vol #4: Shameful Lists
2022 year in review. Some of our favorite songs; 50x50, in a way.
We recommend opening this issue of 3x3 on the Substack website, as the email will cut off its full length in your inbox.
There’s something corrupt about End of Year listmaking. I’m not talking about major publications being biased toward including artists with money and promotional heft behind them, although of course that’s true. And I don’t mean corrupt in the sense of great art being profaned into ranked data, though I sometimes feel a version of that discomfort. Instead, I’m bothered by the process.
In attempting to settle on a representative summary of music I’ve loved across a long stretch of time, I often feel the temptation to skim. I need to consider everything I’ve listened to—or at least everything I’ve liked. And yet the list requires speed. Consider it now! Quickly! Okay, we know what that song’s about, move on, next. Need to remember more, can’t forget anything interesting. Album-length musical statements get short shrift, and since I keep a running list of favorites on Spotify, so do non-streaming releases. That scramble feels antithetical to 3x3 and my daily listening habits, both of which are rooted in close engagement and sharing the joy of listening. A pretense of comprehensiveness is rarely the goal.
And yet year-end lists are such an easy way to share great music, especially stuff that deserves more attention. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. Here’s 50 entries on songs from 2022 that I loved.
(Note that this list is being published at the end of January, to allow for the entire year’s releases to be considered, and to break up the mid-Winter malaise. End of Year lists shouldn’t come out around Thanksgiving!)
—JwD
Any overlap of songs or artist with Jacob’s list are noted by italicization.
**(Don’t miss his list down below mine!)**
Hardest song of the year
“Because Because” — Binker & Moses
My favorite verse of 2022 was a billy woods feature on a loosie that came out in the first week of the year, in which he delivers an entire short story.
“Bardo” — Premrock (featuring billy woods)
Sometimes a 19 year old from Belgium makes a beat absolutely perfect in its simplicity—a lily that popstar remixes can only gild
I love it when an artist lays out the thesis of their sound like this: “Get rich or die tryin like Curtis Jackson, I need money and power like Curtis Jackson.”
Songs that sound like a locomotive
“Natural Death” — caroline (“Natural death / you said / runs like narrow stream / that's not leaking, but flooding / its not leaking, its flooding.”)
“Rust” — Joseph Shabason & Vibrant Matter (Jon Hassell lives on!)
Confound the idea that musical progression moves linearly forward over decades
“Black Gold” — Charles Stepney
There’s a riot goin’ on...and you are loved. Both of those ideas held in tension and harmony at once.
“Phil’s Offering” — Joe Rainey (Could also have chosen several songs on Niineta or the loosies “once the reaper” + “d.m.i”)
As if to ask: so…what’s next? The final shot in The Graduate combined with the last scene of Do the Right Thing.
“Smile #8 (Je3's Eextendedd Megadance Version for Star)(see page 182)” — Slauson Malone
“For D.F.” — Qasim Naqvi / Wadada Leo Smith / Andrew Cyrille
Since a friend of mine once told me she wants to play the Melanesian choral songs from The Thin Red Line in her wedding, I occasionally send her music from around the world—Malagasy, Appalachian, Italian— that is bursting with the same kind of harmonized communal joy. Here’s the latest one I texted her:
“La Lega” — Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker
Few people were seeking this year like Immanuel Wilkins. Worth catching him live, but some of that fire is bottled here.
A musical hug to remind you it’s not all right but it’s all good
“Alive Ain’t Always Living” — Quelle Chris
Like raindrops falling on a piano
“She/Her/Gone” —Valentina Magaletti
Punch me in the jaw—best screams:
“CAN I LIVE? ...WHO GON BEAT MY ASS?” from “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)” — Soul Glo
“I have done a lot of bad things” from "Runner" — (Sandy)1 Alex G
Mike Ladd made a Tom Waits album. It’s as good as that sounds.
“Don't tell Massachusettsz” + “Gold Road Consequence” — Mike Ladd
They put poetry samples over Slint-type-beats and I’m not supposed to love it? I could have chosen so many of the songs on this album.
“Foot Wrong” + “In a Tizzy” — Moin
Footwork it:
Talk to me:
“My Name Is Nat Cmiel” — yeule
A supergroup shouldn’t sound this good.
“Many Tongues in Our Band” – Congotronics International (Konono No.1, Deerhoof, Juana Molina, Kasai Allstars, Skeletons, Wildbirds & Peacedrums)
The kalimba is a surprisingly good partner for languorous dancing.
“A Time For Healing” — Kahil El'Zabar Quartet
Song that predicted the immaculate massacre by three days
“No Hard Feelings” — billy woods (“An attack on the train, persons unknown / baking shows, cold cases solved and closed / I dozed, woke up and ‘no hard feelings’ was all it said on my phone.”)
Each listen teaches me about patience. It makes me think about this perfect little Frederick Seidel poem, Snow:
Snow is what it does.
It falls and it stays and it goes.
It melts and it is here somewhere.
We all will get there.
Piano that sounds like falling into a daydream
“Stureby House Piano” — Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer
“Actually” — Carlos Niño & Friends (that’s friend Jamael Dean on keys)
The bow is mightier than the sword…
“Recovery” — Colpitts (that’s Jessica Pavone on viola)
“Il bersagliere ha cento penne” — Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker
“I’m from empty ugly”
A quiet that erupts into smithereens
Exploding in sound
“In the Garden” — Eri Yamamoto, Chad Fowler, William Parker, Steve Hirsh
Chris Crack may have been usurped in the song titles game (by several on this album)
“I Ate 14gs of Mushrooms and Bwoy Oh Bwoy” — $ilkMoney
It was Tatsuhisa Yamamoto in the library with the brushes.
“Ask Me How I sleep at night” — Eiko Ishibashi
As good a memorial as they come: “Rachel always recommended messing with the settings / she said it's better than settling for whatever they give you…Rachel did her best with the deal she’d been dealt / and that’s what I’ve got for a eulogy.”
“Messing With the Settings” — Craig Finn
(Does a lyric get more Craig Finn than “She had a dwindling grace, and a faith in the industry / that never really made sense to me”?)
(This pick is dedicated to my beloved sister, who knows a little something about aspiring to more than the default.)
The rest of the album mostly doesn’t live up to its promise, but this opening statement is a strong reminder of how electrifying M.I.A.’s music once was.
“Picture me getting a foot rub from Martha Stewart”
Long live the posse cut
“Multi-Game Arcade Cabinet” —Open Mike Eagle, STILL RIFT, Video Dave, R.A.P. Ferreira
The other Lorraine James project from this year deserved some of the love and attention afforded the Julius Eastman one.
“Gloom” → “Awaiting” — TSVI & Loraine James
Scandi spiritual jazz to relax/glimpse the northern lights to
“Kveldsragg” —Gisle Røen Johansen
Sometimes, music should make you feel woozy.
“Wara” — Oumou Diabate and Kara Show (from Music from Saharan WhatsApp)
“Movement 2” — Kim Gordon + Loren Connors
Approaching the same idea again and again from different perspectives across the album allows an image of Bill Orcutt himself to emerge.
“At a distance” … “Or from behind” … “Out of the corner of the eye” … “Or head on” — Bill Orcutt
(Bonus: he chopped and screwed “The Entertainer.”)
It sounds like the song says: body feeling out of sorts.
“Body Feeling (Intro)” — Akai Solo
Imagine being this far out at 69…or 82.
“Fourth Movement” —Bennie Maupin & Adam Rudolph
“Bathe ourselves in that jazz / pour it into our scalps / massage it into our aching joints / paint it across the soles of our feet”
“THOMAS STANLEY JAZZCODES OUTRO” — (Moor Mother ft. Irreversible Entanglements + Thomas Stanley)
The lovechild of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” and “Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)” you didn’t know you needed
“Little Heart of Pieces” — Barry Miles
The vocal stutters in the final 20-ish seconds
Was the song every really here?
I love a song that feels like it’s about to *really* start for its entirety.
Death Grips deconstructed
“free fallen” + “yard 1” — model home
Best covers:
“Wuthering Heights” — Cécile McLorin Salvant
“Buffalo Stance” — Robyn ft. Mapei, prod. by Dev Hynes
“Rooftop Garden” — Bill Callahan & Bonnie “Prince” Billy ft. Xylouris White
The queering of Tupac
“Make Bitches Cum” — Jana Rush
Like an unhinged stalker giving you inspirational advice: “I remember my ex's email address, but I forget that I'm precious”
“Don’t Forget You’re Precious” — Alabaster dePlume
The sound of cautious optimism
“Basic Flowers”—Angel Deradoorian, Dylan Fujioka, Patrick Shiroishi
Sped-up Slowdive (Fastdive?) + the two quick slaps that show up sort of out of nowhere at 1:17 and 1:41
“Tumblr Moon” —Wicca Phase Springs Eternal
A beat like change jangling in a pocket
In 2022, I listened to music anew. I thank mostly you, Jack, for that.
Rather than listening to it from afar, or necessarily to ease life, I tried to let it challenge me. I tried to enjoy things by paying close attention. And when I did not ease—if that makes sense in a non-dramatic way; I mean when I resisted using music as the supermarket does: To make life appear smooth, casual, and frictionless—I found more beauty.
This year, music hit me. It socked me. I want to delete that, but I felt like that way; music felt old-fashioned and obvious: A hit in the face from a boxer wanting to engage in fist a cuffs.
My list still reflects my usual dual tendencies. I am, at heart, a sap. I love the drone sets and the free jazz and the weird little noises but, also, I will include Zach Bryan. I will include emo. There is Neil Young. I feel young and saccharine with music.
But I tried to listen to even my usual fare with more care this year. To draw out why I loved them with the same precision and care I bring to something like Daniel Bachman’s climate change opus. But, also, I just think Tenkiller by Chat Pile makes me want to punch a wall.
(I didn’t put in about 50 songs I wanted to but I felt like I was already over the count—those absences are random. Maybe one of them was actually something I loved more than something on the list. I probably haven’t yet listened to the release from 2022 that in five years will be my favorite. Long life, thank god.)
—JR
Any overlap of songs or artist with Jack’s list are noted by italicization.
Best album
Certain Reveries — Ben Lamar Gay
Best song
“Wharves” — billy woods—or maybe “Heavy Water” or maybe “The Doldrums.” Aethiopes might be my best album of 2022.
Another best song of 2022, either of them from Tara Clerkin
“Exquisite Corpse 1” — Tara Clerkin Trio
“Castlefields” — Tara Clerkin, Sunny Joe Paradisos
Best yell: “CAN I LIVE? CAN I? CAN I? … WHO GONNA BEAT MY ASS?”
“Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)” — Soul Glo
Best Dr. Umar reference
“Couldn’t Be Done” — Freddie Gibbs, Kelly Price
Best “run” on an album
“Fun’s Over” through “Premium Offer” on the hardcore band Drug Church’s “Hygenie” (sometimes skip Detective Lieutenant, but depends on my mood). When it hits COLLISSION (!) in “World Impact” I feel so hyped up, so excited. Truly soaring.
I don’t think I am alone in having an intense draw back to hardcore this year. Something about the pandemic? Smashing into one another with a sense of care: “Catch each other! Catch each other! No fucking drops!”
The most me album of 2022. So many people were like…you must love this. And I do. A bit emo. A bit country. References to North Carolina basketball. Lord.
“Boat Songs” — MJ Lenderman
Top audience performance
“Open the Gate” through “Heading South” (skip Sweet DeAnn) on Zach Bryan’s “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster.”
Jamie Branch’s death this year shocked me. We saw Anteloper perform at Public Records. She was so loud, and I mean that as a compliment like gigantic or immense.
“Delfin Rosado” is a fantastic song. But it was…it makes me sad to say this…I wish I could hear the live version again.
Great song that I don’t think enough people have heard but I think they’d like. (Not an obscure song that I like but that it’s obvious other people would dislike. This is a song that I feel could be even more popular than it already is.)
“Somewhere Near Marseille” — Hikaru Utada
Undeniable
“SAOKO” — Rosalia
Quite the rant, oddly addictive. Is this the future of something?
“This Is Not a Song (This for My Supporters)” — NBA YoungBoy/Top Who Matter
No, wait, this is the best song of 2022. The yells!
“once the reaper” — Joe Rainey
“I can’t answer the phone right now / I’m cookin’ dope.”
“Shootouts In Soho” — Westside Gunn, et. al.
This is one of the best albums of 2022, too. You can’t really not say Soho is the song from it… but the one that touched me the most was Busta Rhymes on “Science Class.” His flow still amazes me. It’s been said a million times, but has any rapper been more misunderstood? His speed hid him. And then, “Switches On Everything”—the Run The Jewels feature…I forgot why I loved them but there it is. “Peppas” too. Of course.
Best Neil Young
“Love Earth” maybe? Entire “Toast” reissue is wondrous. I know people don’t want this but man, I can’t believe how he makes me feel.
Best totally new to me
“Soy El Unico” — Yahritza Y Su Esencia
She wrote this song by copying what a love song sounds like because she is too young to have known the heartbreak she describes so well. There’s an excellent Los Angeles Times piece here. This floored me. It was a totally new world for me. And I can’t recommend digging into this artist’s whole back catalog anymore. This one too: “Inseperables” — Yahritza Y Su Esencia, Ivan Cornejo
A label in Poland is reissuing some of the most incredible jazz I’ve ever heard
“Respiration” — Cecil Taylor
Best Lamin Fofana (!!)
Sheesh: “Unsettling Scores.” I particularly enjoy “A Symbol of the Withdrawn God Redux.” Still, his NTS sets are even better, especially this one from November.
Charley Crockett. Two records this year. Both do the usual amazing thing he pulls off: Plumbing the cliches of America lore to find something true. The Willie cover really got me for a few months. On repeat.
“Make Way for a Better Man” — Charley Crockett
Enough of that. Enough of “best” … If Robbie Basho went punk. If ambient Americana got drunk.
“Flood Warning (Let’s Go)” — Landon George, MJ Lenderman, Will Younts
Single from an album that comes out February 2023. Don’t care. Incredible.
“High School Gym” — Dougie Poole
Everyone loved the album, I did too, but the Chat Pile song of the year was from an independent movie soundtrack. “They put my dick in a vice.” Alright! The guitar at 3:20—titanic. Doom. “In the face of recovery / they laughed at you.” Sludge!
“Tenkiller” — Chat Pile
Line of the year: “Steppin' on a brick of fentanyl before you heard about it”
“Weekend In The Perry’s” — Benny the Butcher, Boldy James
The dying legends release song after song, and one has to mine their catalog each year to make sure a classic doesn’t slip through the cracks. For example:
“Live Forever” — Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams
Early release that got lost in end of year lists. Every album, his voice…I could die to Jake Xerxes Fussell. Or, God willing, at least fall in love.
“Washington” — Jake Xerxes Fussell
Don’t listen unless you like drone/weird noises but my word, if you do, this is like eating a peach in summer
“Performance Novels” — Jessica Pavone
I listened to this reissue and then texted a few people: “I’d kill for Neko Case. I’d murder for her. Blood in the streets.” Still true!
“Halls of Sarah” — Neko Case
Immediate. One of two perfect (not using it lightly) albums this year from Ambarchi.
“I” (from “Ghosted”) — Oren Ambarchi & co
I went down a bit of an Orcutt and Miami noise rabbit hole this year. They re-released his work with Harry Pussy, and it’s so endearingly rag-tag and in your face. Orcutt’s solo work from 2022 was just palatable enough to send around to anyone.
“A different view” — Bill Orcutt
“Chuck! (Live)” — Harry Pussy. There are three versions of the song on this record but I like this one the best because it has a very funny introduction.
Tucked into a cover album, this is a perfect country song. I return to it again and again and again."
“Years” — Sierra Ferrell
A note from Bandcamp user “eurodyke” sums up my feeling on entering this music, which is less listened to than lived: “I'm just so tired after working a lot this past week and then I listen to nature and culture out of sync and in time but not all the ti me t i em , like many I try to crawl into those condensed compacts, a 75-or 140-degrees listening angle tryout…a Landscape in which I can holiday.”
Landscape and Voice— Toshiya Tsunoda
At Big Ears, we saw Claire Rousay perform “sometimes I feel like I have no friends.” It was released in 2021. The live version—in which she went into the audience, taking recordings from people and mixing them—felt more overwhelming, and I am not sure this recording captures how dazed I felt by her work. It’s not enough. With some artists I am not interested in the particular “quality” of each component of their work—testing it for purity—but instead I am drawn to the immensity of the entire project. I am fascinated that Rousay seems, to me, to be making a way through music. See, now I want to devolve into art speak. That is how I know I have not found the words to say something touched me deeply.
everything perfect is already here — Claire Rousay
Waxachatchee is the wheelhouse. Easy for me to love. Fantastic use of “baby”
“Problem With It” — Plains
Speaking of babe. Maybe this is the track of the year? Makes me want to be 25 and a woman with a tote bag. Is that weird?
“Passion Babe” — Aldous Harding
Horace Andy released two great dub records this year. Here’s a bit from an interview with the producer, Adrian Sherwood, on Aquarium Drunkard.
AD: How would you define Dub?
Adrian Sherwood: A stripped down, a deconstructed interpretation of the rhythm. You’re not playing as a full rhythm. You know, we take the drums out and just have one section playing, and then you wait and then bang, back with the rhythm section, the drums and bass, then take out the chops and things. That processing you can apply to anything, and from its start in the dance halls and studios of Jamaica, its influence is so great that you look on every computer, everything now, everyone uses the word dub this, dub that. And they’re using effects, reverbs, phases, flanges, distortions, you know? EQ sweeps that are present on every computer now. And the application of those things, you know, they’re using as a technique now on the most, on the biggest pop tunes and that wasn’t the case when—when it started coming out of Jamaica. It was like, what is this noise, you know? (laughs)
Now it’s spreading. From hip hop to, you know, pop tunes. Everyone’s using the influence of the dub techniques. I hope that answered the question.
“Materialist” — Horace Andy
God fearing!
“Oh Hally Lou” — Terry Allen, The Panhandle Mystery Band
Kirk Franklin went into a prison in Florida to record this gospel song. When I hear things like this I joke, “Okay, so you’re telling me God isn’t real? Be serious.” That’s a joke. And yet…
“Kingdom” — Kirk Franklin, Maverick City Music, Naomi Raine, Chandler Moore
(Sidenote: There’s a part where someone is basically yelling “he’s coming, he’s coming” and it’s hard not to giggle sinfully.)
Not his best album but this song is an all-timer
“Runner” — Alex G
“Hold tight”
“Shlut” — Shygirl
There are these slight panting breaths where I’ve put the ** in here: “You fell on hard times, cold and hostile / Cocaine all caked around your nostrils … I know it’s hard to be human ** / I know it’s hard to be human.” Those make this song.
“Human” — Archers of Loaf
This sound seems simple at first. Yet on repeated listens you can hear how it is continually layering small elements. I think there’s a cow bell? It’s as if there is a central point being attacked from all sides.
“Doo Wop” — Anna Buttress
I adored “St. Bonaventure” through “Chomp, Chomp” on the Friendship album. Great record. It’s a bit long as a whole album, but those first five songs destroy me. Listen to this bit on the opening track, and hear the way he sings the last name “Attenborough”—that’s some fantastic sad sack shit. “It helps having something on / Something keeping me occupied / David Attenborough episodes / So much I didn’t know / Queen Bee ruling her colony / Even she needs a little sleep.”
“St. Bonaventure” — Friendship
I am in the most emotional Ikea. “I get by / pushing poets aside.”
“Moderation” — Cate Le Bon
Another best album of the year. Bachman’s use of radio, noises, vibrations (?) is clearly in the lineage of John Fahey. And yet he seems to be carving a more communal path: The guitar here is still mysterious but so much more loving, open. Fahey strikes me as aloof. A toxic lover to be run after, never held by—except in secret. What is this then? Bachman’s attempt to make a climate change album hits me as something trying to combine the isolation of the Fahey tradition—a certain kind of American isolation—with the togetherness needed to fight. Do I sound too overt? He doesn’t on the record.
“Almanac Behind” — Daniel Bachman
“Mmm”-s of the year
“Blessings (Remix)” — Fridayy, Asake
Supremely satisfying “Yes!” throughout.
“Pay N Spray” — Father
In 2017, Tyler Childers put out one of the definitive country albums of this era in “Purgatory.” Rightful praise for “Feathered Indians.” (“If I'd known she was religious / Then I wouldn't have came stoned / To the house of such an angel / Too fucked up to get back home.”)
But this is not so easy now.
In 2022, he released a triple album: “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?” Each record includes a version of the same eight songs: Halleluiah (country), Jubilee (gospel), and then…Joyful Noise. The last versions are a bit mystifying. A West Virginia DJ splices up the country tunes into a funky, shimmering techno groove. Listen to all four versions of “Purgatory” and, at the very least, you have to admit Childers is most interesting than most.
“Purgatory” — Tyler Childers, Joyful Noise
Love the start to this one. Beat is like: “!!-!!-!-!”
“Mista” — Wiki, Subjxct 5
An instrumental emo-influenced record but run through electrical cords, or an old GameCube? (I can’t find it but I think someone wrote something like that about this album, some critic.) Quite the record. It should be listened to in full, probably. “kmart amen break” is the best song title, so let’s go with that.
“kmart amen break” — They Are Gutting a Body of Water
I hope everyone gets a chance to listen to this on a calm morning someday
“A Time for Healing” — The Kahil El’Zabar Quartet
This is still a (Sandy) household.