Albums of 2022

Another year, another list. Chuck the Spotify Wrapped paper in the bin; make your own present instead! I've selected the seven albums that meant the most to me this year - whether they're ones that were objectively sound, emotionally resonant, or both. This year more of these albums are actually coming in on time, seeing as they were released in 2022. They mostly sit astride the indie / post-punk dictum that has characterised my musical taste for the past ten years (Christ!) But they remain, nonetheless, the best encapsulation of the year I had. So read along if you like that genre too - else, I'm sure Fantano has you covered. Shuffle along then!

1. Small World by Metronomy

    This number came out early on in the year and made me decide, actually, yes, I do like Metronomy a lot thank you. I later saw them at Glastonbury and had a full rock roll of a time. Including (but not opening on) a track like It's good to be back very much carries the fact that this band had been away for a hot minute. But it's also a competent love song in its own right. Things will be fine, by contrast, does a fantastic job of capturing the crisis-mode of the 2020s while, you guessed it, also being a competent love song in its own right. Moreover, seeing this band perform, they're as collaborative and warm-hearted as they've ever been. The music videos for this album were also impeccable, and they took the objectively fit front man from NZCA Lines on tour with them. What's not to like? No really. What's not to like. WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE

2. I'm Not Your Man by Marika Hackman

    I ordered this album in March 2022 only to have it delivered to the house where I lived not three but four years ago. Travelling there thrice to try and recover it from the inside lobby, I failed. So when I was forced to buy Spotify Premium to perform music rounds at pub quizzes, this was one of the albums I ended up playing through a few times. And it's just really good rock music. It's also very able in its disses of straight men. Hackman has since gone from strength to strength and written everything from melancholy folk to electronica. However, this was the only album where she collaborated with The Big Moon - London's best indie girl band, bar none* - to generate some truly room-booming choons. No, I'm not apologising for "room-booming choons". Try Time's Been Reckless or Boyfriend if you don't believe me. And thanks to Abi for recommending me this album about five years ago! Still with it.

*Wet Leg aren't from London are they? Good. Good. Phew.

3. Raw Data Feel by Everything Everything 

    OBVIOUSLY. I'm still kicking myself for not making a video about this album. More than any of their previous efforts, this number by E_E_ left me conflicted to begin with - but it also grew on me more than the others. It feels like a proper concept album, even though the production style and meter are suitably varied from track to track.  The standout feature of this album is the AI generated lyrics - or is it? No, I think the really interesting thing is how vocalist Jon Higgs took a small subset of AI generated lyrics and built an album out of it. Only one of the tracknames - Software Greatman - is AI generated. 95% of the lyrics themselves are original, and they're inspired: "Fish are swimming in and out of all our rooms / I just thought that maybe I'd get used to doom". 

    Ultimately, the impressive thing about this self-produced, self-published sixth album is its ability to wrap you in uncertainty, not just about these lyrics now, but the lyrics of the future.

4. Silent Alarm by Bloc Party

    Woof, back to a classic here. More than ten years old, Silent Alarm is still good, because of course it is. Pleasingly, it's the product of King's College alumni, which means I can appreciate it in a holistic way too: maybe lead singer Kele Okereke stalked the halls of the Strand Building and thought about eating glass. In all seriousness, there's not a dull moment in this album, and even its deep cuts are cult classics nowadays. The Pioneers was remixed by M83 and saw a renaissance on the soundtrack for Netflix psychohorror Dark, This Modern Love became the darling for indie rock playlists throughout the 10s, and, even when this album slips up, sliding into sleazy territory like on Positive Tension, it's saying something about the movement it helped create. Looking at "British Indie", now a bit of a bête noire for folks like Vice and *checks notes* Wikipedia, its mouthpieces did indeed perpetuate some bad habits, and write some bad music. But if you're only looking for the mediocre cuts, you're not really seeing the big picture. In as far as Bloc Party is part of "Indie Sleaze", all of its tracks are part of "Indie Sleaze", not just their sense of blind hedonism and substance abuse, but their sense of hopelessness, restlessness and desperation that sit just as well in our time as they did in the late noughties. 

    Wow, that got political for a hot second. Anyway, Bloc Party is still good.

5. WANDERKID by JW Francis

    I met JW Francis in the Brixton Windmill this year. The guy was so mellow. But what really cut through for me was that he'd brought his entire family on tour with him. It seemed like they'd dropped their previous lives to come and be with him, to help carry him from success to success with stickers and pin badges. But most of all, I noticed his brother, sat there at the back, looking perplexed. I clued Francis's brother was autistic and it suddenly gave me chills. This man and me. I'm not alone. There's JW Francis up there on stage jangling a guitar and when he comes off, he thinks of his brother. His brother who will never hold down a job or write a hit single or sell merch in a cult venue. But it was so clear that the guy loved his brother, in spite of all this - as you should! It was heart-warming. Francis signed my CD album and I walked home convinced that a better life is possible, that you can be someone, that you don't have to live in the shadow of something you couldn't control. If anything, you can be proud of it. If you try.

    Also the guy writes some really tasty licks. Try Maybe, it's killer.

6. Fix Yourself, then Fix the World by The Wombats

    Now, I sense this is not a popular choice. By all accounts, this album is mediocre. Sure, it has a fun bit on Worry where frontman Murph delivers a spoken word bit about some of the silly things that give him anxiety before diving back into the song proper. But more generally, this is just sort of a fifth studio record that continues to make money and evoke the late noughties aesthetic that shot The Wombats to fame fifteen (!) years ago. However, for me, personally, the album is important. Halfway through the year I walked up the Ferme Park Road towards central London and listened to The Wombats playing Community Festival in Finsbury Park just down the hill. I didn't have a ticket but, on the day, hearing the murmurs from our flat just stirred something in me. And it made me sad, drinking a single bottle of premium lager on a street corner and stretching to hear a scouser croon about greek tragedies and that. I was also supposed to go on a romantic holiday for this album. It did not pan out. So, catharsis, guys? Catharsis. Yep.

7. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road

    This one was never not making the list. Actually, that's a lie. When this album came out, it was so overplayed (in our flat, at least) that it became a bit of a hard sell for me. I didn't really make an effort to take it in, I just decided it was good and left it at that. But coming back to it later in the year, metered by vocalist's Isaac's departure and discussion of his depressive tendencies, I saw a lot more in it. Or heard a lot more. Whatever, this isn't The Quietus (fuck The Quietus).

    This album is majestic and magisterial and ever-impressive. It contains simultaneously some of the most memorable musical phrases and some of the most heart-breaking lyrics. It also contains some really stupid stuff, like breadcrumbs in bread and a guy who can't imagine making lunch. But that's exactly what love is like! It is stupid. It does meld heartbreak with total incomprehension. It does stop us in our tracks to tell us "actually, what you thought made sense all along, is completely incorrect". And at the beginning - that's enlightening, that's beautiful, to have your entire preconception of someone or something blown to bits. But by the end? It's crushing. Ants From Up There makes you stop and think and then it slams a musical door in your face repeatedly until it locks you in. I don't believe that BCNR can follow this album up. But let's see them try, hey?

    So those were my 7 favourite albums from the past year, the one where we didn't really do any pandemic nonsense but did strip our entire economy to bits. Who's to say these sorts of events don't colour our musical preferences? That the horror of life itself falling apart forcing us to fall back on our petit favourites until we can clamber out and try something new again? I don't think Spotify Wrapped carries that sort of sentiment. And so, I carry on.