Best music of 2023
Good tidings, folks and friends. I’m not trying to get away from Spotify or anything, but I’d be stretching the truth to suggest I wasn’t more than a little obsessed with the statistics. In some ways I tried to game it a bit, making sure I played the catalogues of a sprinkling of artists who are, at the very least, severely under-listened to on streaming services. I have a whole “deserve more love” playlist for several bands with fewer than a thousand monthly listeners, but the handful I made sure to play every week of the year were Suns of the Tundra, Ensemble 1, Laura, and Ro (as well as Life Coach (with Jon Theodore on drums), Fox Wound, and Five-Way Split at various points). This proved no problem with Laura and Ro, particularly with the latter’s new album from January this year, but I confess I got bored doing it with SOTT about June time, at least until the new record came out. Nevertheless, SOTT was my top artist on Spotify Wrapped – apparently, I spent 136.5 hours listening to ...