2022 AOTY So Far

think i’m the only one who thinks the sharon van etten is her best work yet but that’s at the top of my list

real lies is my other fave. after that: rema, tears for fears, angel olsen, mr fingers

i know i’ll love the rosalía but i still haven’t had the chance to listen

been listening to almost no new music this year so i could be out of touch but i’m a little less cumulatively blown away by music this year than in previous, even though it seems like vinyl manufacturing and promotional tours are finally aligning in such a way that all of my favorite artists are putting out music again. i guess it’ll be a stacked fall

AOTY is going to be the new Soccer Mommy, based on the singles

Real Lies, out of the small handful I've heard. Extraordinary album

xp was only on one list because it's not out til next week but expect it to do well at year end

the big thief album is often awesome but it’s no capacity, that’s my story

The new Mr Fingers is pretty much what youd expect from a Mr Fingers album made in '22 but I dunno its all I want to listen to

probably voivod

Moon Tooth – Phototroph

Also one of the albums I've been listening to most tbh

For me so far it's either Nduduzo Makhathini's In the Spirit of Ntu or the posthumous Eric Wagner album, In the Lonely Light of Mourning. Runners-up: Maule, s/t; Loop, Sonancy.

Ibibio Sound Machine could be up there for me

I think the destroyer album is the one I've listened to most so far. Still waiting for an album to truly amaze me though. I've been mostly going on some deep dives on much older stuff in the last couple of months though.

Real Lies,
Modern Nature,
Mr Fingers,
Duncan Marquiss,
Lynn Avery & Cole Pulice,
Ethel Cain.

Also one of the albums I've been listening to most tbh

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Friday, June 17, 2022 1:26 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Did you notice they're playing here in Sept?

would be shocked if anything beats out Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

Top 20 so far

1. Maya Shenfeld - In Free Fall (Thrill Jockey)
2. Kevin Drumm - Future When It Comes (Self-Released)
3. Sheng Jie & Shen Jing - Parallel Weaving (WV Sorcerer)
4. Tanya Tagaq - Tongues (Six Shooter)
5. Éliane Radigue & Frédéric Blondy - Occam XXV (Organ Reframed)
6. Elías Merino & Daniel del Río - Structures for Wave Field Synthesis (Superpang)
7. Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Kaiser & Alex Varty - Pacifica Koral Reef (577)
8. Laura Cocks - Field Anatomies (Carrier)
9. Flower-Corsano Duo - Halcyon (VHF)
10. Bondi D'Incise/Blutwurst Ensemble - Zgodność (Insub)
11. Jóhann Jóhannsson - Drone Mass (Deutsche Grammophon)
12. Gábor Lázár - Boundary Object (Planet Mu)
13. Phelimuncasi - Ama Gogela (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
14. Fulu Mziki - Ngbaka EP (Moshi Moshi)
15. Keiji Haino - My Lord Music, I Most Humbly Beg Your Indulgence In The Hope That You Will Do Me The Honour Of Permitting This Seed Called Keiji Haino To Be Planted Within You (Black Editions)
16. Jim O'Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi & Joe Talia - Patrick (Self-Released)
17. Infernal Mosquitos - Antigua (Superpang)
18. Imarhan - Aboogi (City Slang)
19. Patrick Shiroshi & Jeff Tobias - Patrick Shiroshi & Jeff Tobias (Topos Press)
20. Biosphere - Shortwave Memories (Biophon)

I don't think I've heard any of that shit upthread but Huerco S. and Sault.

13. Phelimuncasi - Ama Gogela (Nyege Nyege Tapes)

Oooh, new Biosphere.

I dig some of the OP albums but Cloakroom is the one I come back to the most.

my 2022 aoty is probably _dots and loops_ by stereolab

Did you notice they're playing here in Sept?

No!

Something I didn’t mention - because it isn’t out yet - is the Prekop/McEntire LP.

Real Lies by an absolute mile. Also really like Hatchie, Melody's Echo Chamber, Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul, Foxes, Raveena, Charli XCX, Destroyer and Nilüfer Yanya.

Listening to the whole Phelimuncasi catalog right now — they're amazing.

Emily Wells' Regards to the End is worth spending time with.

while we’re doing Nyege Nyege Tapes, DJ Travella’s Mr Mixondo album is quite something too. (Tanzanian) singeli this time, not (South African) gqom.

To my amazement, there’s an actual, quite extensive Pitchfork review:
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dj-travella-mr-mixondo/
(context: I remember reading something about the Phelimuncasi album, but that “review” didn’t mention anything about the kind of music it involved)

did anyone mention finally, new by they hate change? so good

ooh this Emily Wells album is extremely my shit

I love the Taj Mahal/Ry Cooder album.

Real Lies - Lad Ash
Vitesse X - Us Ephemeral

^ this is a very bad description but the second one of those is vapourwave-adjacent dreampop meets 90s ravey stuff

Amber Mark - Three Dimensions Deep (P4k 8+)
Anitta - Versions of Me (RS BSF)
Anxious - Little Green House (SG BSF)

I assume P4k and RS is Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, but what is SG and BSF?

I think SG is Stereogum, and BSF means that the site included it in their “Best (of 2022) So Far” feature

ten I love: Mitski, Rosalia, Let's Eat Grandma, Nilufer Yanya, Adigery/Pupul, Girlpool, Billy Woods, Etran de L'Air, Tears for Fears, Amber Mark. and the 1/3 of Lad Ash I've heard, of course. also didn't get to Jazmine Sullivan or Tinashe last year so I've sorta been pretending the deluxe versions are all new.

New lists from NPR:

ALBUMS: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/28/1107438039/npr-music-favorite-albums-of-2022-so-far

TRACKS: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/27/1107322225/npr-musics-36-favorite-songs-of-2022-so-far

Factoring in NPR's list, here's how the top of my previous list changes:

Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You (10)
The Weeknd - Dawn FM (9)
Soul Glo - Diaspora Problems (9)
Rosalia - Motomami (8)
The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention (8)
Earl Sweatshirt - Sick! (7)
Wet Leg - Wet Leg (7)
Kendrick Lamar - Mr Morale & The Big Steppers (7)

Here are the albums that are only on NPR's list:

Dan Romer - Station Eleven Soundtrack
Girl Ultra - El Sur
Guitarricadelafuente - La Cantera
Harvey Sutherland - Boy
Immanuel Wilkins - The 7th Hand
Jogging House - Weight
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Drone Mass
Kojey Radical - Reason to Smile
MUNA - MUNA
Peter Cocooma - A Place to Begin
Samm Henshaw - Untidy Soul
Saya Gray - 19 Masters
Shortie No Mass - here goes nothing.
Straw Man Army - SOS
Swsh - Goodboy
X Alfonso - Ancestros Sinfónico
Yeat - 2 Alive

a lot of these don't seem like AOTY material (DawnFM? Seriously) But maybe people don't really make those anymore. I figure Kendrick will top a bunch of lists and people will complain about it.

Dawn FM is pretty good! Lopatin worked some magic. Easily the most compelling stuff I've heard from The Weeknd since the initial EP mixtapes. Agreed it won't be many people's AOTY but there are always near-universally "liked" albums that bubble to the top in group voting exercises.

i checked, it's still Rema

Straw Man Army rules! Good job, NPR.

AOTY is going to be the new Soccer Mommy, based on the singles

― boxedjoy, Friday, 17 June 2022 16:03 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was so right about this

you were!!!

wifigawd - chain of command

The 50 best albums I've heard so far this year.

Maybe it's not AOTY level, but I want to take a moment to rep for Flasher - Love is Yours which is, at the very least, a better post-punk-pop record than Wet Leg's debut (and I *like* Wet Leg). Their last one, Constant Image was my most-played album of 2018. This band is perennially under-praised, IMO.

That's a good list unperson, a few more I need to check out now and glad to see some love for that Ecstatic Vision record. I've been a big fan of them and I think the new one is one of their best.

The ILM outlier at the top of this list appears to be Soul Glo. The last post I found on the band was from 2019.

Soul Glo’s rise to hardcore heroism would be greater cause for celebration if it weren’t such a damning indictment of American society. Since forming in 2014, the Philly quartet has garnered modest acclaim for airing their righteous grievances against being both tokenized and ostracized as a Black punk band, all while sparing no detail on hypocrisy within their own community, our broken health care system, generational trauma, and the false promises of higher education and upward mobility. By the time Americans en masse were starting to admit that things were as fucked up as Soul Glo had been saying, they’d put out their first widely distributed release, Songs to Yeet at the Sun, in November 2020. The message hadn’t changed, but more people were actually willing to listen. Nearly two years later, none of Soul Glo’s calls for political action have been answered in a meaningful way. “It’s been ‘fuck right wing’ off the rip/But still liberals are more dangerous,” Pierce Jordan snarls midway through Soul Glo’s staggering new album, Diaspora Problems, a ticking time bomb hurled by a band tired of waiting on solutions and taking power into its own hands. - Ian Cohen @p4k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4vNQ3vEy24

The brand-new Kabza De Small album, KOA II, Part 1, is a likely candidate too.

― butt-mooning is a polysemous word, hoss! (breastcrawl), vrijdag 17 juni 2022 10:18

no kidding

Wormrot are an amazing grindcore band from Singapore; Hiss, which came out on Friday, is their first album in six years, and it's definitely going to be on my year-end list. This video is for three tracks from the album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVk_C_wp1j0

Sick video.

I don't know what my favorites are in general yet, but here is what I've bought physical copies of this year

Horsegirl - Versions Of Modern Performance
Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul - Topical Dancer
P.E. - The Leather Lemon
NoSo - Stay Proud Of Me
Soccer Mommy - Sometimes, Forever
Kat Frankie - Shiny Things
Yumi Zouma - Present Tense
Jackie Cohen - Pratfall
Cate Le Bon - Pompeii
Tallies - Patina
Twen - One Stop Shop
Phoebe Green - Lucky Me
Flasher - Love Is Yours
Mitski - Laurel Hell
Maita - I Just Want To Be Wild For You
Maren Morris - Humble Quest
The Afghan Whigs - How Do You Burn?
Cécile McLorin Salvant - Ghost Song
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down

Oh, and these, which haven't arrived yet...

First Aid Kit - Palomino
Julianna Riolino - All Blue
Warhaus - Ha Ha Heartbreak

An adjunct list to the immediate ones I mentioned upthread. Unranked because haven't really listened to them repeatedly:

Beach House - Once Twice Melody
Blushing - Possessions
Cloakroom - Dissolution Wave
Elkhorn - Distances
Ghost Woman - s-t
Gwenno - Tresor
King Hannah - I'm Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me
Loop - Sonancy
Marisa Anderson - Still, Here
Naujawanan Baidar - Khedmat Be Khalq
Onyon - s-t
The Routes - The Twang Machine
Sault - everything they've released this year
Shearwater - The Great Awakening
The Soundcarriers - Wilds
Viagra Boys - Cave World
Wet Leg - s-t
50 Foot Wave - Black Pearl

There's a lot more I've bought and listened to this year, but they're all folks who just keep on keeping on. Sure, I like the new BJM, Spiritualized, Robyn Hitchcock, Graham Day, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, albums a lot but it's not like I'm going to put them on a list.

In lieu of posting a first draft of my ILXOR ballot I'll pretend this is the "77 voting recommendations" thread and mention a few albums that have received little to no attention here or elsewhere (as far as I know):

Lady Wray - Piece Of Me - Nicole Wray of "Make It Hot" fame continues what she started with the Lady s/t in 2013 and her own album Queen Alone in 2016 - comforting, warm, accomplished soul.

Eliza and the Delusionals - Now And Then - I started a thread for this and unfortunately it received no replies, but despite that silence I am continuing to enjoy this debut from these Australian nostalgists. Widescreen dreampop that takes the Sixpence None The Richer sound and runs with it, as many others have this year.

Say She She - Prism - I've found it hard to place this, but I feel like it sits at the intersection of a host of ILM vectors - Lady Wray herself might be one, but also Natalie Prass, We Are King, Emily King, Kadhja Bonet, that short-lived band Juce, Esperanza Spalding when she's in a more straightforward mode, etc. Their band name is horrible and the album is on the short side, but it's lovely to listen to and hard to fault.

renforshort - dear amelia is my pick for 2022's best imitation of Olivia Rodrigo's SOUR.

Finally, Javiera Mena - Nocturna has the feel of a compilation for me as I'd previously rinsed so many of its component tracks, some of which were released years ago, but at the same time I wouldn't begrudge anyone calling it her best album and if pushed I might give it that description myself. A banger-a-thon that concludes with the song she tried to enter Eurovision with and its spooky-ooky organ solo.

Xp Elvis Telecom thanks for the Teri Gender Bender rec. This shit is unreal.

Still mulling my list but it will def include:

Yeule - Glitch Princess
Death's Dynamic Shroud - Darklife
Arp - New Pleasures
Emily Wells - Regards to the End

Plus previously mentioned Richard/Zahn, Soccer Mommy, Horsegirl, Beth Orton et al.

Definitely a strong year for releases.

Teri Gender Bender - COMPLEXIFY EPs (putting them all together, they will easily be my #1 for the year)

Ooh, didn't realize she had something new out.

My longlist at the moment (mostly metal-adjacent)

Autopsy – Morbidity Triumphant
The Beths – Expert in a Dying Field
Chat Pile – God’s Country
Cloakroom – Dissolution Wave
Cloud Rat – Threshold
Desiccation – Cold Dead Earth
Early Moods – Early Moods
Fellowship – The Saberlight Chronicles
Ghost – Impera
Martha – Please Don’t Take Me Back
Moon Tooth – Phototroph
Moonlight Sorcery - Piercing Through the Frozen Eternity
Negative Plane – The Pact…
Satan – Earth Infernal
Sloan – Steady
Sumerlands – Dreamkiller
Sunrise Patriot Motion – Black Fellflower Stream
Voivod – Synchro Anarchy
Vórtize – ¡Tienes Que Luchar!
Wormrot – Hiss

Favourite tracks: “Toma Acción” by Vórtize, “Wolven Hour” by Moonlight Sorcery

Xp Elvis Telecom thanks for the Teri Gender Bender rec. This shit is unreal.

I need to start a thread. I love the Le Butcherettes albums, but these new EPs are something else

My favourite 2022 album that hasn't been mentioned on this thread is Marlon Williams' My Boy. Up until now, he's been a serious-minded country crooner, but on his third album, he's discovered a sense of fun.

This is one of my favourites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhaZBN3m2EI

nice, alex cameron vibes

I don't believe the new Cass McCombs has been mentioned?

apart from that I highly recommend Glass Horizon by Precipitation, lovely ambient bobbins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEdP99xQCEM

In no particular order,new records by:

Weyes Blood
Big Thief
Black Midi
BCNR
Alvvays

Honorable mention:

Ethel Cain

Wizkid - More Love Less Ego
Homeboy Sandman - Still Champion
Horse Lords - Comradely Objects
Floating Points - Whatever the album is called, the EP of singles is great

I just got through a second play but Nicola Cruz's Fabric mix is a motherfucker and likely to get in the mix

Also big late pass but I've got Ryuichi Sakamoto's Revenant OST on heavy play the last two weeks

Finally checking out the Guitarricadelafuente album that was only listed on NPR's Mid-Year list, and it's a really lovely, unassuming folk pop record with a unique mix of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, mostly in Spanish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aA90hkaCXs

Couldn't put my finger on it at first, but reminds me of C. Tangana's El Madrileño. Traditional Spanish music with modern updates that are mostly successful.

I haven't played anything else as frequently as Loop's Sonancy all year.

In lieu of posting a first draft of my ILXOR ballot I'll pretend this is the "77 voting recommendations" thread and mention a few albums that have received little to no attention here or elsewhere (as far as I know):

Lady Wray - Piece Of Me - Nicole Wray of "Make It Hot" fame continues what she started with the Lady s/t in 2013 and her own album Queen Alone in 2016 - comforting, warm, accomplished soul.

Eliza and the Delusionals - Now And Then - I started a thread for this and unfortunately it received no replies, but despite that silence I am continuing to enjoy this debut from these Australian nostalgists. Widescreen dreampop that takes the Sixpence None The Richer sound and runs with it, as many others have this year.

Say She She - Prism - I've found it hard to place this, but I feel like it sits at the intersection of a host of ILM vectors - Lady Wray herself might be one, but also Natalie Prass, We Are King, Emily King, Kadhja Bonet, that short-lived band Juce, Esperanza Spalding when she's in a more straightforward mode, etc. Their band name is horrible and the album is on the short side, but it's lovely to listen to and hard to fault.

renforshort - dear amelia is my pick for 2022's best imitation of Olivia Rodrigo's SOUR.

Finally, Javiera Mena - Nocturna has the feel of a compilation for me as I'd previously rinsed so many of its component tracks, some of which were released years ago, but at the same time I wouldn't begrudge anyone calling it her best album and if pushed I might give it that description myself. A banger-a-thon that concludes with the song she tried to enter Eurovision with and its spooky-ooky organ solo.

― monotony, Friday, November 4, 2022 2:39 AM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hey monotony! I saw an upcoming listing for Say She She at a local club, and for whatever reason decided to check out their record. Holy shit, I love this album! Then I came to see if anyone at ILM had been talking about them and it turns out that it's pretty much just you. As a gesture of solidarity, I'll check out your other picks from this post.

Anyone else who's reading the 2022 AOTY thread in 2023, give Say She She a shot!