Turn It Up - Everything But Country, 2023
David and Charles with some non-country favorites from the year
It’s that time of year again. This month at No Fences Review, we’ll be spotlighting some of our favorite music of 2023, spotlighting songs and albums that are staying in our rotation and making our listening lives better. Today, we’re turning up some of our favorite non-country tracks - some of these are re-ups from previous weeks, and some are brand new, some were singles and others album cuts, but all of them are things we hope you like as much as we do. (And check out some new reading recommendations at the bottom!) Stay tuned all month for more of the best of 2023!
“Nothing Really Changes” – RVG (from Brain Worms, 2023)
I came to Brain Worms, Australian Romy Vager and group’s third album, way late in the year but fell in love pretty much instantly. Could go with any number of cuts here, but “Nothing Really Changes” is the one I’ve played the most. It includes my favorite musical shift of the year, when its menacing, headache guitar groove seems to have suddenly wandered into a Depeche Mode record, and my ’23-favorite doth-protest-too-much lyric, too. “I don’t want to fight,” Vager shouts over and over, what feels like dozens of times. By the time she rhymes the line with “You’re not gonna ruin my night tonight,” you know a lot more than the evening is already destroyed. –DC
“Vampire Empire” – Big Thief (single, 2023)
Big Thief’s menacing new single “Vampire Empire” stomps rigidly, is trapped in two chords that won’t let singer Adrianne Lenker go. Necrotic details pile up—dead leaves, bad milk, “bleeding on the bed.” The whole jagged record feels frozen in place. Lenker hovers just inches off the ground, her voice jerked into pained falsetto for the last word of each line in the chorus: “I'm empty 'til she FILLS, alive until she KILLS.” Obviously, this is all just a metaphor for some soul-crushing, emotionally draining relationship because Lenker is most definitely not falling under the spell of any literal vampire. Right? Whether Lenker is wailing about a toxic lover or about some actual undead creature, my advice is the same: Run. -DC (originally posted 10/30/2023)
“Oscar Winning Tears” - Raye (from My 21st Century Blues, 2023)
The backing singer on that Al Green Lou Reed cover, Raye is a British rap-and-soul singer songwriter who’s been around a while, but her album debut is next level—a Top Ten of the Year contender for me and ditto for its opening track. Her raps remind me a little of Lady Dynamite’s (“He was a one outta ten, I wish that I knew it then, I’m still recoverin’”), and her vocals are in-the-moment Lisa Stansfield good. She sits down and watches the guy who’s broken her heart sob as he tries to win her back. She enjoys the performance, but she’s seen this one before and leaves even before the final reel. – DC (originally posted 8/28/2023)
“Motherless” - Killer Mike (from MICHAEL, 2023)
On a break from running jewels and other politicking, Killer Mike mourns hard losses: the grandmother who raised him and the mother who knew it was best to give him up. “My Mama dead, my Grandmama dead,” Mike keeps moaning, holding his head in his hands. “I be missin’ you, I be missin’ huggin’ you, I miss kissin’ you.” Hard to hear that, so much harder to live. How do you repay debts to those who are gone? That gospel organ curling throughout may suggest the answer lies in heaven or at least in church, but that’s a different song. This child, doubly motherless, can only bump the blues. – DC (originally posted 8/28/2023)
“Pearls” - Jessie Ware (from That! Feels Good!, 2023)
I’m a sucker for a spinning, swirling neo-disco crowd mover, especially when it’s used for sidestepping workaday responsibilities during a night out or for blasting on repeat during another commute. Brit singer-songwriter Jessie Ware rides beats from co-producers Stuart Price and James Ford that sound lifted from Supermodel of the World-era RuPaul, and the chorus keeps threatening to start in on “I’m Every Woman”—splitting the difference between Chaka rough and Whitney smooth. – DC (originally posted 9/5/2023)
“Heart Is a Mirror” - Ana Egge (single, 2023)
Canadian/American Egge may have written some better songs. 2018’s “Cocaine Cowboys,” say, or maybe “Girls, Girls, Girls” or “Dance Around the Room with Me” the year after. To my ears, though, “Heart Is a Mirror” is hands down Egge’s best record. Needing to be what we want to see in the world—merciful, loving, kind—is the song’s message, one you’ve heard before. But Egge’s voice feels newly husky, stronger and more resilient. As strings threaten storms here and unexpected crises there, the rhythm track holds steady, rebounds, loops anew and refreshed, and Egge keeps showing mercy, keeps loving, arms and heart open wide. – DC (originally posted 9/19/2023)
“Area Codes” - Kaliii (single, 2023)
I realize that my sixty-something ass is not in the target demo: This white guy is neither on Kaliii’s roster nor buying her lobster. (Can it really be no rapper’s dropped that near-rhyme before?) But what I can say? “Area Codes” is fun and it’s funny—even if her striving Material Girl-isms strike me as a lot of work, something easier to brag about than be. With her frisky flow bouncing atop a single banging drum and intermittent finger snaps, it’s the beat - so irresistible, so elemental, so spare it makes LL’s “Dear Yvette” sound like Phil Spector - that keeps her blowing up on my phone. -DC (originally posted 9/11/2023)
“You Haven’t Done Nothin’” – Billy Valentine (from Billy Valentine and the Universal Truth, 2023)
From an album’s worth of fantastic soul-jazz covers, including songs from Curtis Mayfield to War to Prince, it’s this simmering take on a Stevie Wonder classic I can’t shake. The small combo here, led by Valentine on piano, sounds like a cross between the Ramsey Lewis Trio and the old Jazz Crusaders, but it’s Valentine’s vocal that realy sells the thing, leaning into the lyric’s world-weary “sick-and-tired” while adding a word-changing we’re not-gonna-take-it. – DC
“Bubblegum” - Dawn Richard (from The Architect, 2023)
Dawn Richard has made some of the best music of the last 10 years, and it still seems like she’s only just beginning. A fitting addition to the “Age of Pleasure” inaugurated by Richard’s artistic cousin Janelle Monae, “Bubblegum” is one of those tracks that straight-up bursts through your speakers. Over a suitably snapping backbeat, Richard gets gloriously dirty with an extended metaphor that makes room for all matter of ribald puns amidst oozing, polyrhythmic funk. But the words are perhaps secondary to the sounds, especially when Richard bounds between low rumble and high clarity, rapped verses and sung hooks, before ascending into a wordless, manipulated element of the intoxicating rhythm track. Blow this up. And then let it POP. - CH
“Beyond Me” - Foo Fighters (from But Here We Are, 2023)
In the wake of drummer Taylor Hawkins’ death, Dave Grohl and company released the best album of their career. A meditation on loss and perseverance that drives forward and looks inward in exactly the fashion you’d hope from such a seemingly good-hearted rock lifer, But Here We Are finds Grohl blending his trademark metal crunch and pop sensibility in a way that manages to feel epic without lapsing into the ponderousness or nondescript sameness of some of the Foos’ work. “Beyond Me,” which comes near the end, finds Grohl reckoning with death’s mystery – the doubled unknowability of the title phrase – in a near-hush before expanding into the cathartic roar of the chorus. Tender and generous, “Beyond Me” is an open-hearted, open-throated rock anthem from one of the form’s last true believers. - CH
“Tiny Garden” – Jamila Woods (feat. duendita) (from Water Made Us, 2023)
Love as rebirth and regeneration, in the hands and voice of Chicago-based poet and performer Jamila Woods. Woods’ new Water Made Us is a rich and restorative set of songs, and this percolating R&B track is a highlight. Over a warm bed of keyboards and percussion, Woods invites her companion to join her in a process of growth – personal, romantic, world-enriching – that grounds their sweet love in real-life, real-time, real-good work. Woods and guest vocalist duendita sing with restrained joy as they detail the commitment and fulfillment of feeding and watering a “tiny garden” of love as it blossoms into something beautiful, unique, and – most importantly – theirs to share with each other. - CH (originally posted 10/23/2023)
“It Was A Party” - Dan Reeder (from EP x 500, 2023)
Nobody writes songs like Dan Reeder, who’s been releasing his odd and wonderful music for 20 years. One of his specialties is songs that seem hilarious before revealing that they’re also devastating, even as their central joke stays just as effective. The brief “It Was A Party” is one of those, a poison-pen nursery rhyme grounded by one of Reeder’s apparently endless supply of great, simple melodies. Reeder’s written even more simply (like this, my favorite of his) and even more poignantly (like this one), but this is a definitive example of why his catalog remains such a singular and significant pleasure. - CH
“Outta Time” - Bethany Cosentino (from Natural Disaster, 2023)
Cosentino, co-founder of Best Coast, has a great solo album that luxuriates in ‘90s guitar rock, specifically by the women who made so much of its best music in either mainstream or alternative modes. My favorite is “Outta Time,” which comes out swinging and builds to an open-road chorus where Cosentino uses power-chord punch and an escalating hook to fully shake your windows and rattle your walls. “There’s a song on the radio,” she sings, “it helps me when I’m down.” And then she gives us a song that serves that purpose. Turn it up, indeed. - CH (originally posted 10/5/2023)
“Birds” (live) - Daisha McBride (single, 2023)
The Nashville Sound. Or at least a Nashville sound, one of the many that sometimes gets forgotten. McBride’s one of the many great young R&B and hip-hop artists working in “Music City,” and this might be my favorite thing she’s done. Particularly in this simmering live version now available on the streamers, “Birds” is an anthem of independence rooted both in McBride’s eye for lyrical detail and the wide-open spaces the band explores as the song builds to its cathartic, drum-rolling ending. Don’t fence her in, either. - CH (originally posted 8/21/2023)
“Papa Please!” – Talibah Safiya (feat. MadaameFrankie) (single, 2023)
Skittering drums and throbbing bass announce the arrival of this slow-burning funk gem from Memphis-based artist Talibah Safiya. Trembling guitar joins the chorus as Safiya calls out and calls for her man over a loose-change rhythm that, like the song’s protagonist, seems always on the verge of falling apart but somehow pulls it together every time. “Feel like I got the fuckin’ blues,” she testifies, a perfect mission statement for a track that stands in the tradition of testimonies from Bessie Smith to Chaka Khan and beyond. When her voice rises to the climactic “Come home to mama,” it’s hard to imagine how anyone could resist. You won’t be able to. – CH (originally posted 11/6/2023)
“The Parting Glass” - boygenius (feat. Ye Vagabonds) (single, 2023)
It’s the year of boygenius. They made one of the year’s best albums, released a fine addendum E.P., went on an acclaimed concert tour, and poked rock-canon bears from the cover of Rolling Stone to the stage of Saturday Night Live. But the supergroup also found a way to release some great covers, including a striking version of the aforementioned Dan Reeder’s “Stay Down, Man” and this heartbreaking tribute to Sinead O’Connor. Teaming with Irish duo Ye Vagabonds, the trio of Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus envelop this classic Emerald Isle farewell in rich and loving harmonies. It’s a fitting tribute to a crucial forebear, and a blessing for a world that desperately needs it. And it wrecks me every time. - CH
Don’t miss the rest of our Best of 2023!
Monday 12/4: Turn It Up: Country Music, 2023
Friday 12/8: David Cantwell’s favorite albums of the year
Coming Friday 12/15: Charles Hughes’ favorite albums of the year
Reading recommendations:
-Angelica Jade Bastien on Beyonce’s Renaissance, for Vulture:
-Craig Seymour on Angela Winbush, for Rolling Stone
-Craig Seymour on Melvin Lindsey’s Quiet Storm, for Oxford American
-Taylor Crumpton talks to Mya, for Essence
-Langston Collin Wilkins on Geto Boys’ We Can’t Be Stopped, for Houston Chronicle
-Jenn Pelly talks to the Rev. Kristen Michael Hayter, for Pioneer Works
-Ed Pavlic on Anita Baker, Patrice Rushen, and friendship, for Oxford American
-Marissa Moss talks to Brittany Howard, for The Guardian
-Caryn Rose on the problems with no-bag policies, for Jukebox Graduate
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