JUST WHAT WE NEEDED, ANOTHER BEST OF 2022 LIST: THE MUSIC

 Another year, another Best Albums list. Shadooby!!

 

Commentary track regarding this year’s haul:

 

1. Like last year, there’s a higher proportion of “new” artists than usual – although, again like last year, some of them are new to me but have been around for some time. What does this mean? Beats me, but I suppose one takeaway is that there is still good “new” music out there – it’s just a matter of being lucky (or tenacious) enough to discover it.  

 

2. That said, I noticed that some of the newer acts that I liked are the ones that are blending existing styles or otherwise have an unconventional sound. I’ve long believed that mash-up culture was the way forward for music if it’s ever going to progress, and while I may be wrong about that, I found that this is what grabbed my attention this year. After years of comfort food (i.e. the tried and true), I guess I was ready for something out of my comfort zone. Then again, some of these are assuredly old-school, so maybe I’m just trying to sound like one of those people who write for Pitchfork.

 

3. I managed to listen to a lot of new albums this year, but I decided to stick to the Top 10 format, as the majority of new albums I did manage to hear were actually pretty average and just didn’t move me as much, despite having some really good songs on them. So while there may be a lot of good new music out there, I didn’t discover that much of it. But c’mon, I’m just one guy, you know?

 

4. I ranked them out of habit, but don’t take the order too seriously. They’re all good in their own way.

 

dEFROG’S TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2022

 

1. Los Bitchos

Let The Festivities Begin! (City Slang)

 

Debut LP from a London-based band with an international pedigree, featuring members from Australia, Uruguay and Sweden. Their music is a heady blend of surf, psychedelica and Cumbia, among other things and boy can you dance to it. Further proof that instrumental bands don’t have to be just surf music. Easily the most joyful and engaging album I heard all year.

 

2. Lisa LeBlanc

Chiac Disco (Bonsound)

 

New Brunswick native Lisa LeBlanc made her debut ten years ago playing rootsy banjo music. This is her fourth album and as the title implies it’s as far from rootsy banjo music as you can get, ranging from full on disco to the kind of epic string-laden balladry that Lee Hazlewood used to do. Why the change? With tours cancelled due to COVID, LeBlanc started a live bingo game on Facebook featuring an alter ego named Belinda who played dance bingo music. She ended up doing a whole album of songs, all sung in Chiac (a local French dialect). She’s said it was a lot of fun to write and play – which may be why it’s a lot of fun to listen to.

 

3. Otoboke Beaver

Super Champon (Damnably)

 

All-woman Kyoto band Otoboke trade in hardcore math punk inspired by Japanese ‘Manzai’ comedy. This is their second LP (18 songs in 21 minutes!) and the song titles alone (“I Am Not Maternal”, “I Won’t Dish Out Salads”, “I Checked Your Cellphone” and “Dirty Old Fart Is Waiting For My Reaction”, etc) were enough to convince me to check them out. It’s not easy listening by any means, and their humor is more apparent in their live shows (judging from their SXSW gigs) but their music/vocal arrangements are amazing.

 

4. Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder

Get On Board (Perro Verde/Nonesuch)

 

Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder go back a long way, having played together in the short-lived Rising Sons in 1965, and again on Mahal’s debut album in 1968. They got back together in 2021 to record a tribute album to blues legends Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. The songs are ace, but what’s really great here is the loose junkyard-band feel of the arrangements – it’s the sound of two old-timers sitting in a living room playing their favorite old songs from memory while their son adds some percussion with whatever’s handy and generally having a great time doing it. Raucous good fun.

 

5. The Linda Lindas

Growing Up (Epitaph)

 

Debut LP from teen punks who went large with “Racist Sexist Boy”, and deservedly so. The album doesn’t disappoint – as I’ve said before, there’s nothing original here, but that’s beside the point. It’s the sound of four teen girls making music and having fun, and who know a good tune when they hear it.

 

6. Voivod

Synchro Anarchy (Century Media Records)

 

Album no. 15 from Canadian metal band that sounds like no other metal band I know of (although you might). Most of their output since Nothingface has flown under my radar, and Nothingface was an admittedly hard album to live up to. I don’t know if Synchro Anarchy does, but it sounds exactly the way I expect Voivod to sound: weird guitar tunings, technocratic dystopias and calculus-level time signatures. Which is amazing, considering the only original members left are singer Denis Bélanger and drummer Michel Langevin.

 

7. The HU

Rumble of Thunder (Better Noise)

 

Second LP from Mongolian folk metal band, complete with traditional Mongolian instruments and throat singing. It’s a surprisingly potent combination that sounds mesmerizing and powerful all at once. The actual music is fairly standard, but it’s how they play it that makes it work.

 

8. Oumou Sangare

Timbuktu (World Circuit/BMG)

 

Ninth album from Oumou Sangare, who I got into right around the time she started mixing other music styles into her traditional Wassoulou songs on her album Mogoya. Her followup album does likewise, and possibly to greater effect, as she mixes the dance songs with more atmospheric songs. She wrote most of the songs in lockdown in Baltimore, but her lyrics address the war, sexism and injustice that plagues her homeland (though obviously those of you that don’t speak Wassoulou will need a translated lyric sheet). Equal parts groovy and moving.

 

9. Regina Spektor

Home, Before and After (Sire/Warner)

Eighth album from Regina Spektor and her first in six years. It’s also the first in awhile to grab my attention as she expands a bit more musically with forays into surrealism, funk, absurdist pop and even a sci-fi bedtime story. There’s still some of the usual anti-folk balladry that launched her career, with added orchestral flourishes in just the right places.

 

10. Editrix

Editrix II: Editrix Goes To Hell (Exploding In Sound Records)

 

Second album from Massachusetts trio, but the first album of theirs I’ve heard. I’ve seen them described as post-hardcore, with guitarist Wendy Eisenberg and drummer Josh Daniel improvising to Steve Cameron’s bass riffs. Whatever label you want to put on it, it’s weird, dark and baffling and yet somehow accessible, with Eisenberg’s warm and playful vocals providing something to latch onto while everything else whacks you upside the head. Something like that. I dunno man, I just really like this.

 

HONORABLE MENTIONS

 

Yard Act

The Overload (Island/Universal)

Yard Act is one of a number of bands that have been lumped together under the category “influenced by The Fall” (see also: Wet Leg, Dry Cleaning, etc), but so far this is the only band that sounds remotely anything like The Fall. And even then, the spoken vocals are less Mark E Smith and more Scroobius Pip. Sometimes Yard Act are little too clever for their own good, but that may just be me projecting my annoyance with British music journalists who fawn over bands that eloquently complain about how crap England is. Anyway, Yard Act have a sense of humor, which helps.

 

Metric

Formentera (Thirty Tigers)

Eighth album from Canadian synth-rock band that is basically more of the same, albeit in a mostly good way. Reportedly written and recorded under the inspiration of Balearic isle of Formentera (which the band has never actually visited), the song cycle starts off full of doom and gloom about the state of the world as seen via social media (the epic “Doomscrolling”), and ends on a calm, hopeful note with “Paths In The Sky”. It's pretty good, though "Doomscrolling" overshadows pretty much every song that comes after it.

 

Mara Balls

Maranormaali ilmiö (Stupido Records/Playground Music)

 

Third LP from Finnish guitarist, who trades in the kind of fuzzed-out rock that Kyuss used to trade in. Derivative, maybe, but Balls knows a good tune when she hears one, and her earnest yet understated vocals are a good match for the music. It’s very pleasant to listen to, anyway.

 

Luke Haines and Peter Buck

All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out (Cherry Red)

 

Second collaboration between Luke Haines and Peter Buck (along with regular Buck collaborators Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon), which purports to answer the question: why are all the kids super bummed out? I can’t say if it’s successful in that regard, but I can say it’s weirder and longer than their first album. I'm not sure a double album's worth was necessary, but that's what they gave us.

 

Police And Pea

I Want An Authentic Tail (Maybe Mars)

 

Debut album from Beijing duo Police and Pea (although their Chinese name 暴力香槟 translates as Violent Champagne), who describe themselves as ‘bedroom musicians’, although they went into an actual studio to record this after releasing some homemade tracks online. It’s essentially quirky amateur pop-rock for social misfits with whimsical vocals about ghosts, online shopping and food. Comparisons with Hong Kong duo My Little Airport are inevitable, but Police and Pea are less topical (for perhaps obvious reasons) and have a wider range musically. Anyway, it’s charming.

 

Big Joanie

Back Home (Kill Rock Stars)

 

Second LP from UK trio that sees them expanding from their punky origins to something more experimental with a wider range, stylewise. And they’re all the better for it – the album explores themes of home (literal and metaphorical), but musically also reflects the idea that punk isn’t a formula but a tool to smash formulas and create your own spaces.

 

Al-Qasar

Who Are We? (Glitterbeat)

 

Debut album from Parisian band – based in the historically Arab quarter of Barbés – who trades in psychedelic rock with heavy Middle-Eastern and North African influences and instrumentation. Comparisons to Tinariwen and Mdou Moctar are perhaps inevitable, but Al-Qasar taps a wider variety of music traditions and backgrounds and pours it into an otherwise standard psych-rock template. They’re also somewhat more openly political in their lyrics – hence the guest appearance by Jello Biafra. In fact, they’re at their most interesting when collaborating with guests, from Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo to vocalists like Alsarah and Hend Elrawy.

 

BEST EPs and SINGLES

 

1. Catherine Graindorge and Iggy Pop

The Dictator EP (Glitterbeat)

 

File under ‘Collaborations You Never Saw Coming’. Turns out Iggy Pop is a fan of Belgian violinist and composer Catherine Graindorge, and played a few of her tracks on his radio show. She emailed him to say thanks and added (more or less), “Hey let’s do something together sometime,” and he said (more or less) “Sure, send me a track and I’ll come up with something.” And this is the result – four spellbinding widescreen tracks, three of them featuring Iggy’s grizzled-narrator baritone. An obvious reference point is the William Burroughs / Kurt Cobain collaboration “The Priest They Called Him”, and while Iggy is no Burroughs, Burroughs was no Iggy Pop either. Anyway, it’s fascinating.

 

2. Voice of Baceprot, “[Not] Public Property” (12WIRED)

Indonesian metal trio Voice of Baceprot actually released two singles this year (the other one being “PMS - Perempuan Merdeka Seutuhnya”). While both are excellent, I went with this one, mainly because it came out first, so I’ve spent more time listening to it. But honestly they’re both good.

 

3. Pink Floyd feat. Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox, “Hey Hey, Rise Up” (Sony)

 

Pink Floyd (well, David Gilmour and Nick Mason) got back together to record this charity single for Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief. It was written around an a capella recording of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, the singer of Ukrainian band Boombox, singing the first verse first verse of the Ukrainian anthem "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow". For all that, it fits comfortably in the Floyd catalogue, thanks in part to Gilmour knocking out one of his best guitar solos in a long time.

 

4. Leenalchi, “Let's Live For Today” (Lakeshore)

 

Leenalchi is a South Korean band that blends pasori (traditional storytelling in song) with pop music. I got into them doing research for a playlist, but they also recorded this cover of the Grass Roots’ “Let’s Live For Today” as the theme song for K-drama Pachinko. I haven’t watched the show, but I really dig their unusual take on the song.

 

5. The Dickies, “A Gary Glitter Getaway” (Cleopatra)

 

The Dickies have still been touring since their last album (2001’s All This and Puppet Stew), but haven’t recorded anything new – until now! They released this single with the promise of a new album that has yet to materialize. The B-side is a trademark punk cover of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, but the A-side really knocked me out and serves as a reminder that while they’re mainly famous for their cover songs, the Dickies have put out some great originals. In this case, the subject matter (to say nothing of the sleeve cover) may be a little tasteless (Gary Glitter is currently serving time for pedophilia and various sex offenses), but it's not like they’re defending him either.

 

BEST REISSUE

 

Blondie
Against The Odds: 1974-1982 (UMG/Capitol/Numero Group)

 

Blondie’s big boxset perhaps made the biggest splash in 2022, with all six studio albums and 52 bonus tracks, plus book, photos etc. I didn’t buy it – partly because I am a poor boy, and partly because I already own most of the albums, but mainly because the bonus tracks are mostly the usual outtakes, alt-takes and demos, which are great for compleatists but by my experience are usually inferior to the finished song. That said, I’m listing it here for a couple of reasons: (1) the previously unreleased cover of “Moonlight Drive” is great, and (2) it’s an opportunity to reappraise The Hunter, which was a logical extension of their experiments on Autoamerican but not well received on arrival. Listening to it now, it may still be the weakest of their first six albums, but it’s also a lot better than I remember it. If nothing else, it’s a reminder that the Bond film For Your Eyes Only could have had a far cooler theme song.

 

BEST COVERS ALBUM

 

Brass Against

IV (Footnote Records)

 

I was kind of obsessed with Brass Against this year – a brass band covering Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave and Black Sabbath, with singer Sophie Urista doing a dead-on imitation of Zack de la Rocha? It’s like the dream gig of anyone who was in band at high school. Here, with not many RATM songs left to cover, they also include songs by Tool, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins and 21 Pilots. The novelty does wear off after a few listens, and not everything works, but it’s still fairly powerful stuff.

 

BEST POSSIBLY UNINTENTIONAL KISS TRIBUTE ALBUM

 

Märvel

Graces Came With Malice (The Sign Records)

 

Seventh LP from Sweden’s self-proclaimed “Barons of High Energy Rock 'n' Roll”, who wear masks onstage and go by names like The King, The Burgher and The Vicar. They’ve been around 20 years but I’ve only just come across them. Musically they’re good, though pretty average as rock bands go, but it struck me while listening to this how much they sound like Kiss – particularly singer John Steen, who sounds uncannily like Paul Stanley. Other influences are obviously there too (Thin Lizzy and Turbonegro come to mind), but if I tried to pass this off to unsuspecting friends as a lost Kiss album, it might almost work.

THE PLAYLIST


Featuring tracks from all of the above, plus some good tracks from the year’s not-so-great LPs, EPs etc. It's also here if the list doesn't embed for you.

Same time next year,

 

This is dF