Music Suitcase’s Favorite 100 New Albums of 2023
2023 was a blast, musically speaking, with a lot of variation in what I listened to. As usual I heard about 500 new albums, and reviewed about 200, and I‘ve now distilled those into my 7th annual Top 100. This was the final year of my monthly review blog — it’s time for new creative projects — but I’ll still keep doing larger rundowns like this indefinitely.
These are favorites, rather than a judgment on what is “best.” I’m one human being — not a magazine staff — and this list reflects my tastes, however varied. I always marvel at how subjective this process is, and all that factors into how we each experience and evaluate the music we love.
2023 was a great year for conceptually unified albums with a strong sense of direction. It was a fantastic year for psych rock, and psychedelia in general. It was an interesting year, too, for soul and hip hop acts authentically blending guitar-driven rock and folk music into their sound, and vice versa. It was a strong year for folk and Americana in general, too — and a good year for Scotland! (3 of my top 5 UK albums here are Scottish.)
All 100 favorites are listed below, with brief descriptions, and a master list at the end. All of these albums are wonderful — even those at the bottom. It’s daunting to think about all the great albums I couldn’t even find room for here!
A lot of these year-end lists are in countdown format, but I prefer to start with the cream of the crop…
- Lonnie Holley, Oh Me Oh My
This world class 73-year-old visual artist turned outsider musician‘s 5th album is the most powerful new record I heard in 2023. More focused than in the past, Holley reins in his more avant-garde inclinations, while warm atmospherics allow his text to take center stage. Jacknife Lee’s production and a host of top-notch collaborators help turn the artist’s trauma-born, often heartbreaking material into a riveting, revelatory experience. Highlights: “Oh Me Oh My,” “Mount Meigs,” “None Of Us Have But A Little While,” “Earth Will Be There”
2. PJ Harvey, I Inside The Old Year Dying
One of the year’s most ambitious albums, PJ Harvey’s latest masterpiece is based on her own epic poem, written in the dialect of her native county Dorset, and deliberately voiced far outside the singer’s comfortable range. This concept album — involving the esoteric magic of seasons, genderqueer mystics, and Elvis Presley — is enjoyable without knowing the backstory, but those up for the adventure it’s an extra-rewarding journey. Highlights: “Lwonesome Tonight,” “The Nether-Edge,” “A Child’s Question, July”
3. Black Pumas, Chronicles of a Diamond
On their second album the Austin duo sharpens the contrast between the the key elements of soul and psych rock at the center of their sound, giving the band further definition while adding in a bunch of new tricks. Rich and colorful, this is the brightest and most uplifting album of 2023’s highlights, ending a year full of ambitious, often challenging music with an unexpectedly exultant, pep-in-your-step finish! Highlights: “Ice Cream (Pay Phone),” “Gemini Sun,” “Chronicles of a Diamond,” “Tomorrow”
4. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Weathervanes
Here’s a new, potentially career-defining work from the Alabama native, whose deep, dark and heart-wrenching vignettes about lives corroded by addiction, violence and despair ring out with heart and wisdom. It takes some digesting, not just for the difficult subject matter — Isbell’s rich storytelling needs time to sink in. It’s got a strong southern accent in more ways than one, but let that not keep anyone from hearing this modern masterpiece. Highlights: “Save The World,” “Miles,” “Cast Iron Skillet,” “King of Oklahoma”
5. Osees, Intercepted Message
If the Osees can go synth, then anyone can! Though landing on the punkier side of their musical spectrum, the prolific SF band’s 27th-ish album is lit up by colorful keyboards which are often as prominent as John Dwyer’s guitars. Still generally driven by muscular riffs, it feels like another brand new version of the band, and it’s arguably the most fun reinvention they’ve undergone. Highlights: “Intercepted Message,” “Goon,” “Chaos Heart”
6. The New Pornographers, Continue As A Guest
Forever taking the most sophisticated route to the catchiest songs, the power pop supergroup’s 9th album delights in the subtlety and complexity of the songwriting of bandleader Carl Newman, a master of melodies woven intricately together. This album uses more guitar than their last few, seamlessly adds a sax into the mix, and proudly showcases all three singers. Highlights: “Pontius Pilate’s Home Movies,” “Last and Beautiful,” “Marie and the Undersea”
7. Sunny War, Anarchist Gospel
Here the Nashville-born singer/songwriter deftly weaving a helix of Americana music around a punk rock spirit. Toggling between sociopolitical manifesto and break-up album with a few really sweet love songs to boot, the conceptual unity of Sunny’s Gospel is a loose easy-going one; it’s the breadth and dexterity of her songwriting that win the day. Highlights: “Shelter and Storm,” “Sweet Nothing,” “Hopeless”
8. Young Fathers, Heavy Heavy
Genre-agnostic as ever, but rounding out somewhere on the edgier, punchier side of neo-soul, the Edinburgh-based trio’s 4th album is designed to make you move, revel, and embrace life in all its beauty perplexity. This band has swagger to spare and an infectious confidence permeating the music. This album will be loved by people with many divergent musical tastes. Highlights: “Sink Or Swim,” “I Saw,” “Geronimo”
8. Being Dead, When Horses Would Run
This strikingly confident debut is a high energy, idiosyncratic frenzy of surf rock, lo-fi adventurism and freewheeling jangle rock from two best friends in Austin named Falcon Bitch and Gumball. Generously layered, shared vocals and a progressive approach to song structure add further dimension to this revelry; it’s full speed ahead much of the time, but with fascinating detours! Highlights: “Last Living Buffalo,” “Muriel’s Big Day Off,” “Treeland”
10. Geese, 3D Country
Vaulting suddenly from experimental post-punk right across the punk/hippie fence into bluesy, progged out psychedelia, this Brooklyn band has arrived at a much more distinctive and fertile aesthetic. Their third album is equal parts soulful, playful, and trippy, and Cameron Winter’s come into his own as a singer, with the full character of his voice on display. Highlights: “2122,” “I See Myself,” “Mysterious Love”
11. Model/Actriz, Dogsbody
Of all the sit-up-and-take-notice debut albums of 2023, this NYC band arrives with the most fully-formed vision, their full-throttle, sex-soaked industrial post-punk ablaze with kinky desperation and unabashed melodrama. Noisy, deliberately clattering — “every instrument is a drum” — Model/Actriz’s queer odyssey of lust and abandon is riveting at every turn. Highlights: “Crossing Guard,” “Slate,” “Amaranth”
12. Allison Russell, The Returner
The Montreal-born folksinger’s second solo album veers towards a new, livelier aesthetic with soul music in its heart and elements of disco, baroque pop and French pop adding to the mix. Russell has a remarkable knack for transforming personal and generational trauma into paeans of liberation, and this time you can even dance to them. Highlights: “Rag Child,” “Eve Was Black,” “Stay Right Here”
13. billy woods & Kenny Segal, Maps
A master of slow burn, extended-release lyrics that hit harder with each listen, NYC underground rap maverick Woods applies his album’s theme of touring and traveling with a subtle touch, using it to focus his thoughts on a wealth of pithy subjects. His second collab with LA beatmaker Segal feels more cohesive; ample guest features give it a more expansive feel, too. Highlights: “Soft Landing,” “Hangman,” “Waiting Around”
14. Feist, Multitudes
Call it a comeback for Leslie Feist as she finds a distinctive synthesis between the warm and gentle folk-pop of her early work and the more expansive ambitions of her later efforts. The resulting album is an ethereal, folk-y but often elaborate art-pop affair. Feist’s voice is gorgeous throughout, and the arrangements are elegant and clever. Highlights: “In Lightning,” “Hiding Out in the Open,” “Borrow Trouble”
15. Wednesday, Rat Saw God
Karly Hartzman’s Asheville, NC-based southern-fried shoegaze band offers confessional chronicles about life in the most beleaguered parts in the American South. Hartzman’s lyrics thrum with urgency and compassion on Wednesday’s third album, and her band is on fire. Favorite lyric from any album this year: “At night I don’t count stars, I count the dark.” Highlights: ‘Hot Rotten Grass Smell,” “Chosen To Deserve,” “Turkey Vultures”
16. Indian Ocean, Tu Hai
Dehli’s best indie band has been fusing traditional Indian music with rock for decades (and jazz, and more) and have now fully arrived at their sweet spot, focusing in on the psychedelic aspects of both. Just their third album since of the death of Asheem Chakravarty in 2009, Tu Hai finds a top-notch band reinventing itself and playing to its natural strengths in all the right ways. Highlights: “Tu Hai (Pts 1 & 2),” “Iss Tan Dhan,” “Jaadu Maaya”
17. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, City of Gold
A fantastic California bluegrass record about traveling around in the wild west, the gold rush, altered states of consciousness and more, Molly Tuttle’s fourth album is the first one she’s recorded with her touring band rather than hired guns. This is also where her songwriting catches up with her musical chops. Highlights: “Yosemite,” “City of Gold,” “Goodbye Mary”
18. Aesop Rock, Integrated Tech Solutions
His most personal to date, the Brooklyn rapper’s tenth album tempers the all-out lyrical athleticism a bit for a more personal approach, with clear themes and stories from his own life. The flow and the rhymes are still impressive; but more so is this new willingness to show himself — after two decades of spitting left-field mic drops like an alien genius — as human. Highlights: “Pigeonometry,” “Bermuda,” “Vititus”
19. Mon Laferte, Autopoiética
A well-loved Chilean artist based in Mexico, Mon Laferte’s new one displays her musical dexterity. For outsiders it’ll sound like all the Latin music you’ve ever heard fused together seamlessly, with modern and classic flourishes. Those who know the album’s specific musical references will admire the scope and breadth of it, and geek out even as the groove carries them away. Highlights: “Metamorfosis,” “Casta Diva,” “Préndele Fuego”
20. Ghost of Vroom, Ghost of Vroom 3
Originally the Soul Coughing reunion Mike Doughty insisted on doing with or without bandmates, here his collaboration with Andrew Livingston finds its own voice. GoV 3 takes Doughty further still from the upright bass / sax / drums combo that once couched his beatnik hip hop vocals, framing him more as an emcee with limitless sonic options at his disposal. Highlights: “Your Bones in the Mud,” “Yesterday In California,” “I Had To Do It”
21. Sufjan Stevens, Javelin
Sufjan’s latest is a return to the deceptively simple acoustic indie folk aesthetic he began with, and also to the ambitiousness with which he continuously turns that practiced softness on his head by way of colorful extrapolations and artful adventurism. It’s beautiful, often gentle music, but it’s never boring. Highlights: “Will Anybody Every Love Me?,” “My Red Little Fox,” “Shit Talk”
22. Nickel Creek, Celebrants
Re-emerging with an ambitious and thoroughly progressive vision of bluegrass that feels both fast-and-loose and ornately structured, the 90s-birthed trio’s second reunion in as many decades — after several solo and duo projects in between — is largely about coming together after a time apart, and the music underscores the power of that as much as the lyrics. Highlights: “Celebrants,” “Where The Long Line Leads,” Goddamned Saint”
23. Tinariwen, Amatssou
Subtly augmenting the desert blues of the Tuaregs with bluegrass instrumentation may seem a wild curveball or a natural fit depending on your musical cosmology, but in any case, Mali’s Assouf-rock progenitors make it sound like destiny on their 8th album. Steady, hypnotic rhythms and psychedelic-without-trying guitars roll along wondrously throughout. Highlights: “Kek Alghalm,” “Tenere Den,” “Imidiwan Mahitinam”
22. Animal Collective, Isn’t It Now?
Though still experimental to their core, the band’s follow-up to 2022’s Time Skiffs (with songs germinated at the same time) features some of the warmest and colorful music in their discography, and employs an more consistent palate of psychedelic sounds. Without sacrifing any ambtion, it’s remarkable how smooth this band can sound when they want to. Highlights: “Gem & I,” “Genies Open,” “Defeat”
25. Belle and Sebastian, Late Developers
Recorded at the same time as A Bit of Previous, the Scottish septet’s surprise 12th album is stronger than its predecessor. You’ll find a nice array of indie pop here, from synth pop anthems, to thoughtful folk-rock, to power pop, and it’s easy to feel the momentum of this late-career resurgence. Highlights: “I Don’t Know What You See In Me,” “Do You Follow,” “So In The Moment”
26. Tianna Esperanza, Terror
This 22-year-old artist uses severe childhood trauma, sexual exploits, a dazzling confidence, her family’s legacy (her grandmother is Palmolive from The Slits) and a clear contempt for genre confines to craft a wildly unpredictable, sometimes shocking, and certainly stunning debut. Highlights: “Terror,” “Buy You A New Attitude,” “Lone Child”
28. Grian Chatten, Chaos For The Fly
One of the best male rock lyricists around now, the Fontaines DC frontman launches a solo debut. Not much like FDC’s post-punk sound, it’s got a clear folk component but takes a post-genre pop approach to arrangement, allowing the songs, rather than any given sound, to take center stage. Highlights: “Fairlies,” “Salt Throwers Off A Truck,” “The Score”
27. Boygenius, The Record
Three songwriters in their prime (Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker) form a whole even greater than the sum of its parts; Boygenius is an ideal supergroup. Their debut full-length offers many combinations of their voices and you can feel strength of their creative union in every note. Highlights: “Emily I’m Sorry,” “True Blue,” “Leonard Cohen”
29. Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Data Doom
A stew of heavy psych, blistering garage rock and some perfectly inflected Afro-funk, this LA band’s high energy 7th album wears its 21st century influences on its sleeve (KGLW, Segall, Osees) but there’s more than enough life there to go around, and the Zamrock influence is a fun twist. Highlights: “Burn Me Down,” “Weird Dog,” “Political Canniablism”
30. Cabezadenego, Mbé & Leyblack, Mimosa
A celebration of Black Brazilian music by 3 producers who met during a residency in Spain, Mimosa’s mostly upbeat mixture of electronically and analogically sourced dance music revels in Afro-Brazilian rhythms along a spectrum of genres, most notably samba, terreira, funk and hip hop. Highlights: “Roda,” “Matuta,” “Chora”
31. Zulu, A New Tomorrow
A metalcore album centered on the experience of being Black in America, this LA band serves up hearty chunks of metal interspersed with spoken word pieces, ethereal segues, hip hop, and samples of soul and reggae classics. It’s refreshing to realize I can still fall in love with a metal album! Highlights: “Where I’m From,” “Fakin’ The Funk (You Get Did),” “Who Jah Bless, No One Curse”
32. Armand Hammer, We Buy Diabetes Test Strips
Brooklyn underground rap stalwart Billy Woods is on fire in 2023. His 6th album with Elucid as a duo finds the two rapping over beats and live music as trippy as anything, but with tighter song structures, allowing socio-political urgency to emerge from the impressionistic poetry of their lyrics. Highlights: “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” “The Flexible Unreliability of Time & Memory,” “Niggardly (Blocked Call)”
33. Fever Ray, Radical Romantics
Karin Dreijer of The Knife flies their freak flag high on their solo project’s 3rd album, a quirky and inventive, electronically driven art-pop album about romantic and erotic love at its boldest and most urgent. Colorful and hooky, the more accessible music reflects the direct, personal nature of the songs. Highlights: “What They Call Us,” “Even It Out,” “Carbon Dioxide”
34. Angie McMahon, Light, Dark, Light Again
It can be to tell when an artist devotes her music to the audacious task of enriching her listeners’ lives with empowering messages. It works best when the melodies are so engaging it takes you a little while to realize that‘s happening . This album does that really, really well. Highlights: “Saturn Returning, “Divine Fault Line,” “Serotonin”
Continue to #35 through 67 of my Favorite Albums of 2023, and the master list…
(It’s ridiculous how many great albums that couldn’t fit into my top 33 is staggering, as you’ll see below…)
…Or, check out my Highlights of 2023 playlist! It may not be the first time I’ve said this, but I think this is my favorite of any year-end playlist that I’ve made. Feel free to go Follow that, and then read on to the next 33 albums…