Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order. These albums, released in 2023 are simply chosen for their strength of songwriting, quality of performance and innovation, but there are hundreds more of note on the Albums section, and many more still to discover via New Songs with Song of The Day, but also includes embedded albums and EPs. Please dip in to the links, enjoy and explore, and in comments add your own favourites and new discoveries.
Mokoomba: Tusona - Tracings In The Sand
A gloriously uplifting release by the collective from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, joined by the horns of Ghanaian highlife band Santrofi in celebratory songs inspired by Makisi dance gatherings and sung in various languages - Tonga, Luvale, Shona, Nyanja and even Lingala.
Blur: The Ballad of Darren
Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and co return with their ninth LP, and first since 2015, a reflective, melancholy mostly slow-paced release of vivid, wistful beauty.
Palehound: Eye On The Bat
Brooklyn’s El Kempner returns with a new selection of passionate, intelligent, punchy indie-folk with songs about illusions shattering, the before and after, raw nerves and propulsive instrumentation.
ANOHNI and the Johnsons: My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
Taking a new direction the last LP, 2016’s Hopelessness, the artist formerly known as Antony Hegarty releases a gorgeously tender soul album inspired by the sound of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.
PJ Harvey: I Inside The Old Year Dying
Seven years after The Hope Six Demolition Project album, Polly returns with mysterious, experimental, beautiful, alluring release in which she adapts poems from her book Orlam into songs immersed in the otherworld-underworld of her home Dorset countryside, laced with local dialect and unusual acoustic instruments.
Do Nothing: Snake Sideways
Wonderfully offbeat, playful, original, witty post-punk with superb, sweeping melodies, warped experimental guitar, swinging, alternative rhythms, and laced with wry, clever ironic lyrics in this dynamic debut by the Nottingham quartet.
Bonnie Prince Billy: Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You
A sublimely beautiful, poetic, delicate and profound new LP by American singer-songwriter Will Oldham, his first since 2019’s I Made a Place and the collaborative albums of 2021 – Superwolves with Matt Sweeney and Blind Date Party with Bill Callahan.
Dot Allison: Consciousology
With easily the most beautiful and delicate LP of that week’s releases, the Scottish singer-multi-instrumentalist returns with a gorgeous blend of psych-folk, her gentle voice poetically capturing nature’s patterns with threads of orchestral strings, electronica, and some guest guitar by Ride’s Andy Bell,
Corinne Bailey Rae: Black Rainbows
A landmark of powerful storytelling and songwriting in this fourth album by the Leeds-born singer with songs inspired by immersion into a rich collection of art, books and artefacts about Black history organised by Theaster Gates at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago.
CLT DRP: Nothing Clever, Just Feelings
Brilliantly original and fresh post- and dance-punk and electro-pop by the Brighton band with songs about heartbreak and queerness, feminism, vulnerability and gender fluidity, packed with unique sounds, passion and humour.
Róisín Murphy: Hit Parade
Social media controversies aside, the Irish singer-songwriter’s collaboration with German producer DJ Koze is a mesmerically inventive, intimate, candid exploration of funk, pop, disco and house, skilfully pushed through an wonderfully warped aural lens of vocal effects and sounds.
Yussef Dayes: Black Classical Music
Taking a title cue from Miles Davis, a brilliant, landmark 19-track debut LP by the supremely gifted British jazz drummer variously exploring and re-interpreting many sides of 70s funk, reggae and Afrobeat, joined by a stellar group of musicians and vocalists.
Slowdive: Everything Is Alive
The classic British shoegaze band of the 1990s return again after 2017’s self-titled comeback, resurgent with a new and old audience, blending dream-pop haze with resonant, atmospheric, noise-guitar textures.
eee gee: SHE-REX
Packed with smart, witty lyrics and an eclectic mix of dreamy pop, disco, folk and electronica, a wonderful new melodious LP by the smooth-voiced Danish artist Emma Grankvist from Copenhagen.
Danger Mouse and Jemini The Gifted One - Born Again
Delayed by almost two decades, but worth the wait, this stylish hip-hop follow-up to 2003’s acclaimed Ghetto Pop Life LP is a second collaboration between producer Brian Burton and New York MC.
The Pretenders: Relentless
Rolling back the years to their early new wave 80s heyday, a fabulously strong 12th album by Chrissie Hynde and co, packed with strong songwriting, her powerful vocal presence and a top-notch songwriting partnership with the versatile guitarist James Walbourne.
Mitski: The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We
With one of the purest voices around, a sublime seventh album by the Japanese-American artist – slow, powerful, dreamy country-flecked pop with orchestra, themed around troubled love and coloured with animal-themed metaphors.
Nitin Sawhney: Identity
The acclaimed British-Asian musician returns with a powerful LP themed very much as titled, and spurred by burning issues over how immigrants are portrayed, presents 17 tracks on different sides of heritage, sense of self, belonging and multiculturalism, with an impressive set of guest singers and rappers.
The Rolling Stones: Hackney Diamonds
A rock dinosaurs’ indulgent dirge? Far from it. This first LP of new material by the veterans for 18 years, and perhaps their final one, goes with a bang – echoing some of their 70s rock, blues, and country infused pomp.
Ren: Sick Boi
An outstanding LP by the remarkably talented Welsh, Brighton-based singer-songwriter rapper and guitarist Ren Gill, influenced by years of bed-ridden mental and physical illness, expressing caustic, self-torn schizophrenia, his songs are packed with wordplay, wit, catchy tunes, gut-wrenching emotion and invention.
CMAT: Crazymad, For Me
Following her acclaimed 2022 debut, Dublin’s Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson returns with luxuriant, catchy country-pop decorated with her biting, candid, self-deprecatory wit on relationship fragility, packed with highly specific pop culture or British references.
Goat: Medicine
Another wonderfully indulgent dosage of meaty psychedelic folk rock from the mysterious, masked Swedish collective from Norrbotten County, with nods to Black Sabbath and other forbears, and certain fungal mitochondria.
Creation Rebel: Hostile Environment
After recent late-career records by Horace Andy and African Head Charge, another great release on the On-U Sound label, a first by the reggae collective for 40 years, responding to the ongoing unjust Tory UK immigration policy, first introduced by former home secretary and then PM Theresa May.
Hania Rani: Ghosts
The Berlin-based Polish singer, pianist and composer returns with her bewitching voice, elevating, ethereal, minimalistic, ambient electronica and classical, with guests Patrick Watson, Ólafur Arnalds and Duncan Bellamy of Portico Quartet.
Sufjan Stevens: Javelin
After a series of collaborative and more experimental projects, the American artist’s first full singer-songwriter solo LP since 2015’s remarkable Carrie & Lowell is just as exquisite, delicate, tender, and beautifully heartbreaking.
Anjimile: The King
A breathtaking, beautiful, powerful, intimate fifth album by the American experimental folk singer Anjimile Chithambo whose rich, rangey, deep and high voice has an alluring androgyny, somewhere between Nina Simone and Sufjan Stevens.
Beirut: Hadsel
A joyous, tremulously beautiful, restorative new LP by New Mexico’s Zach Condon, the title after old wooden church on the Norwegian island of Hadseløya from which he recovered his physical and mental health after pre-Covid career-threatening throat problems.
David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse (featuring Raven Violet)
After many collaborative projects, a brilliant first full solo album by the Belfast producer and musician since 2008’s The Holy Pictures, here featuring the vocals of Raven Violet throughout, this passionate, powerful, often political noir-synth pop release charts the unravelling of British society over the past decade.
King Creosote: I DES
Fife’s Kenny Anderson returns with his first solo LP for seven years, a glorious, delicate warm, eccentric release of indie-folk, vibraphones, accordions, e-bows, samplers, ungulates, scratched records and wine glass-drones.
Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee: Los Angeles
The ex-Cure drummer and the acclaimed percussionist of Siouxsie, Creatures and other bands team up with the Irish producer for a wonderfully rhythmic, sharply witty, krautrock-style/synth pop-punk fusion with guest vocalists including LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy.
FIZZ: The Secret To Life
Joyously playful, colourful, flamboyant, humorous, dynamic, grandiose but also tender pop-rock by the supergroup of solo artists, Orla Gartland, dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown, whose vocal harmonies exude emotion, but also unsinkable joie-de-vivre.
Black Pumas: Chronicles of a Diamond
A sparkling, superb retro soul-gospel follow-up to their 2019 debut by Texan guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada and singer-songwriter Eric Burton whose soaring, high voice sizzles with these excellent numbers.
Sofia Kourtesis: Madres
A joyous, life-affirming new LP of richly layered alternative dancefloor with twinkling synths, voices and beats by the Berlin-based Peruvian artist, in an LP dedicated to her mother and neurosurgeon Peter Vajkoczy who saved her life.
Bas Jan: Back To The Swamp
This third album by the quartet fronted by singer and harpist Serafina Steer, is another wittily droll, darkly humorous collection about love and modern life’s absurdities and mundanities, with influences from The Pet Shop Boys, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kate Bush, Heaven 17 and even a referential shake of Salt N Pepa.
Soema Montenegro: Círculo Radiante
The Argentinian singer, poet-shaman and social activist’s fifth album brings out her powerful, passionate voice with a backdrop of traditional folk alongside electronica in a beautiful, entrancing release radiant with the sun and South American music.
Peter Gabriel: i/o
Strong, powerful, broad in scope, but also warm, tender emotional songs abound in this impressive, expansive return by the British artist with his first LP of new work in 21 years, with many great collaborators including co-producer Brian Eno, each of the 12 tracks has both Bright-Side and Dark-Side stereo mixes.
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