It’s that time of year again as I take our lovely readers here at Phenixx Gaming through my top albums of 2023. Thanks for following along the past few years with these articles, they’re truly a joy to share with you. Let’s dive into #15-11.

#15: Everything Is Alive by Slowdive

In our last article in this series, I mentioned the impressive release schedule of Squirrel Flower’s three albums in as many years. For Slowdive, three decades together as a band has only resulted in five albums. The latest, 2023’s Everything is Alive, can’t be called their best, but the group’s ability to return to the studio 22 years after their last record and feel this coordinated and complete is a feat that few could achieve.

In 22 years, the members of Slowdive have had families, grown older, and continued to be a part of one of the greatest shoegaze bands of all time. That was true even without new music for two decades. Everything is Alive wears the band’s age on its sleeves. Nothing makes the band feel outdated on this record, but you can hear that time has passed, both in the sound of the group and the lyrics. Acceptance of time passing and what comes at the end is at the heart of this record.

So many records about time or life can focus heavily on death. Slowdive instead opts to explore the perfect conditions that are necessary to feel alive fully, even for a moment. Nostalgia and youth take little time to start having an impact on you. Even by your mid-20s, you feel something as you reflect on your teenage years. Doing so in your 50s provides even more perspective, which can be a transcendent thing if you take time to journey through it.

“Hey, just look at us now/Time made fools of us all/We look, but we don’t understand/We try, but we don’t look around” – From “alife”

#14: Honey by Samia

“Kill Her Freak Out” on Samia’s 2023 album Honey has broken out into a full-blown TikTok phenomenon. The song’s intense lyrics, “I hope you marry the girl from your hometown, and I’ll f*cking kill her, and I’ll f*cking freak out,” are a window in Samia’s talent for emotionally hyperbolic yet perfectly paradigmatic lyrics. There are a lot of artists leaning heavily on intensely personal songwriting in indie music today, but Samia’s voice and veracity help her to stand alone.

Samia leans comfortably into pop music instincts on both up-tempo and melancholic songs on Honey. There’s also plenty of influence to find in these tracks from her newly adopted home city of Nashville. With hints of religiosity and confidence you’d likely find in country music, Samia employs these spiritual and self-assured vibrations to contrast with lyrics about complicated relationships, self-doubt, and the pains of being young and in love. Or, inversely, constantly disappointed by love.

One of my favorite songs of the entire year is on this record: “Pink Balloon.” I want to include the opening verse here to really show love for Samia’s writing style: “Your mom keeps threatening suicide on holidays/Your sister’s in LA making dinner with fresh produce/And whether it’s a fallacy/You sing of love persistently/Sometimes when you sing to me/I still believe I know you/How am I supposed to wanna hear it anymore?”

“All you can do from this hotel room is fantasize/All you can do when he needs you is close your eyes.” – From “Honey.”

#13: Girl With Fish by Feeble Little Horse

Pop vocals and melody are not forced to exist within pop music alone. In fact, 2023’s Girl With Fish is a great example of how melody can be utilized in even the noisiest spaces. Noisy is a great way to describe Feeble Little Horse, a Pittsburgh-based shoegaze-y pop rock group. While many of the tracks on Girl With Fish lean into dissonance just as much as melody, the smaller details like guitar riffs and instrumental hooks provide enough texture to last a lifetime.

The album doesn’t even make it to the 30-minute mark before it’s over, but the time you spend listening to it is enjoyable nonetheless. Vocalist and bassist Lydia Slocum is the focal point throughout, providing grizzly vocals on top of equally chaotic instrumentals. Lyrically, there’s a lot of playfulness to Slocum’s writing style, but no element of the band feels like a joke. This is a group of musicians who have so many influences that they’ve smashed together joyfully.

Without a stable idea at its center, Girl with Fish continues from start to finish with a wide array of ideas and moments of brilliance. If any one element was fleshed out thematically into a full record, I think it would have still been good. What makes this release in its form truly great, however, is the fact that it’s not just one attempt at collaging creative directions together and asking listeners to come along for the ride, however beautifully bumpy.

“Blue collar babies/With biblical names/Pre-paid boat rides/On the coast of Maine”  – From “Heavy Water.”

#12: Sundial by Noname

When Noname announced a potential hiatus a few years back, she felt as if her time could be spent better by embracing her book club, a radical reading group aimed at equipping folks with leftist knowledge that might lead to liberation. The time spent developing an online book club into an LA-based library and national coalition of learners was certainly worthwhile, and continues to be, but we should all feel endlessly grateful she felt called back to music.

One of the more underrated rappers of today, Noname’s Chicago roots are still on full display on Sundial. Her poetic approach to writing is infatuating, and with more time and perspective on her place in hip-hop, politics, and the parasocial mess of online culture, she’s never been more prolific in her observations of society. There’s still humor in her lyrics, but there’s also self-awareness that comes with deep reflection. It’s inspiring to watch someone grow so much from album to album.

While Noname still has a place in alternative hip-hop circles, her efforts creatively and professionally have taken her beyond music. It’s a good place to be, particularly for someone who has always been so aware of the injustices around them and unable to simply stomach them and move on. While Sundial is an expansion of the rapper’s initial plans to observe and report on the world around her, Noname now possesses an even keener sense of why the little things are so worth mentioning and why the big things that feel impossible are still worth fighting for, or against.

“Off the grid, you could be a martian round here/Settle down here, we could love, love” – From “namesake.”

#11: I’ve Got Me by Joanna Sternberg

One of the most impressive things about Joanna Sternberg’s first album Then I Try Some More was the sense that her voice and lyrics have been with us much longer than they really have. Sternberg’s songwriting is in the realm of greats like Kimya Dawson, but not just for the quirky lyricism and acoustic foundation. Like all great singer-songwriters, you feel as if you get to know Sternberg each time you listen to her, and what a beautiful soul to get to know.

At the forefront of her lyrics is a deep sense of inadequacy mixed with a desire to feel deserving of love and acceptance. It’s a human feeling that’s hard to put into language, and like many, I too turn to music to help explore complex emotions like these. Luckily for us, Sternberg not only battles with similar struggles but describes the way they feel so perfectly that it’s almost as if the human condition has been handed to her by some greater being. 

While the bulk of Sternberg’s second record, much like her first, features sing-songy tracks that range from slow ballads to upbeat bursts of positivity, it does feel like this new record is a step forward. Without sacrificing the fragility and vulnerability that endeared her to so many fans a few years back, including Phoebe Bridgers, Sternberg allows us to spend time inside her brain. Her thoughts and feelings are ours, and we are better for having someone to guide us through them.

“And all my faults and flaws and lies/Are no one’s fault but mine/Between self-hatred and self-awareness/Is a very small thin line.” – From “I’ve Got Me.”

We’ll be back tomorrow with #10-6!

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