Bill Cummings’s Albums of the Year 2023 – Part Two

In the second and final part of my albums of 2023, I present to you more records I loved from the last twelve months, there’s always so much great music being released it’s just finding it. Again I urge you to support the acts you love in whatever way you can.

Corinne Bailey Rae – Black Rainbows 

Stony Island Arts Bank is as an art and community space that houses permanent and temporary collections that “honor black excellence and confront the traumas of the past,” Williams’s collection of “negrophilia”: 4,000 objects rooted in stereotypical representations of Blackness. Each track on Black Rainbows is informed by a different discovery that Corinne Bailey Rae made at the Arts Bank archive since first visiting it in 2017.

Eschewing her soul pop fame, Rae explores and stretches her influence into a constantly refreshing and challenging long player that depict the range of her musical palette and delves into the black experience of the world, tackling the prejudice and celebrating its greatness, to produce one of the albums of 2023. From tracks that take influence from her formative punk rock and riot grrl such as the incendiary ‘Erasure’ and the infectious ‘New York Transit Queen’, to subtle compositions that skirt the lines of jazz and pop  like the gorgeous ‘Peach Velvet Sky‘. Imperious.

Caroline Polachek – Desire I wants to Turn into you

Boundary stretching yet crammed with accessible, addictive tunes, Caroline Polachek formerly of Chairlift, produced one of the most refreshing pop experiences of 2023. ‘Welcome to My Island‘ is riotous, body popping with illuminating synths and Polachek’s inventive vocals that bounce off the walls and are riven with self reflective sing alongs that are as deep as the pools she’s swimming in. ‘Bunny is a Rider’ is fantastic, swaying yet sinewy bass line and a clicking beat littered refreshing vocals that come at you from every direction, residing with elements of hip hop and r&b, remolding pop melodies in her image, this is brilliant. ‘Sunset‘ is lit up by Latin guitars, quickfire beats and bewitching vocals that switch between sultry and choral in an instance, it’s utterly entrancing. Imaginative and with magnificent futuristic production that offers constant delights upon every play,  Polachek has consumed the entirety of pop music history and reinterpreted it thrillingly, it sounds like nothing else, this is one of the best records of 2023. 

Chroma – Ask for Angela

Chroma have been one of Wales’s best-kept secrets, this fearsome Welsh three-piece have been producing righteous bilingual noise pop for the last few years, powered by visceral riffing, pummelling drums, and Katie Hall’s powerhouse vocal performances. They signed to Alcopop! Records for their righteously awesome debut album Ask for Angela this year.  Lead single ‘Don’t Mind Me’ laced with chunky fuzzy bar chords, and twitchy drums, it serves as a platform for Katie’s incendiary vocals that chart her struggles with mental health, magnifying her personal experiences and raging at the unfairness of the mental health system, it’s a universal struggle and offers an “I’ve been there too” lifeline to many who have suffered with their mental health, especially since lockdown. “Oh my head is hazardous!” she exclaims repeatedly, over this most explosive chorus, ‘Don’t Mind Me’ hits hard in more ways than one! It also contains their fantastic previous release ‘Girls Talk’  and the explosively rage infused ‘Woman to Woman’ . Chroma should be damn proud of this record.

Echo Ladies – Lilies

Malmo trio Echo Ladies returned in 2023 with the superlative album Lillies, showcasing their intention to, ‘balance the emotions of sorrow and loneliness, with anger, frustration, and the determination to make a change for the better’ gaze rock with a bite and infused with emotional heft. It was heralded with a formidable  single entitled ‘Coming Home,’  a crushing wall of noise, riven with squalling serrated edged riffing with scampering bass lines: barrelling along on the back of powerful drums. Leavened with earworm melodies: it’s like entering a tunnel of noise whilst they are burrowing their way to the freedom of the light. Stunning. “This song is heavily inspired by two of our favourite bands, A Place To Bury Strangers and The Jesus & Mary Chain,” the band said. “Our aim was to make the song feel like a big wave of noise, feedback, and guitars that hits you in the face. We can’t remember how many layers of fuzzed and distorted guitars are on this track, but it’s a lot.”

Meanwhile ‘Awake‘ another stone cold standout crushes in with thudding drum machines and bass lines, simmering guitars that flash like shiny knives, and vocals that menace and bristling with intensity, before this collision of gaze rock and post punk propels into an unmissable space. Don’t sleep on this record, it’s ace! Art School Girlfriend – Soft Landing

Art School Girlfriend is Polly Mackey, and her second album Soft Landing released in 2023. is superb; a record of poetically drawn euphorias, capturing small moments of joy. It also has an immersive and meditative quality, each song possesses the beguiling depths of dream pop but there’s also the major influence of electronica and dance music, with illuminating synth-textures, dappling trance and breakbeat-inspired elements, that combine into an engrossing, detailed tapestry. Mackey’s songwriting craft and depth is matched by a voice of knowing, longing and experience, yet it has a comfort of a Tracey Thorn, but it is her own voice that wraps itself around you like a warm duvet as she’s dealing with emotional peaks and lows. 

Aesop Rock – Integrated Tech Solutions

Legendary MC Aesop Rock delivers an awesomely inventive stomp of future hip hop of the present tense/tension with new single Mindful Solutionism, the opening track from the awesomely prescient ‘Integrated Tech Solutions’ LP. Enlivened by electronic crunch and funky beats ‘Mindful Solutions’ sounds as urgent as a the wordplay of a Run the Jewels’ joint grooving with the electronic samples of Afrika Bambata. Rock thrillingly and playfully weighs up the pros and cons of technology, delivered by the underground hip-hop mainstay in typically unique fashion. Like Killer Mike becoming a nutty professor, this is superbly prescient as AI threatens creativity and humanity itself, Rock pushes back with a laser-focused cut riven with detail, wit, and hooks. Other highlights include the bouncing ‘Infinity Goose Down’ that tries to make sense of a increasingly insane world with a musical nod to Jurassic Five, or ‘Salt and Pepper Squid’ that’s tumbling lysergic bars alight on the absurdity and futility of modern life. Malenas -Ahora 

Spanish quartet Malenas reassembled and offered a wonderful palette of songs on their refreshing third record Ahora. Like a soundtrack to some never produced 70s sci fi programme, this tapestry of vintage synths like the Korg Delta or the Yamaha PSR-36 stretch their sonic orbit, with bubbling melodies and harmonies offering beguiling mystery around each corner, the title track is a symbolic. While the psych flecked 60s pop of ‘1986’ tip toes through the melodic tulips into a joyous space, to have a little boogie hand in hand, quite awesome.

Gradually introducing itself with addictive organ motifs, popping beats and a wonderous vocal in the Spanish language,  the single ‘Dos Parajeros’ (Two Passengers) is a wonderful delight, a pick me up in uncertain times. They say it’s about “people that travel with you, that you carry in your thoughts wherever you go, that somehow illuminate your path in life and accompany you in every moment.” An infectious track that slides somewhere between early Stereolab and Melody’s Echo Chamber, yet has it’s own thing. It’s the sound of growth and finding strength in community and those whose presence you bring with you on your next adventures, two hearts connected as they travel, the entwined vocals have a entrancing quality that wraps itself hopefully around your heart and gives you a warm glow. ill peach – THIS IS NOT AN EXIT

Los Angeles duo ill peach release their debut full-length, THIS IS NOT AN EXIT, via Hardly Art. Abrasive ebullient pop songs, with a gritty electro and punky underbelly. ‘BLAH BLAH BLAH’ is one of the standouts, a rushing cut up of distorted pop redolent of PEACHES and the rushing indie pop speaky/sung sounds of Wet Leg. Yet much better than sounds, Jess Corazza’s vocals drip with irony and attitude amidst a tapestry of cut up abrasive punk riffs, acoustics and distorted hammer, stand well back this is highly addictive. The seed of ill peach was first planted in the recording studios of New York City, where Pat Morrissey and Jess Corazza were working together as professional songwriters. Since then, they’ve collaborated with artists like SZA, Weezer, Pharrell, Saint JHn, Icona Pop, aespa, and Genisis Owusu. The duo needed an outlet for their more left-of-centre, personal compositions, and ill peach was born. CLAIRE M SINGER – Saor

CLAIRE M SINGER announced details of the first release in a triptych of albums, inspired by escapes to the peaks of her homeland of Scotland. The first of these releases, Saor [pronounced Sood: meaning “free” in Scottish Gaelic] is out on the 3rd of November. ‘Cairn Toul’ is really special piece swelling with the vastness and foreboding of the Scottish landscapes that she’s inspired by and the slate grey darkness of the clouds above head.

Singer’s use of the pipe organ, explores rich harmonic textures and crafts a cinematic atmosphere that’s both enveloping and awe inspiring. “Saor follows two narratives: my trekking across the Cairngorm mountains in Aberdeenshire through the granite plateaux, corries, glens and straths, and my exploration of the 1872 organ built by Peter Conacher & Coy, Huddersfield in Forgue Kirk Aberdeenshire where many of my ancestors lie.”

H Hawkline – Milk For Flowers

With Milk For Flowers, released last spring via Heavenly Recordings, H.Hawkline (Huw Evans) delivered his best record yet. Produced and features musical contributions from long-time collaborator and solo artist in her own right Cate Le Bon. Recorded at Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, the album features a host of musical collaborators – Davey Newington [Boy Azooga] on drums, Paul Jones [Group Listening] on piano, Tim Presley [White Fence, DRINKS, The Fall] on guitar, Stephen Black [Sweet Baboo] and Euan Hinshelwood [Younghusband, Cate Le Bon] on sax. 

This suite of luxurious piano led songs houses his heartfelt words, highlights including the bounding opener and title track, that’s horn burnished bouncy melodies are laced with Evan’s tender vocals, the moments when the tempo is taken down offer a melancholic counterpoint. ‘Plastic Man’ is fantastic, a jiving guitar riff spins on top of a stately piano motif that delights, garnished with Evan’s playful vocals, there’s elements of everyone from The Beatles, Bowie to Roxy Music here, a drum fill ushers ‘love’s too tight to mention/I can’t take the tension’, it’s utterly catchy, and one of the tracks of the year indeed. 

Ladytron  – Time’s Arrow

Ladytron‘s seventh studio album Time’s Arrow, is a trip inside their glacial and evocative world full of wonder and disquiet of dystopia. Opener City of Angels was their first new music released since 2019. Underpinned by Ladytron’s trademark ice cold analogue backing, the songs shot of melody inverts sensuous imagery into a vision of a near future with a collapse of cultural memory. “It’s about forgetting,” says Daniel Hunt “…how fragile it is,” “…not about one particular place or other, but a merging of them.”