High-quality new music flowed with abundance in 2023. Here’s part one of the best to hit our ears throughout the year.
20. The Garment District – Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World (Happy Happy Birthday To Me) This one’s a grower, and it already made a strong positive impression when released back in September, so here we are. The Garment District is the project of Jennifer Baron, a founding member of Ladybug Transistor, and the connection is clear through occasional pop-psych vibes, though ultimately Baron’s direction is distinct and stylistically broad. Bottom line is Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World is a fun record, and that makes it quite the worthwhile thing in non-fun times. “Cooling Station” is a gem.
19. Dex Romweber – Good Thing Goin’ (Propeller Sound Recordings) That Dex Romweber is still putting out killer records this deep into his extended venture into recording and performing (“career” just isn’t the right word) is cause for wonderment and celebration. Romweber first hit the scene as half of the Flat Duo Jets, a roots-manic experience if ever one was, but his recent stuff is bold, bright, and straight-up necessary, branching out with suave maturity while keeping a tight grip on classique American forms of all stripes. The aura of Gene Vincent is still tangible, is what I’m saying.
18. Dustin Wong – Perpetual Morphosis (Hausu Mountain) I’m guessing the long wait times in vinyl production played a part in this always interesting label Chicago label’s choice to release most of its recent catalog on cassette. And that’s exactly how Perpetual Morphosis was given a physical release, a fitting format as guitarist Dustin Wong’s layering and looping has gotten increasingly complex. It’s wonderful to imagine popping this into an auto-reversing deck and just letting it roll on for infinity, or at least until the tape or the machine breaks. So maybe buy two copies, just to be safe.
17. Ricardo Dias Gomes – Muito Sol LP (Hive Mind) Multi-instrumentalist Ricardo Dias Gomes played extensively in the band of Caetano Veloso and has collaborated in his own work with Arto Lindsay, relationships that help to situate where Muito Sol is coming from, though it’s where Gomes is headed that’s most exciting. While the experimentation is surely psychedelic at times, there are metallic touches, aspects of drone and a whole lot of post-rock. The record’s Brazilian bedrock is inviting but avoids the mellow, instead cultivating a naturally unwinding if sometimes jarring strangeness. That’s great.
16. Mats Gustafsson & Joachim Nordwall – THEIR POWER REACHED ACROSS SPACE AND TIME-TO DEFY THEM WAS DEATH-OR WORSE (Thrill Jockey) Something terrible is about to happen on the spaceship, and the tension is unbearable, yet also exhilarating. This set, which teams two Swedish giants, Gustafsson on various saxophones, flute, and altofluteophone and Nordwall on synth, tapes, effects, and mixing, opens with a terrifically menacing cinematic moment and with more to follow, but it’s mainly just eight wildly successful stabs at expanding the boundaries of abstract sound.
15. I.P.A. – Grimsta (Cuneiform Records) The sixth release from this Scandinavian supergroup (Atle Nymo on tenor sax and bass clarinet, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, Håkon Mjåset Johansen on drums, Magnus Broo on trumpet, and Mattias Ståhl on vibraphone and soprano sax) is a fully-formed knockout that’s often reminiscent of the edgier mid-’60s Blue Note sessions (Out to Lunch is mentioned by the label) but with a consistently engaging weave of individualist spark and collective heft that is the band’s own. Grimsta also benefits from a tight runtime that increases the effectiveness.
14. Colleen – Le jour et la nuit du reel (Thrill Jockey) Cécile Schott, who records as Colleen, first came to prominence playing the treble viola da gamba, and instrument she gradually set aside as her music became more focused on experimental pop song. She hit an apex in that regard with her prior two albums A flame my love, a frequency (2017) and The Tunnel and the Clearing (2021). Those heights could’ve been extended, and that was the initial intention, but Scott has instead swung back into non-vocal territory with seven robust, enveloping suites utilizing only a Moog synth and two delays.
13. Daniel Bachman – When the Roses Come Again (Three Lobed Recordings) As Bachman’s music has moved away from the direct fingerpicking sublimity that put him on the map, it’s retained all the beauty and intensity. He is part of a generation of players with an immense familiarity of Appalachian tradition who are reshaping it into something fresh and new for this still young century, but with strong connections to another long tradition, namely the avant-garde. Bachman proficiently building drones and editing day-long improvs on a laptop in a cabin results in good energy when its needed most.
12. Sally Anne Morgan – Carrying (Thrill Jockey) Sally Anne Morgan, who is familiar to TVD’s best lists and reviews column solo, as half of House & Land with Sarah Louise, and as a member of the Black Twig Pickers, is another dynamic extender of Appalachian tradition. Carrying has connections to Bachman’s work above (foremost cover art by Sarah Bachman) but the sounds are much closer to folk-rock; a very rich and rural strain of folk-rock (Black Twig Picker Nathan Bowles returns on drums) with elements of psychedelia. The icing on this cake is Morgan’s vocals, which are just exquisite.
11. Susan Alcorn – Canto (Relative Pitch) Part one of 2023’s best new releases opened with a beautiful blast of inspired fun, and we close it with a deep yet life-affirming turn to the serious. Canto is composer and pedal steel virtuoso Susan Alcorn’s immersive remembrance of the victims and fallout from the coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973. Offering six selections including a core titular suite in three sections, the music packs an emotional wallop that’s invigorating rather than exhausting, in part through Alcorn’s compositions, but also her interaction with the talented group she assembled, Septeto del Sur.
