31 Great Albums from 2023 So Far (1st Quarter)

Jun 12, 2023

The first quarter of 2023 is a wrap! The weather is getting warmer, so much more great music for the spring is on the way, and it's also a good time to catch up on some of the great music that's already come out this year. It's too early in the year to start ranking things, but we've put together an alphabetical list of 31 albums released between January and March that we highly recommend listening to if you haven't already. Read on for our picks. What are your favorite albums of 2023 so far?

Algiers - ShookMatador

Following up three albums of genre-defying protest music, Algiers deliver their grandest statement yet with Shook. The band--who formed in 2012 by Atlanta musicians Franklin James Fisher, Ryan Mahan, Lee Tesche, and later cemented their four-piece lineup with original Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong--opted for something more collaborative on Shook, roping in guest vocalists that range from some of the leaders in today's underground rap landscape (billy woods, Backxwash) to Rage Against the Machine's Zack de la Rocha to Atlanta rap veteran Big Rube to indie musicians like Future Islands' Samuel T. Herring, The Make-Up's Mark Cisneros, and Boy Harsher's Jae Matthews, along with a variety of others. The wide variety of guests makes perfect sense on Shook, a sprawling, 17-song album that can't easily be pigeonholed into any pre-existing style of music. If I had to compare it to something, it's a kindred spirit with War's 1972 classic The World Is A Ghetto. Like that album, it's rooted in psychedelic soul and socially/politically conscious lyrics, but instead of incorporating '70s-style rock and funk it incorporates modern punk and hip hop. The rhythms are electric, the arrangements are stunning, and the album is full of genuinely commanding vocal performances by both Algiers and their guests. So much is happening on Shook, but to sum it all up in one word: intense.

For more on this album, read the band's track-by-track breakdown.

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Billy Nomates - CACTIInvada

As Billy Nomates, Tor Maries made one of 2020's most striking debuts, transforming herself from folk-pop artist into a brash original who wasn't afraid to speak her mind and defied easy pigeonholing. It helped that she found mentors in Sleaford Mods and Geoff Barrow (Portishead, Beak>) who encouraged her to find her own voice. It's been tough, though, relaunching a career just as the world shuts down, and all the fears, self-doubt and anger that have come with the last three years play into into her excellent second album. She still sounds like no one else. With her warm voice and way with melody and harmony, these songs sound like they could've been twangy new wave hits for Juice Newton or Kim Carnes in 1980, or pop-country chart-toppers in the '90s -- except Tor's DIY production and arrangements, full of weird synthesizers and post-punk touchstones, pull them in other directions. "Saboteur Forcefield" owes as much to New Order as New Nashville, and CACTI's title track is like Reba McEntire fronting Violator-era Depeche Mode. Maries' voice and personality carry the whole thing, making it all sound as natural as songs engineered to debut at #1.

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Boygenius - The RecordInterscope

When Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus first came together as Boygenius, they had originally only intended to do a 7" to be sold on their 2018 tour together. Once they got to writing, they came out with a lengthier, now-beloved EP, and in the years that followed, the trio continued to appear on songs together, including tracks on Hayley Williams' 2020 album Petals For Armor, Phoebe's 2020 album Punisher, Julien's 2021 album Little Oblivions, and Lucy's 2021 album Home Video. As we know now, a week after Punisher came out, Phoebe sent Julien and Lucy a demo and asked if the trio could be a band again. That demo was of "Emily I'm Sorry," one of the 12 tracks that makes up Boygenius' first full-length album, The Record, out now via their new major label home of Interscope Records. The trio have proved to have such natural chemistry over the years, and that continues for the entirety of The Record. Each member's distinct voice and songwriting style shines at various points, and the record always gets taken to another level when the three of them harmonize together. The record is full of the kinds of gorgeously intimate indie folk songs that these three have a reputation for making, but it's also got hard-edged rock songs like "Satanist," "Anti-Curse," and "$20," the last of which is a rare Boygenius song with screaming. And then there's "Not Strong Enough," which not only calls back to Sheryl Crow's "Strong Enough"; it's also a jangly folk rock song that sounds like it could've been a hit for Crow in the '90s or early 2000s. It's a subtly diverse record, and the more you listen, the more new songs stand out as potential highlights. It's full of clever turns of phrase, melodic surprises, as many pop culture references as their recent photoshoots (including songs titled "Leonard Cohen" and "Revolution 0"), and all the conversational-yet-devastating lyricism you'd expect from these three.

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Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want To Turn Into YouSony/The Orchard/Perpetual Novice

From the M83-ish "Welcome To My Island" (which opens the album) to the Caribbean rhythms of "Bunny Is A Rider" to the flamenco-pop of "Sunset" to the Celtic bagpipes in "Blood and Butter" to the stuttering production and choir vocals of "Billions," it was clear from the singles alone that Desire has a lot of range and the rest of the album follows suit. One section towards the end of the album seamlessly ranges from ambient pop ("Hopedrunk Everasking") to folk-pop ("Butterfly Net") to trip-hop ("Smoke") without missing a beat. One song ("Fly To You") fuses breakbeats with folk guitar and features guest vocals from Grimes and Dido, two artists who helped pave the way for Caroline's music in entirely different ways. "[Dido's] way of blending a quite natural, almost folk approach to pop singing with a very contemporary electronic production was very influential for me," Caroline said in a recent Vulture feature. Caroline's mix of acoustic and electronic instrumentation has also already gained Desire multiple comparisons to Madonna's Ray of Light, while her vastly impressive haters-will-say-it's-auto-tuned vocal runs gain her comparisons that range from Björk to Enya to Imogen Heap. They're all seemingly accurate forebears, and they're tempting comparisons to make when you hear someone using their voice as creatively as Caroline does, but more so than any musical similarities, Caroline is getting mentioned in the same breath as those and other boundary-pushing artists because of the way she makes pop music entirely on her own terms. Read more here.

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DEBBY FRIDAY - GOOD LUCKSub Pop

After a decade as part of Canada's underground music scene, having spent time in Montreal, Vancouver and now Toronto, the Nigerian-born artist DEBBY FRIDAY comes into her own on her full-length debut. As on her EPs Bitchpunk and Death Drive, DEBBY defies easy categorization, mixing rap, electro, post-punk, industrial, techno and more into a glitchy, bruising and bitcrushed blend that is fiery, magnetic and all her own. Working with Holy Fuck's Graham Walsh (found below in this same column with Noble Rot), GOOD LUCK is loaded with high drama, light and heat, noise and beauty, and a handful of killer jams. Among them: "So Hard to Tell," a swaying ballad that recalls fellow Canadians Purity Ring; techno burner "I Got It" featuring Unas; and another four-on-the-floor ripper, "Hot Love," that truly comes alive when the title is shrieked. Those come early, and in a row, but GOOD LUCK doesn't let up, though it does get more abstract, taking us through junkyard R&B and climaxing with the intense "Pluto Baby" that melts into the ethereal, crashing "Wake Up" -- though good luck sleeping through this engaging, original work.

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Fever Ray - Radical RomanticsMute

"We don't come with a manual," Karin Dreijer sings on "Looking for a Ghost" from their third album as Fever Ray, in a voice mutated by effects overtop ticking percussion, like a wind-up mechanical doll. Love is strange and it takes a lot of work to keep it aflame, a theme that runs through the entirety of Radical Romantics. If 2017's Plunge was Dreijer, newly out and embracing the wonders of the heart, then this is the tough job of keeping it going after passions have cooled and the realities of life seep back in. Reality is a loaded word in Fever Ray's world, full of distorted voices and unsettling characters (even moreso in their videos), but for all the creepy noises, Radical Romantics presents a lot of recognizably human emotions at its core. Love, anger and everything in between, all filtered through Dreijer's distinctive style.

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Fireworks - Higher Lonely PowerFuneral Plant Collective

As far as anyone could tell, Fireworks went on hiatus at the end of their 2015 tour, but behind closed doors, they were working on their fourth album, unobstructed by the demands of touring or the expectations of record labels and standard album cycles. In 2019, they resurfaced with the single "Demitasse," an ambitious art rock song that showed off a much different side of Fireworks than the one shown on the indie-friendly pop punk records released during their initial run. Along with the release of the song, they announced their new album Higher Lonely Power, but COVID hit a few months later and Fireworks once again retreated from the public eye. In the fall of 2022, The Wonder Years took Fireworks on the road, marking the band's first shows in seven years, and on New Year's Day 2023, they finally unleashed Higher Lonely Power, self-releasing it on their own Funeral Plant Collective label with less than a 12-hour warning and no pre-release singles.

"Demitasse" isn't on the album, but it did set the tone for it. Higher Lonely Power is an art rock journey through sweeping string arrangements, breakbeats, synth-infused dream pop, and caustic post-hardcore. It brings to mind anything from Sufjan Stevens' Age of Adz to Radiohead's Kid A to The Notwist's Neon Golden to the darker, artsier moments of Arcade Fire, but it still has the energy of a band that comes from the emo/punk world and it still sounds like Fireworks. (And for a more emo/punk world comparison, it makes me think of Foxing's Nearer My God.) As Fireworks make their way through these stunning, shapeshifting arrangements, vocalist Dave Mackinder grapples with Christian trauma, death, the changing perspectives of artists who are nine years older than when we last heard from them, and the days when the members of Fireworks volunteered to have Pfizer test new medication on them so they could earn some extra cash ("Woke up afraid to die when we used to think it was funny"). It's an album that needs to be heard from start to finish, an album where no individual track could possibly give you the full scope of everything that Fireworks have to offer here. (Though if I had to pick one song to at least give you an idea of the album's boundless creativity, I'd probably say "Jerking Off the Sky.") It's an album so expansive and meticulously arranged that you can really picture Fireworks spending the last nine years getting every little detail right, and the wait was worth it. Higher Lonely Power is so remarkable that cult classics like 2011's Gospel seem like warm-ups in comparison.

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Fucked Up - One DayMerge

"After retreating into the fantasy world with Year of the Horse, this record is like we’re returning to real life," Fucked Up vocalist Damian Abraham says of the band's sixth proper album One Day. It's titled One Day because guitarist Mike Haliechuk wrote and recorded the skeletons of these songs in a single day, and then passed the recordings around from band member to band member, who also had just one day to write and record their parts, and that sense of urgency helped make this one of the shortest, most down-to-earth, most traditionally-punk Fucked Up albums. It's got that trademark Fucked Up formula of mixing classic punk and hardcore with whatever else pops into their heads, and setting Damian's distinct bark against soaring, melodic backing vocals, with a few detours like the slow-paced "Falling Right Under" and the Mike Haliechuk-sung power pop of "Cicada." It's a record that often finds Fucked Up at their most concise and their catchiest; I'd call it a return to form, but in reality, Fucked Up don't have any album in their catalog quite like this one.

To get an even better idea about what informed this album, we asked Damian and drummer Jonah Falco what their influences for One Day were, and both gave very detailed responses, with answers ranging from the Adolescents to The Undertones to the deaths of Riley Gale, Wade Allison, and Gord Downie, to various life and family experiences, and much more. Read what they had to say here.

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Gel - Only ConstantConvulse

The track on NJ hardcore band Gel's debut full-length that seems poised to get the most people talking is the one that isn't a proper song at all. "Calling Card" is an atmospheric interlude track made up of voicemails from fans. One of them says "hardcore for the fucking freaks," a phrase that's become Gel's de facto slogan. "From the beginning of Gel, we never — for lack of a better term — gelled with the broader hardcore world," guitarist Anthony Webster said in a recent Stereogum feature. "Especially now, post-COVID, there's a lot of young new kids, and a lot of pushback against those new kids from voices in the broader hardcore space. And I just don't wanna be that person pushing them away. So I guess like, the whole hardcore for the freaks thing, we adopted in like 2019, and it really fully feels true now."

Gel formed in 2018, with three members who had previously played in the powerviolence-leaning band Sick Shit, and they gradually rose, with a series of increasingly good demos, EPs, promos, and as many live shows as they could play. Things really started to take off as the world began coming out of lockdown, with Gel stirring up more buzz than ever for their 2021 EP Violent Closure and their 2022 split with Cold Brats, and now Only Constant arrives as the culmination of everything Gel had been working towards. "Hardcore for the freaks" describes it perfectly; there's some garagey psychedelia, there's raw punk, there's chuggy hardcore, there's a dance beat, there's a tunefulness despite vocalist Sami Kaiser always sounding like they're tearing their vocal cords apart. Only Constant sounds antagonizing, but Gel are entirely welcoming. There's a little something in there for so many different types of hardcore fans, and as Gel's shows keep getting bigger, there's room for all the freaks to meet up in the pit.

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Gina Birch - I Play My Bass LoudThird Man

"The album distills my years of musical, political, and artistic life with these genre-breaking songs," says The Raincoats' Gina Birch of her first-ever solo album. "It's a personal diary using sounds and lyrics, full of fun, rage, and storytelling." That about sums it up. Producer Youth has a way of coaxing the best out of artists, creating a comfortable atmosphere that allows them to be themselves, and it's clear that he and Birch hit it off. I Play My Bass Loud is terrific, funny, whipsmart, angry and never less than entertaining -- a protest album that doesn't forget to dance. That's all exemplified on "I Will Never Wear Stilettos," that has her singing, "My feet are ecstatic in Doc Martens / They love Blue Suede Shoes / They love white Polish waitressing shoes / Never wear Jimmy Choos" over dubby electronic backing. Songs play like signboards, but feel more inclusive and defiant than didactic, even on a JAMC-ish, hissing force-of-nature song like "I Am Rage."

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Heartworms - A Comforting NotionSpeedy Wunderground

Led by musician and poet Jojo Orme, London's Heartworms formed in 2020 but quickly made a name for themselves with their sleek brand of decidedly dark post-punk and intense live shows. Orme, who cites Siouxsie & The Banshees, PJ Harvey and Interpol as key influences and describes her style as "gothic military fairy," seems to have Heartworms' whole deal all figured out on their impressive debut EP which was produced by Dan Carey and released via his Speedy Wunderground label. There are strong post-punk revival / nu-rave vibes here, particularly Bloc Party, which can be felt on the EP's best song, "Retributions Of An Awful Life," a jagged disco burner that works up a sweat while Orme remains cool, poshly delivering lines like "When you're young, decisions are not fun." Carey's production is inspired, helping take Heartworms from claustrophobic to widescreen, as needed, with Orme going from a dry, spoken whisper to wailing at the skies. It's all done with such confidence and panache, and good tunes, that it's almost as if the '00s never happened.

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ICECOLDBISHOP - Generational CurseEpic

South Central LA rapper ICECOLDBISHOP has been on the rise for a few years now--having collaborated with the likes of slowthai, Rico Nasty, Denzel Curry, Boldy James, and more--and now he finally put out his debut album, Generational Curse. Across the album, he proves to be an extremely charismatic rapper, sounding like a cross between all three Flatbush Zombies and Kendrick Lamar at his most theatrical, and the air of desperation in his voice really matches the subject matter. Tragic death shows up at every turn on Generational Curse, whether it's from drug addiction or shootings, and ICECOLDBISHOP often sounds like he's grappling with grief in real time. Like so many great rappers before him, he's a natural-born storyteller, capable of opening the world's eyes to the poverty, violence, and institutional racism that plague neighborhoods like the one Bishop grew up in. He does it with the level of command of a person that's looking you directly in the eye the entire time, and his ear for beats, melodies, and arrangements is just as gripping as his bleak stories.

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Ice Spice - Like..?10K Projects/Capitol

Bronx rapper Ice Spice and her producer RIOTUSA started dropping singles together in 2021, and they took the rap world by storm with 2022's "Munch (Feelin' U)." With Ice Spice's calm delivery and the ability to turn one clever line into an instant-classic hook, "Munch" put a fresh spin on the NY drill sound that's been dominating the city for the past few years, and it quickly became the New York rap song of the summer. Ice Spice proved it was no fluke, following it with "Bikini Bottom" and "In Ha Mood" that successfully repeated the same formula and won over Ice Spice's growing fanbase just as quickly as "Munch" had. Today she follows those songs up with her first project, the Like..? EP, featuring all three recent singles and three new songs, entirely produced by RIOTUSA. She keeps her trademark spin on drill going with "Princess Diana," but Like..? also finds Ice Spice starting to flirt with some other ideas too. Ice Spice recruits Lil Tjay for a song that's named after the late Gangsta Boo and samples P. Diddy's 2002 single "I Need a Girl Part 2," and it finds Ice Spice mixing her usual sound with a little Y2K-era nostalgia. "Actin A Smoochie" finds RIOTUSA offering up slower, more atmospheric production that could fit on an early 2010s Drake record, and Ice Spice matches the mood with something a little more sentimental. With six songs in 13 minutes, starting with an EP instead of going straight to an album or mixtape feels like a good move. The brief format is perfect for Ice Spice's short, blunt songs, and Like..? hints at her being capable of more than she'd shown us already without drifting too far from her already-winning formula. I'm very curious to hear what she does when it comes time for a full-length, but for now, Like..? feels like a neat, lean introduction to a rapper who's clearly got something to say.

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JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown - Scaring The HoesPEGGY/AWAL

Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA both have reputations for making loud, erratic rap music, and their two collaborations on Danny's 2019 album uknowhatimsayin¿ were major highlights, so the idea of an entire collaborative album from these two sounded perfect. And it's just as perfect in execution as it is on paper. Produced by JPEGMAFIA, the album ranges from hyperpop to glitch to industrial to flipped soul samples and more, and Danny and Peggy have boundless energy as they bounce off of each other over these blaring beats. The album's only guest appearance comes from one of the most exciting newer rappers around, redveil, who provides "Kingdom Hearts Key" with its smooth coda.

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Judiciary - Flesh + BloodClosed Casket Activities

It's been over four years since Texas metalpunks Judiciary released their great debut LP Surface Noise, and they've severely leveled up on their sophomore LP Flesh + Blood. Like Surface Noise, the new album strikes a balance between modern metallic hardcore and classic '80s thrash, and Flesh + Blood makes the line even blurrier and hits even harder. The made it with the heavy music dream team of Arthur Rizk (producer/engineer) and Will Putney (mixing/mastering), the former of whom they worked with after being urged by the late Power Trip vocalist Riley Gale to do so, and that's a perfect pair for what Judiciary were going for on this LP. Arthur is the go-to guy from modern thrash and Will is that for modern metalcore; Flesh + Blood exists right in the middle. Like the production, the musicianship and the songwriting is bigger and bolder too. Guitarists Jimmy LaDue and Israel Garza stuff this record with riffs that would knock the Big Four on their asses, and Jake Collinson's hardcore bark is both more ferocious and more tuneful than it was on the last LP. It's tastefully crafted, and extremely hard--exactly what you want from a band like this.

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Kelela - RavenWarp

Kelela takes her time. Since taking the world by storm in the early 2010s as a guest vocalist on electronic tracks by the likes of Teengirl Fantasy, Kingdom, and Daedelus, she's only released one mixtape, one EP, and one full-length album, along with a few standalone singles and remixes. But every time she does drop, it's always worth the wait, and Raven--her sophomore album and first new music in nearly six years--is no exception. The album was written, arranged, and executive-produced by Kelela, alongside co-executive producer Asmara of Nguzunguzu, with most of the production coming from LSDXOXO, ambient duo OCA, and Bambii--a tight-knit team that helped Kelela make exactly the album she wanted to make, without worrying about the expectations of outside forces like capitalism and the culture of white supremacy. Kelela calls the album "an affirmation of Black femme perspective in the midst of systemic erasure and the sound of our vulnerability turned to power," and she accomplishes that with a remarkable fusion of R&B, dance music, and ambient music. It feels like a natural progression from her earlier work, and feels as daring and futuristic today as her debut mixtape Cut 4 Me did ten years ago. On Raven, Kelela doesn't sound concerned with writing another "LMK," the pop-friendly lead single of her previous album Take Me Apart. That's not to say that Raven doesn't have its bangers, but it's an even more intimate, atmospheric album than its predecessor, and even its catchiest, most upbeat songs explore Kelela's experimental side. The production is wide-ranging and innovative, and Kelela has gotten even better at weaving her soaring voice in and out of the beatwork than she already was. Kelela benefited from arriving at a time when the crossroads between indie, electronic music, and R&B was a trendy place to be, but Raven affirms that Kelela is no trend-hopper. It doesn't really sound like any of the big R&B records of late, and with music this creative and refreshing, Kelela is better off that way.

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Lamp of Murmuur - Saturnian BloodstormNot Kvlt/Night of the Pale Moon/Argento

Lamp of Murmuur is already a household name in households that talk about underground lo-fi black metal, but the band--led by enigmatic multi-instrumentalist M.--seem to be coming out of their shell lately. After putting out multiple recordings over the course of three years (including a very limited tape run of his first demo that now goes for 70 bucks on Discogs), Lamp of Murmuur finally debuted a full-band live show in 2022, including a massive Roadburn appearance, and now they've put out their new album Saturnian Bloodstorm, which is their first release on streaming services. It's more accessible in the very literal sense that you can stream it everywhere, but also in the sense that the production is much clearer than the band's early lo-fi material, and the songs are noticeably catchier. Even the album art has more color and clarity than any Lamp release before it. "I felt I didn't want this album to sound the same as the others," M. told Invisible Oranges. "I felt it was time to make an affirmation of my own existence, an affirmation of my strength and vitality, to make an invigorating record." M. cites albums like Immortal's At The Heart Of Winter and Satyricon's Volcano as influences on the clearer sound ("all these albums that appeared during a weird time for black metal, in the early 2000s, when the big bands were going extremely big with their sound"), and chalks the melodic side up to combining black metal with the influence of classic hard rock and heavy metal bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Dio, and Black Sabbath. Read IO's full interview for much more on this remarkable LP.

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Lana Del Rey - Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean BlvdInterscope/Polydor

To quote Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey paved the way for everyone. Her once-polarizing version of alternative pop music changed the way so many artists approached their music, from already-established giants like (recent Lana collaborator) Taylor Swift to more recent rising stars like Billie. And the more influential she gets, the more her own music seems to shy away from commercial expectations. "With this album, the majority of it is my innermost thoughts," Lana said while talking to Billie Eilish in the same Interview Magazine interview that Billie's quote came from. Lana has been moving towards a more personal songwriting style for a few albums now, and she really leans into it with Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. The album is largely quiet and minimal, with piano and string balladry setting the scene for stream-of-consciousness lyricism on the large majority of these songs. And then there are the outliers, like the hip hop-leaning "Peppers" with Tommy Genesis, the gospel-leaning "The Grants," and "Let the Light In," a lovely Laurel Canyon-style folk duet with Father John Misty. The album ends with a reprise of Norman Fucking Rockwell standout "Venice Bitch." (There's also a track where celebrity pastor Judah Smith delivers a four-and-a-half minute sermon, and I dunno if I'm gonna let that one finish every single time I listen to the album but your mileage may vary.) It's an album where Lana sounds like she's doing whatever the fuck she wants, a phrase that basically describes multiple Lana Del Rey albums at this point. In a broader sense, you know what you're gonna get from this album, but on a more micro level, Ocean Blvd finds many ways to surprise you.

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Liturgy - 93696Thrill Jockey

Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix has been challenging the boundaries and purism of black metal since Liturgy's inception, and even with the expectation that the band's new double album 93696 will do exactly that, this colossal new project still thrills and surprises in ways that feel almost jarringly fresh. True to its name, traditional black metal very literally invokes visions of darkness, but Hunt-Hendrix uses familiar black metal tricks to make music that sounds as bright and technicolor as 93696's album artwork. Along with Liturgy's current lineup of guitarist Mario Miron, bassist Tia Vincent-Clark, and drummer Leo Didkovsky, 93696 finds Hunt-Hendrix bringing in string arrangements, a children's choir, art rock electronics, and more to push the music in all kinds of unexpected directions. She says that she aimed to make this album "sound more punk-meets-classical than metal," and that goal is reflected in the album's production and arrangement choices, which rarely feel typical for metal (or any other style of music for that matter). The singles for the album included a shapeshifting 15-minute song, as well as a song that features nothing more than wordless choral a cappella singing, and those tracks make even more sense within the context of this album. It's a true journey of an album, one that can be jaw-dropping, euphoric, and antagonizing all at once.

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Lucinda Chua - YIAN4AD

London artist Lucinda Chua came up playing in the Kranky-signed trio Felix and acting as touring cellist for FKA twigs, and toured as an opener for Slint back in 2013, but she's only now releasing her debut solo album--following solo EPs from 2019 and 2021--and it really feels like the first time she's introducing herself to the world. "It's kind of unusual to write a debut solo album in your mid-thirties," she said in a recent interview with The Forty-Five. "I’ve already been making music for over ten years, yet releasing this album now still feels like such a birthing moment." The album is called YIAN, which is taken from her Chinese name Siew Yian, and it finds her fully embracing her Asian culture and roots that were often absent from her life as she grew up in London. The album's accompanying visuals were deeply inspired by Chinese dance and old Hollywood representations of Asian characters, and she recruited a group of collaborators with likeminded backgrounds to help her achieve her vision. Singaporean art pop artist Yeule is one of the album's few guests. Lucinda self-produced and engineered eight of the album's ten tracks herself, and YIAN largely finds her exploring stirring, atmospheric art pop, bringing to mind musicians like Tori Amos, Radiohead, and Björk. It's an overall quiet, slow-paced album, but give it the attention it deserves and you'll find addictive hooks and explosive climaxes weaved into YIAN's delicacy.

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MSPAINT - Post-AmericanConvulse Records

Hailing from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, MSPAINT are not from one of the popular music locales, they're not backed by one of the big tastemaker record labels, and they're out of step with pretty much every trend happening in music right now, but those who have latched onto the band agree: MSPAINT is something very special. "When I first heard ‘Hardwired’ it felt like I was let in on a secret, like an undiscovered hit," said Militarie Gun vocalist Ian Shelton, referring to the opening track of the band's self-titled 2020 debut EP. Ian since formed a close relationship with the band; Militarie Gun took them on tour and collaborated with them, and Ian co-produced their debut album Post-American alongside Taylor Young, and he sings a verse on standout track "Delete It." The album has one other guest vocalist on "Decapitated Reality," Soul Glo's Pierce Jordan.

As evidenced by their collaborators, tourmates, and record label, MSPAINT have been embraced by the hardcore scene, but they're not a hardcore band themselves. In fact, the band maintains that the only preliminary discussions they had about what MSPAINT would sound like is that they wouldn't use any guitars. Not that the "rock band ditches guitars" narrative is anything new, but MSPAINT do it in a way unlike almost any other band I can think of. Rejecting the rock-goes-synth pipeline that so often results in something cleaned-up and radio-friendly, MSPAINT's synth-punk feels built for grimy, sweaty, poorly-lit warehouse parties. Their drum-and-bass rhythm section is pummeling, their synths are warped and distorted, and their charismatic vocalist--who goes only by Deedee--leads the band with barely-melodic shouts that are way catchier than they'll ever sound on paper. The songs are as jagged and aggressive as they are fun and infectious; it's pop music for the outcasts and freaks, and MSPAINT don't really sound like any of the other bands who fit that description.

For more on this album, read the band's track-by-track breakdown.

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Model/Actriz - DogsbodyTrue Panther Sounds

Nostalgia tends to run on 20 year cycles which means the mid-'00s are back and as someone who was in NYC at the time and has fond memories of those days, I am here for it. At least some of it, like my rent back then, and my hearing. Model/Actriz, who have actually been part of the NYC fringe for the better part of a decade, seem like they could've actually held their own in 2003, with a fierce strain of arty technopunk that sounds like it was forged in an abandoned flame-cut steel factory. Drums fire like jackhammers, a machine gun of kickdrums, guitars shear off slices of metal like a hot knife through butter, and singer Cole Haden wails lines like "I remember thorns shredding my palms!" Dogsbody, their debut album, is fueled on twitchy, relentless energy that rarely lets up over its intense, dark and deadly serious 38-minute runtime. The only respite is pretty closer "Sun In," which you could be forgiven for thinking was the algorithm skipping to another artist after the album finished. Dogsbody is not exactly "fun," but it is cathartic and, like the groups it feels inspired by (Liars, Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, !!!), is probably best experienced live and loud in a sweaty packed club with strobes and smoke machines. In lieu of that, listen to Model/Actriz as loud as you can stand.

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The Murder Capital - Gigi's RecoveryHuman Seasons

Dublin band The Murder Capital have lightened up considerably since their release of their 2019 debut, When I Had Fears. That album trafficked in dour indie rock not too far removed from Interpol. early Editors and other groups who got compared to Joy Division a lot. While derivative, it had good songs played with conviction, and frontman James McGovern had a magnetism that could be felt even through the cheapest of earbuds. Four years later the band are back, and while it would be wrong to say they seem more comfortable in their skin, Gigi's Recovery feels more the product of a band who have figured out who they are. Songs and performances are more nuanced and showcase a whole range of emotions and colors, not just black and grey. The swaying "Good Things" and anthemic "Return My Head" border on joyous, and the latter sounds like a great lost single from the peak blog rock era. In fact, Gigi's Recovery plays a bit like the greatest mid-'00s indie guitar record you never heard, with memorable song after memorable song, all expertly produced by John Congleton with excellent varied guitarwork by Damien Tuit and Cathal Roper. McGovern has become a better singer, too, reeling it in just a little without losing any of the passion. This is not nostalgia for any era, though; Gigi's Recovery is the sound five men making vital music with guitars in 2023.

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Obituary - Dying of EverythingRelapse

Dying of Everything, Obituary's 11th album, comes five years after their last, and in the time since then, we've found ourselves in the midst of a serious death metal renaissance, fueled by an exciting crop of bands who wouldn't exist without Obituary. Obituary and their equally influential Florida peers like Death and Morbid Angel helped pioneer death metal by pushing thrash metal to its most evil conclusion, and making it even more evil from there. And Obituary never abandoned their thrash influences as they went on, making records whose influence echoes throughout a vast array of today's death metal, thrash metal, and metallic hardcore bands. They've also never stopped writing great records, and that includes Dying of Everything, an album that comes 34 years after Obituary's debut and still has the same hunger and urgency as the genre's new blood. Obituary still have original members John Tardy (vocals), Donald Tardy (drums), and Trevor Peres (rhythm guitar), and for the past decade-plus, their lineup has been rounded out by fellow Florida death metal pioneer Terry Butler (Death, Massacre, Six Feet Under) on bass and lead guitarist Kenny Andrews (who previously played alongside Donald Tardy in Andrew WK's band and was in Florida thrash vets Azrael and Pain Principle before that), two people who are not surprisingly very good at helping Obituary keep their classic sound alive. Dying of Everything doesn't stray too far from Obituary's early records, but it also doesn't sound outdated or redundant at all. Obituary made some of the best death metal of the 1980s and they make some of the best death metal today, period. May all bands be this effortlessly relevant 30+ years into their careers.

For more on this album, read IO's new interview with Donald Tardy.

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Paramore - This Is WhyAtlantic

Hayley Williams has said on multiple occasions that Paramore never intended to become just a pop punk/emo band. They had so many other influences early on, but that's the scene they got grouped with at the time, and probably due to various factors, it's the direction they went in and it's what many people still know them best for. But even after mainstream interest in pop punk and emo died down, Paramore weathered a changing music industry, multiple lineup changes, side projects, and various stylistic departures. Their 2017 album After Laughter was a sharp, new wave-inspired album with almost no hints of pop punk at all, and it was hailed as a comeback (not that Paramore ever really went anywhere), affirming Paramore as a band that was just as relevant in the mid/late 2010s musical landscape as they were in the mid/late 2000s. That was now six years ago, and since then Hayley released two solo albums that departed even further from Paramore's roots, but now Paramore are back and they sound like the band they truly always wanted to be.

The well-executed departure made on After Laughter clearly informs the direction of This Is Why, but they also bring back the loud guitars and sneered angst of classic Paramore, and they go in a handful of new directions too. This Is Why is the sound of Paramore reconnecting with their former selves, but still embracing who they've become in the 18 years since their debut LP. It feels like a culmination of everything they've done, as well as an evolution. At times, it also feels like Paramore going back to the very beginning and starting over; Hayley has spoken multiple times about the influence that Bloc Party--who Paramore are taking out on tour this year--have had on this album, and their twitchy dance-punk is all over this record. Songs like "The News," "Running Out of Time," and "C'est Comme Ca" suggest an alternate version of the mid 2000s where Paramore followed in the footsteps of "Banquet" instead of their Fueled by Ramen labelmates and fellow Warped Tourers, and Paramore pull this off in 2023 without sounding out of step, outdated, or like they're pining for a past era of guitar music.

Read our full review.

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Parannoul - After the MagicTopshelf

"This album is not what you expected, but what I always wanted." That's how the mysterious South Korean musician Parannoul introduced After the Magic, which follows two other full-lengths and and a few EPs and splits (both with fellow South Korean artist Asian Glow, and one also a three-way split with Brazil's sonhos tomam conta), as well as releases under other monikers like laststar and Mydreamfever. Those early releases helped build Parannoul a cult fanbase, and it's one that's existed almost entirely on the internet; some of Parannoul's loudest cheerleaders come from across the globe, and this all started to happen during COVID lockdown, before anyone had seen Parannoul live. (As far as I can tell, Parannoul has only rarely performed, and never outside of South Korea.) The ingredients that make up After the Magic are similar to the ones on Parannoul's earlier releases, but this record feels bigger, cleaner, and less lo-fi. It fits in somewhere between the electro-shoegaze of aughts-era M83, The Notwist's glitch pop, and The Appleseed Cast's soaring vocal-oriented post-rock, with fluttery arrangements that wouldn't feel out of place on a Sufjan Stevens album. In other words, this is deeply beautiful music, and it's full of feeling.

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Sanguisugabogg - Homicidal EcstasyCentury Media

"Everything became more legit. The musicianship, the production, the lyrics – which delve much more into horror and body horror – are more thought-out. It's not just a bunch of dick and fart jokes," says vocalist Devin Swank of the new album by his Ohio death metal band Sanguisugabogg, whose last album included a song called "Dick Filet." Not that it's easy to make out a brutal death metal band's lyrics anyway, but you can just tell overall that Sanguisugabogg seem to be taking things a little more seriously these days, and I'd argue that Homicidal Ecstasy lives up to this band's hype (which, as far as death metal bands go, has been pretty loud from the start) more than their earlier material did. It's tighter, heavier, and more intense than the debut, but still with all the gruesome gore that we've come to expect from these guys.

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Ulrika Spacek - Compact TraumaTough Love

In the year 2023, are guitars boring? Of course not, but for the sake of my own dumb argument I'll say it depends on whose hands they're in. (Obviously also true for any instrument, even the pan flute.) In London band Ulrika Spacek's hands, guitars swoop and soar, sneak and creep, caress and roar. Frontman Rhys Edwards and bandmates Adam Beach and Joseph Stone are cut from the same cloth as Doug Martsch, Bradford Cox, Thurston Moore/Lee Ranaldo, and the Radiohead of your choice, working within rock and pop boundaries but still finding new things to do with their instrument and excited by the possibilities. Compact Trauma, the band's first album in six years, plays off the promise of their 2018 Suggested Listening EP and is a glorious guitar record where even the two-minute songs feel epic, loaded with inventive riffs and clever filigrees. The album is very much a band effort, of course, with bassist Syd Kemp and drummer Callum Brown all adding to the wonderful, frequently thrilling din. The album opens with its best song, the swaggering "The Sheer Drop," which swings from sultry cool to wild noise and back, all with big hooks and a stick-in-your-head chorus. Compact Trauma maintains its quality levels over the remaining nine songs, taking us through jazzy pop ("Lounge Angst"), dark romance ("If The Wheels Are Coming Off, The Wheels Are Coming Off"), and more epics ("Stuck at the Door") before going out on the beautiful, dreamlike title track. Guitars? Here are 10 reasons to be excited.

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Ulthar - Anthronomicon & Helionomicon20 Buck Spin

Ulthar--the Bay Area metal trio featuring Shelby Lermo (Vastum), Steve Peacock (Mastery, Spirit Possession), and Justin Ennis (Vale)--are following 2020's Providence with their third and fourth albums at once, Anthronomicon and Helionomicon. The former is a "traditionally" structured eight-song album, while the latter is broken up into two 20-ish minute tracks, also named "Helionomicon" and "Anthronomicon." If the latter sounds more daunting to consume, it's not; it's got just as many twists and turns as the eight-song album, just less track breaks. Recorded in Baltimore by Kevin Bernsten (Full of Hell, Pianos Become the Teeth, etc), both albums sound fantastic, and both find Ulthar completely blurring the lines between black and death metal, and flirting with things like ambient noise and bluesy clean guitar along the way. In an extreme metal landscape that often finds bands splintering off into highly specific subgenres, it's refreshing to hear Ulthar just doing whatever they wanna do regardless of any established boundaries, and sounding absolutely furious in the process.

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Yves Tumor - Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)Warp

Sean Bowie has spent most of their career as Yves Tumor morphing from experimentalist into bold, glammy art-rocker, and at this point, the transformation is complete. Picking up where 2021's crowdpleasing The Asymptotical World EP left off, Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) really leans into the loud, hook-fueled material that's perfect for the Coachella stage that Yves will be gracing this April. But as always, Yves approaches rock and pop music on their own terms; getting more accessible doesn't mean abandoning their stranger tendencies or softening the blow of their sharp, distinct voice. As ever, Yves Tumor is an expert at blending familiar sounds in unfamiliar ways; Praise A Lord recalls an array of different styles of music, including but definitely not limited to new wave, psychedelia, post-punk, grunge, funk, chillwave, and krautrock, and Yves often touches on two or more of those per song. With production from Noah Goldstein (Frank Ocean, Kanye, Bon Iver, etc), mixing by Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Nine Inch Nails, etc), and a cast of talented contributors (including standout guest vocalist Kidä on "Lovely Sewer"), Praise A Lord sounds fantastic, with a timeless sheen that's perfect for the concoction of sounds that Yves has stirred up.

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Zulu - A New TomorrowFlatspot

"Must I only share my pain?" It's a question that Zulu ask more than once on their debut album A New Tomorrow, referring to the way that Black artists are so often expected to make art that reflects their trauma, rather than celebrate their culture and community and selves. Parts of A New Tomorrow are informed by pain, but it's so much deeper and more vast and more celebratory than that. Having started out as the powerviolence-with-vintage-soul-samples solo project of Dare/The Bots drummer Anaiah Lei, Zulu is now a full band, and their multi-genre sound now comes from more than just samples. Anaiah often splits screaming duties with drummer Christine Cadette, and guitarist Dez Yusuf takes over on lead vocals for the album's jazz-rap song "We're More Than This." Soul Glo's Pierce Jordan, Playytime's Obioma Ugonna, and Truth Cult's Paris Roberts lend their voices too. They do still employ soul (and reggae and Afrobeat) samples, but they also offer up their own psychedelic soul and jazz instrumentals. And they've taken their bone-crushing hardcore far beyond powerviolence, often venturing off into territory so groove-oriented and danceable that it fit perfectly when Zulu recreated an A Tribe Called Quest video for one of the album's songs. A New Tomorrow is the perfect name for this album; Zulu sound like the future.

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SEE ALSO: 55 albums we're anticipating for spring 2023

Browse the Notable Releases and Bill's Indie Basement archives for even more album reviews from this year.