Top Albums of 2022
While there’s been a lot of albums that I liked this year I am going to write about my top 4. Top 5 sounds much more satisfying, but I truly had too many in competition for my 5th spot that I decided just making it to the top 4 would be more fruitful and the 5th would probably be a toss-up. Obviously, I will discover more music later on the road that came out this year that I remained ignorant to, so these are just the new releases that acoustically decorated my time this year. Note on my writing and listening process - I tend to listen to albums (or at least think about them) thematically, so I will mostly trace the core themes, ideas, and feeling that I associate with these albums rather than melodic specifics in songwriting and sonics. And also last note - there aren’t any new bands here, I’m sure there are some new bands that released albums that are phenom, but I just haven't found the exposure yet.
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You - Big Thief
Ah, this double album is simply my album of the year. I was never really a fan of Big Thief before this album I liked their music but they never stuck with me. This album on the other hand made me adore the band. Dragon New Warm Mountain is track after track about self-acceptance and the search for universal connection. The interview singer Adrianne Leckner did with The Needle Drop only highlighted this - claiming that there are so many social systems that make people feel alienated (especially self-alienation) and disconnected. She stated that music is a tool that the band uses to heal themselves and others. And I think approaching this album that way makes the music feel like a big big hug. The tracks are a whole variety of things: from wintery folk songs to country jammers, to 90s style rock to strange instrumental mashups; the album is quite diverse. But at the core of the album, the messages are clear - there is a light in the world and in each other, accept oneself, imagination, creativity, and believe in the good in yourself and others. And then there is the theme of connecting and loving your inner child. It connects huge cosmic themes like the beginning of time and the creation of the universe to banal activities such as being on your phone while watching TV and getting takeout. The lyrics of Big Thief pair cosmic and existential themes to natural imagery. And there are just so many lovely moments here. The music is healing and therefore it an exceptionally powerful album, and without a doubt in my top 10 albums of all time. In one word the album is wholesome, but in the deepest and most consequential sense of the word, it is the feeling of feeling at peace and oneness.
My interpretation of the album art highlights why I love this album so. I imagine that the four critters on the album around the campfire are the four band members of Big Thief’s “spirit animals” so to speak, and they are just playing little tunes around the campfire and feeling the warmth and embrace of each other; the group is balancing creativity with admiration for one another. I think that’s really what the album is about, sharing warmth and light, and then using that as a way to connect with the world at large. Honestly, this record is just so damn good, I can’t believe it.
Labyrinthitis - Destroyer
I’ve liked Destroyer’s other work a lot, especially Kaputt, but Labyrinthitis definitely has a cohesive sound and thematic edge. And that is just because it’s surrealist and strange. I describe Destroyer as a post-modern Cat Stevens, maybe that’s just his personal aesthetics, but the album is a weird and winding tunnel of sound, but all remarkably beautiful and nostalgic. The Opener “In Your Heart Now” is a long and meditative piece about travel and memory that sets the tone for the album. But then there are amped-up Borgian bangers like “It Takes a Thief”, “Tintoretto, It’s for You”, and “Eat the wine, Drink the bread”. I can never really tell what these songs are about, but they include strange imagery and disjointed narratives. These rather danceable tracks feel like you are at an interdimensional wedding with guests spanning across the decades with a stylistic approach to the fairy elements of Midsummer Night’s Dream. I think a reason I really like this album is because it feels rather timeless, it is very much not bound in this world or this decade, and as clearly demonstrated as I flounder through this paragraph, kind of hard to describe. The lyric that summarizes the obscurity of the album is during the spoken word segment in “June” where band leader Dan says “ ‘You got to look at things from all angles’ says the cubist judge from cubist jail” - it’s stuff like that that makes one recognize that this is simply weird music. It’s a strange and funky album and I liked it a whole lot - it feels like an album of pure escapism outside of the world, but also surely grounded. Again, this is Borgian-core music, and it tracks.
Cave World - Viagra Boys
Cave World thematically feels like an anthropological post-punk doctoral dissertation about anti-social behavior. The tracklist is basically divided into two different types of tracks: theory and case studies. The theoretical tracks such as “Troglodyte” and “The Cognitive Trade-off Hypothesis”, summarize Viagra Boys' core hypothesis - that during early human development anti-social behavior would not have been tolerated by primitive social groups and they would have been rejected by society. However in the contemporary era, this behavior is supported by social structures, and this modernization of the world results in criminals, thieves, and conspiracy theorists. Then The Viagra Boys create characters that seem like case studies that support their anti-social hypothesis. “Baby Criminal,” tells the story of a Little Jimmy whose anti-social behavior worsens as he grows up into a life of violence. “Punk Rock Loser” is a self-love anthem by and for people who need to do serious self-reflection. “Ain’t No Thief” is the story of a guy who clearly is a thief, but just has the most elaborate excuses for his misdeeds. And “Creepy Crawlers” is best described as Q-Anon internal ramblings put over Pink Floyd core style synths. They are all both hilarious, but also terrifying because these characters are not too far removed from reality. The album ends with “Return to Monke” with the hook “Leave Society, Be a Monkey”, suggesting the theoretical conclusion that we are all monkeys trapped in a cave of society in which we do not belong, and the reason there is all the scummy individuals is because the system we live in is against our monkey nature. Oh, and musically it’s just all bangers - wild wild shit.
Forgot Your Own Face - Black Dresses
I think Black Dresses are probably one of the most important musical acts of this decade thus far - with 3 challenging and complex albums released since 2020. This album distills all their themes into a concise 20-minute shot of Black Dresses which highlights all the hard-to-answer questions the band has asked throughout their musical trajectory: how does one exist in a world that is constantly trying to destroy you? how does one be creative and work towards good in the face of certain destruction and no hope? what is does it mean to be a normal human being and why is this standard considered “good”? They specifically ask these questions in the lyrics like in “normal”: “isn’t it so weird to be a human? to think all this shit is normal?”. I think the core thematic conceit behind Black dresses is that they want to live in a peaceful world where they can create silly songs, but the world they live in forces them to create very abrasive music. . Behind all the chaos and abrasion of the music, the songs here are quite beautiful and hopeful: yes there are so many fucked up things in the world - human connection, creativity, and love are the things that will connect people through the massive waves of chaos violence and apocalypse. I think “nightwish” is the Black Dresses song lyrically as it sounds like their mantra for the end of the world as everything collapses: “I’m grateful for the time we had to do childish things…stars shooting overhead as everything in the universe falls apart…but let’s just try to have fun”. Visions of pure apocalypse juxtaposed to the desire to be a good person who can have fun. Black Dresses Music is powerful and meaningful, mostly because they encapsulate the existential feelings of what it feels like to be at the end of society before it collapses. All in all, we just want a peaceful life.
So yes those are my albums of the year! I’m sure there will be some more 2022 albums that hit home as time goes on. Let me know what your favorite albums are in the comments. Or Whatever.
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