Favorite Music 2023
2023 Albums of the year
1. Billy woods “Maps”
Give my “NYC Tapwater” over Gershwin every day. “One sip of NYC tapwater and I’m dialed back in.” This album is more evocative of NYC than almost any other. Captures the city better than any Def Jux album. I hold it in the same esteem as White Light White Heat or Daydream Nation for most evocative of the city (a city I often despise but miss from afar).
I cannot believe how much I listened to this album. Like all the best hiphop albums it demands a close listen because the lyrics are so good. Same holds for Aesop Rock but it’s easier to slip into a non-listening vibe with Maps because the vibe is so dark, grungy, wintry NYC. It is an amazing travel album: “I will not be at Soundcheck” is the vibe I feel all too often (as is the refrain for that track…). Skipping a conference banquet to go to the top of a hill in Prague to watch the sunset and hearing “I will not be in sound check. Might watch the sunset over your city from a parapet or a park bench.” Yes. After a million listens I finally realized that it’s an album after Bennett Foddy’s heart as it’s all about failure, like a bunch of my favorites are this year (like Aesop Rock’s). I particularly love: “Already knew the options was lose/lose Baby, that's nothing new /That just make it easier to choose.”. But it’s also just an album about an artist who doesn’t make that much money, grinding out on the road. Sometimes killing it (“The live show is t-shirt and jeans, but it's GWAR when I'm on stage”) and mostly just documenting surviving the process (“I actually took a $300 Uber to a show /Asleep in the back like Future, might as well be a Maybach /Showed up with nothing but a computer, let's go”). And after all that traveling? One sip of New York City tapwater (and a three pack of zithro) and he’s dialed back in…Let’s fucking go.
The album is not a NYC hagiography. It’s also a NYC album that is 0% Manhattan. For people who wanna listen and imagine some NYC movie dreams and dream about brunching in the West Village, the last lyrics on NYC Tapwater will set you straight “Don't get it twisted boy, the city wicked, it'll crush you with its feet”
2. Killer Mike “Michael.” I never loved Run the Jewels, but I did really like Killer Mike’s last solo album (particularly “Reagan”). For me, this one is world better than RTJ. It is it a broken hearted, introspective, really difficult listen (if you listen to the lyrics). I do not have encyclopedic knowledge of hiphop albums but it hard to think of one that is more sad and uplifting.
3. Aesop Rock “Integrated Tech Solutions” “Technology, focus on the other shit/ 3D-printed body parts, dehydrated onion dip/ You could buy a jet-ski from a cell phone on a jumbo jet/ T-E-C-H-N-O-L-O-G-Y it’s the ultimate”
4.Bug Club “Rare Birds: Hours of Song”. “Marriage” may be the track of the year for me. Grab a tambourine and join the band.
5. Being Dead: “When Horses Would Run.” “Muriel’s Big Day Off” is a little poppy can of joy. Sounds like they come from a much sunnier place than the one I live in.
6. Annie Hart – The Weight of a Wave Towards a better 90s
7. Sparks “The Girl is Crying into Her Latte” Somehow they keep getting even Sparksier, which rules. They may be America--or at least Los Angeles’s-- answer to The Fall
8. En Attendant Ana “Principia.” Secretly French. “Wonder” is a perfect fuzzed out 9os vibe. Today’s Stereolab
9. Katie Von Schleicher “A little touch of Schleicher in the night”. Best title of the year. Jeanine was a true surprise in overtaking Bowie’s Janine for my favorite song about J(e)anine’s.
10. Patio “Collection”
11. Wimps “City Lights”
12. Marc Ribot Ceramic Dog “Connection”
13. John Cale “Mercy”
14. Alchemist “Voir Dire”
15. A Savage “Several Songs about Fire”
16. Tony Molina “Embarrassing Times” Like Bob Pollard, if instead of putting out 100 tracks a year you did it once every 5 years. Got 12 minutes to spare? If so, you have time to listen to all twelve songs.
17. Joseph Shabason “Welcome to Hell” Accurate
18. Baxter Dury “I thought I was better than you”. No banger like Miami on this one but he’s still great
Tracks of year
“Soundcheck”--Billy Woods
“Muriels big day off”--Being Dead
“Marriage”--Bug Club
“NYC Tapwater”--BW
“Mindful Solutionism”--Aesop Rock
Shows of the year
Killer Mike at the Apollo. The absolute friendliest place to see a show in NYC. Going to a hipster dive underneath the overpass in Bushwick? You will be searched upon entering. Going into the Apollo? They will give you a high five and let you in with your own bottle of water. My lord is that place smaller than you think. Go see a show there.
Secret Byrd. A troupe set up in Green-wood Cemetery catacombs holding a fake secret mass reconstruction of the type William Byrd had. Byrd’s compositions were performed while performers did the mass incorporating the crowd all in the catacombs. Weird as hell, totally ruled.
Sparks at the Beacon. Giving James Dolan my money isn’t my idea of a good time but Sparks was so, so fun. They are approaching national treasure status.
Kronos 50th anniversary set at Carnegie Hall (Perelman main stage). Really fantastic lineup, truly diverse with instruments I hadn’t heard from and sounds I couldn’t understand (particularly from the Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq). Laurie Anderson was there too and ruled as always
Zorn at 70 at the Miller Theater. It’s not the Stone and man I miss that place. RIP Stone, RIP Tonic. Energy is never the same at these more sterile places. But the music was interesting and Zorn said “If I may quote myself: sometimes you just jump up a level. This is the greatest sextet yet written” The sextet was for his own new piece titled “Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that will be able to present itself as a science.” My lord. he really nailed the Wittgensteinian
A Giant Dog at the sultan room. Fuck everything and flop around in the slop rock and roll. Didn’t love their new album but second half of the set was older stuff and absolutely dirty magic. Bonus points for the drummer’s Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown EP cover, but as an advertisement for Billy Joel. show 9/10; t-shirt 11/10
Lamonte Young at the Dream House. Yes he’s still alive. Another national treasure.
Lang lang at Carnegie Hall. Opening night at Carnegie Hall. Confession: I had no clue who Lang Lang was (and had never heard of Saint-Saens, though I knew some of his pieces by osmosis). “The Carnival of the Animals” was super fun to see live, even from the top balcony (smaller than basic economy seats on American Airlines, but at least binoculars help here). It all seems like it would be cheesy as hell but it was sorta perfect. Set and setting is undefeated
Tim Fite: some gallery in Red Hook. If you get a chance to see him live, drop everything and do it. One of the best performers (and I say that bc his art is more than just music--amazing visual artist and he blends everything in his live show. “Over the Counter Culture” is still one of my favorite hiphop albums, and the best commentary on prescription drug culture)).
YLT Hanukkah Show. Forever classic. This year David Sedaris opened with an absolutely filthy story about Santa. Alan Licht (downtown fave of mine, with maybe the greatest avant garde album title of all time, “The Evan Dando of Noise”) and Steve Gunn in a band called ‘Foggy Notion’, a VU cover band. Really fun for NYC music nerds. Damon & Naomi (from Galaxie 500) came out and covered Beastie Boys w/ YLT.
Tim Hecker at Pioneer Works. Up here because of the space and the opener, who was never announced and whose name I otherwise didn't catch. Consisted of two people, one who was dressed as a ballerina and played the cello; the other was dressed as the bad guy from Hellraiser. Then the ballerina got naked and maybe had sex with the Pinhead and the cello? I have no idea what happened. 9/10
Pauly Shore at the Hilo theater. Mentioned for posterity. It was comedy (and not his epochal single “Lisa Lisa.” The comedy was god awful, so bad I left halfway through. But the experience was absolutely singular--the line to get into the theater went back blocks. Totally mystifying.
Honorable mention: Dry Cleaning at Pioneer works (No Wave lives!), Sunset Rubdown at Bowery (excellent fun proggy theater rock), Bug Club at whatever the new Knitting Factory is, & Together Pangea at BK Made (fun, empty calorie fist pumping rock and roll)
2023 was another greatest year ever for music. Top (92) songs of the year are here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2MuMW8Hv0Gm3ioCeutvJxd?si=40164fddaac042fe