Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 1, and Part 2 is also out here. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order. These albums, released in 2023 are simply chosen for their strength of songwriting, quality of performance and innovation. There are hundreds more on the Albums section, and many more still to discover via New Songs with Song of The Day, but also includes embedded albums and EPs. Please dip in to the links, enjoy and explore, and in comments add your own favourites and new discoveries.
Anna B Savage: in|FLUX
Following 2021’s superb debut LP, A Common Turn, the London-based singer-songwriter returns with an exquisitely beautiful, bittersweet, intimate, candid personal set of songs about the difficulties of love
Rozi Plain: Prize
Beautifully textured, gentle, sensitive, understated, mysterious, stripped-back alternative folk by the English singer-songwriter, also joined by colleagues from This Is The Kit, saxophonist Alabaster DePlume and harpist Serafina Steer
Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
Following 2019’s Pang, this cleverly constructed fusion of art-pop and other genres by the dynamic, intelligent, soaring-voiced American ticks all the boxes to be an enormous mainstream hit
Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy
There’s nothing quite like them. Joyous energy and endless invention, the Edinburgh trio’s fourth LP is filled with soulful, emotional vocals, fabulous oddball, dynamic beats and sound textures, and already an album of the year contender
Fever Ray: Radical Romantics
Sweden’s Karin Dreijer returns with her first Fever Ray LP since 2017’s Plunge, this third packed with rich, eerie, complex, multifarious songs about the bewilderment of love
Technology + Teamwork: We Used To Be Friends
Sarah Jones and Anthony Silvester’s debut brings experimental electro-pop, new wave, R&B, disco and more, from brilliant bangers to the oddball and bizarre, and influences from West Coast 60s synthesis movement to late 70s and early 80s Cabaret Voltaire with little dash of Yello
Lana Del Rey - Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
The queen of noir returns with her ninth LP – steeped in powerful, beautiful, piano-based numbers of melancholy and rich vocal harmonies, with rumination about dangerous love, religion and of course, death
Depeche Mode: Memento Mori
With one of the best in over 20 years, Basildon’s veteran electro-pop specialists Martin Gore and Dave Gahan return, now sadly without Andy Fletcher who died last year, but with a album about sex, death and mutability that is also a tribute to their lost longtime colleague
Lucinda Chua: YIAN
A beautiful, sensual, intimate debut LP by the Milton Keynes-raised singer-songwriter, themed around personal history and identity, the title (燕) meaning the swallow bird in Chinese, part of her given name, Siew Yian from her Chinese-Malaysian heritage
boygenius: the record
After 2018’s EP, a fabulous LP debut of folk, Americana and indie combining the talents of American singer-songwriter trio of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, who have each also released three successful solo LPs
A Certain Ratio: 1982
The Manchester post-punk veterans Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson, return with a sparklingly eclectic record of electronica, dance, jazz, funk, Afrobeat and more with a retrospective feel on their history
Jen Cloher: I Am The River, The River Is Me
Brilliantly passionate and powerful, this fifth LP by the Melbourne indie singer-songwriter celebrates their matrilineal line of wāhine Māori heritage in songs of heartbreak, defiance and joy
Desire Marea: On The Romance of Being
An extraordinary, beautiful, passionate, spiritual and erotic new solo LP by the South African multidisciplinary artist, sangoma (Nguni spiritual healer), and previously part of queer gqom group FAKA, now with a 13-piece orchestral ensemble mixing soul, jazz, rock and Zulu chants
Billie Marten: Drop Cherries
A sublime fourth album by the singer-songwriter Isabella Sophie Tweddle from Ripon in Yorkshire, building on 2021’s excellent Flora Fauna with folk love songs blooming with exquisite beauty and intimacy
Feist: Multitudes
A beautifully intricate, delicate, intelligent and innovative new LP by the Canadian singer-songwriter with among others, a theme the many selves we possess and present, now, in the past and future
Dave Okumu & The 7 Generations: I Came From Love
A rich, complex and brilliant release about black history, identity, and channelling the idea of ancestry by British singer, songwriter, producer and guitarist joined by a stellar cast of fellow artists, including Wesley Joseph, Tom Skinner, ESKA and Grace Jones
The Bloodstreams: How To Be A God
With oodles of swagger, theatricality and panache, a wonderful debut by the seasoned Deptford quartet, with witty, black-humoured 60s garage rock and stylish echoes of Siouxsie, Birthday Party-era Nick Cave, Stones, the Doors and the Kramps
Jessie Ware: That! Feels Good!
Classy and indeed classic disco, pop, soul and funk by the London-born soaring-voiced singer, who with this fifth album of 10 glitterball bangers is really at the very top of her game
The National: First Two Pages of Frankenstein
The ninth studio LP by the Brooklyn-based Ohio five-piece of the Dessner brothers co, is slow, reflective and beautifully poetic, capturing singer Matt Berninger’s hopefully winning battle with depression, and includes includes guest Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers and Sufjan Stevens
Susanne Sundfør: Blómi
Strange and strikingly beautiful, the sixth album by the Norwegian singer-songwriter is a mix of classic 70s piano-pop and alternative folk, with echoes everything from Karen Carpenter to Rufus Wainwright
BC Camplight: The Last Rotation of Earth
Sublimity and tragedy meet once again in this brilliantly beautiful, darkly humorous sixth album by Manchester-based US singer-songwriter Brian Christinzio, charting his latest disaster – after nine years, the sudden breakup with his fiancée
Tinariwen: Amatssou
A fabulous new release by the north Mali nomadic group whose distinctive Tuareg Saharan desert blues is beautifully combined with a country style, with added pedal steel and violin, and a title that is is Tamashek for ‘Beyond The Fear’
Brix Smith - Valley of the Dolls
Fizzing with energy, a blistering album of feisty brilliance à la Hole or Breeders, this is possibly the ex-Fall and The Extricated singer’s finest work yet, a debut solo LP featuring a female supergroup that includes My Bloody Valentine’s Deb Googe on bass
Sparks: The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte
Sparky, humorous electro-art-pop joy throughout as the pioneering veteran Mael brothers Ron and Russell return with a classic 27th studio album, packed with catchy droll, silly, zeitgeisty wit and cinematographic scenes and characters
Water From Your Eyes: Everyone's Crushed
Uncategorisably ear-catching, experimental indie-pop by the Brooklyn duo Rachel Brown and Nate Amos, in a fifth LP filled with oddball, interweaving sounds, textures and landscapes, electronica to distorted guitar rock, absurdist clever lyrics and melodies
WITCH: Zango
After a whopping 38 years’ absence, Zambia’s pioneers of zamrock (their name an acronym We Intend To Cause Havoc) return with their heady and wonderful mix of psychedelic rock, reggae, Afrobeat and funk
Extranauts: The Alchemist
Wonderfully stylish, catchy, uplifting indie pop and retro 70s disco with a dash of 60s psychedelia and krautrock by the Irish sextet fronted by singer and songwriter Keith O’Neill and produced with added sheen by Jagz Kooner
This Is The Kit: Careful Of Your Keepers
Another peach of an LP from Kate Stables and band, whose voice especially with her acoustic alternative folk, effortlessly caresses the microphone with clarity, beauty, profundity and minimalism, and is produced by Gruff Rhys
Hak Baker: Worlds End FM
Vibrant, witty, energetic debut by the east London rapper and musician, presented like a pirate radio station the mixes hip hop and storytelling with echoes of The Streets’ Mike Skinner and Ian Dury, as well more conventional, yet pointed indie about troubled Britain
Queens of the Stone Age: In Times New Roman
After a six year absence, Josh Homme and co return with an eighth blistering, brutally brilliant, meaty loud rock LP, returning to more to their roots too – dark, powerfully emotional, ironic, sharp, witty and powerful, here with some elements of Scary Monsters-era Bowie, Cream, epic glam rock, and all fuelled by various personal tragedies
Sigur Rós: ÁTTA
With climate change ever on on the horizon, a beautiful, moving, melancholy, ethereal and dynamic LP by the elemental Icelandic experimental band, their first for a decade, with Kjartan Sveinsson rejoining since he left 2012, to complete the trio with frontman Jónsi and bassist Georg Holm
Killer Mike: Michael
One half of Run The Jewels, the Atlanta rapper and social activist Michael Santiago Render releases a powerful, articulate, and frank autobiographical solo LP, candidly exploring his childhood and more of the other side to his Killer Mike persona
Ursa Major Moving Group: Ursa Major Moving Group
A stellar, innovative and absorbing debut LP project by London multi-instrumentalist, composer and writer Ursula Russell fusing folk, chamber pop and gentle post-punk
Geese: 3D Country
A brilliant second album following 2021’s Projector by the Brooklyn indie-rock quintet, packed with thunderous rocky, bluesy psychedelic grooves, retro yet fresh, stop-start rhythms, and charismatic deep-voiced delivery of Cameron Winter
LYR: The Ultraviolet Age
A beautiful, profound, utterly absorbing second LP by the trio of current British poet laureate, Simon Armitage, singer-songwriter Richard Walters and multi-instrumentalist and producer Patrick J Pearson
Grian Chatten: Chaos For The Fly
The Fontaines D.C. vocalist releases a strong, sensitive solo album leaning more towards gentle, wistful, reflective folk, including some echoes of Nick Drake but retaining his strong Dublin flavour, and produced by the brilliant and prolific Dan Carey
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