The Best Albums of September 2023

It’s a broken record thing to say, but September came and went quicker than ever this year. It did give us five Fridays of new music to get lost in, though, and that’s what matters most! The heat is slowly dissipating, but the albums keep getting better. This month offered us everything from synth-pop soaked in 1980s gloss, a heart-wrenching country joint, lo-fi indie rock laced with hip-hop backbeats and, of course, a near-masterpiece from one of the best working bands in the world. From a great sophomore record from Slow Pulp to Mitski’s poised and grand return to Slowdive’s glorious next chapter, let’s take a moment to recap this great month of unmissable music. Here, in alphabetical order, are the 10 best albums of September 2023. —Matt Mitchell, Music Editor

Alan Palomo: World of Hassle

Even though the atmosphere Alan Palomo has constructed fits squarely in a late-Cold War setting, he contextualizes his ideas in a way that feels both timeless and contemporary. Take, for instance, the discussion of late-night texts on “Stay-at-Home DJ,” allusions to “fuck, marry, kill” on “Nobody’s Woman” or the reference to a line of dialogue from the 1955 Best Picture-winning drama Marty in “Big Night of Heartache.” This balancing act between the novel and the nostalgic can be a tricky feat to pull off, but Palomo makes it subtle enough that it doesn’t feel like a glaring anachronistic distraction.

Although Palomo is so evidently adept at emulating rather than sentimentalizing the past, World of Hassle does, sometimes, feel a touch pastiche-y. Especially as it enters the moody second half, the album begins to mirror what M83 did in 2016 with Junk, leaning so hard into the cheese and schmaltz of late-‘80s muzak that it almost verges on fetishistic parody. But Palomo’s sun-soaked, salt-rimmed, neon-tinged world has such an immersive, hypnotic pull that its more derivative tendencies don’t really matter. World of Hassle oozes so much personality that a two-hour vaporwave YouTube video could never replicate. Like he’s done with Neon Indian, Palomo situates the listener in a time and place that still haunts our culture, but invites us to get lost in the memory—and, as long as he’s leading the way, there isn’t much to worry about. —Sam Rosenberg

Anjimile: The King

Where his debut album Giver Taker explored a more delicate form of personal storytelling—often delivered via nimble, unadorned acoustic guitar flourishes in line with Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan or Illinois—Anjimile works on a much grander scale across The King, as if conjuring a vision of what folk music would sound like if it was delivered by Philip Glass. It’s a record akin to speaking with the force of every voice like Anjimile’s that has been left silent for centuries, arriving with a volume and might that feels primed to shatter anything that gets in its way. Guitar strings now thrum and buzz where they once felt gentle, and Anjimile’s voice is occasionally put through bass-heavy filters or joined by a calamitous, otherworldly choir sonorous enough to make the speakers rattle. Anjimile’s choice to radically reconfigure the basics of his sound is nothing short of revelatory. Much of The King comes solely from Anjimile’s guitar and voice, even if the record’s production makes it sound as if the tracks are being wrought by a cataclysmic full band.

On the climax of “Mother,” Anjimile twists their guitar into a wounded howl of a thing, like a klaxon cry at the climax of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor piece. The pure range of sounds that Anjimile and producer Shawn Everett are able to invoke calls to mind the work BJ Burton made with Low on their final albums, reenvisioning the simplest instrumentation possible until it sounded anything but its source. Here, his acoustic guitar takes on a similarly striking effect: harnessing all the tenderness commonly associated with it on tracks like “Father,” before being torn apart in a distortion-heavy flurry and redirected as a sharp percussive implement on “Black Hole.” If there’s one thing that The King’s sound especially works to highlight, it’s Anjimile’s lyricism. Much of Giver Taker operated in similar narratives of family history and self-definition, but The King weds that focus to its sound even further, its assuredness more emphatic, its openness all the more vulnerable. And, on tracks like “Harley,” where Anjimile sings into a reverb-heavy soundscape for one of the rawer personal moments of songwriting, the transition explores new, audacious configurations that their emotional side can take. —Natalie Marlin

Field Medic: LIGHT IS GONE 2

light is gone 2 is framed as a sequel to Sullivan’s 2015 debut album as Field Medic, but it was largely born out of an attempt to manipulate the musical approach he established on that first release. Sullivan has largely been a guy with an acoustic guitar and a boombox, but this record seeks to blend digital recording—replete with the attendant synth and drum machine accouterment—into his established palette. While certainly adding variation and, according to Sullivan, kickstarting a rush of creativity, it doesn’t fundamentally change what the project of Field Medic is at its core—a fact that can largely be attributed to Sullivan himself, a creator of such idiosyncrasy and personality that it almost overshadows whatever changes in technique or style he might attempt.

If you’ve tracked the many moments of autobiography that run through Field Medic’s discography, then you’re likely aware that most of his aforementioned portrayals of addiction are now sung in the past tense. They are demons with receding shadows, half-remembered nights further blurred by the distance of time and personal growth, but the emptiness of their absence is not as freeing as one might imagine. The stuttering, percussive “everything’s been going so well” is drenched in the kind of guilt one might feel when they are, “too self absorbed and depressed to see everything’s going well,” a kind of self-imposed survivor’s remorse run amok. It’s not that Sullivan suddenly fears honesty, but, rather, the kind of disappointment that might come from everyone’s assumption that you’ve crossed some imaginary finish line. The light might still be gone, but for Sullivan, darkness and light are always relative. —Sean Fennell

Margo Cilker: Valley of Heart’s Delight

Margo Cilker’s approach to construction transcends reference. I’m transported to someplace familiar, though I cannot begin to say where, exactly. The Washington-via-California musician put out her debut album Pohorylle just two years ago; but, on Valley Of Heart’s Delight, it sounds like she’s got a century’s worth of stories to tell. To segue from “Lowland Trail” into “Keep It On A Burner” is a huge flex on Cilker’s part. Here, she takes a beautiful country musing and turns it into this gigantic, rewarding soundscape set adrift with Kelly Pratt’s horns and Jenny Conlee-Drizos’ crystalline piano.

What’s, maybe, most remarkable about Valley Of Heart’s Delight is how unabashed it is about adopting the tradition of country music while also, simultaneously, chiding the very concept of embracing such a silly history. Twang is not a vessel to step into for Cilker, it’s a way of life that surrounds her every beating step. The upbeat tango and two-step of “Steelhead Trout” sounds like a behind-the-scenes look into a weekend for Cilker and her peers, while “Santa Rosa” finds her detailing the places she’s left behind—from forgotten friends to the alien remembrance of kin, a wayfaring token of the singer/songwriter heroes she pulls greatly from. Through lessons taken from the songbooks of John Prine and Gillian Welch, there are inflections of gospel, cowboy chords, soft rock and Americana running through the veins of each track. And, at no point on this album does Cilker ever waver in her convictions, her own prophecies or her own pace towards finding the righteousness she greatly wants—all of which feel so deftly urgent and necessary. —Matt Mitchell

Mitski: The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We

Mitski’s seventh album feels, all at once, like a much-needed course correction away from 80s style synths growing staler with each use and like her lowest stakes release yet. The towering expectation and deafening hype that surrounded Laurel Hell seemed to have died down, leaving her free to exhale. The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We finds Mitski breaking new ground, building transcendent songs with the accompaniment of acoustic guitars, pedal steel, a string section and an entire 17-person choir. These resplendent pieces fit together to form fascinating, delicately arranged songs.

One of the most striking things about The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We is how it succeeds while sacrificing the reliance on melody that undergirds some of Mitski’s best songwriting thus far. There is nothing as electric as “Nobody,” nothing as distorted as “Your Best American Girl.” And yet, this is her finest collection of songs. There’s a beauty to her pastoral vignettes that resonates without the need for traditional pop hooks. It’s not music that’s suited to arenas, and maybe that’s the point. The album ends with a proclamation of her own power and agency. “I’m king of all the land,” she sings on “I Love Me After You,” before unleashing heavy drums and guitar fuzz. Mitski can do anything she wants to now, and we’re better off under her reign. —Eric Bennett

Nation of Language: Strange Disciple

The instrumentation on Strange Disciple is unlike anything the band has done before. On a track like “Sightseer,” you can find all of the familiar Nation of Language fixtures—the push and pull of minimalist arrangements that blossom into an explosive unraveling, all done beneath the gloss of woozy, beautiful electronica. The band making these denser, bolder and bigger songs was always a path that was visible—and Nick Millhiser’s contributions were definitely a huge part in shouldering them into that place, as he was able to preserve what works in a Nation of Language song while also building out each track’s smallness. The result is an immensity that comes alive more and more with every passing chapter, a living room and nightclub album drunk on technicolor, dancing and candy-coated longing.

Strange Disciple evokes a stirring maximalism through vignettes and a cloud of splashy, arresting opulence. Album opener “Weak In Your Light” follows a pulsing metronome of erotic, low-octave key turns—which allow for Ian Devaney to take his own vocals into these operatic, church-clearing ranges. “Stumbling Still” offers a tangible, muted pop tone bustles in conversation with a drum machine—only to tumble into a titanic, appetizing arrangement of malleable dance-floor brushstrokes. Constriction was erased from Nation of Language’s vocabulary, and Strange Disciple is a blown-up, successful imagining that erases the limiting confines of a rough draft. It’s, in no minced words, the band’s greatest document yet. —MM

Oneohtrix Point Never: Again

When the average individual encounters music deemed “experimental,” questions tend to pop up. What are those sounds coming from? Where does this song end and that one begin? It’s confusing and, sometimes, overstimulating. To be transfixed by the unfamiliar because of its unfamiliarity is typical. To thousands, the music of Daniel Lopatin—who releases albums under the name Oneohtrix Point Never—has inspired that and more. But scratch below the affronting surface and, suddenly, chunks of the familiar make themselves manifest. It’s those bits of something intelligible that Lopatin coalesces into a specter of déjà vu. On Again, Lopatin’s latest release, recognizable pieces of classical, pop and alternative rock are somehow both more present and more transformed than on any of his recent projects. They are a trail of breadcrumbs through Lopatin’s young adulthood, after his uncanny infancy seen on Magic Oneohtrix Point Never and his metallic adolescence from Garden of Delete. Again is just as warped and bizarre as any Oneohtrix Point Never release, but its optimism is truly next-level.

Again opens with NOMAD ensemble’s strings in cacophony on “Elseware,” as if each player were still noodling in their own world before recording—only to fall into place, working through an energetic number straight out of the classical period. The subsequent track—the title track—brings the focus back towards Lopatin’s electronic production, with synths swelling and harmonizing like a robotic barbershop quartet. The onslaught of keys, strings and static prepare an early climax that refuses to linger, suggesting something big yet to come. “World Outside” offers a sweeping melody bookended by bedlam, followed by sweet singing from Lopatin himself; “Krumville” is meditative and cosmic as Lopatin partners with Xiu Xiu to play in the art-rock sandbox the band has hewn so well. It feels like blown-out slacker rock with sharp edges. “Locrian Midwest” is even more offbeat, leaning on an oft-avoided mode to craft something anxious yet gorgeous. “A Barely Lit Path” ends playfully but quietly, requesting a moment of kind reverence for the fanciful young adult Lopatin seeks to nurture. This track, much like the others, is designed to baffle at points. However, the unconcealed emotion gushing out of Again is stupefying. Where Oneohtrix Point Never takes these sounds may challenge the senses, but the feelings Lopatin is drawing forward are all too familiar. —Devon Chodzin

Slowdive: everything is alive

Now, six years after their self-titled comeback album, Slowdive have returned with everything is alive, possibly their most cohesive-sounding project to date. Each chapter blends in with the next—fashioning the project into this cinematic experience distilled into 42 minutes of atmospheric, punctuated synths and vivid, droning guitars. Halstead, Goswell, Chaplin, Savill and Scott have crafted what is—in my opinion—the talismanic, spiritual successor to Souvlaki. Concise and prismatic and a proper balance of darkness and angelic glow, everything is alive beckons a push and pull between pop and ambient—a middle ground where shoegaze and the gauze of dreamy bedroom lo-fi live and breathe. Much of what Halstead was trying to do on Pygmalion all those years ago crops up on everything is alive, too, in the ways the project lifts the focus off of the guitars in hypnotic and confident methods. The record is the antithesis of rigid, as it builds aglow and unravels like silk. Isn’t it a funny thing, how the experiments that once ostracized a band from critical spheres can now take a full, cohesive and dynamite shape on their best album yet? everything is alive is a document of transitional life: The record is dedicated to Goswell’s mother and Scott’s father, both of whom passed away before the band reconvened in 2020, and, in 2019, Halstead’s youngest son Albert was born. The project is a proper balance between lightness and darkness. —MM

Slow Pulp: Yard

The truth is: Slow Pulp, as a band, have always seemed to have a groove all their own. Their downtempo, ‌psychedelic approach to indie rock has its roots in Alex G-style slacker rock and intimate, Alvvays-style bedroom pop (two artists they’ve, coincidentally, toured with in the past). The music is approachable, yet it gets abrasive when it needs to. On Yard, Slow Pulp deploy those peculiar, harmonious sounds to unpack conflicting emotion—and their introspection is catchier than ever before. Yard tracks the band’s ever-evolving relationships with isolation and collaboration, the fluctuating roles one plays as an adult whose independence grows more complicated year after year. The album offers the ideal soundtrack for any mid-20-something who is caught re-assessing their social role in those unwieldy years that immediately follow college.

While a track like “Doubt,” with its ticking guitars and lackadaisical vocals, feels like the classic Slow Pulp of Moveys and before, Yard sees the band toy with its sound playfully and freshly. Massey pushes her vocals beyond the deceptively low-effort utterances that have become her trademark. Take “Cramps,” for example—a punk-leaning track with immersive guitars reminiscent of mall emo hits breaking only when Massey sustains: “But I want everything.” “Mud” is its closest neighbor, at times pummeling and at other instances crunchy, falling somewhere between pop punk and fuzz rock. The real outlier on the record is “Broadview,” where pedal steel greets the listeners into a folksy ballad and Massey boasts a striking, unforgettable affection and warmth.

On a typical Slow Pulp song, she seems like someone who can maintain a barrier between her feelings and her vocals, displaying ironic detachment—so it’s anomalous when she lets emotion rip through. “Carina Phone 1000” rests someplace closer to adult contemporary, not far from Sheryl Crow, without any refraction through an Alex G or Soccer Mommy prism. It’s a tad more vulnerable and just as rewarding. Yard is a genuine level up for Slow Pulp that reveals the band’s versatility—confirming that the band has extensive new sonic avenues to explore in depth moving forward. The album is already a delicious feast but, after this achievement, one can’t help but wonder what the band will try next. —DC

The National: Laugh Track

Laugh Track is a companion piece to the National’s other 2023 album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, sure, but it stands on its own. I think it’s become rather difficult to put out two records in one year—and I have to wonder if the stigma around leftovers and B-sides is what’s pushing most artists who aren’t Taylor Swift or Big Thief to stray from the temptation of double-dipping. Thankfully, The National are immune to such a cultural deficiency; Laugh Track registers like a selection of tunes that, just maybe, should have been released first—that’s how good they are.

Bryan Devendorf’s percussion emphasizes the throughlines of anxiety and forlorn across Laugh Track, especially on songs like “Turn Off the House” and “Space Invader.” His drum work on “Deep End (Paul’s in Pieces),” in particular, sounds like the technique he was embellishing on “Don’t Swallow the Cap” 10 years ago—which is a delight to become privy to as, in those moments, it’s as if the hushed arrangements of I Am Easy to Find couldn’t have been more of a one-off anomaly in the band’s catalog. “Turn Off the House” merges a hybrid of High Violet and Sleep Well Beast acoustic and string instrumentation with the lyrical deftness of a contemporary, internal cruelty. “Full body gentle shutdown, so many people to let down,” Matt Berninger hums. “Don’t even think about me.” It’s a standout among standouts, a track that arrives like an admixture of “Green Gloves” and “Quiet Light”—a formula that I will, admittedly, always feel beholden to.

Laugh Track is a close-knit record, if only because the people hurt within it are never too far out of reach from everyone else. It’s hard to channel that kind of withdrawal into a work of spitting, caustic, uproarious melody—though a song like “Smoke Detector” is a good reminder of where the band came from, and it might be a signal as to where they’re heading next. But there’s so much despair and lonesomeness and erosion articulated through various depictions of interpersonal and self-destruction on Laugh Track that an old line like “I’m put together, but beautifully” has never felt more apocryphal. —MM