The 5 Best Rock Albums of the year
This year the annual calls of “rock is dead” and “the album is dead” seem a bit muted. Sure, there will always be bozos claiming “Pet Sounds” was the last great LP. But the indie press, a big chunk of the mainstream, and many Grammy voters disagree. Here are the five best rock — yup, take a wide view of rock — 2023.
“Guts,” Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Rodrigo has great ears. She came up on her parents’ Weezer albums, has a Tori Amos obsession, and knows the coolest guitar tones (check out Smashing Pumpkins nod in “Pretty Isn’t Pretty”). But her voice is better. She outgrew Disney at 17. On “Guts,” made when she was 19, Rodrigo has outgrown pop. Not pop hooks (she’s a hook maestro) but pop pleasantries. She can do authentic rage and sardonic rants at once, scream like Joan Jett, strip it bare like Adele. The album opens with: “I’m a perfect all-American bitch/With perfect all-American lips/And perfect all-American hips/I know my place/I know my place and this is it.” It closes with: “When am I gonna stop being wise beyond my years and just start being wise?/When am I gonna stop being a pretty young thing to guys?”
“Wait Til I Get Over,” Durand Jones
This album is a letter to Jones’ teenage self, a letter to himself and to every kid growing up in the rural South. It’s full of honest admissions — “That Feeling” is his ode to Black queer love — set against a backdrop of history: the legacy of Southern soul music, his grandmother’s remembrance of a town founded by eight former slaves. It’s packed with lush strings, gospel cheers, rock guitar, lonely piano figures, and Jones’ defiant and intimate voice. His words, his voice, the music, the rawness, they add up to a brilliant record born of nostalgia and heartache.
“The Record,” boygenius
The singer-songwriter trio of Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus do so many things so well as boygenius. The vocal harmonies hypnotize. The hushed moments entrance. The roaring moments roar until throats are raw trying to make more of a racket than the screaming guitars, basses and drums (see “$20”). But it’s the intimacy of this music — from folk rock to indie pop to ’90s alternative — that really gets you. The three get intimate with friends, lovers, and themselves (sample lyric: “I’m twenty-seven and I don’t know who I am.”). It makes the album an emotional workout that’s not only worth it but compulsory.
“Continues as a Guest,” The New Pornographers
Greatest streaks in pop? The Beatles over seven years, Fleetwood Mac’s late ’70s, Prince’s whole ’80s. Sure, but how about the New Pornographers from 2000 to 2023? The band’s ninth album is as bright, sharp, smart, sad, and poppy as its first (and second, and third, and…). Leader and primary songwriter Carl Newman gets a writing assist on two tracks from old bandmate Dan Bejar and Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis. But the real assist, as always, comes from singer Neko Case. She and Newman intertwine their voices over and over again. Worth the price of admission: Case singing Newman’s lyric, “Now you’re clearing the room just like Pontius Pilate/When he showed all his home movies/All of his friends yelling, ‘Pilate, too soon!’”
“Rabbit Rabbit,” Speedy Ortiz
Speaking of Speedy Ortiz… No band explores the line between harmony and dissonance better. In the first minute of the first track, “Kim Cattrall,” the Massachusetts band ping pongs from hook to clatter, earworm to roar. This happens over and over again on “Rabbit Rabbit.” When songwriter Sadie Dupuis sits firm on one pole for a moment, the results are staggering: “Cry, Cry, Cry” has the catchiness of No. 1, the last 30 seconds of “Kitty” deliver a tornado of wild notes. Pair it all with Dupuis’ razor lyrics and the LP is an instant classic (“I am an artist and I am for hire, taking materials out of the pyre/Working for lovers hunting for meaning. You can take it from me.”)
Boygenius, “The Record.” (Photo courtesy Interscope)
Speedy Ortiz, “Rabbit Rabbit.” (Photo courtesy Wax Nine)