1. BETH ORTON - WEATHER ALIVE - She'd taken a vertical drop and nobody realized. Being down in the trenches happens to many people, but to utilize it in this way is credence to her cadence. In her third decade in the game now - the inspirational Chemical Brothers collaborator bust out her most gorgeous unchaperoned LP yet.
2. FONTAINES DC - SKINTY FIA - Ravaging. Stone-cold. Wanted to type "Steve Austin'' then. This post-punk LP takes Interpol, The Pogues and Jack Kerouac and puts them to blenderize on setting number 10.21 jiggawatts. The Irish accent helps grittify this further.
3. WILCO - CRUEL COUNTRY - Apparently the most popular band in my Spotify unwrapped, this was a double LP full of proper, inventive country music. There's a certain poetry to this collection that no other band can quite match. One lovely Sunday in summer I had a long, spontaneous walk with a friend drinking cans of beer, finding secret tarmac car-parks, blapsing this LP out. Good times.
4. MAKAYA McCRAVEN - IN THESE TIMES - When this dropped on the same day as Beth Orton's effort, autumn became embedded into a kind of healing capacity. As jazz continues to summon a quite startling renaissance, McCraven had been rustling up something special in the background. Like the title says, this variegated assemblage incarnates du jour.
5. EXEK - ADVERTISE HERE - This'll be your dark horse on the list. Gothy, dubby, propulsive and snarly music with saracstic and paranoid observations. Feeling like it comes from a preternatural time capsule from a David Mitchell or Emily St. John Mandel novel - but instead it washed up on my shores from Melbourne; let it wash up on yours too.
6. ALABASTER DE PLUME - GOLD (GO FORWARD IN THE COURAGE OF YOUR LOVE) - Another dazzling British eccentric, of the jazz typoid. De Plume fuses spoken word and improv to disarm the listener. I first heard him criticising some amateurs sax playing techqniques with him exclaiming "You don't do it like that! You do it like this!'' in his hissy voice. As Pitchfork put it smartly - he's ''strangely uncomfortable and strangely comforting''
7. ADRIAN QUESADA - BOLEROS PSICODELICOS - One for the JimBob in Brooklyn here (yes - shout out) - this is a record collectors dream, a vintage, crisp sounding take on Bolero. Funnily enough brethren, I hadn't expected something like this to drop. It'll warm your cockles for sure and feel like it's always glorious outside.
8. KENDRICK LAMAR - MR. MORALE & THE BIG STEPPERS - 2022 was the year that Kendrick finally clicked with me - I was hoping it would happen at some point, but I could never force myself to feel it, James. Your Christmas card just arrived by the way. Hip-hop LP of the year.
9. BLACK COUNTRY NEW ROAD - ANTS FROM UP THERE - This really expanded on last years debut effort For The First Time. Amazingly, frontman Isaac Wood threw in the towel soon after this record saw the light of day, so who knows what direction this chameleonic band will take next; sliding and shapeshifting into a mental, elastic future.
10. BONOBO - FRAGMENTS - This was the one to jumpstart the year, a bit like Madlib the year prior, and Destroyer the year prior. Trip-hop might be the most unfashionable music known to man, but I'm not one for Vaporspray or Toilet House Duck. What a throwback this was and what an institution this man is. Dig.
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Honorable Mentions:
Destroyer, Kurt Vile, Daniel Avery, The Soft Pink Truth, Kokoroko, Daphni, Big Thief, Florist, Emily Jane White, Danger Mouse & Black Thought, Crack Cloud, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom
