Although my attention to contemporary popular music is not sustained nor comprehensive, I do check in here and there, and it seems to me that in 2023 it remained in a creative trough, one it has been in since about 2019. This was particularly the case with rock, which partly explains why it’s been a year since I wrote a Carl’s Rock Songbook post—the last was about a Weyes Blood song from late ‘22.
The highlight of Bob Dylan’s 90s “comeback” album, Time out of Mind, was “Highlands,” and that song’s most telling statement was this:
The party’s over
And there’s less and less to sayyy…
Now in any argument about rock creativity, I begin from a somewhat unusual place, though I believe I am only unique in being able articulate what most of those attuned to the story intuitively sense is the case. I have repeatedly argued that there are inherent stylistic limitations to the family of genres we can categorize as rock, and that these had become evident by the late 80s or early 90s; what follows from that is the realization that rock’s ballyhooed propensity for progression, for finding new form after new form, is a myth. A refusal to accept that myth has been a basic assumption of my whole Songbook, in fact. I hold that there were early periods of discovering the set of innovations possible within the formal boundaries of the genres, and these were the glory days of rock. There cannot be a repeat of those days’ excitement, as long as it’s rock music we’re primarily looking to.
But I did add that the lesser kind of creativity which could be found in a recycle-ment of the stylistic possibilities should not be dismissed, and that many listeners Boomer, X-er, and younger-ones too, were missing out on the fact that the best Millennial artists were laying down some impressive works in this mode. Because of that, 2010-2018 stand in retrospect as a boom-let of excellence, making the teens definitely superior, rock-wise, to the aughts, and in my grunge-hating judgment, to the 90s as well. I listed the groups I felt were a part of that upsurge of excellence in “My Favorite Millennial Groups.”
But evidently, we are now in another period of exhaustion and confusion for rock, and it sounds to me for most of popular music too. There seems less and less to say, either musically or lyrically, and the confidence isn’t there. I’m just not hearing that much new music that feels compelling, and especially in terms of songwriting and lyrics.
I suspect the artistic dryness is linked to other ones, of ideas and spirit, and as I have suggested now and then, I believe one present drag upon our artists’ creativity is their refusal, nearly all of them, to forthrightly address the Disasters of our era, the first being the Progressivist/Woke Amputations of Liberal Democratic Freedom, and second being the Covid/Vax Disaster. I believe they are experiencing a kind of writers’ block because, much as the playwright character did in The Lives of Others, they refuse to look at, let alone to try to understand, the present regime’s descent into a new form of despotism, as well the extent to which they are “in bed with” it.
But, enough of that hypothesis for now. The Muses still send down some inspirations, and with Christmas almost here you may have a need for gift suggestions for the music lovers in your life.
Again, this is a likely-deficient list, but I have enough confidence in my tastes to say here are a handful of worthwhile albums from this last year—I’ve paired a sample song with each title:
1.) Durand Jones, Wait ‘Til I Get Over
2.) Andrew Bird, Outside Problems
3.) Shana Cleveland, Manzanita
4.) Tele Novella, Poet’s Tooth
5.) Charley Crockett, Live from the Ryman
6.) Nat Myers, Yellow Peril
Pretty short list! Permit me to supplement it with an earlier (2015) gem which most of us only discovered this year, thanks to the new Italian movie The Eight Mountains.
7.) Daniel Norgren, Alabursy
I should also note that two of the most culturally-relevant collections of songs recorded in 2023 are not yet available for physical-copy purchase, a lack that points to the power progressivist gatekeepers have over the music industry, and their increased willingness to overtly exercise it in the service of ideology. I refer to what ought to be our number 8.), that is, whatever the title will be for Oliver Anthony’s debut, whose core song will be “Rich Men North of Richmond,” the youtube hit of the summer—as pop history shows just how capable recording companies can be when there is some grass-roots hit to get a regular-release product out right-quick, the fact that that hasn’t happened in Anthony’s case speaks volumes; and, to what ought to be our 9.), the second of two albums-in-the-can by Morrissey blocked from release, Without Music the World Dies—the first was Bonfire of Teenagers—due to shameful commissar-type behavior by Capitol Records. (However, there are reports that RCA is about to release Without Music…. I am as hesitant to confirm them as Morrissey himself seems to be, as it was around this time last year that Capitol was still pretending it was going to release Bonfire any day now…) For live versions of around eight of the unreleased songs from both albums, listen to this:
I’ve written about this bizarre but-telling suppression of Morrissey’s newer music before, so let’s move on to notes on the other artists.
My mention of Oliver Anthony’s hit, my earlier-this-year celebration of Sierra Ferrell’s success, and my (kinda cheating) pick of a live album by Charley Crockett for this list, all point to 2023 having been a good year for country music, and particularly for artists exploring more traditional stylistic approaches to the genre. Crockett’s overall approach reminds me of that of the Hacienda Brothers, and it features some fine songwriting, as the near-perfect-to-have-released-in-2020 “Welcome to Hard Times” attests. Crockett sometimes calls himself a “blues and country” artist, and so the natural pairing to his song is “Pray for Rain” by a country-blues guy, the Korean-American but very authentically Southern-feeling-as-of-now Nat Myers.
I wrote about Daniel Norgren’s music in my post on The Eight Mountains film. As for the two other millennial sixties-sounds artists in this list, Tele Novella and Shana Cleveland, while the former isn’t yet adequately known, Cleveland is a major artist. Her main band, La Luz, was one of several, along with the Growlers, the Allah-Las, and Real Estate, which discovered there were stylistic territories yet to explore in the areas between 60s surf, garage, and folk-rock. A great band—the discs I most recommend from them are Weirdo Shrine and Floating Features.
Her solo work, however, has explored the possibilities of mostly-acoustic folky music. Her singing there, and often even amid La Luz’s rock, is kind of mumbling/murmuring, that is, she sings as a certain type of artsy person will talk, in a very quiet voice that suggests secrets will be heard if you listen carefully enough. If that sounds annoying, it takes on a musical richness in Cleveland’s case, and comes also with a certain humility; similarly, her lyrics, if nothing amazing, have a way of capturing millennial-gen perspectives, and always seem honest, coming with (at times stoner-ish) admissions of her own limitations. So the main event with Cleveland is her music, in which her quiet manner, her guitar chops, and her refined cultivation in rock’s and folk’s better moments (could you compile, as she has, a 37-card pack of “Obscure Giants of the Acoustic Guitar”?), all come together.
Manzanita combines certain arrangement-strengths of her first two solo LPs, Oh Man, Cover the Ground, and Night of the Worm Moon. (For one thing, the cello-touched sound of the first returns in a way, through a creative use of stand-up bass.) The best song-sample is “Faces in the Firelight,” one whose beauty is compelling enough to recommend listening to it without the video visible; but also, try one of the several instrumentals, “Sheriff of the Salton Sea.” Lyrically, Manzanita is fairly simple, ditching the esoteric-magic references of Worm Moon, and matching-up with Cleveland’s retreat into country life, a topic already sung about on the last La Luz record, and with her now being a mother. See this genuinely interesting interview by Mother magazine, where we also learn about Cleveland’s serious health-scare with breast-cancer a couple of years back.
I know less about the Sacramento band Tele Novella, and so I will mainly just quote the compliment I paid them on youtube upon hearing the first song for this new album: “As the discs stack-up, they're making a serious bid for the all-time gold medal in the Baroque Rock category.” I can hear the objections: “What !!??—are you saying they do a better job than even the Kinks or the Zombies did with that genre?” Put that way, it is hard to stick to my guns, but with the release of Poet’s Tooth, Tele Novella now have two albums that stand that tall or nearly so.
Leader Natalie Ribbons, beyond her evident skill as an arranger, is an arresting singer and lyricist. She has a way of delivering sharp observations and kind counsels with maximum impact, but without being heavy-handed. Notice, for example, the trick of “Poet’s Tooth,” which at first glance seems an elaborate and approving evocation of Witchery, literal and artistic, but which turns out to contain some killer digs against it. Maybe I shouldn’t highlight that song, though, since “Hard-Hearted Way,” “Broomhorse,” and the western-tinged “Funeral,” and “Rodeo Clown” are the more obvious winners; the album also has a cover of a 70s “outsider” artist I’d never heard of, Peter Grudzien; the song is “Unicorn,” and it fits perfectly both with Ribbons’ type of word-play and Tele Novella’s baroque-hippie aura. Their cover gives it more of a sonic punch, though the original has its own unsurpassable psychedelia-meets-country beauty.
My Andrew Bird selection here is arguably not even a popular music album, as it is a set of instrumentals, some of them being developments of parts of his regular songs; overall, they showcase the amazingly large sound he’s able to get from his electric violin, in most instances backed merely by a four-piece or three-piece. When I saw him this summer, he wasn’t showcasing these instrumental numbers, but sticking closely to the songs from his excellent ‘22 release, Inside Problems. Maybe he thought they wouldn’t have been the best choices for live performance, but I can report they work wonders on the home stereo and on the road, as well as when they’re paired with the nature-photography videos he put together for them: try “Epilogue” for another example of what he’s accomplished here.
As for the album I listed first, Durand Jones’ solo effort Wait ‘Til I Get Over, it’s the standout of the year. I once started drafting a Songbook post on it, but didn’t complete it because I found I had just too much to say about it. To give one example, there’s the breath-taking “Heroes”-era Bowie-imitating song, “That Feeling,” linked to above, but to an audio-only version, lest its coming-out-as-a-bisexual aspect, half-cloaked in the song but underlined in the video, dominate our first impressions of it. Talking about just that one song requires, in my view, a.) differentiating of the impact of the song-alone, from that of the song/video, b.) discussing the sensitive topic of how bisexual identity relates to the broader (and in my view heavily social-contagion-driven) Millennial and Gen-Z championship of alternative sexual orientations and identities, and c.) how Jones’s coming-out is in admitted tension with the longing for community evident in so much of this album, given its specific focus on his memories of the black-run township he hails from.
My main terms for the whole album would be: personal statement, black-gospel-tinged, genre-hopping-yet-unified, and judiciously-experimental. Three of my favorites from it are “Gerrie Marie,” “Sadie,” and a cover of Donny Hathaway’s “Someday, We’ll All Be Free.”
Now Jones is the titular leader of probably the top the soul-revivalist group of our day, Durand Jones & the Indications. Although he recorded Wait… with other musicians, in interviews he indicates a continued dedication to the Indications, which given the solo projects of other members, Aaron Frazer and Steve Okonski, might now be regarded as a supergroup. I say Jones has been its “titular leader” because most of their songs are co-written by at least two members, and Frazer and Jones regularly trade lead vocal duties. The top-billing of Jones in their name may be a case of a choice that in retrospect seems unfitting, but which “Branding 101” obliges one to stick with. Now we might also regard it as significant that Jones was initially the only Afro-American member, and that the genres they specialize in, classic soul and disco, are rooted in black culture. Truth is, though, nearly all the bands of the millennial-gen soul/funk-revival are more staffed with white or Mexican-American musicians than black ones, and you wouldn’t want any kind of bean-counting get in the way of appreciating groups as excellent as The Monophonics, Thee Sacred Souls (who in “Running Away,” surely have cut the single of the year!), and the Indications. Still, I suspect this fact must produce a bit of awkwardness for one and all. Conservative me, I’m ready to celebrate integration, and Ralph-Ellison-endorsed cultural borrowing/mixing, but things must feel different for bands expected to please predominately progressivist critics and indie-music audiences, and in an era where the crude “Cultural Appropriation!” hatchet remains at hand.
Anyhow, with this Jones LP there are two short tracks of spoken-word, and a 20-page booklet of photos, lyrics, and additional poetic scraps, in which family photos of Jones’ own childhood are interwoven with a photo-essay on Hillaryville, Louisiana, and its Mississippi Delta surroundings. It is presenting itself as a statement, a wholistic artwork.
The songs and the booklet underline certain ways in which Jones will be forever of Hillaryville, but as he explains in word and song, that town’s viability and distinctiveness is now fading away, and he needed anyhow, as artist and individual, to move beyond it—he went to a college in Indiana to study music (especially classical), and that’s where he met the guys who would become the Indications.
This duality of wistful recognition of the home community’s gift to one’s upbringing on one hand, and celebration of one’s self-realizing emergence out of it on the other, is illustrated in the one outright-gospel song here, the title track. It also suggests the connection that exists—which was also displayed in a masterpiece of independent cinema, John Sayles’s Sunshine State—between black gospel hopes for an Acts 4 community of fellow believers and black civic hopes for black-run neighborhoods and municipalities. But again, the song is also about many individuals’ need to define themselves, a la the Emersonian and Whitmanian teachings, or more aptly, the Ellisonian and (Zora Neale) Hurstonian ones, apart from the claims, expectations, and collective dreams of the community at hand. Whatever we make of that, it is the case that alongside Sayles’s portrayal of the fictional “Lincoln Beach” and Hurston’s of the quite-historical Eatonville in her autobiography Dust Tracks in the Road, and in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jones’ album stands as one of our best artistic meditations about the black-founded town.
So Jones has given us an enjoyable and stylistically fresh album whose waters runs deep. As a social conservative and a Christian, I have my quarrels with some of its suggestions, but I cannot feel Jones is a man dismissive of my point of view, nor that of most older black Christians; similarly, I cannot suspect him of being dishonest about his own story, nor Hillaryville’s. If his flying the flag of bisexuality diminishes my own kind of hopes for how his artistry might someday serve the cause of American reconciliation, I still believe he’s an artist to keep an eye on.
Wrapping up, I should mention that there is a new album from the important late-Gen-X band Blur which many critics are hailing, but which is underwhelming for the most part; there is also one from the important early-Gen-X band The Church, which on initial listens sounds intriguingly strong, but perhaps, similarly resigned-in-spirit—let’s just say the jury on the Church release is still out for me. As for boomer acts, I am aware that there was a new album from the Zombies, but unfortunately I don’t like it much—certain bad habits acquired by many boomer rockers back in the 1970s are still too much in its mix. Finally, Van Morrison released his second roots-oriented and mostly-covers album of the 2020s, but despite my having no objections to its music, i.e., to its demonstration of the timeless strength of 50s-era R ‘n’ B, it is just too predictable an affair to recommend. My fellow conservative culture critic (and fellow late-era Morrison/Morrissey appreciator) Armond White is stretching himself way too far in finding deep significance in it.
And what do you think? Any popular music albums you’re aware of from 2023 which delivered? My tastes are limited, so clue me into what we need to be checking out!
I always enjoy your music articles, Carl! For those of us who enjoy rock music, we are living in meager times for this, as the genre slowly fades into the mists of mediocrity.
The rock albums I enjoyed this year include silly ones like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's 'PetroDragonic Apocalypse'; '90s nostalgia like White Reaper's 'Asking for a Ride,' the Foo Fighters 'But Here We Are' (which at least attempts to say a good farewell to drummer Taylor Hawkins), and Queens of the Stone Age's 'In Times New Roman'; glam rock nostalgia the Struts' 'Pretty Vicious'; '70s throwback Greta Van Fleet's 'Starcatcher'; Dolly Parton's fun, over-the-top, not-quite-well-enough-produced 'Rockstar'; and the only one I would call good, P.I.L.'s 'End of World.'
None of these are serious or have much to say to our current world beyond "look back to the good-ole'-days"--except P.I.L.'s, which is quite strong in calling out the new and returning oppressions, in its odd instrumentation, dramatic vocals, and bold lyrics. One of my favorite albums of the year!
"Car Chase": "I don't get bothered/I don't get bored/I get ignored"
"Being Stupid Again": "You're being stupid again/Well done, it's the students again/So sloganed again/Verbatim again/You're being students again//Ban the bomb/Save the whale/Give peace a chance//You're being sponges again/You're being minges again/Full to the brim/All Marx and Lenin again//Pretending again/You're being students again/Being stupid again/Well done, it's students again//Ban the bomb/Save the whale/Give peace a chance//Men into women/And back into men/Again and again/All banning all men/You're being stupid again/Happy hippy drippy shit/You're being students again//All maths is racist/Pretending again/Passive-aggressive/Again and again/All accepters are dead/You're all stupid again//Here's a question again/Does that make me racist again?//How much money for that education?/I'm not paying for that/Not gonna be stupid again//Ban the bomb/Save the whale/Give peace a chance"
"Walls": "You have no history/Just some political mystery/Some new conceit/Without teeth"
"L F C F": "Oh, give yourself a story/Empty of a history/Wrap it up in Mickey Mouse/Mimicry and Disney"
Not as straightforward as Van Morrison, but perhaps just as bold.
As far as albums with good lyric writing go, my favorite was a Country album, the Turnpike Troubadours' 'A Cat in the Rain.' Of course, the title is a reference to the Hemmingway story, and some of the songs almost live up to it. Especially "The Rut" and the title track.
I have more but I've already gone on too long here!
Addendum: here's a solid article about, and interview with, Durand Jones on Wait Til I Get Over. https://ratedrnb.com/2023/05/durand-jones-wait-til-i-get-over-album-interview/ It's really a special album, very personal and yet also major statement on a key aspect of America--my only regret about the above essay that my love for it doesn't come through strongly enough!