Hey y’all. Hope you all had an amazing 2023. I truly appreciate every one of you who take the time to read this newsletter that my good friend Andy and I get to do (Andy: I did this already in the other post). This was a wild year: I had a baby and boy is that shit crazy. She rocks, even though she’s screaming her head off every waking moment as of late because she has four teeth coming in. Doesn’t she know Andy is making me listen to Man Must Die? Doesn’t she know I have podcasts to listen to? Anyways, she is so fucking cool and spending time with her this year has been my favorite thing and tops my End of the Year List for Life (Andy: same).
Anyways, music: it was good! Lots I loved! Before getting into The List, I want to shout out a few more records. My true Honorable Mentions are a) Boygenius’ The Record, which might be the biggest record in this space of the year and had a handful of some of my favorite songs of the year and also some other songs, b) Danny Brown’s Quaranta, with Danny being maybe my favorite rapper alive and this being his most stripped back and raw record, c) Ratboys’ The Window, which rocks and is a record I think I’ll appreciate more after seeing some of these songs live, d) Harms Way’s Common Suffering, one of the hardest records of the year and e) Loma Prieta’s Last, because I Love Screamo. Some other records of note are records where I LOVE one or two songs, but the records themselves don’t fully work for me, would include the Armed, Bar Italia, Bully, Japanese House, Militarie Gun, Squid and Wilco records. Noel Gallagher released a record of three or four pretty incredible songs but ultimately left me pretty disappointed because, what, it wasn’t 12 perfect tracks? Why did I expect that from a 56-year-old? On me. Lastly, Cory Hanson, Fust and Slaughter Beach, Dog released records this year that I didn’t hear until last week that I loved. It feels disingenuous to include records I’ve listened to like five times the week before making this list. They absolutely would be on the list if I found them when they came out and I look forward to being on board for whatever comes next. Long rant aside, let’s get to the list (Andy: Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean didn’t even make the honorable mentions man, go to time out) (Patrick: off to a great start lol).
Patrick’s AOTY List 2023
Pile – All Fiction
MSPAINT - Post-American
Enforced - War Remains
John R. Miller - Heat Comes Down
Geese - 3D Country
Patrick: Lots of new discoveries in this batch. Pile is the only band here I had any baggage with coming into this year and they released a record that feels like a reinvention, which is so cool at this point in their timeline. MSPAINT goes so fucking hard: hardcore meeting industrial in the best way. Enforced is thrash, which just fucking rocks, brother. Hadn’t heard peep about the man John R. Miller prior to the release of his record and it’s the best straightforwardly country record of the year, without heavier guitars or what have you getting added to the mix. I wanted to be a hater for Geese. I don’t love their debut. The vocals here are … Going For It. But fuck did it 1000% land for me. Guy does something wacky and awesome every few seconds on this record. I love it.
Andy: Pile was a good song that suffers from kicking off a pretty damn good list of songs. It is more of an endorsement of the rest of the list instead of that song in particular. I’ve heard the MSPAINT name for a bit but never listened. Goes so hard. I’ll listen to the record because of this track. John R Miller makes music for Patrick, he does not make music for me. Enforced makes music for both of us. Great track, great album. Geese, man. Wacky as heck. I love the wackiness. I’m here for it. Will definitely listen further.
Big Head - The Worst is Yet to Come
Indigo De Souza - All of This Will End
Gumm - Slogan Machine
PONY - Velveteen
Will Johnson - No Ordinary Crown
Patrick: Fun-ass records here. Will Johnson is the only guy I knew here before the year - been a huge fan since I was in college of his band Centromatic and his solo stuff is remarkably consistent 20 years in. Indigo De Souza is someone I probably should have known and, man, it really connected for me. Big Head, Gumm and Pony make for some of the loudest hooks of the year and I absolutely love those records. Big Head is so insane and all over the place and feels like alt-country and weird emo all at once, Gumm is brutal and massive, and Pony should have had a song on every episode of Degrassi. Great stuff.
Andy: Big Head was one of those songs I hated on first listen but enjoyed more and more each time. I like it now, a lot, thank you. Indigo De Souza is definitely some Patrick music but it was very fun. It took me a few listens but really started to enjoy it. Gumm is great, man. Might be the second-best song on this playlist? Maybe? It is very good. Patrick is right. Pony is some CW high-school song stuff (Patrick: to be clear, this is a feature not a bug also Degrassi aired on CTV, thanks!). Personally, I preferred “Sucker Punch” from the album, but they definitely know how to write a chorus! Will Johnson also has a track here that seems like it is great for people who enjoy singer-songwriters but we know I’m not very good at that yet so I’ll revisit this in 2026 when Patrick finally converts me.
Liquid Mike - Liquid Mike
Deerhoof - Miracle-Level
Broken Record - Nothing Moves Me
Billy Woods & Kenny Segal - Maps
Mil-Spec - Marathon
Patrick: This grouping kind of feels like a level-up. Love the records before but we’re moving up a tier in terms of stuff I was constantly running back this year. Liquid Mike came outta nowhere with one of the best pop-punk-kind-of records in a long time. Deerhoof somehow dropped their first record exclusively in Japanese 25 years in??? Broken Record is Stadium Emo and I love it. I listened to probably the least amount of rap this year as any year in my adult life but Maps pretty clearly seems like the best rap record of the year. And Mil-Spec did such a cool hardcore record, mixing in psychedelia and some of the best lyrics from the genre in a bit.
Andy: Liquid Mike drops some decent pop-punk I guess, I can also say it is one of the best pop-punk-kind-of records in a long time because I’m only ever exposed to that genre from our friend Thomas and he is too busy doing other things (Patrick: like converting his fandom from Miami-based sports to Philadelphia-based sports) (Andy: is he loyal to nothing?!?). Deerhoof song was sick. Never heard of them but will be checking them out. Apparently this is the first album they’ve recorded in an actual recording studio? Wild. Broken Record was great. Better as a full album listen than a single song in a playlist but I’m a purist - sue me. Patrick blessed me with some good rap in a year where I’ve listened to essentially 0 rap. I’ll check out the full Billy Woods & Kenny Segal album. Mil-Spec is great. Literally no notes.
Skourge - Torrential Torment
Truth Club - Running From the Chase
Tomb Mold - The Enduring Spirit
Empty Country - II
The Gaslight Anthem - History Books
Patrick: Some incredible heavy stuff in this batch. Skourge goes fucking hard and Tomb Mold is an achievement in Death Metal during a year when it was on top. Truth Club released a record that reminded me of Pile, but with absolutely huge hooks. Empty Country (and the gone-too-soon Cymbals Eat Guitars) and The Gaslight Anthem are projects I’ve loved for a long time and released records that are some of the respective songwriters’ best releases to date. Great stuff that I, personally, love to listen to.
Andy: Skourge is so damn good. More people should make good hardcore. Truth Club was fun. That seems more North Carolina than Wednesday but they’re both pretty good. Death Metal is great and Tomb Mold is good what else is new? Empty Country is good weird. We need a good genre name for ‘good weird goofy music’ (Patrick: it’s called ‘indie rock’ lol) (Andy: no way man, there is a subsection of indie rock that is fun and wacky and then there is normal not-fun indie rock). I enjoyed it. The Gaslight Anthem sucks and this is the worst song on the playlist. Please form a queue to discuss. I Won’t Back Down (Patrick: dealing with you is more exhausting than dealing with a teething 9-month-old).
Agriculture - Agriculture
Drain - Living Proof
Olivia Rodrigo - GUTS
Mali Velasquez - I’m Green
Patrick: At different points of the year, these records were all quite high for me. Agriculture is the best metal record of the year. We love the spiritual sound of ecstatic black metal by the band Agriculture. Drain is just fun. Maybe the album I threw on the most this year at the gym. Riffs, baby. Olivia dropped the best pop album of the year, it’s impossibly fun. And Mali Velasquez made some of the best singer-songwriter stuff in a long time. Just an incredible debut.
Andy: I picked Look pt1 and Patrick picked Look pt2. We both love Agriculture. How is Drain not in his top 10 (Patrick: it’s 13, buzz off)? I forgot to put it on my list! I’m the worst! Such a rifffff. Olivia Rodrigo is fine. I recognize that she is everything I should enjoy about Pop but I just don’t connect to it. Maybe the lyrics are just too outwardly young? Idk, not for me. Mali Velasquez hiiiiittttsss man. Patrick thought I’d hate this but that’s just more proof he’s a dork. Definition of ‘going hard.’ Great voice, great melancholic instrumentals. This is a debut? Wild. I’m here for it.
Mitski - The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We
Patrick: One of the most celebrated voices in indie music released probably her best record. Just incredible hooks here and incredible production. The strings and the pedal steel! Adam-Driver-MORE.gif. Mitski forever.
Andy: This is okay. I can recognize it’s very well crafted and yet I still do not find much enjoyment in it. Especially when it is sandwiched between two bangers, so might just be a victim of circumstance.
Protomartyr - Formal Growth in the Desert
Patrick: My favorite band in the recent crop of post-punk bands. Gotta be honest here: I thought when this dropped that they dropped their first brick. I was ready to call this the biggest disappointment of the year (that is actually Ruston Kelly). And then I would find myself putting this on basically every morning while I was still on parental leave. It sunk its hooks in me and now I’m convinced it might be their best. They leveled up the instrumentals here so massively and Joe Casey continues to be one of my favorite vocalists around.
Andy: Very fun stuff here. The instrumentals are great and the vocal melody is assaulting in the best way. One of the better songs on this playlist for me. Surprised he didn’t pick this for a week this year.
Taking Meds - Dial M for Meds
Patrick: The biggest hooks of the year. 90’s college rock/punk filtered through massive hooks and tunes. What if Jawbox was as big as Weezer and Oasis? What if Rival Schools was as big as Foo Fighters? Incredible stuff. Also, we joke that lyrics don’t matter here, but they matter and Skylar Sarkis is one of the best lyricists around. I love love love this record.
Andy: Late 2000s metalcore ass album art lol. This song is fine. It is interesting and catchy enough to enjoy while it is on but I never think about it once it ends.
Greg Mendez - Greg Mendez
Patrick: Lots of discoveries this year and this was my favorite of them all. Elliott Smith by way of dudes that like to tweet “Go Birds” 5,000 times a year. In reality, again, the lyrics here are incredible. A friend on X, formerly known as Twitter, did their AOTY stuff as “AOTY when …” type situational stuff and Greg Mendez’s record was my AOTY when my daughter smiled for the first time and I wanted to cry happy tears for a billion years and relive that moment over and over again. It’s a melancholic record that always brings a smile to my face. I love it.
Andy: Definitely thought this could be black metal based on the album art. If you read the lyrics, you could say the same thing. It’s not though! I had to give the full record a spin because I wasn’t clicking with this song and I’m glad I did. I vibed much more with songs like “Maria” and “Goodbye / Trouble.” Maybe it was sitting with a full album of the music vs. a one-off song in a playlist of great tracks but it was much more enjoyable for me.
Fiddlehead - Death is Nothing to Us
Patrick: Huge band for a Type Of Guy dropping a huge record. The Type of Guy is Me. My favorite “hardcore” band. “True Hardcore” is a song that, on the title alone, should absolutely suck and, brother, it does not. “Fifteen to Infinity” is a post-hardcore love song? Where do they get the nerve? This is my AOTY when I have exactly 27 minutes and 19 seconds available to listen to a full record.
Andy: Fiddlehead makes very good and enjoyable hardcore. Doesn’t seem like a huge departure from the album we covered earlier this year, but that is good cause that album was great.
Hotline TNT - Cartwheel
Patrick: We love shoegaze around these parts. This is everything that I love about 90s Swervedriver and Ride records thrown into a blender with about 5,000 guitar layers and modern production and it sounds like a billion bucks. The hooks are massive. “BMX” is my most-played song of the year that isn’t off of my top two records. Just going back to it over and over again, as Tim McGraw would say. I got into this band when Wednesday covered one of their songs on last year’s cover record and this somehow managed to blow away everything they had previously put out.
Andy: What the heck is this (Patrick: this is shoegaze, Andy)? Sick album art and sick song. One of my favorites from the playlist. This sounds soooo good man. I felt like at any moment it could just explode to that next level. Will be checking this out in full.
Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
Patrick: AOTY for me Thanksgiving week, when I was wallowing in upstate New York thinking about my dead grandpa and dead mom, both of whom died on Thanksgiving week two and seven years ago, respectively. Who wants to hear songs that make you think about death and get sad and stuff? I thought this guy was COOKED post-Carrie & Lowell and he released his best record to date. Incredible.
Andy: I’m glad that this record was good for Patrick but I cannot say I connected to this in any of the same ways. I know a lot of my buds enjoy this so I am happy that it exists for them.
Sparklehorse - Bird Machine
Patrick: So we’re just going to casually hop from an album about the death of a partner to … an album released 13 years after the songwriter killed himself. Brutal! This is the best Sparklehorse release. I love It’s a Wonderful Life but it has simply been supplanted. “O Child” perfect song. “Wake Up, I love you, it’s daytime.”
Andy: I liked the lo-fi vibe on this song. A nice sort of eerie quality soaks the whole song. It’s equally uncomfortable as it is beautiful. Is the whole record like this? I enjoyed it.
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit - Weathervanes
Patrick: My favorite record by one of my favorite songwriters. Just about any other year and certainly any prior year of the 2020s, this would have been my AOTY, with ease. Jason went back to the Drive-By Truckers well more than he has on any of his prior solo records. Also, he has talked a lot about being in Oklahoma for the filming of Killers of the Flower Moon (he’s incredible in it???) affecting his songwriting and, man, for a guy who was about the best going at his craft to completely level-up like this … it’s insane, unparalleled stuff. “When We Were Close” is my most-listened to song this year. I’m going to close this tab and listen to it like ten more times, in a row, on fucking repeat. An all-timer achievement of a record. “Miles” is one of the best closers in a long time. Beautiful. I’m done doing my Wright Thompson impression, I promise, but go listen to this crap.
Andy: I'm glad Isabell managed to find time to work on this small side project during his remarkable performance as Bill in Killers of the Flower Moon. Actors sure do love making music in their free time, huh? Not quite as good as any of Jeff Bridges or Ryan Goslings music but he can try (Patrick: okay, man).
Wednesday - Rat Saw God
Patrick: My Album of the Year in July is still my AOTY in December, something that hasn’t happened in a very long time. Just a perfect record. The best of the 2020s so far, in my estimation. It is so aggressively North Carolina. I love to just drive on the highway here and throw on this record, with the windows down, and cruise along to the insane layers of pedal steel and fuzz guitar and Karly Hartzman’s voice. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this record. I can’t wait to listen to it with Holly when she gets older. I can’t wait to take her to a Wednesday show when MJ has a bald spot as large as my own. I can’t wait to listen to “Formula One” when I win the Formula One Grand Prix (Andy: nice). It is eternal, to me, like the sound of sustain on a guitar run through a Big Muff pedal or the smell of dew on the grass in Charlotte in the summer or the size of the menu at Cook Out. I am always listening to this record and I will always be listening to this record. It’ll be with me when I die and it was with me when I was born. AOTY.
Andy: I already wrote about how much I liked this album when we covered it in July. It is one of the better, if not the best, things he has recommended on this platform. It is very good and very fun. As the resident metalhead, I can confirm it goes hard. Highly recommend and, honestly, it should have been on my list. I can admit I’ve made a mistake. Great album.