Sun 13’s Top 50 Albums of 2023

Who needs AI when you have the pub? Yes, the latter really does have its benefits, for many of the words that garnish these pages begin as abstract ideas inspired by some cheap lager as the weekend is ushered in.

Whether you agree with these means is neither here nor there, but that’s simply the truth behind the inner workings of what happens around these parts. It’s just what works sometimes, particularly with intros like this (which again, you guessed it, began in the local).

By now you are neither suffering from list fatigue nor bored of this insipid yarn, so for that, dear reader, I thank you.

We tend to publish our Albums of the Year feature later than most. Release trends have shifted over the years, what with Covid and pressing plant delays seeing many independent labels move their releases to much later in the year.

Publishing later also gives us a couple of extra weeks to both nail down our choices and negotiate the 11th hour curve balls that come with the territory of lists like this.

It’s been another fine year for the new music, but that really shouldn’t be a surprise. More and more people are making music, which makes the task of selecting 50 albums that much harder each year.

We wouldn’t have it any other way, though. Three-and-half-years-in, and I didn’t think this site would still be functioning let alone grow like it is. That’s down to you, and while we will reserve gushing sentimentality for our end of year message later in the week, it would be rude not to at least acknowledge the readers of this site right now. Thank you!

In a world that is full of conflict, poverty and failing leadership, some of the messages we’ve received from readers confirms that it’s the simple things that can get us through. Granted, while it may not seem like it at times, there are flickers of light at the end of that tunnel and new music can help many of us get there.

From us, there will be no let up, and if there is new music in this world, then we’ll always do our best to share it with you. Which brings us to our Top 50…

There are always notable omissions, which has rendered the last week an interesting one. However, for those artist’s whose albums don’t feature, they deserve mention. The frightening mind-grind of Hell on Hearth; the homespun warmth Tele Novella, Matt Christensen and Martin Frawley; the white-hot rage of Anti-God Hand; the fingerpicking majesty of The Man from Atlantis and the spiritual splendour of Jayve Montgomery. All releases that were most certainly at the table when final decisions were made.

With a site like Sun 13, there is an obligation to mix it up with the main aim to champion independent music: a space where so many artists are as under-appreciated as ever.

As always, we hope you find something new in our selections and spread the word those who are receptive to new music and new ideas. So, without further ado, the time has come. Thank you for reading.

Sun 13’s Top 25 EPs of 2023

50.
Búho Ermitaño: Implosiones
Buh Records

Formed in 2008 in their hometown of Lima, Peruvian collective, Búho Ermitaño, originated fundamentally as a jam band. After six years and multiple line-up changes, it eventually led to the band’s wonderful 2014 debut release, Horizonte.

Nine years on, and while some may have thought the band faded into obscurity on the back of Horizonte, the members Búho Ermitaño had spent the proceeding nine years tinkering and plotting ways to move the project forward. The result? Implosiones: an album widely removed from its predecessor in what is an organic series of out-there sonics inspired by marginal sound worlds and carefree surroundings.

A blistering concoction of musicianship and borderless terrains, Implosiones is essentially the blueprint of psychedelia.

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49.
Nadja & Fawn Limbs: Vestigial Spectra
Wolves and Vibrancy / Roman Numeral / Sludge Lord Records

While Full of Hell and Nothing’s latest split release has had tongues wagging over the past month, perhaps it’s another that should equally be lauded that has been somewhat overlooked in comparison: Nadja and Fawn Limbs’ Vestigial Spectra.

Between Fawn Limbs’ lust for extremities and Nadja’s expertise in finding space and creating their own brand of mayhem, what the pair channel on Vestigial Spectra is a raw horror and burning contempt, resulting in a menacing barbed net of destruction.

In all its uncompromising, unadulterated onslaught of noise, Nadja and Fawn Limbs rip, tear, and barrel through the earth’s core at lightning speed.

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48.
The Declining Winter: Really Early, Really Late
Home Assembly Music

For over three decades now, Richard Adams has been one of the most important voices from the U.K experimental underground. Just about every artist from the New Weird Britain movement echoes some sort of influence from Adams’ involvements in Hood and The Declining Winter. The sounds of rural psychedelia stretched and shaped into new ways, but make no mistake, Adams was at the heart of its beginnings and still remains entrenched in its presence.

At the time, 2015’s Home For Lost Souls was The Declining Winter’s apex moment. While follow-up, 2018’s Belmont Slope, didn’t quite emulate the emotional force of its predecessor, Adams’ latest offering, Really Early, Really Late is welcoming return to form, showcasing the same ranges of emotion and frozen obscurity.

Like Jason Pierce, Adams’ ability to conjure up different results from the same ingredients time and time again is one of those rare feats in music, and he’s done it again on Really Early, Really Late.

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47.
Niecy Blues: Exit Simulation
Kranky

Charlestown-based produced, Niecy Blues marks her Kranky debut with the kind of blurred blues that enhances your dreams.

13 songs clocking in at 42 two minutes, Exit Simulation is a record that simply transports you to another world with a myriad of slow-motion spectre ballads. Pulling from the worlds of blues, jazz, psychedelia and ambient composition, Niecy’s creations occupy the space between accessibility and experimentation, and the results are excellent.

Exit Simulation is a record that will draw in listeners from totally different orbits. A kind of spatial, sci-fi gospel record that breaks the boundaries of conventionality. It’s a record every music lover needs in their collection, and already I can’t wait for the next instalment Niecy Blues has to offer us all.

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46.
All The Heavens Were A Bell: A Wheel of Burning Eyes
Cruel Nature Records

All The Heavens Were A Bell is the collaboration between Panurus Production label founder, James Watts (also of Plague Rider, Friend, Lovely Wife, Lump Hammer, Dybbuk, Möbius), and Esmé Louise Newman (Penance Stare, Petrine Cross, Fashion Tips, 1727).

The pair’s second surge into the abyss sees us meeting sonic fury head on with A Wheel of Burning Eyes. With meaty riffs and bowel-twitching feedback, All The Heavens Were A Bell produce the kind of furnace-like heat that warms the pits of hell. Yes, this is Satan’s soundtrack and a mighty fine one at that.

Unlike other records in this sinister space, however, there’s a transcendental quality to A Wheel of Burning Eyes. A fierce offering, of course, and for those on a Sunn O))) binge, this should be in the queue, because these are the kind of compositions that will reach the same corners of the mind.

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Yuko Araki Interview: “I love death metal and dark fantasy manga!”

45.
Ghostwoods: My Neon
4000 Records

James Lees struck early in 2023 with his latest LP under the Ghostwoods moniker, My Neon.

The Queensland composer first came to our attention last year with the lead single from the LP, Terminal Bliss. Sounding very much likes its title, My Neon operates in the similar realms of noir, taking it us through cinematic passages which at times reach hymnal-like levels.

Backed by Mark Angel (guitar), Karl O’shea (bass), Andrew Garton (saxophone, clarinet, flute), James Halloran (keys, synths) and Rohan Seekers (keys, synths), My Neon is an album full of twists, turns, and sharp reflections. Right now, there aren’t too many artists in Australia that sound like Ghostwoods. A national treasure from the experimental terrains, with My Neon, Lees produces something very accomplished indeed.

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44.
The Necks: Travel
Northern Spy

Seemingly immune from failure, while their latest dispatch, Travel, is a slight departure from The Necks’ usual methods, it’s still uncompromisingly Necksian in all facets.

With Travel, for the first time in their history, The Necks captured 20 minute improvisations performed in the studio during the recording process. And the more you listen to Travel, the more you realise how closely aligned to their live performance it is.

The Necks catch and harness the lightning in one of those rare moments in the realm of creativity. The sheer magic of it all, and The Necks add yet another hit to the pile in what is their most diverse range of recordings since 1990’s Next.

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43.
Godflesh: Purge
Avalanche Recordings

Through the decay of economic upheaval and despair during the years of Thatcherism, no British act has captured the raw and primal collective thought quite like Godflesh.

Following the release 2017’s Post Self, there were doubts as to whether another Godflesh record would surface. Given the world’s incessant conflict and injustice, the circumstances render Godflesh as futureproof. Purge is no re-tread of past glories – this band doesn’t exist for nostalgic purposes, and once again we find Godflesh emitting a calcified timebomb of bile.

A walking sea of turbulence, navigating through economic crisis, post-Brexit rage and the festering unease, once again, Godflesh capture these times in spirited, authentic ways. It’s the only way a band like this knows how. Anything less would be considered a total failure.

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42.
Danny Paul Grody: Arc of Day
Three Lobed Recordings

Previously a part of post-rock underground legends Tarentel, and later the equally vital jazz-influenced collective, The Drift, Danny Paul Grody has spent the last 13 years releasing music under his own name.

On Grody’s latest offering, Arc of Day., purely through sound Grody manages to capture a locality like never before. Harnessed by collaboration, the guitarist is joined by former fellow Drifters, percussionist Rich Douthit and bassist Trevor Montgomery (also of Tarentel), clarinettist John Sielaff and Chuck Johnson.

Arc of Day is a release which sees Grody adding new layers and dimensions to his songcraft. It’s an exciting progression into new territory, capturing a wholesome sound anchored by his fellow collaborators.

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41.
Prewn: Through the Window
Exploding In Sound

Songwriters like Gareth Liddiard and Craig Finn have spend the last three decades writing songs that turned mundane moments into magic. So too Izzy Hagerup, who on her debut LP, Through the Window, parts with gritty folk tales that spark with similar tones of Exploding In Sound label mates Bad History Month and Pile.

And in doing so, Hagerup stumbles into the same folk-inspired punk echo system that continues to be the most interesting landscape in modern day guitar-based music.

Through the Window is an experience. Dissecting layers down to the core, it’s like line editing a novel with a watchful eye. Every single moment is crucial, and that’s why Hagerup has taken so long to shape these songs. All of which contain messages that have been conceived from the fault lines.

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Witching Waves Interview: “It was a decision on our part to push ourselves to be more honest”

40.
Ben Chasny & Rick Tomlinson: Waves
Voix Records

A release that’s gone under the radar in 2023, in truth any record involving Ben Chasny should be cause for celebration. This time the fractured folk pioneer teams up with intricate fingerpicking guitarist, Rick Tomlinson, for a collaboration many could only have dreamt of.

Recorded six years ago in Tomlinson’s native Todmorden, throughout these five compositions the pair combine to creative a beautiful acoustic-based record, radiating with a warmth and locality that combats the howling West Yorkshire crosswinds.

Even with the epic outlier in the tape-looped Paths of Ocean Currents and Wind Belts, Tomlinson revisits the ghosts of David Peace’s Red Riding series, navigating through the undercurrents of darkness that the Moors often evoke. It’s another wonderful release out of the north, and alongside Chasny, another to file under “must listen”.

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39.
Les conches velasques: Sitio y lacería
Repetidor

For those wondering when the next record from Dutch veterans The Ex will land, in the meantime the ultimate alternative has been found: Zaragoza’s Les Conches Velasques, at your service…

Sitio y lacería is one of those records that freezes everything around you. Almost like a wonderful experimental record that transports you to another world, Les Conches Velasques manage to dial in with a crystal-clear transparency between artist and listener. It’s achieved by being completely locked-in the groove and producing the kind of raw sound vibrations that epitomise soul. Artistic purity. Street-level reality.

That’s the essence of what new music should accomplish, and with Sitio y lacería Les Conches Velasques have showcased a provocative attitude and delivered a string of songs that truly spark the senses.

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38.
Bad History Month: God Is Luck
Exploding In Sound

Having released one of the year’s finest EPs merely weeks prior (True Delusion), it was a glorious surprise when it was announced that the third Bad History Month full-length, God Is Luck, would follow so soon after.

Whether it be under Bad History Month or the Fat History Month moniker before that, Sprecher has always made music to serenade the outlier. A songsmith for the margins.

Moving with the speed and grace likened to a chapter from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, you never know quite where you stand with it, and that’s part of the mystique in Bad History Month’s world. A unique take, and with God Is Luck, once again Sprecher isn’t trying to be anybody but himself.

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37.
TORPOR: ABSCISSION
Human Worth

This year has proven big for music on the darker frontiers, and sludge sentinels TORPOR are the latest to throw their weight around, with their third long-player, ABSCISSION. An arctic blast that sees a band completely reveling under the iron-grey skies which inspire much of their work.

Following their 2019 release, Rhetoric of the Image, ABSCISSION sees TORPOR (Jon Taylor – guitar/vocals; Lauren Mason – bass/Rhodes / vocals; Simon Mason – drums/electronics/ vocals) resuming hostilities with producer Wayne Adams (JAAW, Petbrick, Big Lad et al) with mastering duties once again undertaken by James Plotkin (Khanate).

On ABSCISSION, TORPOR touches upon the hypnotic heaviness largely associated from chief purveyors BIG|BRAVE. However, the Bristol trio explore throughout the more sludge-laden marshlands, and in a search and destroy mission via a series of brutish, overwhelming sounds, TORPOR seem as powerful as ever.

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36.
RVG: Brain Worms
Fire Records

Brought up on a diet of Nick Cave, Rowland S. Howard and Beasts of Bourbon, RVG have spent three albums taking their audience on a wild ride of hairpin turns filled with high-wire drama. However, it hasn’t been through the same vein of their fellow antipodean heroes noted above.

Instead, RVG take a slightly more user-friendly approach, echoing the jangle pop lustre of the Go-Betweens, and on Brain Worms Romy Vager mirrors the pomp of Robert Forster and the emotional vigour of Chrissie Hynde. 

The thing about Brain Worms is the glowing immediacy to these songs. RVG manage to orchestrate a series of sing-your-heart-out anthems that no one would have bargained for prior to this release. Not only is it another string to their bow, but it’s also their finest outing so far.

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Mike Donovan Interview: “It’s all down to a moment”

35.
François J. Bonnet & Stephen O’Malley: Cylene II
Drag City

Following their 2019 debut LP, Cylene, composer and electroacoustic musician, François J. Bonnet, and experimental guitarist, Stephen O’Malley, resume their collaboration with the next instalment: Cylene II.

The result is both a departure and a progression from its predecessor, as the pair create a new eerie, pulsating world of harsh textures and dusk-like imagery.

In some ways, Cylene II could be considered a soundtrack to the kind of black acid nightmare that currently engulfs the world as we know it. However, by intersecting the core ideas of psychedelia with the world of deep listening, somehow Bonnet and O’Malley absorb the darkness. It’s escapism, but along the darkest frontiers imaginable.

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34.
ChiaraOscuro: Rancour: Succour
Nefarious Industries

With Kristen Hayter retiring the Lingua Ignota project for a new chapter as Reverend Kristen Michael Hayter, albeit briefly, a void opened up which needed to be filled.

Enter ChiaraOscuro, whose debut album, Rancor: Succor, is one of 2023’s most complex journeys across the avant-metal terrains. Whist there is a lot to untangle through these 10 compositions that go beyond the hour mark, once underneath the surface, the results are equal parts frightening and spellbinding.

It’s the meticulous attention to detail that is Rancor: Succor’s greatest feat. ChiaraOscuro is an artist who is simply uncompromising, going to great lengths to strive for perfection. And on Rancor: Succor, she just about reaches that point. The world simply needs more artists like her.

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33.
Agriculture: Agriculture
The Flenser

Formed by Los Angeles underground lynchpins, Kern Haug and Daniel Meyer who were later joined by Richard Chowenhill and Leah Levinson, Agriculture stormed onto the scene last year with their 10-minute blast of hell that was The Circle Chant EP.

Now they follow it up with their self-titled debut LP. 31 minutes of crystallised rage that epitomises these times. With mirthless shrieks, heavy break beats and waves of guitar that cannon out of the speakers, Agriculture capture a raw energy that few have matched this year.

Earlier in 2023, Liturgy took metal down the neo-classical religious-inspired path. Here Agriculture, while socially not a world away, submit a brand of anxious, sprawling avant-metal that hits in all the right places. It’s majestically pulsating in the same vein as fellow Flenser label mates Boss-de-Nage, and most certainly not for the faint hearted.

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32.
Trio Not Trio – Aidan Baker / Tim Wyskida / Daron Beck: Trzecia
Gizeh Records

Trzecia, the third instalment in the Aidan Baker-led Trio Not Trio series saw the Canadian experimentalist team up with Khanate percussionist, Tim Wyskida and Daron Beck of the Fort Worth, Texas duo, Pinkish Black.

Whipping up intoxicating atmospheres, the title track and Czwarta are fractured doom jazz at its finest, with sounds arriving like veils of smoke. Wyskida’s percussion rumbles like a storm that rolls in from hell, backed by Beck’s subtle inflections across the keys, giving both tracks an elusive charm.

With the Trio Not Trio collaboration series, Baker has created yet another world, and in this instance alongside Wyskida and Beck, he continues to bestow hard-nose experimentalism that maintains that element of surprise.

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31.
Oxbow: Love’s Holiday
Ipecac Recordings

If ever there was a band that captured the chaos of someone trying to escape from a burning building, it’s Oxbow.

While fitting that their new album, Love’s Holiday, includes a song referencing such scenes (The Night the Room Started Burning), the San Francisco four-piece – vocalist Eugene Robinson, guitarist /pianist / arranger Niko Wenner, bassist Dan Adams and drummer Greg Davis – have spent an eternity in the ire of mayhem.

Resuming with long-time producer Joe Ciccarelli, Love’s Holiday is staple Oxbow. Wenner’s arrangements alongside Robinson’s narratives dance on a knife’s edge (Icy White & Crystalline and album centre piece, All Gone). Through abrasive textures and contrast, on Love’s Holiday Oxbow ride across the underbelly of their esoteric sound world in what is yet another forceful statement over a reign that has produced many.

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Outer Limits: The Bailter Space Experience

30.
Elizabeth Still: Going for Home
Wrong Speed Records

Those familiar with Ben Chasney’s 2021 Drag City release, The Intimate Landscape, and more recently with Infinite River’s Prequel will instantly find sanctuary in Elizabeth Still’s Going for Home.

Recorded, mixed and mastered by fellow finger-picker Nick Jonah Davis, Still creates an atmosphere tailor-made for open fireplaces and lazy Sunday mornings.

While occupying a similar sound world to her main project, Haress, it’s the skeletal soundscapes that give Going for Home an elusive, perennial charm. The experimental acoustic world continues to grow, but with her subtle style and range, Still occupies an enclave that separates her songs from the lot, with songs that grow stronger with each listen.

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29.
Black Duck: Black Duck
Thrill Jockey

Black Duck is the wonderful collaboration between Chicago stalwarts, bassist Doug McCombs (Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day), experimental guitarist Bill Mackay and drummer, Charles Rumback (Ryley Walker).

Between the three musicians who have sprinkled both Thrill Jockey and Drag City’s catalogue with gold dust over the years, Black Duck’s self-titled debut is everything this collaboration boasts on paper, with MacKay’s lush guitar sketches finding spaces between McCombs’ searching bass lines and Rumback’s perceptive percussion.

In a year that has seen so many great collaborative releases, add enough to that ever-growing list. This is a big win for the crate diggers out there, and we can only hope this is the start of the Black Duck story.

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28.
Activity: Spirit in the Room
Western Vinyl

Activity are one of the few bands that I struggle to write about for these very reasons. Every music writer has one of those bands, and Activity are mine: purveyors of a curve ball that is their stock-standard pitch. Lyrically ambiguous and wonderfully multi-faceted, trying to unpick Travis Johnson’s messages is like trying to read a Jonathan Lethem novel in one sitting.

While their debut LP, Unmask Whoever, was cloaked in its own mystery, Activity’s excellent slow burning follow-up, Spirit in the Room, is enveloped in its own source of dread. The collective anxiety of COVID-19 is felt throughout these songs, however there’s the added personal trauma for Johnson, who lost of his mother to pancreatic cancer.

It’s the type of album that makes or breaks bands, and Activity have navigated through an emotional maelstrom to create what could be their defining moment. An album brimming with blissed-out dreamscapes and abstract themes that help repair a damaged mind and mend a broken heart.

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27.
SQÜRL: Silver Haze
Sacred Bones Records

SQÜRL have spent the last decade functioning between the lines in elusive ways. Over the past 10 years, Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan have unfurled a number of EPs and film scores, which have always felt like a precursor to something bigger. Finally, that something bigger arrives in the way of with their debut long-player, Silver Haze.

Producer, Randall Dunn (Marissa Nadler, Sunn O))), Six Organs of Admittance, Steve Von Till et al), provides the sonic anchor to Silver Haze. Dunn’s work over the years has been among the finest in the alternative metal and folk pantheon, capturing an intensity from behind the studio glass that is undoubtedly unique.

An album that is unapologetic yet assured, through extracting maximum results from minimalism and space, Silver Haze is an out and out vibe record that showcases the best elements of shoegaze and drone rock, creating the sort atmospheric psychedelia that stays etched to your mind.

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26.
Billy Woods & Kenny Segal: Maps
Fat Possum

Through a post-lockdown world and the haze of jet lag, Billy Woods returns with an album for the ages. A travel log underlining the life of an artist circa 2023, from taking 300 dollar Ubers to a show, to couples therapy sessions over Zoom after landing on the other side of the world, Maps is a kaleidoscope of ideas that are infectious, original and era-defining.

Along for the ride is the master of sonic gold dust, Kenny Segal, and together he and Woods reconvene in the best possible fashion. Segal, in particular, producing a smorgasbord of sounds that somehow ape his efforts during Serengeti’s wonderful 2020 opus, AJAI. Arguably, Maps is the finest hip-hop release since that.

Backed by free-jazz wig-outs and narcotic dreamscapes, Woods completely throws down the gauntlet on Maps, and where hip-hop is concerned, no one has held a candle to it.

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No Restrictions: 10 Years with Cruel Nature Records

25.
Infinite River: Space Mirror
Birdman Records

With Space Mirror, it’s not a stretch to suggest that Infinite River has surpassed the majesty of their preceding 2023 release, Prequel.

Again, those shapes and colours are prominent throughout these seven compositions (entitled Summer Sessions #1 through to #7). There is a slightly different feel to Space Mirror, undoubtedly more raga-inspired, as Gretchen Gonzales, Joey Mazzola, and Warren Defever become slaves to the drone, which is the vital nexus in these recordings.

Space Mirror boasts no stand out track: the record itself being the stand out. One protracted jam session that excavates down to the core of psychedelia. It’s an emotional ride and one that is quite hard to put into words, making the experience a deeply hypnotic one.

Interview
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24.
Baxter Dury: I Thought I Was Better Than You
Heavenly Recordings

London crossover marvel, Baxter Dury, never makes the same record twice, and that doesn’t change on I Thought I Was Better Than You.

On his seventh studio album, Dury has never sounded more self-deprecating (Shadow) in what is 27 minutes of razor-sharp lyrical dexterity that is some of the best out of the country this year. (Sadly, for the most part, it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.)

Again, on Shadow, while lamenting that he is a hit in France while struggling to overrun the shadow of his famous father Ian, ironically, had Baxter been born across the channel, then he would be lauded as a national treasure. I Thought I Was Better Than You only adds weight to these claims, and following 2020’s The Night Chancers, it’s Dury’s his best run of form since his first two records.

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23.
The Serfs: Half Eaten By Dogs
Trouble In Mind

Most smaller cities and regional areas throughout the world tend to have a bit more of a grounded identity that is conducive for exciting artistic endeavors compared to the concrete jungles of New York, Los Angeles and, across the Atlantic, London.

One of those bands is The Serfs. Their rise through the ranks of the Cincinnati underground has been steady, dispatching darkwave-inspired sonics since 2018 with their debut Sounds of Serfdom and last year’s Primal Matter. 12 months on, and The Serfs not only return with their Trouble In Mind debut, but also their game-changing long-player, Half Eaten By Dogs.

An album that expands on their past, Half Eaten By Dogs is so well-rounded with new ideas that it actually go beyond any specific scene or genre, as The Serfs cherry-pick the best parts of many to create something that doesn’t sound like anything else out there.

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22.
Civic: Taken By Force
ATO Records

If ever there was a band to shake the frost, it’s CIVIC. Following the 2018 raw assault of New Vietnam and 2021’s Future Forecast, somehow the Melbourne collective better both with Taken By Force.

An album that snivels, snarls and bristles with contempt, this is essentially the sound of nihilism. Sonically, the sinewy rhythms are reminiscent of the greatest Australian band that ever walked this earth (Radio Birdman). Did we also mention the boulder rumbling rhythm sections inspired by Mission of Burma? Yes, Taken By Force is the best version of proto-punk that has been made all year. 

CIVIC create the kind of maelstrom that vaporises foul moods, and tailor-made for dingy pubs and loud volumes, Taken By Force is the soundtrack to usher in the apocalypse.

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21.
The Pines of Rome: The Unstruck Bell
Solid Brass Records

Undoubtedly a slowcore band, The Pines of Rome explored untrodden recesses within the genre, and it came in the way of a sharp country slant that proved to be their greatest boon.

With their last album The Everlasting Arms released 20 years ago, the band faded into obscurity shortly after, and it wasn’t until 2020 when Matthew Derby and John Kolodij began writing music together again. The sessions were the embryonic stages of what would become the year’s best comeback album, The Unstruck Bell.

The sunset sway of album highlights White Ships and Beavertail Spoils expel the raw country echoes of their previous album, A Catholic Western, however here The Pines of Rome pack a one-two punch like never before.

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Label Watch: Ramble Records

20.
All Structures Align: Cut the Engines
Wrong Speed Records

While listening to All Structures Align may have you reaching for your Polvo and June of 44 records, through an uncanny perceptiveness, they sound like neither of them.

It’s through exploring the inner grains of sound from this period that they arrive at a place where post-rock is actually exciting again. On Cut the Engines, the much-anticipated follow-up to Distance and Departure, in many ways it’s eight songs that take thematically remnants of Slint’s Washer and build on this core idea in superb variety of ways.

Not just with Cut the Engines, but over their three-album reign, All Structures Align have proven that they are the embodiment of what guitar-based music should sound like. It’s open architecture from a band who knows that the not all the intricacies in this in this life can be untangled: sometimes it’s best to just leave them.

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19.
Pound Land: Violence
Cruel Nature Records

It’s a funny game this life business, and Pound Land only know too well. Undeniable social provocateurs, while the Sleaford Mods comparisons will arrive thick and fast, Adam Stone and Nick Harris have swiftly moved away from the sprechgesang dullards that have blunted the perilous kitchen utensils the ’Mods have wielded for the last 15 years.

Pound Land operate closer to the fault lines. Margins within margins in fact, with danger at a premium. On Violence, the addition of bassist Richard Lamell, drummer Steve Taylor, and saxophonist Jo Stone, sees Pound Land take the sharp turn of phrases inspired by X-Ray Spex and deliver them with Godflesh-like nihilism.

Violence is everything its title suggests. A band firing on all cylinders, not only is the greatest release under the Cruel Nature stable this year, it also catapults them as the best band within the M60 Ring Road.

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18.
Water Damage: 2 Songs
12XU

Taking the visceral aspects of art, and through searing, combustible pressure, Water Damage deliver the kind of sonic disturbance inspired by the frayed and damage facets of this world. Life’s scars seemingly thrashed out and etched to tape in wonderfully obscure ways.

Twisting the noise of fellow agitators Oxbow and Swans into something more hypnotic, Water Damage continue their explorations into the noise-rock-inspired improvisation. Constantly locked in the groove of dread, with sweltering humid gusts 2 Songs is a fitting progression from a band that will always produce a different sounding record from the vaults at each time of asking.

Think of a bunch of outliers spending their day on the workshop floor, only to down tools for a different kind. Yes, this is music inspired by the roar of machinery and the smell of grease-stained floors, and somehow Water Damage cross-pollinate the avant-garde with a street-level civic vitality that few of their peers have replicated.

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17.
Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy
Ninja Tune

Five years is a long time if you ask Young Fathers fans. In truth, despite the chaos of the last three years, 2018’s Cocoa Sugar feels like it was only released yesterday. That’s the kind of effect Young Fathers’ music has, and with Heavy Heavy, that narcotic effect completely consumes.

Built more on the framework of pop, Young Fathers find ridiculously innovative ways to present their cacophony of noise and rhythms in what is their defining moment caught between the studio walls. The anger, the tenderness, the euphoria. Yes, Heavy Heavy has it all in what is an epic blast of emotion splayed across the creative canvass.

If we didn’t know it already, then we do now. Young Fathers are the finest act to come out of Edinburgh in years. True originals, and if they never make a record as good as this, then so be it.

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16.
Sweet Williams: Sweet Williams
Wrong Speed Records

Since the late ’00s, Thomas House has been one of key components in the new weird Britain movement. A purveyor in unearthing underground gems, most recently his appearance on Haress’ Ghosts was one of the shining points of 2022.

He returns with the latest Sweet Williams instalment, which follows 2021’s What’s Wrong With You. Sweet Williams is slowcore sliced out of the belly of solitude. Or an abandoned outhouse, as guitars creak and whine in something that sits between Low and Alan Sparhawk’s Retribution Gospel Choir project.

Sweet Williams is a wonderful addition, not only to the Sweet Williams canon, but to the Wrong Speed stable. A label that simply doesn’t deal in filler, and with Sweet Williams it’s the label’s finest offering this year.

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Weirdo Rippers #10

15.
Bonnacons of Doom: Signs
Rocket Recordings

In October, hypno-psych-rock masters, Bonnacons of Doom, returned in with their much-anticipated follow-up to their 2018 self-titled debut in Signs.

Led by vocalist Kate Smith, whose chants and shrieks separate the Bonnacons from just about every other band across the terrains of psych-rock and alt-metal, Signs is like a thin crack of thunder rolling down the hell-forsaken skies. A thrilling cosmic storm of doom-laden psychedelia that launches you into another orbit.

With the addition of several slick electronic passages, these new dimensions see the band guiding us through new sound portals in what is another transcendental experience. A wonderful boon for the band who are one of the leading forces on the Rocket Recordings label.

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14.
Prison: Upstate
Drag City

Prison are a band simply not born for these times. It’s exactly the reason what makes them masters in their own right, and another why more people should be listening to them.

A band that is the new voice of reason in what is a ramshackle of punk-inspired outlaw psychedelia. A wicked brew for lovers of everything from The Stooges and Spaceman 3, to those Grateful Dead lost souls who have spent the last 50 years scouring the ends of the earth for the ‘vibe’.

That vibe? Look no further than Prison’s debut album, Upstate. Five long-form jams that is 90 minutes of locked-in lunacy, deeply entrenched in fundamental outsider grandeur. The kind of album you gravitate towards during a certain time of the day. Where that window of opportunity for something more expansive seems like the only one to go through.

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13.
Emil Amos: Zone Black
Drag City

Where outliers are concerned, Emil Amos is leader of the realm. The underdog that is never deterred; his creations constantly provoking thought and reaching every corner of the mind.

It continues with Zone Black: Amos’ follow-up to 2017’s Filmmusik and first for Drag City. While recorded in tandem with his defining Holy Sons LP, Raw and Disfigured (also Sun 13’s inaugural album of year in 2020), Zone Black is a different proposition. Always on high alert to create something outside of the conventional paradigm, Amos delivers a drug-inspired body high album that reaches new emotional depths.

Zone Black is an album for solitude. An album where natural tendencies for human interaction dissolve. In many ways, it makes Zone Black an out-of-body experience, and who better the architect than the chief underdog himself?

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12.
Rabbit Hash: Don’t Mistake My Enthusiasm for Impatience
Marginal Glitch Records

Like always in life, there are soundtracks that form the backdrop to a wide range of emotions. Capsule-like sonics that will remain with you for the rest of time. In this case, the providers are Rabbit Hash – the collaboration between droneroom’s Blake Conley and Cincinnati experimental guitar veteran, Pete Fosco.

Fosco’s textures are brooding, heavy with atmosphere and sentiment. Carefully chiselled out by Conley, from front to back Don’t Mistake My Enthusiasm for Impatience is like watching the clouds pass over open fields. A panoramic outer-world that is part fact, part fiction.  

Don’t Mistake My Enthusiasm for Impatience is an album that radiates with an enigmatic transparency. That’s what can happen when real people make music, and as a collaboration, Conley and Fosco possess an unbridled telepathy. Together, they have formed a gale-force coalition in the space of experimental guitar music.

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11.
Marthe: Further In Evil
Southern Lord Recordings

Marthe, the alter-ego of Bologna artist, Marzia, began her descent into the abyss back in 2012, and while born as a bedroom project, the results sound anything but. Essentially, Marthe is a one-woman army creating a maelstrom that blends searing anarcho punk with black metal majesty.

While Marthe’s 2019 debut full-length, Sisters of Darkness, was a release that was inspired by DIY with the kind of morbid eruption that ascended from a flea pit, on her Southern Lord debut, Further In Evil, the Italian hurricane reaches Cat 5. The waves of menace slamming into the shores and beyond with moments that are as intense as anything else committed to tape this year.

Something born from the beauty of solitude and that open space to take stock and find perspective. Forget bedrooms and other confined spaces. On Further Is Evil Marthe goes well beyond the ideas of that in what is music to emit from the mountains.

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Mick Harvey & Amanda Acevedo Interview: “It was a journey of a lot of discovery and experimentation”

10.
Grails: Anches En Maat
Temporary Residence

Grails are like an abstract painting. An abundance of room for critique and interpretation. Take a song such as the aptly titled Stoned at the Taj Again – one of the many ways to construe a band that has constantly reinvented themselves over the years.

Which leads us to the latest chapter of the weighty Grails tome, Anches En Maat. Six years in the making, Anches En Maat drips with a fever-dream residue that takes days trying to piece together abstract thoughts. Essentially, it’s another facet of this ever-evolving concern.

With Grails of course, it broadens beyond any one musical style. It’s a wellspring that this band has continuously tapped in to, and Anches En Maat as much as any Grails release is an extension of that. A well-informed idea into music’s history.

Corridors of Power: 20 Years with Grails feature
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9.
Winterwood: Exploratory Guitar: Cavelands
Self-released

New Zealand-based duo, Zac and Holly Winterwood have been on some run of form. In between the releases of Harakeke and the split with Neil Johnstone, Arriving in the Oceans of Different Views, the pair released the third chapter of their Exploratory Guitar series, Cavelands.

Emotionally, these compositions see the duo sinking their hooks in, with an array of multi-dimensional sounds designed to wet the corners of the eyes.

Cavelands goes beyond the sacred limits Winterwood have so far set out. An hour’s worth of wonderful meanderings, bursting with an emotional intensity seemingly Winterwood can only conjure up. Cavelands is one of the most frighteningly beautiful releases of the year.

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8.
Chris Abrahams / Oren Ambarchi / Robbie Avenaim: Placelessness
Ideologic Organ

Sometimes an album comes along that is so intoxicating and deeply hypnotic that it’s difficult to find the right words to do it justice.

Placelessness, the debut collaboration album between Australian trio and experimental force, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim, is one of those records. An album that boasts the kind of multi-coloured textures and vivid sketches that become purer with each listen.

Collaborations like this don’t always replicate the majesty one sees on paper. That’s not the case here, and with beautiful tempo shifts and effortless movement through sound worlds, the Australian experimental alumni capture the kind of burning intensity that feels like lighting coursing through your veins.

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7.
Great Falls: Objects Without Pain
Neurot Recordings

Following their 2018 LP, A Sense of Rest, Objects Without Pain sees Great Falls turn up the heat to astonishing new temperatures.

Listening to Great Falls is likened to being on a plane nosediving. Turbulence committed to tape unlike anything this year, and with the chaos harnessed from behind the studio glass by Kowloon Walled City’s Scott Evans, Objects Without Pain is a snapshot of some seriously bleak images which sees Great Falls tackle turmoil head on.

Flustered, disheveled and undoubtedly hard-edged, Objects Without Pain caps off what is Great Falls best moment committed to tape. 54 minutes of shattering noise that crumbles under the weight of despair.

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6.
Droneroom: Rusted Lung
Echodelick Records / Ramble Records

From the opening metallic echo of Blood Goes Warm, you get the sense that Rusted Lung is one of Blake Edward Conley’s finest moments caught on tape. Just the feel of it embodies the spirit of the droneroom story.

The Distance From Myself is droneroom at its most malevolent and visceral. Dark curls and fizzy slabs of noise that strike with devastating effect. It’s the kind of track you feel that Dylan Carlson never made.

With ceaseless waves of militant drones that buckle the mind and draw a tear from the eye, Rusted Lung is a tableau of pain and ecstasy. Again, those juxtapositions that are indicative of life, and that’s what the droneroom experience is all about. A tainted soul trying to find solace, and with Rusted Lung Conley finds his place on this earth. Or, indeed, at the summit of it.

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Cosmic Cowboy: The Month with Droneroom feature
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James Johnston & Steve Gullick Interview: “If it was always easy it would probably be boring”

5.
FACS: Still Life In Decay
Trouble In Mind

FACS have always been inspired by black pits, and Sill Life In Decay harnesses a new shade of gloom in what is the band’s darkest moment captured on tape yet.

Still Life In Decay unravels with themes that barely shift from the tone of its title. The hope we may have felt on the back of lockdown, swiftly evaporating in a world that is out of control with global power struggles sending shockwaves throughout the world as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.

Neither preachy nor polemic, Brian Case never talks down to his audience like so many others in this space. He simply places the world’s ills at our feet and, ultimately, it’s for us to decide. On Still Life In Decay, the message hasn’t been clearer.

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4.
Michael Plater: Ghost Music
Hypostatic Union

Involved in a plethora of other projects, including The Northern Lighthouse Board, Ghosts of Electricity, Cornish Wreckers and The Old Colonials, U.K.-based Australian experimentalist Michael Plater has reached the apex of his creative arc with Ghost Music.

There’s a Crime & the City Solution circa-late ’80s Berlin vibe. However, in truth, it feels less chaotic than that. These songs are too tender to burn the heart: they melt it instead.

Ghost Music isn’t a record you choose. Boasting songs that feel as though they were written for your ears only, it chooses you. It’s not true of course, but that’s how great storytellers sink their hooks in, and Plater is most certainly that. A pure world-builder, and one whose music should be attracting far more attention than it currently does.

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3.
PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old Year Dying
Partisan Records

While PJ Harvey’s I Inside the Old Year Dying echoes the minimalism of White Chalk, even then it’s only fleeting, maintaining the notion that each PJ Harvey album stands completely on its own two feet. Each of her records should be considered in isolation, with lineage and through-lines almost non-existent from one to the next.

Harvey’s narratives have always possessed different shades and tones of darkness. Masqueraded in metaphors and mystique, in what is stark, wintry, and positively earthy, I Inside the Old Year Dying sees Harvey unpicking the patchwork of her past: locality. It’s something she has rarely explored throughout her career.

There’s a ghostly quality to I Inside the Old Year Dying that you can’t quite put your finger on. A dark aura and eerie pathos that Harvey hasn’t captured before. I Inside the Old Year Dying will morph into different shapes and colours as the months and years roll on. In that sense it’s a quintessential PJ Harvey record.

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Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea 20th anniversary feature
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2.
Crime & The City Solution: The Killer
Mute

Crime & The City Solution are a band whose mark should be far more prominent than it is, responsible for some of the most exciting outlier blues-punk ever made.

The latest incarnation of the band sees Bonney and Adams joined by Frederic Lyenn (piano, bass, synth), Donald Baldie (guitar), Georgio Valentino (synth, guitar), Chris Hughes (drums, percussion) and Joshua Murphy (piano, guitar). The Killer also marks a first as Bonney and Adams enlist outside ears; producer Martin J. Fiedler (Josh T. Pearson).

With The Killer, Crime and The City Solution’s arrival is timely. Simon Bonney, the creative force that parts with the pertinent truths during a time where lies and obfuscation are the new normal. It’s another defining moment from a band that has given us many.

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1.
Luggage: Hand Is Bad
Amish Records

It’s a plausible argument to suggest that Luggage are the most underrated act on the planet. The Chicago three-piece, vocalist/guitarist Michael Vallera, bassist Michael John Grant and drummer Luca Cimarusti, are, in fact, go beyond any orbit considered post. They are, in fact post-post. A band dialled in with a unique, codified telepathy.

From spatial to savage within the blink of an eye, Luggage unfurl the kind of brooding undercurrents that shift the landscapes on which Hand Is Bad is built. It’s wonderfully incongruous and unique, pulling together the remnants of past releases and reaffirming their position as one of the true behemoths of guitar-based music.

This is music made by lifers for lifers, and in a world that degrades artistic expression more and more as each day passes, bands like Luggage and albums like Hand Is Bad remind us that the struggle is worth it.

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Top 50 recap:

50. Búho Ermitaño: Implosiones
49. Nadja & Fawn Limbs: Vestigial Spectra
48. The Declining Winter: Really Early, Really Late
47. Niecy Blues: Exit Simulation
46. All The Heavens Were A Bell: A Wheel of Burning Eyes
45. Ghostwoods: My Neon
44. The Necks: Travel
43. Godflesh: Purge
42. Danny Paul Grody: Arc of Day
41. Prewn: Through the Window
40. Ben Chasny & Rick Tomlinson: Waves
39. Les conches velasques: Sitio y lacería
38. Bad History Month: God Is Luck
37. TORPOR: Abscission
36. RVG: Brain Worms
35. François J. Bonnet & Stephen O’Malley: Cylene II
34. ChiaraOscuro: Rancour: Succour
33. Agriculture: Agriculture
32. Trio Not Trio: Trzecia
31. Oxbow: Love’s Holiday
30. Elizabeth Still: Going for Home
29. Black Duck: Black Duck
28. Activity: Spirit in the Room
27. SQÜRL: Silver Haze
26. Billy Woods & Kenny Segal: Maps
25. Infinite River: Space Mirror
24. Baxter Dury: I Thought I Was Better
23. The Serfs: Half Eaten By Dogs
22. Civic: Taken By Force
21. The Pines Of Rome: The Unstruck Bell
20. All Structures Align: Cut the Engines
19. Pound Land: Violence
18. Water Damage: 2 Songs
17. Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy
16. Sweet Williams: Sweet Williams
15. Bonnacons of Doom: Signs
14. Prison: Upstate
13. Emil Amos: Zone Black
12. Rabbit Hash: Don’t Mistake My Enthusiasm for Impatience
11. Marthe: Further In Evil
10. Grails: Anches En Maat
9. Winterwood: Exploratory Guitar: Cavelands
8. Chris Abrahams / Oren Ambarchi / Robbie Avenaim: Placelessness
7. Great Falls: Objects Without Pain
6. Droneroom: Rusted Lung
5. FACS: Still Life In Decay
4. Michael Plater: Ghost Music
3. PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old Year Dying
2. Crime & The City Solution: The Killer
1. Luggage: Hand Is Bad

Previous Sun 13 Top 50 Albums of the Year:

2022
2021
2020