Erland Cooper & Scottish Ensemble, Folded Landscapes
Beirut, Hadsel
Blur, The Ballad of Darren
Zach Bryan, self-titled
Gia Margaret, Romantic Piano
The National, Laugh Track & First Two Pages of Frankenstein
Josh Ritter, Spectral Lines
Slowdive, Everything Is Alive
Tour-Maubourg, Spaces of Silence
Jess Williamson, Time Ain’t Accidental
This year I want to draw attention to the albums that sustained me. I found myself struggling to let albums work their way in. I made lots of playlists to curate moments. Honestly, quite a few albums I was highly anticipating on faith and promise of the advance songs disappointed me upon arrival. But over a year, something is bound to break through. My list is not ranked, but Erland Cooper & Scottish Ensemble’s Folded Landscapes is my clear #1. It has contributions by UK Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage. It belongs in the ambient-classical crossover genre. It’s beautiful morning music. It can shape an evening. I have spent the whole year living in its landscapes.
The rest of the list is unranked. Tour-Maubourg’s Spaces of Silence and Gia Margaret’s Romantic Piano were companions while working. They create spaces you can enter and focus for hours. They would loop and loop until hunger or some other distraction pulled me out. Tour-Maubourg descends from the sounds of Moby’s Play and where French jazz and electronica meet. If I was to identify their kin today, I’d say that if you like Maribou State, then Tour-Maubourg might be for you. Romantic Piano is simply beautiful. I’ve avoided reading about it. Something about it feels unfinished, but more like a release rather than being incomplete.
A few old favorites turned out work I connected with. Josh Ritter’s Spectral Lines feels refreshed. It’s recognizably following the last few albums, but it has an openness in its sound that feels brighter and welcoming. The National released two albums. They’ve reached a certain level of success in Taylor Swift’s orbit and also been at this a long time, so folks seem ready to dismiss these albums. I get that in a way. But The National continue to connect with me. Are these my favorite National albums? No. But they continue to build out their world and contribute textures and images that are rewarding. Laugh Track, a surprise second album, feels more immediate with its looser live sound. Then, Blur. The Ballad of Darren is a triumph. It’s not spectacular in nature, but just having Blur together again is fireworks enough. The first listen pleased the Blur-lover in me. I thought it would fade, but it has actually deepened. Throughout the summer in Scotland, this is the one new album that stuck. Did it help that it was the rainiest July in Scotland on record? Yes, I think it did.
The last few don’t really group easily. Slowdive’s Everything Is Alive reached me despite my bias against the shoegaze band. I had a bad listening experience with them twenty years ago and had decided that they were in no way for me. A text and a nudge from a friend made me try out Everything Is Alive, and I’m glad I did. It’s glacial, pulling shoegaze toward ambient without – and this is key – without losing songs in the haze. Zach Bryan was all the buzz this fall. This self-titled album is, as is his tendency, too long. Enough of the songs don’t stand out from each other. But I also think its point is to let it all be there. I love the self-produced sound; it creates intimacy and urgency. The songwriting is frequently stellar. The opening poem, “Fear and Fridays,” should not work. But it does. Jess Williamson’s Time Ain’t Accidental. Half of Plains (her duo with Waxahatchee), who made my favorite album of 2022, Williamson is on songwriting fire. Her “Roads” should be taught in Songwriting 101. It’s emotionally moving as the story unfolds; you feel a loving humor in the absurdity of life. The words are so sharp and precise, which is true for the whole album. It feels like one that will stay in my listening rotation for a long, long time.
Finally, Beirut’s Hadsel was just released in the last few weeks. These late releases are always hard to measure. Will they stay with me beyond the two-week new-thing interest? It’s impossible to predict that. I think this one has a good chance of sticking around. It creates spaces like ambient-leaning music should. But, as with a lot of his work, it remains anchored in the acoustic, organic instruments of the past. The sound is at once modern and ancient, personal and inviting. It echoes in this way another cabin-away-from-it-all album, Bon Iver’s For Emma Forever Ago. I look forward to taking this album with me into the holidays through the new year.