Lists Are Nice, Actually: Here's Some Music I Liked In 2022
I listen to a lot of music. I’m listening to music as I write this. (Marina Herlop - Pripyat) I listen to music as part of my morning ritual; I have a youtube playlist of uptempo music that I listen to with headphones on at my standing desk and I try to spend a few minutes each morning dancing. Usually it’s reggaeton. One of my favorite songs to dance to is this Tokischa song; I think I also need to make a separate dembow playlist because those are my favorite beats.
I have a different ritual at night: I listen to white noise or ambient music when I’m writing, because it’s hard for me to write while listening to anything with lyrics. It’s too many word-streams crossing with each other.
I’ll often play an ambient album on loop all night when I go to sleep. I write down my dreams most mornings and I like to think the type of music I’m listening to infiltrates my dreams, so I try to listen to stuff that’s soft and spacious that will give me consciousness a safe place to wander.
The result of all this is I think I logged like 124,000 minutes of listening on my Spotify wrapped, embarrassingly. (As an aside, in an effort to slowly wean myself off of streaming music, on account of the lesser audio quality & unethical business model, I got a phone this year with 160 gigs of storage so I can hold more files locally. So far all I have on there is Joanna Newsom’s discography as flac files. (Because her music is not on Spotify.)) (I will probably also “get into vinyl” next year, sorry.)
So, like, most of my day I am listening to music, and if I didn’t have to interview people or write for a living I would listen to even more. One of my favorite things to do is to lie down. And my second favorite thing to do is to listen to music while I lie down. I say this because sometimes people tell me that they don’t have time to listen to new music or to listen to music at all, and I find this really confusing, as you can listen to music while you are doing almost anything.
I find new music to listen to through a combination of sources. 1. Spotify recommendations - I know a lot of people have not had good luck with this, but unfortunately since I overuse the service it knows what I like and alerts me to new albums. 2. Bandcamp - It’s fun to browse the different genre tags for new ideas, and the articles are usually good. Instead of just a barrage of reviews there are big thoughtful trend articles crammed with recommendations. I like to buy music on Bandcamp fridays, particularly if the artist is someone I know. 3. I think this is it, I used to browse Fact Mag’s twitter presence but I lost track. Sometimes I read Pitchfork, but I have avoided Pitchfork ever since that time in 2003 I rage-quit my laptop after reading a review of a Jay-Z album that quoted Heidegger. (This is what their reviews were like in the early aughts!) Ideally, I would have a subscription to The Wire, but every time I look up how much it costs I cry. Sometimes I get recommendations from social media, which is how I heard about a few of my favorite artists this year, including Rachika Nayar and Beast Nest.
Anyway, here’s a list of my favorite music I listened to this year, almost all of which came out this year. These are all just personal preferences but also it is objectively what was the best, which overlaps conveniently with my personal preferences. Just kidding. (?)
Here’s the shortlist of my absolute favorite albums-
Beast Nest - Sicko (2022) I’m kind of obsessed with this album by Oakland based electronic musician Sharmi Basu. I think it’s soothing to me because the music is doing so much at once and driving in seemingly opposing directions; long, spectral, repetitive tones that are act as a guidepost, under which are faster drum and bass sounds, with layers of different percussive elements & classical south asian vocal samples underneath. It feels cosmic & all-encompassing which in turn lets my little brain relax underneath the hectic soundscape.
Rachika Nayar - Heaven Come Crashing
This album sounds exactly like the name of the album (It does what it says on the tin). It is epic & regal, its spirals and dips & chaotic fractures & descents each perfectly ordained. There is a cinematic quality to Rachika’s songs & it is hard not to compose little stories or epic plays in your head while listening to them.
Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn - Pigments
This was one of the bigger surprises for me this year. I loved Ricard’s album “Second Line” last year. I had never heard of Spencer Zahn before this album but the pairing is perfect; Zahn’s jazz-inflected soundscapes feel like a cathedral which Dawn Richard’s voice contorts and shimmers and fills, hanging and dripping from the stained glass windows. & then also: some of the songs are just groovy & uplifting & earnest in a way that Dawn Richard has the range to pull off.
Makaya McCraven - In These Times
McCraven is a jazz drummer & composer whose work I was not familiar with before this year but it’s sort of a perfect mix of time-distorting percussion with almost vintage-sounding flourishes of piano, guitar, harp and saxophone drawn over it.
OHYUNG - imagine naked!
kind of just perfect brain-loosening waking dream music. no notes.
Rosalía - Motomami (2022) This is great even if I haven’t been returning to it as much in the past few months. Rosalía shows off her range well & slips in and out of reggaeton & flamenco. It’s a short album with a few quick-driving bangers interspersed with wavey, soft acoustic pieces. My favorite songs are the ones produced by Argentinian producer El Guincho - his beat on Saoko is I think one of the most fun this year. El Guincho had two amazing solo albums in the late 2000’s but has sort of reinvented himself as a producer for reggaeton crossovers & produced “Con Altura” featuring Rosalía et. al which I first heard last year & still can’t stop listening to.
Mira Calix - absent origin (2021) I love this album! Sadly this is the final release by Mira Calix, who died in April. It is not for everyone but for people like me who spent the early 2000’s listening to music on indie electronic labels like Tomlab, Chicks on Speed and Tigerbeat 6, it felt really familiar and resonant. There’s a lot of chopped up field recordings over driving IDM beats, experiments with different sound textures that fans of Matmos would be into, jarring but catchy fusions of flute, violins and aggressive drum machines next to sampled raps and melodic harmonizing. It’s not relaxing ambient music, rather it shifts between being contemplative dance music & ambient experimental music, but it sounded like something I’ve been missing for a while.
Perfume Genius - Ugly Season (2022) I actually haven’t particularly enjoyed previous Perfume Genius records and didn’t consider myself a fan, but I really love this one. I find it a little difficult to define: it is big & melodramatic & gothic, at times it sounds whimsical and medieval. At times it reminded me of early Xiu Xiu, at times it reminded me of Current 93, and at times, like the song “Pop Song,” it was just sexy and cool.
Black Thought/Danger Mouse - Cheat Codes Maybe this album is tailor made for middle aged rap fans like me but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that and I love it. (And MF Doom is on it!) (Note: I wrote this blurb before President Obama added this to his end of year list..RIP MF Doom, open borders, abolish ICE etc.)
Mary Lattimore, Paul Sukeena — West Kensington
Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin - Ghosted
TLF Trio - Sweet Harmony
Offering Rain - Offering Rain
More Eaze - Strawberry Season
(Thank you to whomever recommended this on instagram?)
Huerco S. - Plonk
These albums were also good and I listened to them a decent amount!:
Bad Bunny - Un Verano Sin Ti
FKA Twigs - Capri Songs
Vince Staples - Ramona Park Broke My Heart
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Let’s Turn It Into Sound
Blood Orange - Four Songs EP
Suzi Analogue - Infinite Zonez
Doechii - Coven Music Session, Vol. 1 (2019)
Freddie Gibbs - Soul Sold Separately
Marina Herlop - Pripyat
BbyMutha - CHERRYTAPE EP
Michel Banabila - Echo Transformations (2021)
Rochelle Jordan - Play With the Changes (Remixed)
What I’ve been writing: But…I don’t get paid to write about music! (By choice, no offense to music writers!) I get paid to write about housing and very convoluted urban policy problems!
To close out the year I have two end of the year pieces: Dwell asked me to write an essay answering the question: what was the housing market in 2022? I had a lot of thoughts! I also tried to have fun by mentioning some books, movies and tv shows that conveniently intersected with my work interests!
For my regular gig at Next City, I wrote a year-end roundup of the year’s biggest narratives in housing policy and what they portend for 2023. Read it if that’s what you’re into! Though similar, I don’t think these pieces overlap much.
This is probably it for the year, but I will be back early in 2023 with more end of year reflections on books I’ve been reading! So, hang tight!
Okay!