The Curmudgeon: Overlooked Albums of 2023

When we read stories titled “The Best Songs of the Year” or “The Best Albums of the Year,” an unacknowledged phrase should be added: “… of All Those I Happened To Hear.” These lists are not like a political election where a limited number of candidates are on the ballot, and one is asked to choose from among them. Music critics are instead asked to choose from the tens of thousands of releases in a given year, far more than any one human being can hear. The choices may not be infinite, but they can seem that way.

So each critic’s list reflects not only one’s definition of excellence but also what particular corner of the musical universe one has focused on. My own list, for example, is light on hip-hop, dance-pop, punk-rock, classical music and foreign-language music. And that’s not because I dislike those genres; I often find things I like in all those categories. I loved last year’s albums by Killer Mike, Olivia Rodgrigo, 100 Gecs, Gustavo Dudamel and Karol G. But life is short, and I tend to turn towards the areas where I have a higher batting average of finding pleasure.

As a result, my list is heavy on jazz, Americana, roots-rock and country. That tilt is both the weakness and the strength of my list. A weakness, because it doesn’t accurately reflect the music marketplace of 2023. A strength, because it’s more likely to lead readers to undiscovered gems unmentioned on other lists. I don’t claim to have found all the best records; I only claim that these are truly great musical achievements that can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of genre preferences. These are the best “… of All Those I Happened To Hear.”

It works both ways. Just as I believe other music-lovers can learn something from my choices; I believe I can learn from the choices of others. That’s why I devour the year-end lists in this magazine, the New York Times, Rolling Stone and elsewhere. I think I’m adding more to the conversation with a list that’s an outlier rather than one that merely seconds the consensus.

The big story that most music critics and fans have ignored is the creative renaissance that jazz is enjoying right now. All those music lovers who limit their jazz listening to the same handful of names—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Wynton Marsalis—are missing out on magnificent work being done right now by artists as young as Immanuel Wilkins and Julian Lage and as experienced as Bill Frisell and Jason Moran.

Many music-lovers get jaded by pop music’s countless variations on the same set of sounds. They crave sounds so new they seem unprecedented. Pop often tries to satisfy that hunger with the novelty of new technology and new gimmicks added to the same set of chords, time signatures and verbal tropes. The problem with such novelty is that, like milk cartons, it comes with an expiration date. Today your hunger for something new is sated, but tomorrow it returns with a vengeance.

Jazz has the advantage of not changing just the clothes the music wears but changing the music itself, not just the production values but also the underlying note combinations. Pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, drummer Allison Miller, pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, saxophonist Ivo Perelman and drummer Rudy Royston are using familiar instruments to generate new chords, new melodies, new rhythm patterns and new textures that will feel as fresh next year as they do now.

These artists are inventing music of such surprise and complexity that they make most cutting-edge rock and hip-hop seem like child’s play. A warning: Once you immerse yourself in jazz, you’ll find it hard to be impressed by any other instrumental music. And unlike some of the experimental jazz of the past, this new music has shed the intellectual aridity for an emotional wallop rooted in gospel and blues.

What jazz isn’t that good at is integrating original lyrics into the music. There are exceptions—most notably Cecile McLorin Salvant and Gregory Porter—but most of the best music with words is coming from the pop side. And my own preferences are with those that marry the texts to melodic hooks and the emotional susceptibility those tunes can imply.

My favorite album of the year was Only Dead for a Little While from Austin’s semi-obscure roots-rocker Jon Dee Graham. Like the Rolling Stones, the 64-year-old Graham has been playing music for a long time. But unlike the Stones, he doesn’t have a myth-making, money-printing machine to protect and afford to be ruthlessly honest about getting old.

This latest project reflects on his three close brushes with death in recent years. Both the irrefutable terror of mortality and the increased importance of the few remaining days are reflected in the music as well as the lyrics. Graham sings with Tom Waits’ growl and plays guitar with Paul Westerburg’s barbed-wire tone and gives these facedowns with death the urgency they deserve.

The Jackmormons’ Jerry Joseph does something similar on his terrific album, Baby, You’re the Man Who Would Be King. So do the young Texas band the Nude Party, the Memphis rockers Lucero, Americana hero Jason Isbell and the Philadelphia piano pounder Adam Weiner (of Low Cut Connie) on their new albums. Guitar-rock can still be a powerful vehicle, no matter how many times it has been counted out.

On the other hand, I agree with the critical consensus that 2023 was a terrific year for young women refashioning old forms into new music that presented their side of the story in smart, impactful songs. SZA, boygenius, Olivia Rodrigo, Joy Oladokun, Sunny War, Esther Rose and Morgan Wade exemplified this better than anyone. And the twin queens of modern pop, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, dropped two of the best concert films ever made, even if they didn’t offer much new music.

If you like lyrics that tell a story or confess a secret rather than bragging or dazzling with wordplay, your best bet is often country music. That was true again this year—both from mainstream performers such as Ashley McBryde, Willie Nelson, Jelly Roll, Chris Stapleton, Lori McKenna and Brandy Clark and from such alt-country acts as Charley Crockett, Buddy & Julie Miller, Zach Bryan, Vincent Neil Emerson and Marty Stuart.

The corner of country music that most often gets overlooked, though, is not Americana; it’s string-band music, an umbrella term that covers bluegrass, old-time, Cajun and Celtic. These small combos of acoustic instruments—usually without drums—require a sonic adjustment from listeners accustomed to amplified and synthesized sounds, but it’s an adjustment worth making.

For one thing, as in jazz, there’s a much higher level of instrumental virtuosity than in most pop music. While there’s less innovation than in jazz, there’s a better accommodation of verbal storytelling. This year, for example, the great songwriters Darrell Scott and Robbie Fulks set their latest songs in bluegrass contexts. And the masterful Irish fiddler Martin Hayes delivered a splendid Celtic folk album.

The Rolling Stones weren’t the only veteran act to put out a solidly enjoyable album that nonetheless fell far short of their best work in the past. Also releasing better-than-average, less-than-their-best albums were the Pretenders, Graham Parker, Rhiannon Giddens, the Hold Steady, Bettye LaVette, Old Crow Medicine Show and Margo Price.

The past is always a good place to search for powerful, overlooked music, and 2023 focused a revealing light on it in the form of reissue packages. The most monumental of them was The Memphis Blues Box, which included 534 tracks by 175 different performers spread out over 20 CDs in a carton with a 360-page coffee table book. The subtitle, Original Recordings First Released on 78s and 45s, 1914-1927, establishes the parameters. These were commercial singles, cut by Memphis-area residents and released soon after they were made, and promoted mostly to working-class African-Americans in the South.

Some of the names are familiar—Ma Rainey, B.B. King, Bobby Bland, Booker T., Howlin’ Wolf, Tina Turner and even Elvis Presley. But it’s the names that are less well known that give this collection its importance. Memphis and New Orleans—both Mississippi River ports—generated most of the pre-Pearl Harbor fusions and fissions that would establish the character of American music for the rest of the century. And the basic ingredient was the blues—West African music played on European instruments, sung in English and shaped by North American experiences.

The early discs in this set are devoted largely to jug band music—a street corner entertainment played on cheap, unconventional instruments: ceramic jug, kazoo, harmonica, mandolin and banjo. It was rougher than the sophisticated piano-and-horns music coming out of New Orleans, but in that roughness were ear-grabbing hooks and emotional frankness. And out of those simple materials came several geniuses: Will Shade, Noah Lewis and Gus Cannon—as well as such jug-band-influenced troubadours such as Furry Lewis, Yank Rachell, Sleepy John Estes and Frank Stokes.

The Memphis Blues Box would be worth its high price for that alone, but it goes on to document the early “blues empresses,” female singers such as Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie and many obscure imitators who made the blues immensely popular by giving it a vaudeville makeover. After World War II, a more modern, more familiar brand of amplified blues emerged in the voices of such pioneers as B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Roscoe Gordon, Rufus Thomas, Little Junior Parker, Johnny Ace and Bobby Bland. Many of these were recorded in Memphis by producer Sam Phillips, first for Chicago’s Chess Records and then for Phillips’ own Sun Records.

The accompanying book provides the back story, biographies and track-by-track notes, even if it’s hampered by its academic prose. This is what a reissue should do: tell a story that’s never been told quite this way before—and rewrite musical history in the process.

The year’s other best reissues do something similar—even if on a far less ambitious scale. Evenings at the Village Gate adds to the paltry number of recordings we have of John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy in collaboration. These two jazz reed players are magnificent, but so is the rhythm section of Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner.

Rumours Live captures Fleetwood Mac 1977 at their absolute peak as a live band. This was before Stevie Nicks had gone off the deep end into self-indulgent mysticism, and when Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were still the best British blues-rock rhythm section this side of the Rolling Stones. Lindsey Buckingham, heir to the George Harrison school of melodic guitar, could stretch out in these live arrangements.

The Replacements’ Tim, Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind and the Drive-By Truckers’ The Dirty South, three of the very best rock ‘n’ roll albums of the post-punk era, were given welcome new attention last year in the form of unreleased tracks, live tracks, remixes and essays. The songs Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach co-wrote, which had been scattered over different albums or kept in a vault, were finally collected into one place as The Songs of Bacharach-Costello.

What follows are two lists: My 100 favorite new albums of 2023 and my 15 favorite reissues.

Geoffrey Himes’s One Hundred Best Albums of 2023:

1. Jon Dee Graham: Only Dead for a Little While (Strollin’ Bones)
2. Jerry Joseph: Baby, You’re the Man Who Would Be King (Cosmo Sex School)
3. Piernick Pedron & Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Pedron & Rubalcaba (Gazebo)
4. Charley Crockett: Live from the Ryman Auditorium (Son of Davy)
5. Lafayette Gilchrist: Undaunted (Morphius)
6. SZA: SOS (Top Dawg, RCA)
7. Allison Miller: Rivers in Our Veins (Royal Potato Family)
8. boygenius: the record (Interscope)
9. Ashley McBryde: The Devil I Know (Warner Nashville)
10. Zach Bryan: Zach Bryan (Warner Nashville)
11. Ivo Perelman-Matthew Shipp: Triptych (ESP-Disk)
12. Buddy & Julie Miller: In the Throes (New West)
13. Olivia Rodrigo: Guts (Geffen)
14. Martin Hayes & the Common Ground Ensemble: Peggy’s Dream (251)
15. Rudy Royston: Day (Greenleaf)
16. The Nude Party: The Nude Party Rides On (New West)
17. Johnathan Blake: Passages (Blue Note)
18. Low Cut Connie: Art Dealers (Contender)
19. Martin Zellar: Head West (Owen Lee)
20. Cecile McLorin Salvant: “Il m’a vue nue” from Melusine (Nonesuch)
21. Killer Mike: Michael (Loma Vista)
22. Jason Moran: From the Dancehall to the Battlefield (Yes)
23. Henry Threadgill Ensemble: The Other One (Pi)
24. Iris DeMent: Workin’ on a World (Flariella)
25. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit: Weathervanes (Southeastern)
26. James Brandon Lewis: For Mahalia, with Love (Tao Forms)
27. Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy (Ninja Tune)
28. Lucero: Should’ve Learned by Now (Liberty & Lament)
29. Darrell Scott: Old Cane-Back Rocker (Here)
30. Robbie Fulks: Bluegrass Vacation (Compass)
31. Gustavo Dudamel & the Los Angeles Philharmonic: Thomas Ades: Dante (Nonesuch)
32. Koppel Colley Blade: Perspective (Nu)
33. Ray Bonneville: On the Blind Side (Stonefly)
34. Orrin Evans: The Red Door (Smoke Sessions)
35. John Scofield: Uncle John’s Band (ECM)
36. Joy Oladokun: Proof of Life (Amigo/Republic/Verve Forecast)
37. Morgan Wade: Psychopath (RCA)
38. Artemis: In Real Time (Blue Note)
39. Vincent Neil Emerson: The Golden Crystal Kingdom (La Honda/RCA)
40. Tyshawn Sorey Trio: Wishing Flower (Sunnyside)
41. Bela Fleck-Zakir Hussain-Edgar Meyer: As We Speak (Thirty Tigers)
42. Taylor Swift: 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (Republic)
43. Marty Stuart & the Fabulous Superlatives: Altitude (Snake Farm)
44. Gregory Porter: Christmas Wish (Blue Note)
45. Lori McKenna: 1988 (CN/Thirty Tigers)
46. Willie Nelson: The Bluegrass Album (Legacy)
47. Shakti: This Moment (Abstract Logix)
48. Hold Steady: The Price of Progress (Positive Jams)
49. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension (Nonesuch)
50. Jelly Roll: White Chapel (BBR)
51. Brandy Clark: Brandy Clark (Warner)
52. Arlo Parks: My Soft Machine (Transgressive)
53. Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry: Our Daily Bread (ECM)
54. Esther Rose: Safe To Run (New West)
55. Sunny War: Anarchist Gospel (New West)
56. Nils Lofgren: Mountains (Cattle Track Road)
57. Slaid Cleaves: Together Through the Dark (Candy House)
58. Graham Parker: Last Chance To Learn the Twist (Big Stir)
59. Brandy Clark: Brandy Clark (Warner)
60. MeShell Ndegeocello: The Omnichord Real Book (Blue Note)
61. Karol G: Manana Sera Bonito (Universal Latino)
62. 100 Gecs: 10,000 Gecs (Atlantic/Big Beat)
63. Tom Heyman: 24th Street Blues (Bohemian Neglect)
64. Old Crow Medicine Show: Jubilee (ATO)
65. Joel Harrison: Anthem of Unity (HighNote)
66. The Pretenders: Relentless (Parlophone)
67. Ratboys: The Window (Topshelf)
68. Leo Genovese: Estrellero (Sunnyside)
69. Julian Lage: The Layers (Blue Note)
70. Billy Valentine: Billy Valentine and the Universal Truth (Flying Dutchman)
71. Susan Alcorn & Septeto del Sur: Canto (Relative Pitch)
72. Jason Carter: Lowdown Hoedown (Rounder)
73. Morgan Wallen: One Thing at a Time (Big Loud/Mercury/Republic)
74. Various Artists: Long Story Short: Willie Nelson 90 (Legacy)
75. Chris Stapleton: Higher (Mercury)
76. Dierks Bentley: Gravel & Gold (Capitol)
77. The Steep Canyon Rangers: Morning Shift (Yep Roc)
78. Bettye LaVette: LaVette! (Jay Vee)
79. Selwyn Birchwood: Exorcist (Alligator)
80. Lonnie Holley: Oh Me, Oh My (Jagjaguwar)
81. Gerald Cannon: Live at Dizzy’s Club (Woodneck)
82. SFJazz Collective: New Works & Classics Reimagined (SFJazz)
83. The Rolling Stones: Hackney Diamonds (Polydor)
84. Various Artists: More Than a Whisper: Celebrating the Music of Nanci Griffith (Rounder)
85. Jennifer Wharton’s Bonegasm: Grit & Grace (Sunnyside)
86. Allen Lowe: American—The Rough Cut (ESP-Disk)
87. Feist: Multitudes (Interscope)
88. Robbie Robertson: Killers of the Flower Moon Soundtrack (Masterworks)
89. The Turnpike Troubadours: A Cat in the Rain (Bossier City)
90. Rhiannon Giddens: You’re the One (Nonesuch)
91. The Baseball Project: Grand Salami Time? (Omnivore)
92. William Bell: One Day Closer to Home (Wilbe)
93. Bobby Rush: All My Love for You (Deep Rush)
94. Michael Cleveland: Lovin’ of the Game (Compass)
95. Margo Cilker: Valley of Heart’s Delight (Fluff & Gravy)
96. Margo Price: Strays I & II (Loma Vista)
97. Gretchen Parlato & Lionel Loueke: Lean In (Edition)
98. Magos Herrera: Aire (Sunnyside)
99. War and Treaty: Lover’s Game (Mercury)
100. Walter Smith III: Return to Casual (Blue Note)

Geoffrey Himes’s 15 Best Reissues of 2023:

1. Various Artists: The Memphis Blues Box (Bear Family)
2. John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy: Evenings at the Village Gate (Impulse)
3. Fleetwood Mac: Rumours Live (Warner)
4. The Replacements: Tim: Let It Bleed Edition (Sire/Rhino)
5. Bob Dylan: Fragments: Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997) (Columbia/Legacy)
6. Joni Mitchell: Archives—Volume 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975) (Rhino)
7. Burt Bacharach-Elvis Costello: The Songs of Bacharach-Costello (Universal)
8. Nina Simone: You’ve Got To Learn (Verve)
9. The Drive-By Truckers: The Complete Dirty South (New West)
10. John Lee Hooker: Hooker Alone: Live at Hunter College 1976 (BMG)
11. Roy Head: Treat Her Right: The Backbeat Recordings (Sutro Park/Geffen)
12. Bill Evans: Treasures: Solo, Trio & Orchestra Recordings from Denmark (1965-1969) (Elemental)
13. Neil Young: Chrome Dreams (Reprise)
14. Shirley Scott: Queen Scott: Live at the Left Bank (Reel to Reel)
15. Various Artists: Playing for the Man at the Door (Smithsonian/Folkways)