BY MIKE METTLER — JANUARY 1, 2024
Whether you choose to consume your music via high-grade180-gram LPs, full-on surround sound and/or Dolby Atmos immersive audio mixes, top-shelf streaming services, hi-res audio downloads, or even standard-issue CDs, this past year delivered yet another wonderfully wide wave of full-length aural wonders. In reverse order, here are The SoundBard’s Top 31 long-players of 2023, along with YouTube videoclips to give you a taste of just how good they all are, in addition to direct links to any of my related deep-dive interviews with the artists and/or reviews of the albums at hand. Happy listening!
31. The Zombies: Different Game. Cooking Vinyl. My interview with Zombies lead vocalist Colin Blunstone was posted on Analog Planet on March 30, 2023. To be sure, Different Game contains all the hallmarks of a classic Zombies LP, from the finely layered harmonies on “Rediscover” to the fully careening “Merry-Go-Round” to the impassioned harmonica breaks on “Got to Move On.” As Blunstone told me, “I think the arrangements on Different Game are wonderful. When Rod [Argent, Zombies keyboardist] writes a song, a lot of the arrangement will be in the writing of the song. He very often knows what he wants the bass lines to be. He may even know what he wants the drum pattern to be.” Find my complete chat with Blunstone here on AP.
30. Ian Hunter: Defiance Part 1. Sun Records. My interview with Ian Hunter was posted on Analog Planet on May 11, 2023. “Stuff comes to you, and you just do it. You’re the tube it passes through, you know? You think, ‘Just when I was gonna do that, now I’m gonna do that,’” Hunter told me about how he channels his songwriting muse. “Your antenna has to be up — and I’ve learned from bitter experience that you have to get out of bed at 4 in the morning and get it down, because you might remember the thing, but you might not remember the groove.” Just drop the needle on Defiance Part 1 cuts like the wistful reminiscences of “Bed of Roses” (shown below), the non-blinking shrugs of “No Hard Feelings,” and the direct sneer of “I Hate Hate” for further firsthand evidence. Find our complete chat here on AP.
29. Sass Jordan: Live in New York Ninety-Four. Deko. I chatted with Sass Jordan about thus gritty ’n’ gutsy live album on Zoom back in June, and I hope to have that interview posted soonishly. In the meantime, please enjoy her balls-out rendition of “High Road Easy” from this killer live set, which features the late, great Foo Fighter Tayor Hawkins on drums.
28. Dwight Twilley: The Best of Dwight Twilley – The Tulsa Years (1999-2016) Volume 1. Paramour Records. I conducted my interview with Dwight Twilley back in May, just a few short months before he passed away on October 18. I’m currently working on a special tribute to Dwight and his storied singing/songwriting career that is likely to make it into print before it posts online — but in the meantime, please enjoy his rollicking Tulsa Years take on “Runnin’.”
27. Joan Osborne: Nobody Owns You. Womanly Hips. My interview with Joan posted on Stereophile on November 21, 2023. “Yeah, we had one of those big console stereos, and ours was set against a wall,” Osborne told me about listening to music in her formative years in such a way that informed the guile and personal empowerment vibes of Nobody Owns You, “The console stereo had a giant speaker that was closest to the wet bar. If I sat next to the speaker with my back against the wall, and I opened one of the lower cabinet doors of my dad’s wet bar, I could make a little box that I would sit inside. In there, I could listen to the Sound of Music record over and over and over again, and I’d sing along with it.” One listen to “Great American Cities” (which you can do below) tells you all you need to know about Osborne’s state of mind. Find our complete chat here on Stereophile.
26. The Dollyrots: Night Owls. Wicked Cool. The power pop/punk twosome comprised of mindmelded guitarist/vocalist Luis Cabezas and bassist/lead vocalist Kelly Ogden are as effervescent as ever on the eternally catchy Night Owls. Luis and Kelly and I Zoomed it up back in September, and our vinyl-centric chat will be posting soon. In the meantime, please dig the propulsively catchy ostensible title track, “Night Owl,” below (and listen for drummer Aixa Vilar’s stick toss toward the very end, a favorite moment of mine).
25. The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots – 20th Anniversary Pink Vinyl Deluxe Edition box set. Warner Records. My interview with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne posted on Analog Planet on April 13, 2023. “It’s a great-sounding record, with all the little details. And we spent a lot — a lot — of time punishing it, to a certain extent, to get it like that,” Coyne told me earlier this year about how the full Yoshimi project came together. And when it comes to feting an album like The Flaming Lips’ cosmically cool tenth studio effort, July 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, putting together a180g 5LP baby-pink vinyl box set that includes the remastered core album, demos, non-album tracks, live radio sessions, and a score of additional live tracks is the exact right call. You can hear the evolution of some of the band’s creative choices on the demos found on, naturally, the Demos+ LP (LP2, Sides 3 and 4), especially on the version of “Do You Realize??” that’s at the outset of the second side of said Demos+ LP, wherein we hear a false start and then Coyne just keeps on going. After all that gritty production elbow grease, the 5LP box set edition of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots clearly reaps and realizes many a great listening reward. Find my complete chat with Coyne here on AP.
24. Jethro Tull: RökFlöte. InsideOut Music. My interview with Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson posted on Analog Planet on April 26, 2023. “For RökFlöte, I thought I would move on to looking at polytheistic religions,” Anderson told me. “I’m not suggesting these are anything other than personal feelings — just examples of the characters and the roles as exemplified in Norse mythology. This, for me, was the amusing way of doing it. It will stand or fail on the basis of the music and the general feel of it.” To my ears, RökFlöte is a notch or two above Tull’s previous studio album, January 2022’s The Zealot Gene, in terms of its overall intensity and verve, as ably demonstrated by hard-driving tracks like “Hammer on Hammer,” “Trickster (and The Mistletoe),” and “The Navigators” — the latter of which you can check out below. Rök on. Find my complete chat with Anderson here on AP.
23. The Church: The Hypnogogue. Communicating Vessels. Longstanding Aussie alt-rockagogues continue to forge ahead with their (yes) 26th album, the title of which refers to a fictional machine that extracts music directly from subconscious dreams. If that doesn’t describe the aural palette of such heady tracks like “Ascendence,” “Realm of Minor Angels,” and “Succulent,” then nothing will. Head Churchmaster Steve Kilbey and I are hoping to connect on Zoom in the near future to dissect it all — but in the meantime, enjoy the full expanse of the album’s spot-on title track below.
22. Ivan Neville: Touch My Soul. The Funk Garage. A once and future Neville Brother takes a solo turn — his first in almost two decades — with Touch My Soul, a connection point between his deep N’Awlins roots (“The Greatest Place on Earth,” “Hey All Together”) and spiritual bonafides (“Beautiful Tears,” “Blessed”) alike. Neville and I did the Zoom thing together back in the fall, and I hope to post that interview soon. Until then, dig into his swamp-funkified, horn-driven take on Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place,” below.
21. The Orb and David Gilmour: Metallic Spheres in Colour. Columbia/Legacy. My interview view with The Orb and David Gilmour’s co-producer Martin “Youth” Glover posted on Sound & Vision on September 29, 2023. “It’s incredible how our eyes and ears can work together as inner projectors to give us an almost illusionary reproduction of sound,” Youth told me. “From that, we get 3D, Atmos, and Spatial Audio recordings that harness those illusionary techniques to create what you’re hearing—or what you think you’re hearing.” Indeed, the stereo mix of October 2010’s Metallic Spheres — a decidedly experimental two-part, 49-minute ambient soundscape collaboration between The Orb’s chief sonic scientist Alex Paterson and Pink Floyd guitar guru David Gilmour — seemed almost too big to be contained in just two channels. Hence, this dynamic duo came together 13 years later to produce the more concise, 40-minute update redubbed Metallic Spheres in Colour — now fully realized in an expansive digital-only Atmos mix. Colour is the shapely embodiment of that maxim being brought to 360 degrees of fully panoramic life. Find my complete chat with Youth here on S&V.
20. The Flower Kings: Look at You Now. InsideOut Music. Swedish post-prog collective The Flower Kings keep pushing the limits of complex arrangements and virtuoso playing with their 16th studio album, Look at You Now. Head King guitarist/vocalist Roine Stolt and I talked all about in on Zoom back in the fall, an interview I hope to have posted soon. In the meantime, enjoy the majesty of the purely prog-tastic “Beginner’s Eyes,” below.
19. Intrigue: Steven Wilson Presents Progressive Sounds in UK Alternative Music 1979-89 box set. Edsel. No surprise, really, that our man Wilson is behind a new and quite, well, intriguing import-only box set compilation that presents 58 tracks Wilson personally selected from that hallowed decade across the Pond, as spread across 5-plus listening hours on either a 4CD and/or 7LP set from Edsel Records (or you can consider the much more abbreviated and reasonably affordable 19-track version on 2LPs from Demon). Among my favorites herein are Wire’s “I Should Have Known Better,” a broader, brooding amalgamation of guitars, effects, synths, and other electronics that could also be seen as a dark-wave precursor, Skidoo’s percussive 10-minute dub-voodoo ride via “The Gospel Comes to New Guinea,” German synthpoppers Propaganda’s wide-open “Dream Within a Dream,” with precise of-era production courtesy of Trevor Horn and Stephen Lipson, and how the neoclassical soundscape twosome Dead Can Dance deliver us to the wailing wall of “The Host of Seraphim.” The overall beauty of Intrigue is that you’ll never really be at a loss for discovering something you haven’t heard before, and/or will find yourself getting deeper into tracks you may only have a cursory listening relationship with at best — and isn’t that what targeted compilations like this box set are ultimately all about? Find my full Intrigue box set review here on Sound & Vision.
18. The Who: Who’s Next – Life House Super Deluxe Edition box set. Polydor/Track/UMC. Although August 1971’s Who’s Next has been feted with various enhanced anniversary editions over the years, the definitive 11-disc box set has finally arrived to mark the LP’s golden jubilee (plus two, that is). Ten CDs (count ’em!) sport a three-digit cavalcade of extra of-era tracks under the subheaders Pete Townshend’s Life House Demos 1970-1971 (22 tracks), studio sessions in New York and London (23 tracks), singles and other sessions (17 tracks), and four discs of 1971 live sets culled from the Young Vic in London and the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco (38 tracks; 20 songs from the latter SF set are available on 3LPs in a separate 4LP box set alongside the original album, for the vinyl-inclined). In Atmos, the aforementioned indelible mixmaster Steven Wilson takes an undisputed rock classic from August 1971 to an entirely new level, 50-plus years onward. “Baba O’Riley” unfolds over five-plus minutes in a very cinematic and spherical fashion — like a space western taking place on the Emerald Isle — while the linchpin moments in “Won’t Get Fooled Again” have all the 360-degree impact you semiconsciously expect after having heard Pete Townshend’s still-scathing cultural treatise in stereo again and again for decades, most prominently with the placement of Roger Daltrey’s final “Yeaaahhhh!” More sparsely arranged tracks like “Behind Blue Eyes” play off the emotion in Daltrey’s voice during its acoustic front half, rather than over-emphasizing the sheer bombast of its back half. Next-level Atmos mixology magic at its best. Find my full Who’s Next – Life House box set review here on Sound & Vision.
17. City and Colour: The Love Still Held Me Near. Still Records. Visionary Canadian singer/songwriter Dallas Green has made quite a name for himself as City and Colour, a springboard for how truly personal songwriting can become more universal in scope. C&C’s latest long-player The Love Still Held Me Near, runs the table from the soul-stirring “Underground” to the eventual uplift of “The Water Is Coming” and the bare acoustic treatment of “Things We Choose to Care About,” and beyond. My interview with Dallas is projected to be posted ahead of and/or concurrent with City and Colour’s upcoming winter Canadian tour, but until then, see how the touching manifesto “Meant to Be,” seen below, lives up to its title.
16. Phil Manzanera & Andy Mackay: AM ● PM. Expression/BFD. My interview with Phil Manzanera ran in two separate installments — the first vinyl-oriented one posted on Analog Planet on November 3, 2023, and the second surround-sound-oriented one posted on Sound & Vision on November 30, 2023. Roxy Music guitarist/composer Phil Manzanera adjoins with his longtime Roxy bandmate, saxophonist Andy Mackay, for an atmospheric instrumental exploration dubbed by their initials AM ● PM. “Andy’s tone was just so beautiful on the sax, and I’ve never heard him play with such a beautiful feeling and tone as he’s done on this AM ● PM record,” Manzanera told me. “I was so happy to capture that moment. And [drummer] Paul Thompson was at the top of his game too. He just came in, and just played it. It went so fast. It was just a delightful, enjoyable thing — which is what music should be all about, you know?” Misty, broody tracks like “EGM” (short for “Early Gloomy Morning”) and “Blue Skies,” as evidenced below, capture the full arc of a creative, shared-surname-initials mindmeld. Find my full Manzanera interview here on AP, and here on S&V.
15. Hiss Golden Messenger: Jump for Joy. Merge. Helmed by singer/songwriter M.C. Taylor, this North Carolina-bred outfit pushes past their alt-countryish roots to touch so many bases on Jump for Joy, from the loping ramble-tamble of “20 Years and a Nickel” to the low-end twang of “Shinbone” to the reverbified funk of “Sunset on the Faders.” Joy to the world, indeed. My interview with Taylor will be forthcoming, but please enjoy the commercialization satire that is “Nu-Grape,” one of my favorite videoclips of this (or any) year.
14. Extreme: Six. earMUSIC. What an abject joy to hear an oft-mischaracterized hard-rock band get down and dirty on Six, an aggressive blend of hard-charging riffs (“#Rebel”), layered harmonies (“Rise”), and acoustified emotionality (“Hurricane”), all presented in the tone-capturing, thoughtful, well-arranged way it should all be played. Extreme frontman Gary Cherone and I Zoomed it up back in the summer, and our wide-ranging chat — including a discussion of Extreme’s truly underrated January 1995 album Waiting for the Punchline and how “Hip Today” is essentially the only track from that album to appear on vinyl to date — will hopefully be posted soon. Meanwhile, you can headbang according to “Rise,” right here, right now.
13. Rufus Wainwright: Folkocracy. BMG. My interview with Rufus Wainwright posted on Analog Planet on June 12, 2023. The acclaimed eclectic Canadian-American songsmith returns to his other true roots with Folkocracy, a 2LP set produced and directed by Mitchell Froom. “Mitchell was really the conductor of this piece,” Wainwright told me. “I initially went to him with about 30 or 40 songs I thought would be interesting to cover and said, ‘You pick what you think would make a great album.’ He subsequently did — and I agreed with every choice he made.” The 60-minute song cycle breathes deep and clean on all four LP sides, running the gamut of a modern-yet-vintage blend of traditional folk (“Down in the Willow Garden,” “Shenandoah”) and more contemporary fare (Neil Young’s “Harvest,” Wainwright’s own “Going to a Town”) alike. Plus, Wainwright deploys a heaping helping of storied guests to share the load, including Susanna Hoffs, David Byrne, Van Dyke Parks, and Chris Stills — the latter of whom can be seen in the clip of “Harvest,” below. Find my full Wainwright interview here on AP.
12. Stewart Copeland: Police Deranged for Orchestra. Shelter/BMG. My interview with Stewart Copeland posted on Analog Planet on June 22, 2023. The sonic fruit of ace rhythmatist Stewart Copeland’s latest twisted muse, if you will, has manifested itself in a solo project somewhat cheekily dubbed Police Deranged for Orchestra, consisting of ten classic and deep-cut Police tracks rearranged — or “deranged,” in Copeland’s titular parlance. Here, you get such detail-oriented reimagined Police songs both well-known (“Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” the ever-ubiquitous “Every Breath You Take”) and semi-known (“Tea in the Sahara,” “Murder by Numbers”) alike, with a guitarist, bassist, and three separate vocalists accompanying the noted percussionist/drummer along with the orchestra at hand. “These are the same ‘Derangements’ I strung together for the movie [the 2019 documentary Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out],” Copeland told me, “only they’re done by orchestra. The mission to score the Everyone Stares movie was to have alternatives, as in — ‘It’s gotta be Police, but it’s gotta be Police you haven’t heard before.’ So, I found all those strange bass lines and those strange, obscure guitar lines and vocal lines, and strung them together into versions that were all ‘Deranged’ to score the movie.” One could even go as far to say that every little derangement on the accompanying new album is, well, magic. Find my full Copeland interview here on AP.
11. Trevor Rabin: Rio. InsideOut Music. My interview with Trevor Rabin ran in two separate installments — the first vinyl-oriented one posted on Analog Planet on October 6, 2023, and the second surround-sound-oriented one posted on Sound & Vision on October 31, 2023. Rio covers enough musical ground that it could easily be retitled Rio Grande, given the full scope of Rabin’s compositional skills being on full display in the widescreen opening track “Big Mistakes” in addition to his recently discovered Americana proclivities in both “Oklahoma” (make sure you catch his nod to “Happy Trails” in the middle of the track) and “Tumbleweed” (which also features a stacked cavalcade of Beach Boys-like harmonies). “I was writing all the time through the long, long period of not doing a vocal record,” Rabin told me, “and one of the things I got was a B-Bender [an accessory that assists the bending and pitch of a guitar’s B string, a la Clarence White and Gene Parsons]. I really got into that, which led to me visiting some kind of country demographic, if you like.” I very much like — and I suspect you’ll like checking out “Big Mistakes” in the clip below. Find my full Rabin interview here on AP, and here on S&V.
10. The Raveonettes Presents: Rip It Off. Crunchy Frog. The Danish post-punk sound-chasing collective known as The Raveonettes — a.k.a. guitarist/production maestro Sune Rose Wagner and bassist/vocalist Sharin Foo — asked a number of artists to reinterpret songs from their August 2002 debut Whip It On, now cleverly recast as Rip It Off, and the results are as stark and off-kilter as the original mini-LP was in all the right ways. Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan’s industrialized take on “Chains” is especially haunting, while Danish indie-electronic ace Trentemøller captures the echo-chamber blast-off spirit of “Cops on Our Tail” to a supersonic T. Rip it up.
9. Frank Zappa: Over-Nite Sensation – 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition. Zappa/UMe. Frank Zappa’s September 1973 commercial breakthrough album Over-Nite Sensation is among the ten most-played albums I’ve listened to in my lifetime, so I was very much looking forward to devouring all the contents of its just-released 50th anniversary 4CD/1BD super deluxe edition — most especially the Dolby Atmos mix on Blu-ray that was done by Karma Auger and Erich Gobel — as well as spinning it in its also improved two-channel form on the companion 45rpm 2LP edition (and the splatter vinyl 3LP limited edition, whose third disc is full of bonus track selections). I heard things in Atmos that I both found a whole new appreciation for and/or had never heard prior in the original ONS stereo mix, such as the insistent gut-punch sub-channel kick drum and keyboard fills in “I’m the Slime,” the side-channel clarity of FZ’s blistering guitar solo on “Dirty Love,” and the proggy time-signature-bending blend of horns, keys, and ratchet in the heights and sides on “Zomby Woof.” However you choose to experience this timelessly cool album, the immersive pleasures of Over-Nite will last you a lifetime. Find my full ONS box set review here on Analog Planet.
8. John Mellencamp: Orpheus Descending. Republic. A master storyteller who continues to spin songwriting gold in his twilight years, painting stark pictures with a world-weary gruff voice and perfectly arranged instrumentation to match the mood of the moment. His Live and in Person 2023 tour (which I saw back in June) reinforced the stripped-down grit of powerful new tracks like “The Eyes of Portland,” the latter of which is presented in its full Orpheus glory below.
7. Jamie West-Oram: Skeleton Key. BFD. My interview with the innovative textural Fixx guitarist Jamie-West Oram was posted on Analog Planet on August 22, 2023. His solo debut, Skeleton Key, is a concise, 31-minute, 10-track sonic statement that begs an even 5/5 side split on the inevitable vinyl edition, with the slow-burn shimmer of “Life Support” as my choice to end Side 1 and the gnarly funk of “Collusion Blues” to commence Side 2. “I do think sequencing is a very important part of making an album,” West-Oram told me. “When my partner in crime, Nick Jackson — who co-produced the album — and I both felt we had gotten the material we needed to do the job, we decided to send each other the proposed sequence, without discussion. When we both opened the envelope, so to speak, they were exactly the same.” Dig how West-Oram channels the ethereal eeriness of Syd Barrett in “Cuckoos in the Nest,” as presented below. Find my full West-Oram interview here on AP.
6. Porcupine Tree: Closure/Continuation Live. kScope. A most necessary 2BD/2CD and/or 4LP document of Porcupine Tree’s 2022 semi-improbable reunion tour that covers all the post-progtastic bases by incorporating challenging newer songs like “Rats Return” and “Chimera’s Wreck” into the setlist alongside longtime PTree favorites like the abject sneer of “Sleep Together,” the sensual motion of “Trains,” and the uplifting, power-packed set closer, “Halo.” My favorite track from last year’s Closure/Continuation studio album, “Harridan,” gets its full unbridled due below.
5. Steely Dan: Aja – 200g 45rpm 2LP UHQR edition. Geffen/Analogue Productions. The Holy Grail has truly been delivered unto us with the Analogue Productions UHQR 200-gram 45rpm 2LP edition of Steely Dan’s September 1977 masterpiece, Aja. Without question, the UHQR (short for Ultra High Quality Record) Aja truly deserves its perfect rating of 11 out of 11 in terms of both the quality of the music itself and the sound of it on vinyl. How come? Well, the UHQR Aja never fails to engage me, spin after spin after spin. Just on the title track, “Aja” — which you can check out below — “Aja,” I’m continually blown away by Steve Gadd’s cymbal work, the right-channel guitar counters, and Joe Sample’s left-channel Fender Rhodes at the outset, in addition to Victor Feldman’s percussion on the choruses — as I am by the interplay between tenor saxman Wayne Shorter and drummer Gadd during their solo sequence in the song’s back half, wherein the two of them come across even bolder and on equal par on the UHQR, by far. The bottom line is this: If you want to consistently experience the best of what this highest-quality vinyl series has to offer, then the Analogue Productions Aja fits the bill for being the pride of the UHQR neighborhood, hands down — and, in my listening book, it’s also the best archival release of 2023. Find my full Aja UHQR review here on Analog Planet.
4. Peter Gabriel: i/o. Real World. It may have taken Peter Gabriel well over a decade to produce a full outing of new music, but i/o was well worth the wait. Gabriel doled out each of the album’s tracks digitally month-to-month — in addition to performing most of them live during his outstanding two-set 2023 tour, which I saw back on September 22 — before releasing them collectively in December in a combo of 2LP, 2CD, and 2CD/1BD choices that proffered a pair of two-channel options dubbed the Bright-Side Mix (done by Mark “Spike” Stent) and the Dark-Side Mix (via Tchad Blake), plus the big kahuna — the Dolby Atmos version titled the In-Side Mix on the BD, courtesy of Hans-Martin Buff. Never one to plow through song arrangements at a breakneck pace, most i/o tracks unfurl like tightly wound blankets of layered sound, rich in instrumentation and vocal layering — the orchestral age treatise “So Much,” the piano-and-synth-driven “Playing for Time” — not to mention the percussive churn, string section accents, and daughter Melanie Gabriel’s wafting female vocals on “Four Kinds of Horses,” the “Big Time”-inspired all-channel fun of “Road to Joy,” or the turgid blend of Tony Levin’s instantly recognizable bass tone and David Rhodes’ guitar textures on the opening track, “Panopticon.” Overall, the sheer breadth and magnitude of i/o only serves to bolster Gabriel’s rightfully taken place in the pantheon of rock-era pioneers.
3. Gord Downie & Bob Rock: Lustre Parfait. Arts & Crafts. The late, great Tragically Hip frontman and the noted, appropriately named rock producer combine forces to share their own aural buddy movie, a 60-minute double-album that draws on their respective individual strengths to produce music that unabashedly embraces the core-vibe intentions of the initial rock era when dropping the needle on an album and settling into its groove was pretty much all you really cared about. A late-emerging sax solo, rollicking piano, and female background vocals sprinkle, well, all the right lustre onto the title track, while the slow-drifting “The Moment Is a Wild Place” highlights Downie’s songwriting strengths, wordsmithery command, and how he chose to enunciate it all — as well as Rock’s own production intuition to follow the muse, rather than lead it. Parfait magnifique.
2. The Secret Machines: The Moth, The Lizard, and The Secret Machines. TSM Recordings. One of the best, most underrated post-rock collectives of the early-aughts — see the 2LP white-vinyl import edition of their June 2004 debut Now Here Is Nowhere and its constantly detonating leadoff track, “First Wave Intact,” for starters — Secret Machines return anew after a three-year break with a 2LP attack that guarantees you won’t be able to sit still while taking in all of its four-sided drama. The brooding instrumental “Last One Out” builds to an absolutely explosive cymbals-and-synths soundstage wash before clawing its way back into the off-kilter mix like a spent tide receding from the shore, while “Crucifixion Time” marries chucka-guitar crunch, determined layered vocals, whipcrack drumming, and a synth-bleating, volume-level-challenging back half. Lastly, the album’s closing track, “The Finalizer,” does just that with low-end sneer and SM mastermind Brandon Curtis’ sustained earworm riffology. Though its staccato opening cut is titled “There’s No Starting Over,” The Moth proves exactly the opposite is true for Secret Machines.
1. Steven Wilson: The Harmony Codex. Virgin Music Group. You’re not really surprised to find the once and future all-channel maestro artiste Steven Wilson at the top of this list, are you? Year in and year out, Wilson finds new ways of challenging listeners with his genre-defying immersive mixes, whether it’s what he concocts for his solo albums, occasional new offerings and archival updates for his sometimes-active band Porcupine Tree (such as last year’s blisteringly powerful Closure/Continuation, the album that was my No. 1 choice for 2022), and a seemingly endless cache of catalog refreshers for artists from most any era and musical style. (See the recent catalog-culled reissues from Jethro Tull, ABC, and Suede for three quite diverse 2023-released SW surround-mix examples.)
Once Wilson chose to dive head-on into making his solo career a nonconformist one, tracks like “Pariah” (from August 2017’s To the Bone) and “Man of the People” (from January 2021’s The Future Bites) laid the groundwork for where he has emerged here in 2023 with the rich aural tapestry that is his latest solo effort, The Harmony Codex. Earlier this year on Zoom (full interview coming soon!), Wilson told me his main goal for The Harmony Codex was to create “cinema for the ears” — and if Atmos is the auditory equivalent to the best IMAX experience you’ve ever had, then you’ve clearly come to the right place. Dig the breadth of “Beautiful Scarecrow,” an underwater electro-adventure with a momentous cross-channel drum attack. Follow that up with the deceptively sparse title track, consisting of nine dreamy-drifty minutes awash in a 360-degree synth bath made up of a fine blend of ARP 2600, Cobalt 8, and Prophet-8 machinations.
Though Wilson is the undisputed king of surround-sound mixing, he also knows how to deliver his music in two channels — and his seventh solo studio outing, The Harmony Codex, wisely distributes its quite dense 64 minutes across 2LPs. Naturally, as an SW completist, I bought all the multiple color vinyl editions of THC, but, aesthetically speaking, I prefer the coke bottle clear version the best. As for the sound, the unbridled raucousness of the Side B opener “Impossible Tightrope” will test the limits of your volume knob, while the almost-ten-minute synthfest title track that ends Side C deftly blends Mike Oldfield sensibilities with the tenets of Gil Mellé’s still-unsettling electro-theme to Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. The final, loop-laden track on Side D, “Staircase,” unravels in a slow-but-steady climb across its nine minutes that breathes and dreams right into the runout groove. It’s a track that couldn’t really start a side nor be nestled between other Codex songs, in turn showing that Wilson also understands how to sequence LP sides as much as he knows how to challenge the width of a soundstage.
Taken from any and all angles, the Atmos version of Steven Wilson’s The Harmony Codex is my unquestioned No. 1 album of 2023. Taste some it for yourself via the following push/pull videoclip for “Rock Bottom,” another impassioned duet with Israeli vocal marvel Ninet Tayeb (she of the uplifting elegiac response lines in the aforementioned “Pariah”), wherein the pair’s lead vocal turns take literal center stage over any potential accompanying instrumental pyrotechnics—and even the brief, David Gilmour-like guitar solo in the song’s back half stays planted firmly in the middle. Truly Harmonious.
