I had a ton of favorite albums/EPs and honorable mentions this year, more than I've ever had in a single year. I've just listed them alphabetically because I can't possibly put them in order of preference.
Attic Ocean - the heavy blue and then after [Les Yeux Ferm茅s, Fall]
Bleach Lab - Lost in a Rush of Emptiness [Nothing Left to Lose, Everything at Once]
Esben and the Witch - Hold Sacred [The Well, Petals of Ash]
Ewiniar - Another World [Cyanide, Sister Moon]
Fragile Animals - Slow Motion Burial [December, Glass]
Frankie Rose - Love as Projection [Saltwater Girl, Come Back]
Glazyhaze - Just Fade Away [The Other Side, Saltless]
Maraschino - Hollywood Piano [Illusions, Venus' Kiss]
Paramore - This Is Why [Thick Skull, This Is Why]
Pia Fraus - Evening Colours [Cloud Winterland, Who's the Envelope-Man?]
Pony - Velveteen [Sick, French Class]
Sea Lemon - Stop at Nothing [Cellar, Breakdown]
seablite - Lemon Lights [Melancholy Molly, Monochrome Rainbow]
Soft Science - Lines [Sadness, Kerosene]
Softcult - See You in the Dark [Drain, Someone2Me]
Taleen Kali - Flower of Life [Tomorrow Girl, Only Lovers Left Alive]
Some comments:
Bleach Lab, Fragile Animals, Glazyhaze, Maraschino, and Taleen Kali are all debut albums, and Attic Ocean is a debut EP.
I listened to Esben and the Witch a lot while playing Tears of the Kingdom, especially while running around in the depths. Coincidentally, there's a song on the album called The Depths.
Ewiniar and Fragile Animals came out less than two weeks ago, so I haven't had as much time with them as a lot of the other releases on this list. They're why I didn't make this list sooner. I wasn't expecting either of them until early 2024.
The Other Side by Glazyhaze and Sick by Pony are two of my top favorite songs of the year. I've binged both of them a lot.
I didn't know Maraschino released a video for Illusions a few weeks ago until I went to grab a link for this list. It's my favorite song on the album.
Maraschino is the solo project of the vocalist of Puro Instinct. The album feels like a fairly natural progression from Puro Instinct's second album.
Evening Colours by Pia Fraus is such a solid album. I had trouble picking a couple favorite songs because all the songs are great. This album is definitely in the upper half of my favorites.
Velveteen by Pony is the other main album I was listening to a lot while playing Tears of the Kingdom. It was more my surface album while Hold Sacred was my depths album.
Velveteen is also in the upper half of my favorites. Seriously, this album is super catchy and addictive.
Melancholy Molly by seablite has an actual video, but it's very flashy, so I didn't link it as part of the main list. If you want to watch the video: Melancholy Molly. Beware of the strobing.
There's a lot of dreampop and shoegaze in my list because earlier in the year I started listening to a dreampop/shoegaze online radio station called DKFM. Before then, I struggled to find new(er) shoegaze and dreampop despite it being one of my favorite areas of music.
Now on to my honorable mentions:
Acid Wave - heart2heart
Atrium Carceri - Forgotten Gods
Bodywash - I Held the Shape While I Could
Dream Wife - Social Lubrication
Duga-1 - Abyss
Eloise Chamber - Departure
The First Eloi - Low Glow
GEL - Only Constant
Ghost and Tape - Freeform
Glixen - She Only Said
Gorillaz - Cracker Island
Hazel Mills - The Embrace
Helios - Espera
Isadora Eden - forget what makes it glow
Johnny the Boy - You
KEN mode - VOID
Sanguine Glacialis - Maladaptive Daydreaming
Screaming Females - Desire Pathway
She's Green - Wisteria
Skrika - Vyeltyra Vortex
Soulmass - Let Us Pray
Speedy Ortiz - Rabbit Rabbit
Tim Hecker - No Highs
Yaeji - With a Hammer
I hope I haven't forgotten anything. Even though I keep a list throughout the year, while writing out this post, I noticed that Atrium Carceri was somehow completely missing from my list.
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I just think it's interesting how in 1961 Michael Moorcok created Elric of Melnibon茅 in part for a contrast to the extensively popular Tolkienesque fantasy writing common in that day (still common today), and he was like, "Yeah so this super inbred prince comes from a hyperxenophobic kingdom of an island nation which has fallen into almost total decay, and they think everyone different from themselves are barbarians who they like to torture and enslave. He wants to fuck his cousin so much and he is literally as white as physically possible."
And from there proceeded to give Elric a powerful magic sword of destiny which he uses to win back his kingdom and it goes right back to being terrible so instead of being a king who restores honor to his nation, he literally murders every single person on the island and burns his whole kingdom down.
He fucks off to die but his murder sword won't even let him, and just kills every single person around him constantly like, friendship is magic all right and that magic is evil murder sword food. But he finally murders his way to basically a legendary city of paradise where heroes get to go and rest in their final days except he's done so much murder that a giant fuckoff army tracks him down and razes paradise to the ground.
Then once pretty much every single person and several gods are dead he's like now what murder sword there's no one left to kill and murder sword is like "actually there's one" and fucking stabs Elric to death before transforming into a demon and destroying the entire planet.
And while he didn't exactly invent whole languages I have to admit he sure did some fuckin contrast there and basically created the trope of a scary fantasy murder boy in black armor with a magical black evil sword what is evil, and proceeded to turn this gritty reboot of the Conan sword and sorcery subgenre into this entire other different Eternal Champion thing.
Some thirty or so odd years later the whole drug fueled alcohol soaked lot of those stories ended up in my hands in the guise of cheap used paperbacks with lurid covers, and that's how Elric of Melnibon茅 took the place in my own youth usually occupied by The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings, and never got supplanted by either.
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