Well, I guess we're still blogging once a year, so here goes.
I thought 2023 was a very good year for noises. Lots of cool, interesting sounds. In a past life we were arsonists, it's the 2023 list!
1) feeble little horse - Girl with Fish: Saddle Creek Records is known for aggressively twee music, but my favorite album of the year is tweely aggressive. The scuzziest, horniest record the label has ever put out, there's not one clean guitar note on the album, indebted to both 4AD/Creation and Sarah/K albums. Or, if Wet Leg sniffed a lot more glue.
2) Popular Music - Minor Works of Popular Music: Achingly gorgeous goth-tinged, synthy chamber pop.
3) The Armed - Perfect Saviors: From maximalist hardcore on their last album to maximalist rock, and pop, on this one.
4) Smote - Genog: It's drone, it's folk, it's psych. I fell into its spell.
That's the top 4. Want to quibble with the rest of the list? Fine by me. Really, quibble all you want, it's just opinions.
5) bar italia - Tracey Denim: "Aggressively British" post-punk in the vein of the xx and Young Marble Giants. They have three singers, and none of them are any good, but that's part of the charm. They have a second album, The Twits, that's pretty good, too.
6) MSPAINT - Post-American: The "is it hardcore" debate is boring, so here's an identifiably hardcore album with no guitars. Instead you get multiple synths, fuzzed out bass, and drums. Get in the pit!
7) Home Front - Games of Power: Ever wondered what it would be like to get curb-stomped by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark? Wonder no more! A new wave band that sounds like When in Rome, but they tour with hardcore bands (produced by the drummer from Fucked Up), lyrically are closer to Gang of Four, and are ready to beat your ass.
8) boygenius - the record: By law this must appear on every 2023 best of list.
9) Altin Guen - Ask: Turkish psych from the '70s, today!
10) Inevitable - Summer Haze '99: None of this makes any sense, not the name, not the stylistic departures from heterodox black metal to... Spanish-language pop, with scat!, but I kept listening to it, so here we are.
11) Mandy, Indiana - i've seen a way: Industrial, beat-driven noise rock in which the aura of capitalist violence permeates everything. There's blood on the dancefloor!
12) Black Country, New Road - Live at Bush Hall: When the lead singer and lyricist left the band the rest of them chose to sing, and wrote all new material to perform live. It's still very good.
13) Oxn - CYRM: It's folk, it's doom, it's psych, I fell into its spell.
14) Gisli Gunnarsson - Momentos: The only post-whatever Icelandic album you need this year.
15) Joel Ortiz - Signature: It's kinda funny to hear Andre 3000 talk about rap as a young person's genre when you could just rap about how hip hop got you a house in the 'burbs and reflect on how you came up.
16) Czarface - Czartificial Intelligence: It's kinda funny to hear Andre 3000 talk about rap as a young person's genre when you could just rap about having fun with the comic books of our youth over boom bap beats with the occasional keyboard flourish.
17) Ragana - Desolation's Flower: A gorgeous mix of doom and black metal.
18) Protomartyr - Formal Growth in the Desert: Still post-punk, but with more doom, plus they made a beer with my friends.
19) Algiers - Shook: The vocalist and drummer cede a lot of space to guests on this album, which is a radical move for a radical band. A glorious, overstuffed mess of a record that parties at the end of the world.
20) Wednesday - Rat Saw God: '90s style indie/alt rock, some shoegazey noise, and a great alt-country song, all in one package.
Also, because why not: To Be Gentle - What Keeps Me Here; Katie Gately - Fawn/Brute; Nation of Language - Strange Disciple. I've got 5-10 others I could mention here, but I'd like to get this list out, so here we are.
Cheers to: Slowdive, for aging gracefully, a shoegaze Yo La Tengo; Lankum, for kicking off the micro-genre of folk/drone/doom from the Isles; and both Danny Brown and Joel Ortiz had themselves a good year in what I think was a down year for rap. Two remastered reissues that sound great: Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense and REM's 25th anniversary of Up. Two albums I missed in 2022 that could have been on last year's list: Ashenspire and Liminal Shroud.
We only appear to have lost two breweries inside the Beltway this year (Astro Lab became Third Hill and I'm not counting them for our purposes), and one of them, The Public Option, could return in 2024. Given what a shit year it was for restaurants, it could have been a lot worse and I hope that it doesn't get worse in 2024. The rough rules of the game are that the beer should be new or new to market in 2023. We'll do the DMV in alphabetical order, then the others.
Atlas - Yawn, Barrel Aged Quad: I don't like quads, but both the base beer and the barreling really shine here, plus I put them in contact with one of the distilleries, so I might be biased. Just a very well done job, with layers of dark fruit complemented by boozy, oaky tannins from four different barrels.
City-State - Air and Space, West Coast IPA: I'd put this up against any other beer in the style made in the DMV.
DC Brau/Pink Boots Society - Pink Phase IPA: A blast of fruit punch and tropical fruit notes from the hops, and a bit of stone fruit esters from the yeast as well. Very well done.
Denizens - Turkey Fest, barrel-fermented Marzen: Too many Oktoberfest beers are too sweet, so here's a clever solution: ferment the beer in a barrel and let the oak dry it out a bit.
Right Proper - Raised by Giant Wolves, Pale Ale: Raised By Wolves is something like 60% of this brewery's production, but I don't love the hopping on it. I do love the hopping on its bigger sibling, named for the Giant grocery chain. I hope to see it again in 2024.
Liquid Intrusion - South of DC Cream Ale: This and Right Proper Senate were probably the two beers I drank the most of this year. Beer flavored beer.
Lost Generation - Back to Oblivion IPA; Dying Moons and Shadows Czech Dark Lager; Tiger Spirit Witbier (with Bluejacket and 50 Hertz Tingly Foods): This is the brewery I drank at the most this year. Just over a year in and it's already the best in the city.
Ocelot - Formal Growth in the Desert, Lager: Ocelot's lager game has never been better, and I thought this was the best one. The brewery's logo is a guitar pick and they're named after a Phish song, so a partnership with Merge Records shouldn't be too surprising.
Port City - Colossal II, imperial smoked porter: A re-brew of their second anniversary ale
Troddenvale - Dickie Brothers Orchard, Cider: Virginia Winesap and Black Twig apples from an orchard that's been active for nearly 300 years, with no commercial yeast added. Dry, but not too dry. Funky, but not too funky. Tart, but not too tart. Cider perfection.
Wheatland Spring - Return Estate Piedmont Pilsner and Goslar, Gose.
The out of towners:
Lindeman's - Cuvee Francesca, Geuze: This came out in 2022 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the namesakes' marriage, but it was new to me in the first half of 2023 and whenever I saw it I bought it.
Troegs and Warwick Farm Brewing - Foraging for Clouds, Hazy DIPA - The unlikely featuring of Azacca as a lead hop, along with BRU-1, Citra, and Simcoe makes for one of my favorite IPAs of the year. Pillow soft, with unexpected notes of vanilla to go along with the obvious citrus and tropical fruits.
Sacred Profane - Dark, Tmave: I have no idea how there is enough of this to go around that DC got kegs and Virginia got cans and kegs, but I'm not complaining. A 4% crushable dark lager.
Schilling and Human Robot - Tmave 10: The day after Snallygaster the best thing you can do is head to Other Half and drink three pints of this and hang out with friends old and new.
Tilquin - Cuvee Marie-Catherine, Gueze: Perhaps the best beer I had at Snallygaster; so good that I bought a bottle the next week.
Xul - PB&J Mixtape, fruited hard seltzer: I can't write this and then not include the "beer."
Next year is an election year, it's going to be bad. Here's hoping it's as least bad as possible. Cheers and thanks for reading.
