The Best Albums of 2023: David's Version
David Cantwell picks his favorite country, non-country, and reissued albums of the year
I’m philosophically opposed to segregating lists by genre, but I also remain sick and tired of generalist end-of-the-year lists that, more often than not it seems to me, whiff on country entirely. A particularly frustrating tendency in 2023, which was yet another great year for this big-tent genre, its troubled mainstream format notwithstanding. So, to make sure you don’t miss just how great a country year I think it’s been, I’ve split the lists up: My picks for 2023’s best country albums, a list of my favorite non-country albums and then some favorite reissues too.
David’s Best Country Albums of 2023
Tanner Adell BUCKLE BUNNY (DELUXE) – This year I heard country music future and its name is Tanner Adell: A proudly trashy “Beyonce with a lasso,” singing along with Luke Combs on the radio and falling in love at a stoplight on her way to church in a Ford truck loaded down with kiss offs and busted hearts, bass beats and banjo. Country album of the year.
Chapel Hart Glory Days – From the sound of it, sisters Danica and Devynn Hart and cousin Trea Swindle locate those title days smack dab in the guitar-and-hook-heavy arena-country Nineties. They sing a couple of family-values songs—one funny, one earnest as hell—while also getting drunk, preferring a new pickup to a ring, and saluting both Loretta and the flag.
Iris DeMent Workin’ on a World – Since she knows you can’t be neutral on a moving planet, DeMent’s first album in eight years is also her most political ever. (I wrote about the album for The New Yorker.)
Robbie Fulks – Bluegrass Vacation “Old Time Music Is Here to Stay” was my most played track this year, but my favorite Fulks’ album since at least Let’s Kill Saturday Night back in the last century also kept me streaming, among other bluegrassy highlights, the high-and-aching “Lonely Ain’t Hardly Alive,” a version of “Nashville Blues” with Tim O’Brien, and “Mama’s Eyes,” a tenderly observed but furious-at-God song about dementia.
Brennen Leigh – Ain’t Through Honky Tonkin’ Yet Leigh’s particular modern-retro brand of country just keeps getting better and better, to these ears. Her “Running Out of Hope Arkansas” is a great get-me-out-of-this-small-town number, the menacing with regret “The Red Flags You Were Waving” updates age-old mistakes, and “Carole with an E” is the best new trucking song in decades.
Jenny Lewis Joy’All – My favorite Lewis since that one with the Watson Twins. I loved this batch of hooks (her low-key super power) straight off but thrilled a little more to her domestic dramas with each listen: trading neither up nor down in “Apples and Oranges,” screaming her way quietly to identifying the complicated “Essence of Life,” both parodying and embracing country philosophy in “Puppy and a Truck.”
Lori McKenna 1988 – Jangly singer-songwriter country. Grown-up songs that are big-hearted, hard-won, wise—all about grownups still trying to grow. “Remember what your heart is for,” McKenna sings on “The Old Woman in Me,” “and you won’t have to ask for more.” The warm, hard facts of life.
William Prince Stand in the Joy – Chill but simmering, Prince’s voice is marvelously inviting, his telling details both unexpected and inevitable, and his melodies seem always to have hovered in your heart. Like if Don Williams wrote short stories.
Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives Altitude – Haven’t spotted this one even on many country lists so could be we’ve officially entered the taking-him-for-granted phase of Stuart’s era-and-subgenre-spanning career. Ho-hum. Just another Superlative fusion of Cashgrass-country-rock from the best band on the planet.
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway – City of Gold – Well, the best except for maybe this one. I love the way Tuttle and co. use downhome drug songs, like “Down Home Dispensary,” and trippy ones, like “Alice in the Bluegrass,” as a gateway drug to bluegrass. And bluegrass, in “The First Time I Fell in Love,” as a path to self-worth.
Honorable Mentions: Brandy Clark Brandy Clark / Tyler Childers Rustin’ in the Rain / Margo Cilker Valley of Heart’s Delight / Luke Combs Gettin’ Old / The Country Side of Harmonica Sam Back to the Blue Side / Rodney Crowell The Chicago Sessions / Cut Worms Cut Worms / Dom Flemmons Travelling Wildfire / Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit Weathervanes / Ashley McBryde The Devil I Know / Buddy & Julie Miller In the Throes / Ian Munsick White Buffalo / Willie Nelson Bluegrass / Piper Road Spring Band The Gainesville Session / Reyna Roberts Bad Girl Bible, Vol. 1 / Benjamin Dakota Rogers Paint Horse / Esther Rose Safe to Run / Son Volt Day of the Doug / Larry Sparks It’s Just Me / Joanna Sternberg I’ve Got Me / Tanya Tucker Sweet Western Sound / Turnpike Troubadours A Cat in the Rain / Various Artists More Than a Whisper: Celebrating the Music of Nanci Griffith / Joshua Ray Walker What Is It Even? / War and Treaty Lover’s Game / Jess Williamson Time Ain’t Accidental
David’s Best of the Rest
Anonhi and the Johnsons My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross – If I had to choose just one album of the year, it would be My Back Was a Bridge to Cross, a singer-songwriter album so hushed it screams, an absolute bummer of a record all about never giving up, as nakedly performed as any music I know. The unadorned grief of “I don’t want you to be dead” hand in hand with the hope-against-hope of “You be free, you be free for me.”
boygenius the record – “$20,” “Not Strong Enough,” “Letter to an Old Poet.”
Killer Mike Michael – “Motherless,” “Talkin’ that Shit,” “Don’t Let the Devil.”
Janelle Monae The Age of Pleasure – “Float,” “Black Sugar 42,” “Phenomenal.”
Noname Sundial – “hold me down,” namesake,” “toxic,” “gospel.”
Joy Oladakun Proof of Life –This could have gone in the country list, I suppose, given my big-tent tendencies and even more so in this year of Oladakun-hero Tracy Chapman. Then again, Luke Combs and his hyper-individualist ilk seem unlikely to embrace lines like, “I’m a revolution… but I’m not sure I can do it on my own” or even “It’s easy to forget you are strong.” “We’re All Going to Die,” performed as a catchy and danceable blues-impulse anthem, is both about as traditional a country sentiment as I can imagine and the single sentiment most likely to be rejected by current stars. Are “life-embracing,” or “profoundly humanist,” a genre?
RAYE My 21st Century Blues – “Oscar Winning Tears,” “Mary Jane,” “The Thrill Is Gone,” “Worth It.”
RVG Brain Worms – “Nothing Really Changes,” “Escapism,” “Midnight Sun,” “Brain Worms,” “Tambourine.”
Billy Valentine Billy Valentine and the Universal Truth – “Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” “Sign of the Times,” “You Haven’t Done Nothin’.”
Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good! – An album-length, dance-floor argument for fun and pleasure. Not by losing control but by demanding it. Not getting lost in the crowd but moving it.
Honorable Mentions: Corrine Bailey Rae Black Rainbows / Black Legacy Project Vol. 1 / Hailey Blais Wisecrack / Chuck D We Wreck Stadiums / Freedom Affair Freedom Is Love (Instrumental) / PJ Harvey I Inside the Old Year Dying / Susanna Hoffs The Deep End / Lonnie Holley Oh Me Oh My / Kara Jackson Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? / Rickie Lee Jones Pieces of Treasure / Nas Magic 3 / New Pornographers Continue As a Guest / Cat Power Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert / Rancid Tomorrow Never Comes / Olivia Rodrigo Guts / Sexyy Red Hood Hottest Princess / Allison Russell The Returner / South Hill Experiment Moonshots / Bill Wendel All One / Martin Zellar Head West
David’s Favorite Reissues of 2023
Anita Carter Blue Doll – Give or take her aunt Sara, and with apologies to niece Carlene, Anita Carter is the best singer country’s first family ever produced. If you know, you know. If you don’t, this incomplete collection of her early singles, from 1950 to 1962, basically from hit midcentury duets with Hank Snow up to her haunting original version of her sister’s song, “(Love’s) Ring of Fire.” My favorite reissue this year.
Grandpa Jones Bread and Gravy: The Complete Recordings, 1952-1955 (two-disc set) – This early Grandpa Jones collection is a fascinating treat, full of social or political commentary (“TV Blues,” “I’m No Communist”), parodies (“Papa Loves Mambo,” with Minnie Pearl) and other novelties, sometimes with a full band (“Old Blue,” “My Heart Is Like a Train”), sometimes with wife Ramona (“Mountain Laurel”) but mostly just Grandpa solo, a-hollerin’ and clawhammerin’ away.
Jo Dee Messina Heads Carolina, Tails California: The Best of Jo Dee Messina – Messina is a key if still under-appreciated figure from the mid-to-late-90s country boom. At only eleven tracks, this set is a little stingy but, gathering anthem after freedom-seeking anthem, still essential.
The Replacements Tim: Let It Bleed Edition (four-disc box) – The “Ed Stasium Mix” clarifies the power of what was already the band’s greatest album and elevates it to one of the greatest albums ever made. Plus, the “Rare and Unreleased” disc of passed-over arrangements, demos, and alternate mixes is often thrilling and always fun.
Nina Simone You’ve Got to Learn – Simone’s small-combo and seven-song set from the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival, singing intense and distinctive versions of “Blues for Mama,” “I Loves You Porgy,” “Mississippi Goddam” and more. Riveting.
Honorable Mentions: Elvis Presley Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite (three-disc box) / Warren Storm Prisoner’s Song / Joyce Street Tied Down / Various Artists Looking for the Magic: American Power Pop in the Seventies (three-disc box) / Various Artists Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriters Demos (seven-disc box)
Don’t miss the rest of our Best of 2023!
Monday 12/4: Turn It Up: Country Music, 2023
Monday 12/11: Turn It Up: Everything But Country, 2023
Friday 12/15: Charles Hughes’ favorite albums of the year
If you like what you’re reading here, please think of subscribing to No Fences Review! It’s free for now, although we will be adding a paid tier with exclusive content soon. Also, if you’d like to support our work now, you can hit the blue “Pledge” button on the top-right of your screen to pledge your support now, at either monthly, yearly, or founding-member rates. You’ll be billed when we add the paid option. Thanks!