I seldom get excited about posthumous albums of material artists were working on when they died -- I mean, I'll check it out, sure, but with no expectations. I was incredibly excited to learn a few months ago, though, that a final Sparklehorse album would be coming out, 13 years after Mark Linkous's death, lovingly completed by Linkous's brother and occasional bandmate Matt. When I wrote about Linkous on the 10th anniversary of his death, I mentioned that a tribute project had been blocked by Linkous's estate, and quickly dismissed the notion that the unfinished 5th Sparklehorse album would ever see release. But it turns out there had been more extensive sessions than I'd imagined, both with Steve Albini in Chicago and at Linkous's home studio Static King, and Matt Linkous discovered enough recordings and notes to finish it. In a way, Sparklehorse is a perfect candidate for a project like this -- Linkous's sound was always a strange patchwork of high-fi and low-fi, so aesthetically it's totally consistent with the previous albums. I think it's probably his best since It's A Wonderful Life, great balance of fuzzed-out rockers like "I Fucked It Up" and evocative slow songs like "Everybody's Gone To Sleep." Here's the 2023 albums Spotify playlist of all the new albums I've listened to this year. 

I think one of my favorite things as a music fan is when you just want someone who had a great debut to make something half as good again, and they go ahead and totally surpass it on their second album. Guts makes me feel the way it probably felt to hear This Years Model or De La Soul Is Dead when they were new, like holy shit they're even better than I thought? Guts already has 3 great singles like Sour did, but it's got a bit more really hooking me beyond the singles, especially "Love Is Embarrassing," "Pretty Isn't Pretty," and the fantastic album opener "All-American Bitch." 

Cleo Sol and her partner/collaborator Inflo are both "rumored" members of the "anonymous" British collective Sault, who surprise released 5 albums last November. I found that flood of music kind of unwieldy and difficult to digest, and don't think Sault's faceless public image does them any favors, since they have such a human sound and specific perspective. But Cleo Sol released an excellent album, Heaven, in September, and then followed it two weeks later with an even better album, Gold, which I thought was a better and more exciting way for them to roll out multiple albums. There's a flat "indie rock practice space demo" sound to a lot of the drums on these albums, but the keyboards and bass and Cleo Sol's vocals are all so lush and sumptuous that it's easy to get past, "Only Love Can Wait" and "There Will Be No Crying" are really gorgeous songs. 

Two years ago, a musician from Melbourne named Adam Kyriakou sent me a song called "Fear Of The Heavens" that I thought was really cool (I think that song has since been wiped from the Internet, unfortunately), and I encouraged him to send me any other music he made. So I was pretty excited a couple weeks ago to see an e-mail from Adam that he'd released his first album. Department's music is kind of in the same sample-collage plunderphonics world as The Avalanches (or maybe they just come to mind because they're also from Australia and Tony Espie has mixed both artists), but Dumb Angel uses samples in a way that's driven much more by melody and emotion, these big "wall of sound" arrangements influenced by producers like Joe Meek or Phil Spector that are comprised of recontextualized samples of stuff like Mariah Carey or Parliament or  J-Kwon or 702 or Spiritualized (he uses the bit of the Spiritualized record that interpolated "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" that was removed from the album for years because of Elvis Presley estate lawyers, which is a funny thing to put on an album made of unlicensed samples, whether Adam did that deliberately or not). I've pitched different outlets on this record, I hope I get to write something more substantial about it or somebody else does, so please, any editors or writers, by all means, check it out, it's on Bandcamp and all the streaming services. 

Ashley McBryde is really on an amazing run right now, there aren't many artists, if any, that have released four albums since 2018 as good as hers, three of them with my favorite producer in country music, Jay Joyce. The Devil I Know's title track is the real stunner, maybe the best song she's ever written, but that was already a promo single and I'm still settling into the rest of the album. "The Coldest Beer In Town" is a great example of how McBryde is a master of the trick of cleverly taking the long way around to relating the song title to a seemingly unrelated lyric. 

The first three Brothers Osborne albums were produced by Jay Joyce, so I was a little nervous when they made their new album without him. But their new producer is Mike Elizondo, an insanely versatile guy who co-produced Dr. Dre hits like "In Da Club" and also produced the last Turnstile album (weirdly, my favorite Elizondo production is Maroon 5's It Won't Be Soon Before Long, he made them sound amazing on that record). I shouldn't have worried, because he's as great at producing Brothers Osborne as anyone else, and it's fun to hear them try something new while still retaining their style of country and southern rock. I have a piece about Brothers Osborne coming out later this week, watch this space. 

In August, Nas released Magic 2, and I ranked every Nas album for Spin. A few weeks later, though, Nas released Magic 3 on his 50th birthday, so I went back and added that to the ranking. His 6th album with Hit-Boy is supposedly his last of this insanely prolific run the last three years, and I'm curious if he's gonna just keep killing it with different producers or finally take his foot off the gas. 

I've spent the last few years sort of cataloguing every song Willie Nelson's ever written and each time he's recorded it -- not really sure what kind of project will come of that, but I'm trying to figure that out while he's still alive and kicking. He's written over 300 songs and released over 140 albums, which means an average of only about 2 new songs per album, but a lot of those songs were comprised mainly or entirely of covers, and he's recorded some of his favorite compositions over and over on different albums, in different styles. And Willie's first bluegrass album is fun because instead of just covering the obvious bluegrass standards, he's finding songs of his own that work in that style, including old warhorses like "Bloody Mary Morning" and "Sad Songs And Waltzes" as well as "Still Is Still Moving To Me," which was first recorded in 1993 and seems to consistently be Willie's favorite song he's written since early '80s. This might be one of his best sounding albums in a while, the bluegrass approach feels very compatible to how much time has weathered his voice by now. Bluegrass actually includes his first ever studio recording of "On The Road Again," which was recorded live for its famous original version. 

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