My Top 25 Albums of 2022
A strange year where I didn't have many runaway favorites, but more than a few hit elite ranks for me by the end
[posted to IG from January 13, 2023, to January 16, 2023]
25. Jack White - Fear Of The Dawn
With a plethora of guitar tones and textures, contemporary rock icon Jack White delivered an album with a great classic rock vibe filtered through a surreal bizarro-world twilight lens. It’s dark, atmospheric, and slightly savage, yet completely unthreatening, like musical campfire stories told at a traveling carnival in the heart of Transylvania, or the type of tunes a cool, friendly middle-aged suburban werewolf dad would listen to in his garage.
24. Joe Rainey - Niineta
Shoutout to the one and only music mentor @erikcarlsonn for putting this on my radar last year when he made it one of our group chat’s albums of the week. Rainey’s forward-thinking artistry merges the traditional organic elements of indigenous music with piercing electronics to navigate the traumatic history of indigenous peoples, honor their culture, and build towards the future - I’ve never heard anything like it.
Shoutout to the one and only music mentor @erikcarlsonn for putting this on my radar last year when he made it one of our group chat’s albums of the week. Rainey’s forward-thinking artistry merges the traditional organic elements of indigenous music with piercing electronics to navigate the traumatic history of indigenous peoples, honor their culture, and build towards the future - I’ve never heard anything like it.
23. Erasers - Constant Connection
A flood of electro-psychedelic soundscapes that warmly drone into oblivion, drowning me in surreal textures, oscillating between haunting and comforting, arousing feelings of both familiarity and unease, like standing before a portal to a strange frontier that appeared in your childhood home, half-remembered, blurry memories chalked up to imagination and childhood dreams.
A flood of electro-psychedelic soundscapes that warmly drone into oblivion, drowning me in surreal textures, oscillating between haunting and comforting, arousing feelings of both familiarity and unease, like standing before a portal to a strange frontier that appeared in your childhood home, half-remembered, blurry memories chalked up to imagination and childhood dreams.
22. Jean Dawson - CHAOS NOW*
The most impressive and inspired genre-bending pop music I heard last year. It’s energetic and vibrant, blending emo pop angst, folk sentimentality, indie outsider status, and whiplash punk structuring and energy with the culture and braggadocio of hip hop and sticky crossover hooks that get caught in your maw. And it works because Dawson’s chameleonic shape-shifting feels like authentic self-expression rather than a cover-all-bases corporate gimmick to sell music.
The most impressive and inspired genre-bending pop music I heard last year. It’s energetic and vibrant, blending emo pop angst, folk sentimentality, indie outsider status, and whiplash punk structuring and energy with the culture and braggadocio of hip hop and sticky crossover hooks that get caught in your maw. And it works because Dawson’s chameleonic shape-shifting feels like authentic self-expression rather than a cover-all-bases corporate gimmick to sell music.
21. The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention
Essentially a Radiohead side project, this debut from the English art rockers features expectedly immaculate production where each track is very musically distinct, yet unified by the dense themes lingering under Thom Yorke’s allusive lyricism.
Essentially a Radiohead side project, this debut from the English art rockers features expectedly immaculate production where each track is very musically distinct, yet unified by the dense themes lingering under Thom Yorke’s allusive lyricism.
20. Cities Aviv - MAN PLAYS THE HORN
This avant-rap project from Cities Aviv is an 80-minute psychedelic odyssey of colorful surreal beats, impressionistic stream of conscious bars, and a dense feeling of kaleidoscopic hypnagogia. It sounds like it should be blaring over the speakers in an abandoned ghost town shopping mall or some other liminal space.
19. SZA - SOS
TDE pop star, SZA, followed up her universally acclaimed Ctrl with this long-awaited record that shows the R&B crooner’s ambition has only grown with her fame. SZA’s writing and knack for earworm melodies remain sharp as ever as she demonstrates that her sonic capabilities extend to every corner and every facet of pop music.
TDE pop star, SZA, followed up her universally acclaimed Ctrl with this long-awaited record that shows the R&B crooner’s ambition has only grown with her fame. SZA’s writing and knack for earworm melodies remain sharp as ever as she demonstrates that her sonic capabilities extend to every corner and every facet of pop music.
18. Grace Ives - Janky Star
Though downplayed and almost aloof, creativity surges from the the near-bedroom pop of rising artist Grace Ives. Her hushed yet expressive vocals dance and play over the bubbly, free-spirited production, with quirky details popping in and out of her left-field bops like whack-a-moles.
Though downplayed and almost aloof, creativity surges from the the near-bedroom pop of rising artist Grace Ives. Her hushed yet expressive vocals dance and play over the bubbly, free-spirited production, with quirky details popping in and out of her left-field bops like whack-a-moles.
17. Viagra Boys - Cave World
The animated post-punk of Viagra Boys sounds like if DEVO were made up of aggressive, coked-out bikers. Their bizarre, bitingly satirical humor (that’s very plugged into the current zeitgeist) and gonzo lunatic stoner art-punk energy seem expressly made for the Adult Swim domain - and I mean that as a compliment because Adult Swim consistently works with the dopest, most unique voices in music.
The animated post-punk of Viagra Boys sounds like if DEVO were made up of aggressive, coked-out bikers. Their bizarre, bitingly satirical humor (that’s very plugged into the current zeitgeist) and gonzo lunatic stoner art-punk energy seem expressly made for the Adult Swim domain - and I mean that as a compliment because Adult Swim consistently works with the dopest, most unique voices in music.
16. Beach Bunny - Emotional Creature
I spent 5 months thinking this album was mid, but then it recently dawned on me that just the fact that I’d been regularly listening to it for 5 months straight and hadn’t gotten tired of it probably means that I actually really enjoy it. I finally realized that one of my favorite albums of the year had been sitting right in front of me the whole time, not getting the recognition it deserved purely because I thought it was too simple and plain. But you know what else is simple and plain? Chocolate chip cookies. And the warm, gooey power-pop of Beach Bunny’s Emotional Creatures fills me with the same satisfaction as a fresh-baked tray of chocolate chip nom-noms.
I spent 5 months thinking this album was mid, but then it recently dawned on me that just the fact that I’d been regularly listening to it for 5 months straight and hadn’t gotten tired of it probably means that I actually really enjoy it. I finally realized that one of my favorite albums of the year had been sitting right in front of me the whole time, not getting the recognition it deserved purely because I thought it was too simple and plain. But you know what else is simple and plain? Chocolate chip cookies. And the warm, gooey power-pop of Beach Bunny’s Emotional Creatures fills me with the same satisfaction as a fresh-baked tray of chocolate chip nom-noms.
15. The Weeknd - Dawn FM
Continuing to harness the power of 80s new wave production, The Weeknd delivers another blockbuster album that’s even more pristine than its predecessor. The Canadian prince of pop is one of the more adventurous male pop stars in the world today, and his willingness to take unexpected swings pays off in some stunningly magical moments on Dawn FM.
14. Sam Prekop & John McEntire - Sons Of
I don’t often have fully instrumentals albums in my top 25, but when I do it’s because they make me want to smoke up on a spaceship and dance and write poetry as I float through the vast expanse of the cosmos. It sounds like the type of songs that would play on the radio in the captain’s quarters in Mass Effect as you check your logs and then you’d be like “damn this actually kinda slaps,” and then just spin in circles until the song ends.
13. Ada Rook - UGLY DEATH NO REDEMPTION ANGEL CURSE I LOVE YOU
Ada Rook’s rage reaches face-melting heights on Ugly Death as she creates a volatile cocktail of harsh electronic noise that combines hardcore, screamo, glitch, and hyperpop to express the existential angst of existing as a trans person in a world that endlessly tries to erase your identity and deny you personal validity and human rights (to any trans or non-binary person out there who might be reading this, you’re valid as fuck).
12. Alex G - We’re All Going to the World’s Fair OST
Filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) was one of the best movies I watched last year, and Alex G’s partly ambient, partly indie score is so integral to its success that his soundtrack rippled into my favorite albums. There’s no separating the images from the music, and they both coalesce into a haunting atmosphere of otherworldly loneliness and isolation that captures the lives of those whose only connection to others is through the unsettling rabbit hole of the internet.
14. Sam Prekop & John McEntire - Sons Of
I don’t often have fully instrumentals albums in my top 25, but when I do it’s because they make me want to smoke up on a spaceship and dance and write poetry as I float through the vast expanse of the cosmos. It sounds like the type of songs that would play on the radio in the captain’s quarters in Mass Effect as you check your logs and then you’d be like “damn this actually kinda slaps,” and then just spin in circles until the song ends.
13. Ada Rook - UGLY DEATH NO REDEMPTION ANGEL CURSE I LOVE YOU
Ada Rook’s rage reaches face-melting heights on Ugly Death as she creates a volatile cocktail of harsh electronic noise that combines hardcore, screamo, glitch, and hyperpop to express the existential angst of existing as a trans person in a world that endlessly tries to erase your identity and deny you personal validity and human rights (to any trans or non-binary person out there who might be reading this, you’re valid as fuck).
12. Alex G - We’re All Going to the World’s Fair OST
Filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) was one of the best movies I watched last year, and Alex G’s partly ambient, partly indie score is so integral to its success that his soundtrack rippled into my favorite albums. There’s no separating the images from the music, and they both coalesce into a haunting atmosphere of otherworldly loneliness and isolation that captures the lives of those whose only connection to others is through the unsettling rabbit hole of the internet.
11. Camp Cope - Running with the Hurricane
Frontwoman Georgia Maq’s vocals went from sounding like a ragged and worn down falcon that had been chained up and finally broke free, unrestrained and wailing, on Camp Cope’s previous record, to a glowing, sunny songbird on this new one. Most of the hard edges are gone, replaced with a sense of serenity and vocal control, lovely melodies, breezy 90s alt-rock production, group harmonies, and a more delicate exploration of love and acceptance. After the trauma that was unloaded previously, she sounds like a woman exorcised here; someone who took the hard route to healing and came out on the other end all the better for it, truly finding themselves and running with the hurricane. And she lets the listener know that they can make this journey as well, ending the album with a soul-stirring chorus, Maq repeatedly, radiantly, triumphantly belts, “You can change and so can I.”
[I’ve never had a single country album in my top 50, much less two in my top 10, so shoutout @adventuresofjameyg for picking enough quality county records for his Album of the Week suggestions to make me rethink the genre this year. Getting to discover new ways to appreciate music really is the best part of sharing it.]
10. Orville Peck - Bronco
Dusty desert country production and a booming voice fit to blow the peaks off mountain tops: Orville Peck’s desperado melodrama, Bronco, is a barrage of unbearably catchy powerhouse anthems.
Dusty desert country production and a booming voice fit to blow the peaks off mountain tops: Orville Peck’s desperado melodrama, Bronco, is a barrage of unbearably catchy powerhouse anthems.
9. KA - Woeful Studies / Languish Arts
More gritty, gut-punch raps from the thoroughly undervalued KA. The beats vary from hard as bricks to ethereal and gauzy, like being hammered into the cold, unforgiving NY streets and fading in and out of consciousness as shadows play on a concrete canvass teaching history lessons about a morally corrupt country and the morally grey world KA grew up in, gazing unblinkingly into death’s veil.
More gritty, gut-punch raps from the thoroughly undervalued KA. The beats vary from hard as bricks to ethereal and gauzy, like being hammered into the cold, unforgiving NY streets and fading in and out of consciousness as shadows play on a concrete canvass teaching history lessons about a morally corrupt country and the morally grey world KA grew up in, gazing unblinkingly into death’s veil.
8. Soul Go - Diaspora Problems
At its best, punk music has always had its finger on the pulse of a nation, and Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems recalls that best: it’s one of the most urgent and essential albums of the year. With an ultra-modern blend of anarcho-punk, hardcore hip hop, and occasional electronics, Diaspora Problems harnesses all the rage of marginalized communities and delivers it with a leftist bite acidic enough to melt bones, speaking truth to all capitalist powers. As frontman Pierce Jordan himself declares, “It's been fuck right-wing off the rip / But still liberals are more dangerous.”
At its best, punk music has always had its finger on the pulse of a nation, and Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems recalls that best: it’s one of the most urgent and essential albums of the year. With an ultra-modern blend of anarcho-punk, hardcore hip hop, and occasional electronics, Diaspora Problems harnesses all the rage of marginalized communities and delivers it with a leftist bite acidic enough to melt bones, speaking truth to all capitalist powers. As frontman Pierce Jordan himself declares, “It's been fuck right-wing off the rip / But still liberals are more dangerous.”
7. Maren Morris - Humble Quest
Not only is it a flat-out fantastic country album, it’s elite pop music with some of the best commercial songwriting of the year. Bangers, bops, and ballads, it’s earworm after earworm, bubbling with downhome country sincerity. 9 months later, I’m still addicted to most of these tracks.
Not only is it a flat-out fantastic country album, it’s elite pop music with some of the best commercial songwriting of the year. Bangers, bops, and ballads, it’s earworm after earworm, bubbling with downhome country sincerity. 9 months later, I’m still addicted to most of these tracks.
6. Billy Woods - Aethiopes
I still think Freddie Gibbs has the best flows and Kendrick has a more all-encompassing artistry, but every subsequent Billy Woods verse convinces me more and more that he has the best pen in hip hop. To be continued…
I still think Freddie Gibbs has the best flows and Kendrick has a more all-encompassing artistry, but every subsequent Billy Woods verse convinces me more and more that he has the best pen in hip hop. To be continued…
5. Billy Woods - Church
Not to say that the man could ever be replaced, but for me Billy Woods has come to fill the space that the late MF DOOM left after his death (although I think Woods’s music has a much more emotional effect on me). The space of an underground rapper just doing their own thing whose skills and artistry leave me in awe. Woods is one of the most visual rappers out there and his immaculate writing is existential, introspective, and intensely political, with descriptive, imagery-laden, metaphor-heavy storytelling that reminds me of 70s cinema, especially when paired with the darkly surreal, texture-filled production he often flows over.
4. Alex G - God Save the Animals
Not every song is perfect, but every song on this superlatively imaginative album has at least one section that’s masterful. Alex G’s God Save the Animals is an abstract exploration of faith where there’s no easy interpretations. It’s an exploration that seems like it’s meant to be felt rather than understood, and whatever it is, I feel it - like a metaphysical blade piercing through to some undefined core inside of me, lingering long after each song has ended.
3. ROSALÍA - MOTOMAMI
16 tracks of all rippers, no skippers means this is a masterpiece in my book and one of my favorite pop albums of all time. Rosalía’s music is catchy enough to be mass appeal, but experimental and artsy enough to really stand out and defy expectations. She uses her stunning voice with unbelievable precision and the creative decisions she makes are consistently inspired. With any justice, the Spanish chanteuse will become the biggest pop artist in the world sooner rather than later.
4. Alex G - God Save the Animals
Not every song is perfect, but every song on this superlatively imaginative album has at least one section that’s masterful. Alex G’s God Save the Animals is an abstract exploration of faith where there’s no easy interpretations. It’s an exploration that seems like it’s meant to be felt rather than understood, and whatever it is, I feel it - like a metaphysical blade piercing through to some undefined core inside of me, lingering long after each song has ended.
3. ROSALÍA - MOTOMAMI
16 tracks of all rippers, no skippers means this is a masterpiece in my book and one of my favorite pop albums of all time. Rosalía’s music is catchy enough to be mass appeal, but experimental and artsy enough to really stand out and defy expectations. She uses her stunning voice with unbelievable precision and the creative decisions she makes are consistently inspired. With any justice, the Spanish chanteuse will become the biggest pop artist in the world sooner rather than later.
2. Chat Pile - God’s Country
If Alex G’s God Save the Animals is an exploration of faith, Chat Pile’s God’s Country is the inverse. This is utter nihilism. I would call the album dark, but it’s defined more by absence. It’s a void. A black hole that consumes all light. No hope. No future. Just the inescapable hell on earth made possible by unchecked late-stage capitalism and all those who turn a blind eye to it, whether knowingly or ignorant. It is pure wrath, and listening to this sludgy noise punk nightmare is a draining task. It’s less about enjoyment and more about submittal to the power it has to so nakedly turn the dark mirror on the U.S., as it bleakly explores topics of addiction, psychosis, murder, mass shootings, the homeless epidemic, the violence inherent in capitalist systems, and the industrialization of slaughter. Frontman Raygun Busch’s expressionistic vocal performances are closer to method acting than singing, and the band captures despair, psychosis, and horror with the same devastating detail that Mount Eerie captures grief. One of the most impressive songs on the album is the harrowing “Pamela” which is delivered from the point of view of Pamela Voorhees (mother of iconic hockey-mask wearing villain Jason). It’s so simultaneously empathetic and disturbing, expertly capturing the bereaved mother’s shattered psyche following her son’s death, that I have to believe someone is adapting the track into a screenplay. God’s Country is not an easy listen and not for the faint of heart, but on a purely artistic level I think it went unmatched in 2022.
1. Pool Kids - Pool Kids
I’m pretty sure the algorithm created this album specifically for me. It encompasses everything I’ve been loving the last few years and I cannot sit down while I listen. Like I will literally just stand in my kitchen or in the middle of my living room for the entire run time jamming out. Everything about it speaks to my current music taste. Whether it’s the ADHD instrumentation that’s never stagnant, always changing and evolving and moving forward with plenty of intoxicating math rock riffs; the clever, sincere, somewhat angsty diaristic songwriting; or the spunky female vocals that range from beautiful falsettos to impassioned shout-singing: it’s everything I want and everything I need. It was love at first listen. It was music destiny.
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