Best Albums of 2022
Ants From Up There – Black Country, New Road
Ants From Up There is a masterpiece of a record. The first few seconds of the “Intro” strings set the tone for the record before catapulting into “Chaos Space Marine” — the stage is set for theatrics and melodrama, but not at the expense of crushing vulnerability. It’s hard to not be grossly complementary, but it is a perfect record. There’s an immense sense of catharsis at moments, a soul crushing painfulness at others. It’s an album that deals with heartbreak and its various forms. It’s also tragically prophetic with its symbolism of the Concord — a revolutionary creation that burned too bright and then burnt out. With their lead singer Isaac Wood departing the band publicly during the release of the record, the band has now entered a new era (one that by the looks of the slew of sold out shows worldwide seems to be on a great path). Ants From Up There remains a treasured time capsule of a truly prolific band coming into their own and for the first and only time sharing that with their audience. — Lauren Khalfayan, Managing Editor
Talk Talk Talk – The Paranoyds
The Paranoyds’ sophomore LP quickly earned its place as a modern new wave gem. Expertly juxtaposing the boisterous enthusiasm of a day at the beach with outright apocalyptic attitudes, Talk Talk Talk darkens dayglo soundscapes with creeping shadows that stretch from the edge of the frame like ominous vignettes on a freshly developed Polaroid.
The ability to contrast casual nihilism with wide-eyed wonderment is one of the band’s hallmarks and a product of their Los Angeles environment; immeasurable beauty balanced precipitously on the edge of civilization, expertly conveying these cultural contradictions with the sensation of sunbathing in the blinding flash of nuclear annihilation. It’s not all widescreen philosophizing, however, as The Paranoyds are equally adept at telling truly personal stories, intricate intimacies rendered amongst the impending bleakness that injects Talk Talk Talk with a compelling sense of undeniable humanity. — Clayton Pacelli, Associate Editor
Anywhere But Here – Sorry
Anywhere But Here is further proof of Sorry’s enviable and infuriating skill. From front to back, it’s both dark and vibrant, exhilarating and heartbreaking. Sorry have truly used every color in their emotional and creative palette to paint an auditory and visual masterpiece that’s representative of coming of age and all the accompanying pains and joys.
Starting off with one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, “Let The Lights On” shows Sorry at their most fun and spilling over with wild abandon. There is hope and optimism to the track that rivals the dance club anthems concocted by the likes of Robyn. London appears in full force as a main character on the record — most notably on “Key To The City”; a character whose force is as overwhelming and all encompassing as an ex whose memory haunts and taunts you at every turn. Another standout is “Closer”. A typical one step forward, three steps back conundrum, it’s about being trapped between who you’ve been, who you are, who you are becoming, and if any of those people are who you want to be.
Musically, the album is stunning — the mix of grunge and pop and trip hop is captivating and earwormy. What is maybe even more striking are the emotional chords that Sorry plucks so vigorously, throughout. It’s an album that you feel with your whole heart and body. While the band goes through their own journeys, so does the listener. It rips your heart out, but you know you can piece it back together again, even if haphazardly. — Lauren Khalfayan
Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile – Pretty Sick
I experienced an immense sense of nostalgia upon discovering Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile. Which is not a phenomenon I’ve traditionally experienced with new records, but this album is one that took me back in time to when music first began to profoundly resonate with me — my adolescence. That’s not to say Makes Me Sick… is immature, but rather that it taps into the unbridled, uncontrollable emotional rollercoaster of that time in your life. With influences like Hole and dare I say Avril Lavigne up her sleeve, Sabrina Fuentes is raw and angsty while simultaneously delivering pop riffs that you can’t shake.
“Yeah You” is a perfect album opener as it creates vignettes of Fuentes’ world through Tompkins Square park and beyond. “Self Fulfilling Prophecy” is genuinely very sad and brilliant. It’s exactly the kind of record both my younger and current self can fall completely in love with. — Lauren Khalfayan
DECIDE – Djo
Djo’s DECIDE might be my album of the year. It’s not what I listened to the most, but it’s all hits no skips. It’s funky and it’s cheeky; it’s smart without trying to be too smart. The lyrics are straightforward but not in a way that feels like it’s on the cusp of being overdone (a la Phoebe Bridgers). On the lead single “Gloom,” a true standout with an absolutely stellar driving baseline and tension in the vocal delivery, you get, “I know my hair looked good in the bathroom at the bar, turns out I left my wallet in the bathroom bar. That’s life, that’s death.” Every song becomes slightly different than what you would have expected at its start, and it leaves you thinking, “that’s just too good.” — Grace Eire, Associate Editor
Household Name – Momma
So many songs on Household Name had an absolute chokehold on me this year. “Speeding 72” has one of the best riffs of all time. Momma balance this insane catchiness with their carefree style vocals while also singing about how much they give a shit about making it big and all together it’s a perfect mix. The melodies they write genuinely shift an emotional chord inside you — mostly one that mimics the feeling of exhilaration — but whether it’s chorus of “Motorbike” or “Medicine” it’s always present in a new way. — Lauren Khalfayan
Ali – Vieux Farka Toure and Khruangbin
Son of renowned Malian bluesman Ali Farka Touré, Vieux Farka Touré follows closely in his father’s footsteps as one of his nation’s more prominent singer-guitarists. In tribute to the impact his father made as a global ambassador for Malay culture and music, Vieux Farka Touré enlisted the aid of Austin, Texas psychonatus Khruangbin on a collection of remarkable covers that reinterpret selections from his father’s catalog with a modern touch and immeasurable reverence.
Ali is a laidback, almost meditative album that fully embraces an otherworldly atmosphere of floating freeform through soundscapes that pulse and swell with a softly glowing warmth. Vieux Farka Touré’s voice sits back in the mix, allowing Khruangbin’s considerable skill at crafting compelling compositions to form a solid base upon which Touré layers his own instrumentation to mesmerizing effect. Easily working their way into the mainstream, it’s a testament to Khruangbin’s skill as musicians that allows them to not only share the spotlight with another artist, but to almost fade away completely into the background – allowing the primary star to shine on their own, supported by a platform of adjacent familiarity that opens the doorway to wider recognition and well-deserved attention. — Clayton Pacelli
No Luck – Death Lens
Bursting with bravado and overflowing with heart, Death Lens’ No Luck might be one of the most underrated releases of 2022. In a time when Turnstile’s candy-coated hardcore is taking the world by storm Death Lens take a similar approach but without sacrificing street-smart sensibilities.
No Luck is an absolute bruiser that merges muscular posturing with moments of frank honesty that jostle and shove up against each other in a high-impact mosh of unrelenting magnitude. Embracing a sense of workmanlike authenticity is key to the album’s success, expressing the blue-collar frustrations of this young generation grappling with a system that is inherently rigged against the have-nots but maintaining an ever-hopeful eye on a future where the struggle eases just enough to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of one’s labor. Debut albums are rarely this strong, and if No Luck serves as any indication Death Lens seem fully poised to confidently push their way to the front, which is exactly where the band deserves to be. — Clayton Pacelli
Best Live Acts of 2022
The Dare
Seeing The Dare perform in an ungodly hot converted gallery space to celebrate the release of “Girls” was one of my favorite shows of the year. The whole evening was a sight to behold. Opening act, Shallowhalo, had an artist on stage doing multi-colored portraits of the band and hanging them up on the wall behind the stage as they performed. The room was packed and sweltering and no one seemed to care. With a lukewarm corona in hand, the sound guy smoking a cig as he surveyed the room, a man I have to assume works there offering everyone free tequila shots and repeatedly asking if we were having fun, and an industrial fan in the back of the venue trying to provide some sort of refuge, it felt like we were in a strange, but really fun, circle of hell.
When the now infamous track hit at the end of the night, the crowd erupted. The Dare’s Harrison Patrick Smith flailed recklessly as people screamed along in lyrical step — the room flooded with fog, strobes, and sweat.
“Girls” leans into excess, clichés, debauchery, lust, messiness, and total abandon and the release show followed suit. It was perfectly captured chaos in the best way possible. — Lauren Khalfayan
Amyl and The Sniffers
Amyl and the Sniffers’ behemoth of an LP Comfort To Me abruptly launched the scruffy Aussie four-piece into the absolute stratosphere of rock n roll notoriety, embarking on a seemingly endless world tour that delivered their riotous set and boundless energy to stages at nearly every corner of the globe.
After an extensive period touring the US for nearly all of 2022, the band concluded the year’s American dates at The Observatory North Park in San Diego with a rowdy set that wielded their inherent ferocity with the subtlety of a bunt instrument aimed squarely at the head. To see this band perform is to bear witness to the elemental ferocity of a whirling dervish tearing across desert sands in a manic maelstrom of barely contained typhoon intensity.
Despite the rawness of their sound and often imprecision of their playing, Amyl and the Sniffers temper their aggressive onslaught with an exceedingly sharp sense of nuance that flexes the grey matter with the same lean athleticism as the band’s frontwoman. It would be easy to simply make loud, high-energy music but to do so while taking a stance on truly big issues is a Herculean feat that Amyl and The Sniffers achieve with resounding significance. — Clayton Pacelli
Shame
I was lucky enough to see Shame at Truck Fest in the UK and seeing them on their own turf was an unreal experience. It was the first time I had seen them in years because of the pandemic and it was well worth the wait. I do think they are genuinely one of the best live bands (and honestly just bands period) out there. Charlie Steen radiates with intensity, but his showmanship all comes from what feels like a completely authentic place. It’s not calculated or put on. It’s out of the pure necessity to get that emotion out of his body. Josh Finnerty runs around like a madman on stage, uncaring if his bass gets unplugged, adding to the sense of chaos that’s mirrored by the trashing of the crowd. Steen is an almost godlike/cult-leader in how he can walk on top of crowd and command them with his hand like a maestro. All of this and the music is all-time. Particularly stoked on the new material and what’s to come. — Lauren Khalfayan
Turnstile
I never got to see Turnstile play a smaller show and that’s something that I’’ll always regret. After seeing them freezing cold at Brooklyn Mirage, soaked like a rat in the pit, I got tickets to see them again immediately, for both nights in Boston. You need at least two shows – one to let it rip in the pit and one to actually watch the show, 6-minute drum solo and all. A totally immaculate performance that wills you to buy a $50 pink plushie. — Grace Eire
Slift
It’s an uncommon occurrence when a band has built up such considerable momentum domestically without ever having played a single show in the US. Such was the case for Slift, a French power-trio whose mythic space rock exploits have garnered considerable acclaim since emerging in 2015. Embarking on their first tour of American soil with a sold-out show at Los Angeles’ The Echo as part of Desert Daze 2022’s slate of warm-up gigs, Slift handily proved to an enthusiastic crowd that space is indeed the place.
Slift’s holy trinity moved with lightspeed precision, full-on warp factor 10 as time and space appeared to bend and flex to the will of these unspeakably talented musicians, wizards of sound bestowing a glimpse of the terrifying beauty that exists just beyond the rim of event horizon. Conjuring the music of the spheres themselves, Slift’s mesmerizing mastery seemed drawn from the pages of the deepest arcana, beyond the comprehension of the mere mortals caught in the unavoidable path of wonderous infinity.
In turns monumentally thunderous and indescribably magnificent, Slift expertly pushes the definition of space rock well beyond its science fiction tendencies, blending unspeakable Eldritch horror with terrestrial influences that fleetingly touch upon regional sounds from the Middle East and North Africa without getting caught within the confines of convention. Perhaps it is this inherent adoption of a galaxy of stylistic approaches that allows Slift to so convincingly construct a reality of their own making, one that informs and explains the wildly diverse crowd that had gathered this evening to witness what is truly a first contact event. — Clayton Pacelli
Death Lens
For a band so early in their career it’s remarkable how fit and polished Death Lens presents themselves, both compositionally and as consummate performers. A regular fixture at The Echo, Death Lens plays to the strengths afforded by having the home-field advantage, whipping a crowd of friends, family, and fans alike into a frothing frenzy of sweat and limbs surging at the foot of the stage. It’s in these moments that the power of a supportive scene truly shines, allowing an already promising band to easily find their footing as a creative force with the comforting knowledge that their community will be there to catch them should they take a dive.
A band of brothers in absolute lock-step, Death Lens move with a synchronization born from camaraderie– part band, part gang, part extension of the environment each member calls home – a wholly complete expression of the thoughts and emotions of a generation coming of age amongst the tumbling refuse and glittering excess of a city eternally teetering on the brink of unmitigated success and total collapse. As a performance, a Death Lens show is best experienced in the pit, one among many pushing back against the void with brilliant enthusiasm that truly communicates the unbeatable strength that lies in united numbers. — Clayton Pacelli
Top Tracks of 2022
Not necessarily new shit, but shit we were into this year