Last month had five album release days—five Fridays chocked full of good new music, making it harder to narrow the list down to 10 notable albums. But that’s just what we do here at Paste. This is just a snapshot of LPs that caught our attention, and it’s very possible that something not on this list ends up on our year-end, Best Albums of 2023 list. That said, each of these albums, listed alphabetically by artist, is worth your streaming time.
boygenius: the record
The first EP from boygenius—the supergroup composed of three of the greatest millennial rock singers: Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus—felt raw in an almost accidental way, like we were peeking into a quiet evening among friends through a door left ajar. the record travels to a similar space emotionally, but everything about it feels more curated: the tracklist, the sonic mood, and the sharing of the mic (and pen—all three artists are credited as songwriters on every song). Boygenius’ collaboration is harmonious in more ways than one, and the record shows they belong among the ranks of the greatest American supergroups. For every bar of lo-fi folk or pop music on the record, there’s a rock ’n’ roll outburst to match. In the fashion of Bridgers’ “I Know The End” (and a seemingly endless stream of indie rock songs since then), both “$20” and “Satanist” feature guttural screams. “Anti-Curse” is another great loud moment. Baker initially takes the lead, but then a little glimpse of each artist comes into focus: Dacus’ trembling guitars, Bridgers’ cool soprano against the backdrop, and Baker’s warm-blooded words. Their three voices together are magic, they know this, and best of all, they seem to just really enjoy making music together as much as we enjoy listening to it. Baker, Bridgers and Dacus are nothing if not effective communicators, but it’s clear the most important dialogue is between each other. —Ellen Johnson
Caroline Rose: The Art of Forgetting
The Art of Forgetting, the latest album from Nashville singer/songwriter Caitlin Rose is a departure in both theme and production from their previous release. While Superstar paid homage to ’80s cinema and a culture obsessed with celebrities, The Art of Forgetting finds inspiration through Balkan cries and the natural life cycles of handcrafted instruments. Although Rose has created fictionalized characters before, here they delve deep into their vulnerabilities and pain in The Art of Forgetting: a memoir of healing. Caroline Rose’s portrayal of a new beginning during the first three tracks is visceral and guttural. “Tell Me What You Want,” is undoubtedly the best track on the album. The witty and literal lyrics are bolstered by gritty guitar and Rose singing, “I just gotta take a beat / To get some fresh air in my lungs.” It’s fabulously dynamic in texture with different fortes and meticulous phrasing. Rose has reached new heights on this record, executing her ideas flawlessly. —Rayne Antrim
Fever Ray: Radical Romantics
It starts with fear, because that’s present even in pleasure. As a phantom synth melody swirls between channels in the mix, Karin Dreijer’s lyrics return to the same uneasy question: “Did you hear what they call us?” “What They Call Us” hangs a pall over the rest of Radical Romantics, the third album from Dreijer’s solo project Fever Ray. Though Dreijer’s slippery experimental synthpop record never explicitly returns to the social peril of this opener, it looms like a latent hitch to queer desire, a subconscious state that must be confronted to achieve unguarded connection. It’s a thread made all the clearer in a stray aside on second track “Shiver,” with Dreijer interrupting their lustful lyrics with a simple question: “Can I trust you?” It’s a question of unclear directness—is it asked in actual conversation, or to themselves in thought?—but one that places all its impact in unambiguous baggage, holding the tacit hesitancy that comes after past hurt. Dreijer penetrates these themes with pop songwriting that cuts to the chase like a forthright come-on. For all their uncertain trust on “Shiver,” Dreijer and their brother/former bandmate Olof infuse the song with a deep, bubbly bounce, as if to prove that the track’s unquenchable thirst remains even through anxiety. What makes Radical Romantics, like the best of Dreijer’s work, a cut above merely great pop is its subversive streak. Their lyricism is unapologetically queer while sidestepping empty platitudes, more often nodding to the knotted complexities of queer and trans people’s existence against marginalization and endangerment. Even in the face of apprehension, Fever Ray has never surveyed their own future with this much conviction. —Natalie Marlin
Kate Davis: Fish Bowl
Fish Bowl is Kate Davis’s best work yet; a unique movement inspired by Greek epics and A Hero’s Journey. In a lot of ways, the album twists and turns like a big, romantic concerto with Davis firmly in the eye of the storm. While other artists saw their music releases halted or postponed at the beginning of COVID in 2020, Davis used that time to start piecing together the glass of Fish Bowl. The songs are wondrous and confessional, and Davis chronicles a life full of people standing at a distance from one another. Perhaps that’s why the songs are astronomical and poetic. On “Confessions,” she talks of a black hole tearing into the part of her heart that had forgotten about fragility and tenderness; on “Call Home,” she ponders if the last gasps of freedom should be spun into an apocalyptic romance or social commentary. There’s a bit of embellishment at play, which Davis zeroes in on nicely by taking up the persona of an otherworldly character—FiBo (short for Fish Bowl)—a vehicle in which Davis feels most comfortable telling her confessional stories, serving as a mirrored experience of what she had been living through but in a world that had nothing to do with her own reality. —Matt Mitchell
Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My
After an a collaboration album with Matthew E. White over the pandemic, Lonnie Holley’s latest is full of collaborations. They include poet/activist Moor Mother adding her own lyrical flavor to Lonnie Holley declaring, “I Am A Part Of The Wonder” and “Earth Will Be There” and Michael Stipe lending his lovely baritone to the title track, singing “Oh Me, Oh My,” before Holley contrasts it with his higher timbre and his occasional growl. Justin Vernon, Sharon Van Etten, Rokia Koné and Jeff Parker all lend their talents to songs that both dig deep into Holley’s past and proclaim messages of peace and kindness and thankfulness. “Kindness Will Follow Your Tears” is one of the titles, and it’s one of the many mantras Holley has chosen to live by. But there are no vocal collaborators on “Mount Meigs.” It’s his voice alone over the cacophony as the memories become more horrific. The three years of abuse and neglect he experienced at the notorious Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children will always be with Holley. And they will always fuel his art and music, but with a purpose, challenging the viewer or the listener to think about the distant future and how we’re living. —Josh Jackson
Nickel Creek: Celebrants
With the line “My god, it’s good to see you,” Nickel Creek welcomes you back after nine years with Celebrants, their first original album since 2014’s A Dotted Line, and quickly acknowledges that we have work to do. The trio, composed of Chris Thile, Sean Watkins and Sara Watkins, and joined by Mike Elizondo, has been making Americana music together in ebbs and flows for more than 20 years. By now, they know something about working together. What might lie ahead is “something we can sing through”—having incisively clever-sounding harmonies like theirs certainly helps. The group rapidly weaves together and apart on this album, from the tearing pace of Thile’s mandolin or Sara Watkins’s fiddle to the quick wit of their lyrics. There is patience for moments of rest and quiet, but they do not suffer inactivity. The music demands an awareness of movement—“Celebrants” has literal stomping, whereas on “Strangers” the instrumentation takes on the sureness of footsteps, whether through the dancing lightness of Thile’s mandolin, or the certain stepping of Mike Elizondo’s bass. The mix of instrumental tracks with vocals reminds us that more than anything, Nickel Creek are avid musicians, full of feeling accented by their technical prowess. Sara Watkins’s jazz-inflected vocal slides on “Thinnest Wall” are made all the more exhilarating by their unexpectedness, mischievously playing with their usual bluegrass sound. At the heart of this album is a feeling of running a losing race, with words of panic and love jumbling together until you can’t separate the notions anymore. To love anything or anyone right now is to agree to go through a period of immense change and dread together, and to risk losing each other. You have to choose your partners in forging ahead carefully, and Nickel Creek is more locked in and together than ever. —Rosa Sofia Kaminski
Shalom: Sublimation
Shalom’s debut record is very good and very emotionally naked. The 13 songs are familiar, but only sonically. They’re informed by her influences, like Car Seat Headrest and Soccer Mommy, but the lyrics are immense and personal, almost to the point where you might accuse Shalom of oversharing. That’s what you get with her. Being engrossed in the ugly parts of life is something Shalom is really in love with, and it translates into her own songwriting. But Sublimation is this grand exercise of not giving in to fear. She puts her entire self out on the line, not afraid of articulating her life in ways that might make for an uncomfortable list. The lead single, “Happenstance,” is a giant “fuck you” to Shalom’s college roommate from freshman year. Her de force single “Soccer Mommy” arose from the ashes of a destructive 2018, where she found herself off of her meds and taking a lot of acid, and her getting her driver’s license in 2019. The tracks are clean, groovy and urgent. Her vocals are unmoved and glide atop Ryan Hemsworth’s production in a mix of grit and finesse. —Matt Mitchell
The Hold Steady: The Price of Progress
The Price of Progress is The Hold Steady’s most musically adventurous collection of songs so far, pairing singer Craig Finn’s vivid storytelling with arrangements that go in some unexpected directions. That’s not to say that Tad Kubler has forsaken guitar riffs: the lead single, “Sideways Skull,” is full of guitars that thrum like a glasspack muffler at a stoplight, while opening track “Grand Junction” unfolds over a loping, guttural guitar line, with punctuation from horns. Elsewhere, though, things are pretty different—two songs even feature congas, a first for the band. Perhaps the biggest departure is “Understudies,” which offers a call-and-response between Kubler’s guitar and Franz Nicolay’s piano near the beginning before sashaying along on a beat rooted in disco, the same way that Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2,” has a disco edge. Finn’s lyrics are as evocative as ever, and though the characters in these songs have problems, they aren’t all as desperate or druggy as some of the ne’er-do-wells on previous Hold Steady albums. That he keeps finding new ways to sing thoughtfully about people facing challenges is a testament to his skill as a storyteller, and to his empathy as a narrator. The fact that Finn fronts a group of musicians who are as keen as he is to rethink and refine what they do seems almost too good to be true, and yet each album reaches a little further than the one before. The Price of Progress is progress indeed. —Eric R. Danton
Unknown Mortal Orchestra: V
Portland-based psych-rock band Unknown Mortal Orchestra has mastered the use of space and sound in their lofi genre. Their mix of wah-wah pedals, reverb, groovy syncopation and stripped-down production led to the commercial and critical success of Unknown Mortal Orchestra and II. Hawaiian-New Zealander Ruban Neilson’s double-album is half composed of groovy, funk instrumentals and half of sun-kissed melodies. V was recorded in both Palm Springs and Hawai’i with his brother Kody Neilson and longtime band member Jacob Portrait. The records also features Neilson’s father playing saxophone and flute. It’s obvious how much influence both locations have over the Hapa-haole (“half-white”) record, quite literally representing Neilson’s ethnic background as half Hawai’ian and half Kiwi. The tracks were also heavily influenced by ’70s AM radio rock with “Messugah” and ’80s pop with “Weekend Run.” V is a fun, water-glistening record that waves hi to the palm trees and lies down to take a sun-nap with the sleepy sand dunes. Unknown Mortal Orchestra continues to expel their creative boundaries in their timeless, vintage nature. —Rayne Antrim
Yves Tumor: Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
Yves Tumor—alias of Miami, Fla.-born artist Sean Bowie—sings in a layered falsetto on “Parody”: “See your face and name on a postcard / Parody of a popstar / You behave like a monster.” The swelling, sauntering track arrives in the middle of Bowie’s fifth full-length album, Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds). It marks the latest bold step in the progression from their ambient/sound collage-inspired debut, 2015’s When Man Fails You, to 2020’s critically lauded art-rock opus Heaven To A Tortured Mind and 2021’s EP The Asymptomatical World, the former of which brought forth apt comparisons to the likes of Prince and the other Bowie. Still, to drop those names—suggesting the cover-band-level imitations others have attempted as of late—feels like it does the all-consuming world that this Bowie creates a disservice. The thing they have most in common with experimental forebearers like these is their inability to fit the mold provided for them, as well as their incessant need to reinvent themselves every time we turn our backs. On Praise A Lord…, with the assistance of producer Noah Goldstein, their work still contains that urge to reference other genres and periods of time in music history, but it never feels like pastiche. If anything, Bowie is more interested in detaching it from any nostalgic context and placing it in the framework of their own immersive collage of sound. It’s psychedelic, but not dreamy or spaced-out; if anything, Bowie’s psychedelia is metallic—all intense greens and blues and purples that shade their maximalist, deconstructed vision. On each track, influences drop in and out against the buzz of a rattling bassline, trying on different styles without ever fully fusing them to the song’s skeleton. —Elise Soutar