My Favourite Music of 2023
Sorry, my favourite-music-of-the-year post is shorter than usual because my book* is due in a month (and I’ve left the hardest parts to the end). But I did create a playlist, which you can listen to on Apple Music or Spotify, and that’s more useful because as the old saying goes, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
The playlist includes songs from boygenius, The Clientele, Indigo De Souza, Feist, Fenne Lily, Jason Isbell, Sufjan Stevens and many more. One selection comes from our this-shouldn’t-work-but-it-does department: on Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, Chan Marshall recreates the famous Dylan concert, which was actually recorded in Manchester (though she did hers at the Royal Albert Hall).
I’ve also included songs from the two albums The National put out, both of which were… fine. But not as good as I’d hoped. Speaking of dad rock, I really liked Wilco’s Cousin. Apparently, no one else did, though, as I’ve heard nobody talk about it—unlike those National albums—and saw it on no best-of lists.
Perhaps my favourite album of the year was a reissue. The remix of the righteously named Tim made the brilliant 1985 album by the Replacements sound brand new. I spent a lot of time enjoying it.
* My next book, Windfall, is about Viola MacMillan and the biggest mining scandal of the 1960s. It will be out in February 2025