Sonic signposts

Finally, in the year of our Lord 2023, I think I'm past the age of seeing end-of-year best album lists as a source of bafflement, or as something to piss and moan about. (How DARE they overlook Big Brave, bdrmm and Richard Dawson? Why are the latest Slowdive and Sleaford Mods records so highly rated?)

Instead, I'd rather celebrate the recurrent inclusion of artists whose albums have made my year: Yo La Tengo, first and foremost, but also Beach Fossils, Young Fathers, Lankum, PJ Harvey, Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter and Mandy, Indiana.

And I'd also now rather look at the lists as reminders of records I've been meaning to investigate - and as alerts about albums I haven't even heard of. Doing so has already reaped significant rewards.

Take Blondshell's self-titled debut, for instance, which turns out to be stuffed with the sort of indie-rock-par-excellence twentysomething mini-melodramas that more than scratch the itch for fans of Snail Mail, Courtney Barnett and Best Coast. It was love at first listen. And then there's Sweeping Promises, whose Good Living Is Coming For You hits the new wave sweet spot between Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre.

So far, so in my comfort zone. But I've also ventured further afield, sampling (and, more importantly, enjoying) the fractured electronic pop of Fever Ray's Radical Romantics and the thrillingly proggy (yes, really) death metal of Tomb Mold's The Enduring Spirit.

Namechecks in Harry Sword's mighty tome Monolithic Undertow had piqued my interest in Surgeon, and sure enough the brutally unforgiving techno thump of latest LP Crash Recoil hit home hard. It sounds like music precision engineered for late night in a dingy beneath-a-railway-arch Digbeth club.

Most remarkable, though, is Sprain's The Lamb As Effigy. If ever an album deserved to be called a magnum opus, it's this Black-Country-New-Road-meets-Swans beast. OK, so you have to be in the right frame of mind to take it on, and it perhaps pushes things a little too far at times (especially the final track) - but it's an immense creation. Little wonder the band were driven to breaking point.

Of course, the best release of the year was Angel Olsen's Forever Means EP - but then you knew that already...