Music Suitcase: Favorite Albums of April 2023
Welcome to the 64th edition of my monthly blog! This month my favorites were largely on the softer, gentler side of my tastes, and offered a good balance between rising stars and seasoned artists coming back into prominence. Between women-fronted bands, and female singer-songwriters, women absolutely ruled this month.
Along with the blog, here’s a playlist with favorite songs from April!
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”
Wednesday, Rat Saw God
Initially a solo project, 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”
Kara Jackson, Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love?
A celebrated poet making her debut album as a singer/songwriter, the former U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate’s lyrics — more often candid than abstract — are as rich as you’d hope. Folk music with cleanly delivered, unembellished vocals, the album’s simple production underscores the clarity of Jackson’s voice as both singer and poet. Highlights: “Lily,” “Dickhead Blues,” “Therapy”
The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein
Rejecting catharsis, The National are as cozy as ever with melancholy and heartache, inviting it stuff to stick around long enough to impart its lessons. Their 9th album offers a gentler tugging at the heart than usual, which does not so much console as show us where we need consoling. A week isn’t enough to digest a National album though, and a few sentences can’t summarize one, so just go listen, will ya? Highlights: “Eucalyptus,” “This Isn’t Helping,” “Send For Me”
Neil Gaiman and FourPlay String Quartet, Signs of Life
The well-loved British author’s debut music album — as a spoken word performer and occasional songwriter — arrives in collaboration with an Australian indie string quartet. Gaiman’s preoccupation with the nature of storytelling, his penchant to looking at life’s underbelly, and his sense of humor, are all on display here, and the strings are in step with him at every turn. Highlights: “Signs of Life,” “The Wreckers,” “Song of the Song”
Lael Neale, Star Eaters Delight
Lo-fi indie rock on Sub Pop from a singer/songwriter recently returned from LA to her native Virginia, Lael Neale’s 3rd album uses mostly guitars and an ancient synthesizer to work its unpredictable magic. Standing apart from any scene or subgenre, the record gives the impression that each song was written with its own approach; most of those will leave you wanting more. Highlights: “I Am The River,” “In Verona,” “No Holds Barred”
Everything But The Girl, Fuse
Updating your sound after 24 years away might be hard work for most bands with an electronica bent, but then reuniting as a band may be easier when you’ve been married-or-engaged that whole time. At any rate, Tracy Thorn and Ben Watt’s smooth, slow, romantic 11th album is what just about anyone would want an EBTG comeback to sound like. Highlights: “Nothing Left To Lose,” “No One Knows We’re Dancing,” “Karaoke”
Petite Noir, MotherFather
If “Noirwave,” the term Yannick Ilunga has coined for his own music as Petite Noir, is merely a catch-call term for the otherwise ineffable patchwork of African and Western music he creates, I’m here for it. Native to at least 5 countries, Ilunga lets his music travel broadly from art rock to rap to African dance to post-punk to wherever it will, and who would stop him? Highlights: “Finding Paradise,” “Blurry,” “Play”
Tiny Ruins, Ceremony
A band that continually expands its sound as well as its roster (Hollie Fullbrook’s one-time solo act is a quartet now), the New Zealand folkies push further into soft psychedelia on their 4th album but this one’s brighter and more direct. Fullbrook’s lyrical imagery is as rich and beautiful as ever. Highlights: “Dog Dreaming,” “Out of Phase,” “Sounds Like”
Metallica, 72 Seasons
Nobody really expects a Metallica album to have a message, let alone a hopeful one, so the themes of their sprawling 11th album — wrestling with depression and actually finding one’s way to the other side of it — are an interesting focus for the world’s biggest metal band. Bringing their A game as musicians, virtuosos and songsmiths, they stick the landing marvelously. Highlihts: “Too Far Gone?,” “Lux Æterna,” “Inamorata”
Black Thought & El Michaels Affair, Glorious Game
The Roots frontman continues to find producers that make his content-driven raps slap, this time teaming with Leon Michels’ long-running NYC-based R&B-and-also-everything-else outfit, who provide all the melodic lubrication Thought needs to shine as the earnest, focused emcee he was born to be. Highlights: “Protocol,” “The Weather,” “Alone”
Rodrigo y Gabriela, In Between Thoughts…A New World
Inspired by their spiritual practice, rooted in Hindu mysticism (specifically the Advaita Vedanta), the Mexican guitar duo’s thoroughly psychedelic 8th studio album adds synths and strings to the mix, and weaves rock, jazz, Latin and Afro-Cuban influences together seamlessly. Highlights: “True Nature,” “Egoland,” “Descending To Nowhere”
HMLTD, The Worm
A rock opera unified tightly by its concept and narrative, but not at all by any musical style — gospel, prog, jazz and Broadway probably get the most airtime? — this punk band’s second album (yeah you read all that right) is weird and ambitious and has “cult classic” written all over it. Highlights: “Wyrmlands,” “The End of Now,” “Past Life (Sinnerman’s Song)”
Daniel Caesar, Never Enough
This Canadian singer’s got a beautiful voice and a knack for weaving neo-soul and psych into smooth, modern R&B. He does it subtly enough not to freak out the devotees of either camp, on his slow-ish, silky third album. Highlights: “Let Me Go,” “Do You Like Me?,” “Cool”
Jessie Ware, That! Feels Good!
The British pop singer goes all in on sultry, sex-positive anthems of celebration, liberation and pleasure, and newly outfits her disco-kissed electro-dance-pop with Latin-style horns and percussion on almost every track. Highlights: “Free Yourself,” “Freak Me Now,” “Shake The Bottle”
Daughter, Stereo Mind Game
Indie folk from the UK, the trio’s third album applies subtler shadings to its emotional intensity. Elena Tonra’s real-life long-distance relationship focuses the album’s pathos, and the spacious production is a perfect fit. Highlights: “Party,” “Swim Back,” “Future Lover”
If you’d like to hear just the best of the best, here’s a playlist with 56 of my favorite songs from April which includes one or a few songs from each album above, and a bunch of great songs from albums that didn’t make onto my list too — Playlist: Music Suitcase April ‘23!
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While we’re here…
Did you enjoy this article? Awesome! It was written by a white guy privileged enough to have time listen to like 40 albums every month and write a blog as a passion project, for free.
If you are white and you are also are privileged enough to have some time on your hands, or some money to donate, please check out some anti-racism resources and help fight the good fight.
Nerding out over music is fun, but let’s not forget that we live in a burning world that needs our help! Black Lives Matter.