists. God’s County by Oklahoma City band Chat Pile is one of those this year.
It’s somewhat remarkable how quickly I fell in love with this album. I think part of what sucked me into it so quickly was hearing the second track, “Why,” for the first time. It’s an arresting song, not only because of the heavy, punctuated bass line and open hi-hat, driving drum pattern. It’s really because of the first lyrics you hear.
“Why do people have to live outside?
In the brutal heat or when it’s below freezing, there are people that are made to live outside. Why?
Why do people have to live outside?
When there are buildings all around us, with heat on and no one inside. Why?”
Raygun Busch, a pseudonym for the band’s lead singer (pun intended, I hope), sings these lyrics with such passion and anger, perfectly matching the instrumental ferocity of the song. Not to be incredibly cliché, but it’s an anger that a lot of people have felt over the past couple of years, made so much more raw when the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic made many of capitalistic society’s starkest inequities more clear than ever before.
Although “Why” made me fall headfirst into this album, it’s not the only excellent moment on the record. It is, to be clear, the heaviest and darkest album on this list. It’s an album of melancholic sludge metal that alternates between sentiments of pure depression to violent anger, oftentimes on the same song. “Pamela,” the song after “Why,” is maybe the best example of this.
God’s Country is a cathartic exclamation of capitalistic angst; it’s a fitting record for a year that has, more often than not, been more than a little despondent.
Favorite tracks: Why, Pamela, Anywhere
6.) Natural Brown Prom Queen - Sudan Archives
The Current, the Twin Cities’ independent alternative radio station, just loved “Selfish Soul” after it came out as a single in mid-May this year. But I didn’t fall in love with Sudan Archives’ Natural Brown Prom Queen until I saw it featured in one of Bandcamp’s Essential Releases round-ups. The music website included “Home Maker” as the one song to preview the album for interested readers, and, oh my God, I was hooked.
The track builds slowly, with a sort of ambient feel punctuated by little bursts of horns and key, until the drums kick in around the one minute mark. Then we fall headfirst into an infectiously simple hi-hat, snare and bass groove until a quick snare pattern introduces us to Brittney Denise Parks’ lyrics.
“I just got a wall mount for my plants, hoping they’ll thrive around the madness/
Won’t you step inside my lovely cottage? Feels so green it feels like fucking magic.”
I don’t know — I hadn’t really heard a song about building a living space for yourself before, and all the emotion and care that goes into that effort. It’s a lovely idea for a song, I think. And again, one particularly suited for a pandemic-infused period where so many people have turned inward instead of outward.
“Selfish Soul,” the Current-loved single, is a banger, too, of course. It’s a song about how Parks views expressing herself through her hair and comes with an excellent pseudo-chorus of its own.
“I don’t want no struggles, I don’t want no fears.
I don’t want no struggles, I don’t want no fears.
Does it make sense to you why I cut it off?
Okay, one time if I grow it long, am I good enough? Am I good enough?
’Bout time I embraced my self and soul. Time I feed my selfish soul.”
Besides these two songs, the whole album carries themes of self-care and self-confidence, introspection that turns outwards to approach the world with more openness and courage and care. It’s also about embracing one’s body and looking at yourself with unflinching love rather than critical cruetly. About truly and deeply embracing oneself.
Parks is a violinist, and her strings grace a number of tracks on the record. The whole instrumental feel of the thing is quite cohesive. It’s 53 minutes but really flies by — in a good way.
Favorite tracks: Home Maker, Selfish Soul, Homesick (Gorgeous & Arrogant)
7.) The Linden Trees Are Still In Blossom - Jens Lekman
Like Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, Jens Lekman’s The Linden Trees Are Still In Blossom is an over-one-hour-and-fifteen-minute album with an over-five-word title. In fact, it’s the longest album on this list, at least in terms of run time. But, like Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, there’s not one second I’d want to leave off the record after listening through it a couple times.
Linden Trees (I’ll abbreviate this one) is possibly the most introspective album on this list. But it’s not introspective in the sense of personal growth of self-realization, per se. It’s much more about how a person relates to their memories of the past, and how those memories come to influence a person’s present and future. That’s pertinent, for me at least, in a year that I’ve spent a lot of time, especially recently, thinking about how memories impact my own life. They’re weird things, those memories of past people, place, things and experiences.
I think Lekman does a wonderful job sharing his thoughts about memories with a slight sense of sadness and longing, but also with humor and more passive reflection. No song shows this better on Linden Trees than “Sipping On The Sweet Nectar,” the album’s second track.
“Do you remember your first kiss? Well how could I forget? My hands still shiver from the very thought of it.
Sometimes I almost regret it, like I regret my regrets. I see myself on my deathbed saying ‘I wish I would have loved less.’
But that’s when the feeling hits. So just lick your lips. These are the good times that you’ll miss when you are sipping on the sweet nectar of your memories.
So just take a sip, and let it wet your lips. You won’t understand all this until you’re sipping on the sweet nectar of your memories.”
It’s my favorite song on the album, and I remember listening to it while walking around Loring Park in Minneapolis in the summer while the flowers and greenery were all in full bloom. Summertime brings with it a certain nostalgia that’s distinct from that of the fall or winter, I find. And this song fueled my own summertime, post-undergrad nostalgia in a way that few other songs came close to.
Linden Trees is, I think, just a really, really sweet record. It’s the Swedish singer-songwriter’s first project since 2019. I’d recommend reading through some of the ‘small talk’ posts from his website, where Lekman responds thoughtfully to questions from fans. The most recent was from last December, but I still think they give some more context to a lot of the lyrics and themes we hear on Linden Trees.
It’s true: The Linden Trees are still in blossom. Always.
Favorite tracks: Sipping On The Sweet Nectar, Your Arms Around Me, A Little Lost
8.) ULTRAPOP: Live at the Masonic - The Armed
Here it is — the previously-mentioned live album that made me break my 10-album-list format, again.
Why did I want to include a live album this year, you ask? And why this one? Well, this summer I went to Pitchfork. It was my first music festival and an all-in-all extraordinary experience. I got the chance to see something like 30 artists live over the course of three days. But no single show stood out as much as The Armed. The Detroit band absolutely blasted the blue stage, tucked away from the two main stages in a more intimate and, therefore, intense environment. It was the coolest musical moment of my life. I thrashed around in the mud and rain, jostled between a crowd of sweaty and terribly-smelling people in a swirling outdoor mosh. A photographer even captured me mid-show.
I’m there, in the patterned golf shirt and light brown-reddish tuft of hair. It’s remarkable, this picture. One of my favorites. From @jonestakesyourphotos on Instagram.
So if there’s an album that comes close to capturing the energy of that performance — captured almost poetically in the photo above — it’s The Armed’s live album the band released this year, a collection of songs from their breakout 2021 record ULTRAPOP performed at the “mysterious” Masonic Temple of Detroit, a massive 550,000-square-foot structure. The group released an accompanying 50-minute film to go alongside the album.
I’ll admit, I haven’t seen the film. But if it gets anywhere close, again, to capturing the hardcore punk band’s visceral energy and raw talent, then I’m sure it’s a good one. You really have to listen to this album yourself to understand what I’m trying to convey. Or you can just listen to my favorite tracks while staring at this picture of me from Pitchfork. Your choice!
Favorite tracks: ALL FUTURES (Live), AN ITERATION (Live), WHERE MAN KNOWS WANT (Live)
9.) Some Nights I Dream Of Doors - Obongjayar
Nigerian-born Obongjayar’s Some Nights I Dream Of Doors is the other of my favorite albums that I found very late in the year through other year end lists. (Shout out to Oliver Kemp. @deepcuts = YouTube channel) Instrumentally quite different but thematically similar to Jens Lekman’s Linden Trees, Steven Umoh, stage name Obongjayar, sings of topics of homesickness, familial love and diaspora troubles on Some Nights I Dream Of Doors.
Obongjayar has been a name that’s bounced around a lot recently. He’s picked up some excellent features on Little Simz’ Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (see last year’s list) and Jeshi’s Protein. He released a brief album/EP in 2020, Which Way Is Forward? But Some Nights I Dream Of Doors, at 35 minutes, is Obonjayar’s full-length debut. And it’s absolutely wonderful.
Umoh’s voice is so singular, not just because of his somewhat raspy Nigerian-British accent. He shares a painful and impassioned perspective on Some Nights I Dream Of Doors. A lot of the lyrics seem to reference his move from Nigeria to the U.K. when he was 17. He followed his mother, who had left Nigeria early to escape her abusive husband, Umoh’s father. Lyrics on the album’s title track bring through some of the pain and heartache that could stem from this period.
“Some nights I dream of doors. I need a way out, I’m suffocating.
Some nights I dream of doors. My obsession will drive me to the end or set me free.”
And later on on the song, he seems address his mother and his choice to follow her overseas.
“No matter where I run, the ways they lead me right back here.
I think it’s time I stop running from myself. You want to make a life here, you and everyone else.
You want to be happy, yeah, well so do they. So do they.”
But other tracks, like Tinko Tinko (Don’t Play Me for a Fool) share a more personal sense of introspection. Umoh sings on the song:
“Don’t play me for a fool. I’d rather be alone than be next to someone who don’t feel like I do.
Are we in love or are we just comfortable?”
Instrumentally, Obongjayar fuses light influences of Afrobeat with an almost dreamlike mix of synths and keys. Even the album cover itself — the bright colored one at the bottom of the collage above — evokes these themes of dreams. And that’s not to mention the record’s title, too.
Memories and dreaming, love and loss often come hand-in-hand. Expressing those themes earnestly and majestically, Obonjayar’s debut is a gem.
Favorite tracks: Parasite, Wrong For It, Tinko Tinko (Don’t Play Me for a Fool)
10.) Ants From Up There - Black Country, New Road
I wrote at the end of my review of last year’s For the first time, “If For the first time had high expectations, its revealed quality has created a seeming fervor to discover where Black Country, New Road go from here.” Well, BC,NR have done it again.
Ants From Up There takes much of what was excellent about For the first time — its horns, its instrumental swells, its dramatic lyricism — and refines it. I don’t know if it’s too vague to say that every song on Ants From Up There just feels so quintessentially Black Country, New Road, but I think that’s true. It feels right to say that.
The record’s release comes with a bit of a sense of sadness. BC, NR’s lead singer and songwriter, Isaac Wood, left the group shortly before the album’s release. It’s been reported that he left because of depression and other mental health issues that, at least in part, stemmed from writing Ants From Up There.
Isaac’s doing better now, according to some reports. But still, when you listen to Ants From Up There, it’s possible to trace a line from many of Isaac’s lyrics to his struggles with mental health. He sings with melancholy and forlornness, but also with anger and desperation at times. He tackles topics like addiction, abuse and longing for what once was.
Still, Ants From Up There is a gorgeous, gorgeous record that features some of my favorite lyrics and musical moments from the year. (I guess that’s why it’s on this list, huh) Take the imagery in the song “Concorde,” for instance:
“And you, like Concorde, I came, a gentle hill racer.
I was breathless upon every mountain, just to look for your light.”
Or a passage from “Good Will Hunting”:
“And if we’re on a burning starship, the escape pods filled with your friends, your childhood film photos. There’s no room for me to go.
Oh I’d wait there, float with the wreckage, fashion a long sword, traverse the Milky Way. Trying to get home to you. And you’d bring some piece of the stars.”
It’s gut wrenching and tear-inducing. Isaac’s pain is real, written throughout Ants From Up There, on full display. But the beautiful thing about these themes on the album is that they’re so universal. They’re pulled from one person’s experience, of course, but they’re things a lot of folks can relate to. The lyrics are hard to listen to at times, for sure, but that makes them better, more moving, more potent.
Ants From Up There fuses a variety of instruments, ranging from horns to violin to keys to, of course, guitar and bass. Like For the first time, the record starts with an instrumental intro, driven in large part by those horns and the violin playing of Georgia Ellery. But certain songs are driven more by guitar, others by the drums and still others by the keys. There’s even a track in the middle of the album, “Mark’s Theme,” that is, like the intro, instrumental-only and features and saxophone-violin duet, joined by piano later on the song. It’s a wonderful moment on the record.
Listening to the album is sort of like traversing a mountain range, or watching waves on the ocean. It’s full of slow builds, majestic swells that crash into intense choruses that then slowly fade. As I wrote about For the first time last year, you never really want the songs to end.
My only issue with the record, if I had to find one, is that its last two tracks — “Snow Globes” and “Basketball Shoes” — feel somewhat excessive. That’s not to say they’re bad songs. No, not at all. Rather, “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade,” the album’s third-to-last song, feels like a closer. With all of the themes on the album, for some reason “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” just feels like where the record should end. It’d be about 37 minutes without those two last songs instead of 58 minutes with them. Again, not an inherently bad thing, but cutting those two I feel would make the whole album feel tighter.
Still, “Snow Globes” and “Basketball Shoes” are great, and the album isn’t any worse because they’re on it. “Basketball Shoes” in a lot of ways epitomizes the BC, NR song construction formula better than any other. And it’s the longest track at around 12 minutes. The band pulls in many different swells, climaxes and resolutions into the one track. Even though I think “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” would make a great closer, it seems fitting that BC, NR would leave us with “Basketball Shoes.”
I love Black Country, New Road, and I love Ants From Up There. It’s a painful — yes, quite painful — record, but it’s so, so excellent.
Favorite tracks: Concorde, Good Will Hunting, The Place Where He Inserted the Blade
11.) In These Times - Makaya McCraven
“I’d never want to be known as anybody opposed to progress,
But this is no longer a matter of progress, or not progress.”
Makaya McCraven’s In These Times, a sprawling, 41 minute jazz record, opens with spoken word. It’s pulled from an interview with Harry Belafonte, the American singer, activist and actor. He’s chatting with Studs Terkel about the tale of John Henry, the Black American folk hero who out-dug a steel drill through a Southern rock tunnel.
“My brothers, my cousins, my friends have died trying to built this tunnel,
And it just kinda seems to me that nobody has the right to take away our responsibility to finish what these people have died for.”
The recording of Belafonte continues as McCraven’s band slowly builds. We hear a light marimba pattern repeating in the background, a set of sweeping, overarching strings, all pushed ahead by McCraven’s own drumming through an incessant, driving ride cymbal.
“Our dignity is involved in it. Our integrity, and everything that we believe as working men are involved.
I ain’t really opposed to the machine. I just feel that the machine can’t take the place of the soul and sweat of the many men who died to help build this tunnel.”
The band continues up to a fever swell, a crescendo of strings and drums and keys and horns, until:
“We gotta finish it, and it just ain’t two ways about it.”
And then, everything clears. A cathartic moment of release from the tension that had been building over the one-and-a-half minutes or so while the recording of Bellafonte’s voice played. McCraven’s drums suddenly slow into a relaxed beat, the strings and horns extended their lines and we hear, for the first time, a harp on the record that offers quick, delicate melodies on top of everything.
McCraven is a part of International Anthem, a Chicago record label that features some of my other favorite jazz musicians from the city that I love so dearly. But In These Times might be my singular favorite release from the record label. In These Times is lush, pulled together by the cohesion and rhythm of McCraven’s drums but accentuated by moments of individual brilliance from the various soloists and guests on the record. Brandee Younger’s harp, Jeff Parker’s guitar, Greg Ward’s alto saxophone.
All of the instrumentation is pulled together by McCraven’s deft compositions. We get moments of tranquility, like the release on the first song. But we also hear moments of fervor and energy, and anger and frustration. And, in the end, everything circles around that theme spoken by Bellafonte at the top of the record. A sense of integrity, pride in work, determination to move on and to move forward. It’s an acute sentiment, one that’s as universal as it is motivated by the individual.
We do have to finish it, whatever “it” may be. It’s a determined, almost energizing sentiment for the year ahead, one that I’m sure will feature more of this album and its cascading strings and soft horns and patterned drums from, what is, my favorite record of 2022.
Favorite tracks: In These Times, Dream Another, So Ubuji
Honorable Mentions
5 to the Eye with Stars - R.A.P. Ferreira
Home, before and after - Regina Spektor
And In The Darkness, Heats Aglow - Weyes Blood
Deathfame - Quelle Chris
Could We Be More - Kokoroko
The Forever Story - JID
There Will Be No Super-Slave - Ghais Guevara
Hellfire - Black Midi
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers - Kendrick Lamar
We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong - Sharon Van Etten
five seconds flat - Lizzie McAlpine
Timewave Zero - Blood Incantation
RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART - Vince Staples
Chloe and the Next 20th Century - Father John Misty
Melt My Eyez See Your Future - Denzel Curry
Warm Chris - Aldous Harding
PAINLESS - Nilüfer Yanya
Time Skiffs - Animal Collective
Few Good Things - Saba
Laurel Hell - Mitski
These are my 11 favorite records from 2022, in no particular order. As I wrote at the top, it’s been a monumental year, full of the highest highs and some of the lowest lows. But, ending with the determination shared on In These Times feels appropriate for looking ahead to 2023.
