20 Songs of the Summer, 2023
20. Slowdive - alife
Seven years without a Frank Ocean album has felt just a bit more soul-crushing each day for his fans, but a seven year-long hiatus for Slowdive fans is nothing - they waited a patient 22 years between 1995 and 2017 for the band to finally reunite and drop their acclaimed self-titled LP. Nearly seven years on, they staged a comeback to their comeback and released the 40-minute long everything is alive in early September. On “alife”, the wispy, humble nature of the vocals provides a perfect backdrop for the reflective lyrics (“Hey, just look at us now / Time made fools of us all / …Time has got me somehow”), with a bold guitar melody that comes gratifyingly close to the ambience of Souvlaki, shoegaze’s most venerated album.
19. KAYTRAMINE, Pharrell Williams - 4EVA
When “4EVA” dropped in April, it felt that we were destined for a hip-hop and electronic crossover of a summer, not just from the eclectic Kaytranada or the dependable Amine, but from the rap industry as a whole. Spring releases in recent years have tended to set the paradigm for the following months - see XXXTENTACION’s “Look At Me” from 2017 and the ensuing Soundcloud/rage/emo infused summer, or Kendrick’s Mr. Morale for the naked instrumentation and vocal experimentation that rubber-stamped itself across K-dot’s return to popularity in the hip-hop mainstream in summer 2022. Pharrell too has production credit on this joint, which manifests itself with the clean, perc/snare-centric drums that accompany his vocals on the hook. While the excitement of this release’s consequences ultimately fizzled out with a lukewarm reception to the duo’s subsequent self-titled LP, 4EVA as a single is memorable enough to break into the top 20.
18. Nas - Fever
“Now we on album six, the top team on your list” raps Nas on “TSK”, the sophomore track on his most recent release Magic 3, the 6th full-length collaborative release between the Brooklyn-born legend and his now-inseparable ally, esteemed producer Hit-Boy. Now 50, Nas’ affirmation here feels like an acknowledgement of a second career, with just as much genius, presence and sonic excellence as his first time round, starting from the duo’s release of King’s Disease in 2020. Always “in the conversation”, but beleaguered by notions of “boring beat selection”, Nas’ prolificness since the turn of the decade has been nothing short of remarkable - indeed, KD won Best Rap Album at the Grammy Awards in 2021. “Fever”, the intro for M3, emanates the swagger that has characterized Nas’ comeback while incorporating a nice nod to one of hip-hop’s crowning jewels - the chorus interpolates “Represent” from Illmatic, oft-cited as the greatest rap record of all time.
17. Boygenius - Cool About It
The creative project of Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus delivered one of the indie cult classics of 2018 with their self-titled EP. In a pleasant surprise, the trio returned in the spring with the release of the record, a dozen-song offering of predominantly acoustic excellence and impeccable vocal harmonies. The pick of the bunch is probably “Cool About It”, a country-tinged hit in which the trio’s verses blend seamlessly from one to the next in a melancholic quilt that harks back to the stripped-back second half of Punisher, Bridgers’ most recent solo LP. In visual form, the honest but eerily tenebrous tone of the piece is the same feeling I associated with The Perks Of Being A Wallflower or Garden State upon my first viewing of both.
16. Steve Lacy, Foushee - Sunshine
The hipster’s “Bad Habit”, “Sunshine” marks the beginning of Foushee’s purple patch in the alternative hip-hop scene, with her prints later found on Lil Yachty’s Let’s Start Here, Saba’s Few Good Things, and most recently Teezo Touchdown’s How Do You Sleep At Night?. Both her and Lacy are at their playful best on Sunshine, a track that has few structural rules and excels in the spotless guitar-led instrumentation and crooning that basks in it. The electric and bass guitars have a 30-second slot to flourish in the song’s outro, which is, for want of a more technical term, simply luscious.
15. Jordan Ward - FAMJAM4000
Jordan Ward’s music would fit an NPR Tiny Desk Concert like a glove. If the St. Louis-born singer keeps producing effortless summer jams like springtime release “FAMJAM4000”, the call shouldn’t be too far away. St Louis’s music scene is slowly showing signs of rebirth as far as soul - Luv 4 Rent, from the Lou’s Smino, was one of the genre’s most celebrated releases of 2022. FAMJAM4000 contrasts a breezy guitar instrumental and upbeat cadence with a heartfelt take on family troubles and the inevitability of being distant as a prominent artist on the international stage. Ward not only gives a good showing of his own abilities on the track, but adds more reason for the average indie/hip-hop head to turn their curiosity to Missouri.
14. Overmono - Is U
As a British publication, this list would be pretty quickly thrown into disrepute if we didn’t include a summer garage tune. The Welsh duo’s debut full-length LP, Good Lies, is one of the genre’s standout releases this year, coming at summer’s dawn in May. “So U Kno” and the title track are worth taking note of, but “Is U” is our pick of the bunch, taking over beach parties and warehouses for a brief period throughout Britain and Europe.
13. Aphex Twin - Blackbox Life Recorder 21f
The appreciation of ‘liminal spaces’ had ethereal/pretentious Twitter in a chokehold last summer. The gist of the craze was the act of stopping in a space where one normally does not, due to its transitional nature. Good examples are subway stations, hotel corridors, or dimly lit swimming pools (I think?). If I had to provide a visual dimension to Aphex Twin’s comeback track, “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f”, a ‘liminal space’ would probably come the closest to doing it justice. The inseparable snappy and bipolar drum fills are here, but with a strangely soothing synth melody to carry the thing throughout. It’s a surprisingly accessible return to the limelight for Richard D. James. Then again, he’s just twisting buttons.
12. King Krule - Seaforth
Another reclusive cult wonder returning from the woodwork, King Krule released “Seaforth” in April as a prelude to his first album in three years, Space Heavy. Accompanied by a wonderfully executed music video, the track finds its place in the early hours of the morning, with Krule’s lyrics speaking of an out-of-grasp attachment to loved ones that he visits while he sleeps. In the cold light of the morning, he concludes that "this faith is all I have”, pertaining to the feeling that the life in his dreams is his only real existence left. Poetic.
11. Fred again.., Obongjayar - adore u
Fred Again’s reign as the hottest property in the British electronic scene shows little sign of slowing down. The release of Secret Life with ambient legend Brian Eno was met with mixed reception, but inarguably showcased the range the London-born DJ can extend to if he feels like it. He returns to a more festival-friendly mode with August’s “adore u”, which enlists the vocal prowess of fellow rising star, Obongjayar, with a sundrenched sample from the singer’s “I Wish It Was Me”, with ad-libs sourced from none other than The Fat Boys. I had the pleasure of seeing Fred concoct a live version of this in Edinburgh, so am a bit biassed, but in no doubt that the track deserves a spot on this list.
10. Travis Scott - MY EYES
I saw a cog-whirring tweet the other day. “What was the last ‘instant classic’ hip-hop album that dropped?”, posed someone to the masses. Many replied with Kendrick’s Mr. Morale, Pusha T’s It’s Almost Dry or JID’s The Forever Story. But the overwhelming response was Travis Scott’s July release, UTOPIA. Indeed, it feels like the first hip-hop release in a while that has met daunting expectations, and pulled hip-hop fans, commentators and reactors onto the same page (broadly speaking) in their appreciation for Scott’s latest world-building project. Potentially the most stark left-turn from the Houston rapper comes from track four, “MY EYES”. Starting off with a woozy two minutes of autotuned crooning, the track kicks into life around the halfway mark, with a brief vocal interlude from Sampha, a welcome surprise as an unlisted feature, before snares and 808s suddenly appear alongside a sped-up beat, before Scott reminds everyone of his flowing ability on an explosive and brilliant closing verse.
9. Tinashe - Tightrope
Tinashe, a name I haven’t heard since about 2015, popped up on my Twitter timeline the other day, as a result of a “spat” with former collaborator Chris Brown (as it turns out, a pretty harmless throwaway comment from a podcast which Brown took predictably disproportionate offence to). I then had a foray into her latest project BB/ANG3L, and was startled to find the former rising RnB star had switched to an adventurous electronic sound, with well-executed deluges into garage, jungle and DnB all within the same 20-minute runtime. “Talk To Me Nice”, “Gravity” and “None of My Business” all merit a place in my heavy rotation at the moment but it’s the closer “Tightrope” that’s gripping me the most. Angelic vocal harmonies, interlaced with an intricate DnB instrumental, get the song into the top 10.
8. Blur - St. Charles Square
Blur are back! 8-year hiatus over, the 90s legends dropped The Ballad of Darren in late July, with lead single “The Narcissist” preluding the album’s release, which saw them reach number one in the British charts once more. However, it’s “St. Charles Square” that steals the show here, with awesome riffs and blockbuster drums taking us back to the good old days. Damon Albarn said of the record: “St. Charles Square is a place where ghosts of monsters can be found”, whatever that means. Who cares? Great track.
7. Pangaea - Installation
Pangaea (a.k.a. Kevin McAuley)’s career has seen pretty unwavering consistency since the late 2000s, with underground garage classic “Router” now 15 years old. “Installation”, a high-energy medley of techno and house, is brilliant. Weird synths, even weirder vocals, and the odd spaceship noise makes this a great backing track for a fast-paced workout, or as I’ve chosen to utilise it, a languid dog walk. Experimental but inarguably head-bop-inducing, this is one of my favourite techno tracks that I (admittedly, not a huge techno aficionado) have discovered this year.
6. Toro y Moi - Sidelines
Far from an explosive chart-topper, Toro y Moi’s August EP, Sandhills, appears to have gone under the radar somewhat in the underground indie scene. It is a bit of a left-turn for the South Carolina-born artist - it’s at its heart a country record, with stripped-back acoustic guitar the order of the day. All five tracks are emotionally evocative pieces of art, with the concept that one always has a longing for the simplicity of a hometown, all the while knowing you can’t really go back, according to a description on his Spotify page. “Sidelines” is my favourite from a sonic standpoint, with a falsetto and ukulele the bedrock from which Toro y Moi recalls the melancholic memories of the town that raised him.
5. Earl Sweatshirt, The Alchemist, MIKE - Sentry
In front-page news for hip-hop this year, Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist have finally dropped a collaborative tape. The duo released VOIR DIRE on NFT-based website Gala Music, alongside 11 NFTs to accompany each track. According to The Alchemist, all 11 songs have been available for quite some time under fake names on YouTube and have successfully remained unidentified by anybody. Lead single “Sentry”, a typically caliginous and eerie Alchemist instrumental, provides the perfect canvas for Earl Sweatshirt to pick up where he left off from the highly acclaimed 2022 LP, SICK!, while MIKE’s candid delivery of cold truths (“I was there when them smiles were salt / Put you higher than you say that you are”) ensures the track is replete with what Super Hans would correctly call “a powerful sense of dread”.
4. Lil Yachty - the BLACK seminole.
Seldom have I been more dumbstruck by a song in music-following years than the opener to Lil Yachty’s most recent album, Let’s Start Here. Always acknowledged as a fairly eclectic artist but still largely pigeonholed into the Soundcloud rap and hyperpop genres, Yachty draws on his inner Pink Floyd to produce a heavenly cacophony of drums, accompanied by the vocal nirvana of Foushee, who hits every note with perfection and scratches every sonic itch you didn’t even know you had. This song has sombre piano, cool basslines, choppy synths, and soulful crooning aplenty. The whole album swept me sideways, with “drive ME crazy!”, “the ride-” and “THE zone~” all making a case for inclusion, but the shock of hearing “the BLACK seminole.” for the first time is a feeling of pleasant astonishment I can only recall a handful of times. Each time you think the song can’t reach another level, it laughs at you. Yachty apparently has production credits on the joint, too.
3. Justin Vernon - hazelton
Justin Vernon, the real name behind the iconic alternative project/band Bon Iver, flexes his acoustic ability on “hazelton”, the (almost) title track of mini-project hazeltons. With his impeccable falsetto and spotless chord progressions, this is one of the most beautiful tracks I’ve heard this year. A marked departure from Bon Iver’s brilliant experimental successes in I,i and 22, A Million, the beauty of hazelton stems from its stripped-back simplicity. While technically cheating, as the song was apparently released on CD-R somewhere between 2005 and 2006 before Vernon became famous, the completely mastered track hit streaming services in June, so we’ll allow it [evil laugh].
2. Lana Del Rey - A&W
Arguably one of the releases of the year, Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd cemented Del Rey’s status as one of the best indie songwriters of all time, if it wasn’t already solidified fact. Indeed, heavyweight publication Rolling Stone crowned her the greatest American songwriter of the 21st century in March, a few weeks out from Ocean Blvd’s release. On “A&W”, unsurprisingly the most streamed track on the LP to date, the singer grapples with ideas of male gaze and female subjugation in contemporary America by brilliantly sequencing various chronological narratives around her body and image throughout her life, from childhood to present. Sonically, the song is even better. It is split into two halves - first, a moody guitar and gnawing synth let Del Rey’s vocals take centre stage, interlaced with gentle bursts of piano to accompany the chorus. In the song’s second half, a Radiohead-esque fade into electronic tumult and 808s give the song an psychedelically-tinged ending.
1. Tyler, The Creator - SORRY NOT SORRY
How much does Tyler, The Creator have to do to be a part of certain “of all time” conversations? The quality and consistency of the past decade for the artist is indisputable. He has released projects bi-yearly throughout his entire career, with his previous two works, IGOR and Call Me If You Get Lost, winning Best Rap Album at the 2019 and 2021 Grammy Awards respectively. Many wolfgang-ers would have been disappointed at Tyler’s recent announcement, that CMIYGL’s deluxe version Call Me If You Get Lost: The Estate Sale would be “his release for 2023” and resultantly the hint that we wouldn’t get a new album until 2025. That’s understandable, but the seven-track package of “throwaways” we got was arguably the most enjoyable new listen in hip-hop this year, from the boisterous link-up with Vince Staples on “STUNTMAN” to the Alchemist-esque bass and woodwind-led saunter on “WHAT A DAY”, or the most playful and droll joint on the whole record in “DOGTOOTH”. The deluxe’s closer, “SORRY NOT SORRY”, is the best hip-hop song of 2023 so far. T gets everything off of his chest, from grievances about fake stories and people babbling on about their problems and guilt tripping him, to genuine apologies to his mother for making “the four minutes where you see your son feel like a chore” and to “the boys I had to hide”. The track crescendos into an furious rant against his nay-sayers, that “claim I don’t know about minimum wage or Section 8”, all the while apologising to his ancestors and conceding that “I know I’m supposed to fight / But this ice shinin’ brighter than a black man’s plight”. It finishes with two words (“fuck em”) before the tension relents and a silky outro washes away the residues of his pent-up frustrations. DJ Drama then officially declares the CMIYGL era over and proclaims the dawn of another: “I guarantee another era is upon us / So once again, we gone”, as the beat abruptly ends. Vintage Tyler. 10/10.