The GB Album Club Presents... What's Your Favorite Album That You've Listened To This Year?

Duders! While we at GB Album Club get our shit together (we're starting properly next week as we continue to build the pool), we figured we'd do a bit of bridge post while we get our final ducks in a row. So...

What's the best thing you've listened to this year?

Was it a new album? Was it an old album? Was it a little bit of both? Write about! Discourse about art and all that good shit.

And while we're at it, come on down to the GB Album Club Discord if you want to submit an album or two (*ahem @zombiepie*)! We're doing a themeless chaos cycle this time so you can literally submit whatever you want.

I got the 10th Anniversary version of Random Access Memories, so I guess it's both new and old. I never got the original, so I didn't listen to the full album until this year. It's exceptional and the 2nd disc is a fun bonus.

I’ve been trying to catch up on all the 2022 albums I missed so I haven’t gotten through much, but “This Stupid World” by Yo La Tengo is top of my list. You can really get lost in it, it feels like driving on a hot summer night.

2023 Stuff

Here's a big ol' list of every 2023 album I've listened to that I liked, with an occasional thought or two. The bold ones are the ones I really love, but I recommend them all:

- Alice Longyu Gao, Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn, and Retire (EP)

Just a completely bonkers pop EP. I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing of the year, but it's definitely the thing I've listened to the most.

- Amaarae, Fountain Baby

- billy woods & Kenny Segal, Maps

- Caroline Polacheck, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You

- feeble little horse, Girl with Fish

- grouptherapy., i was mature for my age, but i was still a kid

- HMLTD, The Worm

Fantano's wrong on this one.

- JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown, SCARING THE HOES

- Kelela, Raven

- El Michels Affair & Black Thought, Glorious Game

- IDK, F65

- Jessie Ware, That! Feels Good!

- Kara Jackson, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love

- Killer Mike, MICHAEL

- King Krule, Space Heavy

- Lana Del Rey, Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd

I have a weird relationship with Lana. I like Lana when she's at her most ridiculous and cartoonish, and because of that, I didn't connect with Norman Fucking Rockwell and her later albums that fellow music snobs sincerely like. (There seems to be a distinction between the Born to Die Lana fans and the basically-anything-post-Ultraviolence Lana fans. Or at least it seems that way to me because I was in college when Born to Die came out and it was inescapable.) But Ocean Blvd is the first of her actually good albums that's worked for me. A perfect balance of that Canyon aesthetic she's been chasing and over-the-top romanticizing of self-destructive love. What's not to love?

- Lil Ugly Mane, Singles

- Lil Yachty, Let’s Start Here.

- Lonnie Holley, Oh Me Oh My

- McKinley Dixon, Beloved! Paradise!Jazz!?

If I had to pick an actual favorite album of the year so far, it would be this one. McKinley Dixon's been on my radar since For My Momma and Anyone Who Look Like Her, so I pounced at this release like a cheetah. The same kind of sense of introspection and personality as the first album. The same seemingly endless search for inner peace. The same heartbreak. The same sense of joy and warmth, as well as the same sense of innovation. But more so. Way more.

- Meshell Ndegeocello, The Omnichord Real Book

Most slept on album of the year so far. Riveting blend of jazz, soul, electronic, and just about everything in between. And yet, somehow, it feels perfectly cohesive and focused.

- Miya Folick, ROACH

- Navy Blue, Ways of Knowing

- Nia Archives, Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall (EP)

- Paramore, This Is Why

- Tony Molina, In the Fade

- Tyler, the Creator, The Estate Sale

- Yaeji, With a Hammer

- Yaya Bey, Exodus the North Star (EP)

- Young Fathers, Heavy Heavy

- Yves Tumor, Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)

- Zulu, A New Tomorrow

- 100 gecs, 10,000 gecs

Non-2023 Albums

Here's a list of some of the non-2023 albums that have stood out to me the most.

- The Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas

I have no one to blame but myself for waiting so long to finally give this album a shot. Turns out it's as great as everyone says it is!

- Gorilla Biscuits, Start Today

My roommate spent his whole life in the LA hardcore scene, and now he does tour management for a living. This is one of the albums that he talks about a lot. I gave it a shot. When someone more knowledgeable on a genre you like gives you a recommendation, you should act on it.

- Burial, Untrue

Truth be told, the "album you never got around to" cycle of the GB Album filled in a ton of important blind spots for me. Black Sabbath and Gary Numan and so much more. But even though it wasn't my favorite of the cycle, this is the one from that cycle I return to the most. I've really fallen in love with it. Shout out to @dain22.

- Lil Ugly Mane, Mista Thug Isolation

Take horrorcore rap of the 90s. Your Mystic Stylez era Three 6 Mafia and stuff like that. Now drag it through miles and miles of internet sludge. That's basically what Mista Thug Isolation is like.

Been mainly going through the early '70s via besteveralbums this year. Here's a rough top 10:

Comus - First Utterance

Beach Boys - Surf's Up

Yes - The Yes Album and Close to the Edge

Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink

Gil Scott-Heron - Pieces of a Man

Chico Buarque - Construcao

Sly & The Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On

David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name

Paul McCartney - Ram

Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson

@alianger: Yo, that Sly and that Gil Scott-Heron tho

The Northern Boys!! They've only released singles so far.

Voyager - Fearless Love

Ulthar - Anthronomicon & Helionomicon (2 separate albums released at the same time)

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation

Sanguisugabogg - Homicidal Ecstasy

Immortal - War Against All

Enforcer - Nostalgia

Hellripper - Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags

I haven't listened to enough full albums this year to really have much input, but as far as singles, don't sleep on Satin Jackets and Tailor's "Somewhere in Paradise." That is a smooth, immensely danceable song and one of the best earworms I've heard in years.

Edited to say I did really like July Talk's "Remember Never Before." It doesn't have the manic energy of their previous albums but it's a matured album in every way, and a hell of a smooth, thoughtful listen.

Thinking about just albums that were released in 2023, it's definitely Fake Names' Expendables. If anyone is a fan of Cyberpunk 2077's Samurai (Swedish punk rock band Refused), Fake Names is the lead singer Dennis Lyxzen's pop punk project. I am especially fond of the song "Can't Take It", which effortlessly mashes up the kind of politically-driven catharsis Refused is known for with catchy and infectious pop elements. It's more of an earworm than its lyrical theme might let on. 😂