Shortly after I started releasing my end-of-the-year music lists, I recognized that to a certain degree, these lists were just self-fulfilling prophecies. Many of them ended up filled with artists I would have ended up listening to anyway. So I resolved to make an effort to listen to more types of music released throughout the year. That shortly turned into a grandiose attempt at listening to ALL of the new albums released during the year. For the last several years I’ve scoured over New Music Friday playlists looking diligently for every new album and added it to a designated playlist for mass consumption. After running through this tradition for the last couple of years I’ve reached several conclusions: 1) there is an exorbitant amount of mediocre rap music that is released throughout the year and 2) this task is EXHAUSTING. I typically try to accumulate enough for a top ten and honor roll, however, when presented with the responsibility of sifting through the releases from this year, I had to take a long look in the mirror and realize this was not as impactful of a year musically for me, in terms of number of releases. Even then, it felt like a miracle that I was able to ascertain the appropriate top four releases for me from the year (that number being determined by graphic design reasons).

Maybe it wasn’t the music this year, maybe it was me. I went into this holiday break seemingly encouraged and ready to check off the plethora of things that existed on my professional and personal to-do list. And yet, how easy was it to slip into sloth and slovenliness, avoiding responsibility and productivity for the sake of temporal existential distractions. The term “seasonal depression” would seem appropriate if not for the long lingering nature of this disposition. When distanced from the regular day-to-day requirements of my profession, one has nothing but the hovering questions of impact, redemption, reconciliation, and legacy. And at 35, fuck, that can be terrifying.

But here I am. Because sometimes progression is like gravity: all it needs is a little push (someone trustworthy said that right?). I’m finding that despite my current callousness and adrift existence, filled with questions about forgiveness, eternity, and community, these four albums have reached down into the depths of the valley to bring me the comforts of joy or comradery.

Top 4 Albums of 2022

A drone metalcore album inspired by the Eastern Orthodox faith is as ridiculous of a sentence to read as it is to type, trust me. But the state of Tommy Green’s life seemed primed for such a unique and unlikely musical endeavor. A series of familial hardships and life circumstances led Green, the former singer for Christian hardcore heavyweights Sleeping Giant, to a crisis of faith which left him longing for an authenticity, clarity, and peace that his previous faith tradition was not able to provide amidst recent struggles. While deconstruction has been a powerful trend amongst the younger adult demographics in the church, Green instead found himself immersed in the ancient tradition that provided more than simply “a concert and TED talk”. The encounter with the Eastern Orthodox church was so consequential that the project of HolyName was born. Melding his love for hardcore with a desire to express elements of his newfound faith community and tradition, Tommy enlisted friend and musician Joe Holt, and several stars within the Christian heavy music community (Ryan Clark of Demon Hunter, Brook Reeves of Impending Doom, Brian Head Welch, and others) to create not just an album of songs, but a collection of modern heavy hymns to enable worship in a new and refreshing way. The album alternates between heavier moments with absolutely crushing melodies akin to typical hardcore and metalcore faire, but then also embraces more somber and sludgier low-end drone metal. Vocally, Green compliments this dynamic by allowing his guest collaborators to take the reigns on the aggressive vocals, while he instead opts for an almost monotonal chant-like delivery, undoubtedly influenced by the orthodox liturgies in which he now participates. The result is something impassioned with and embodied by the boldness that characterized the charismatic nature of Christian hardcore while also filled with a reverence and serenity that envelops the listener and provides them with a glimpse of the ancient faith.

This jubilant indie pop collaboration between John Van Deusen and Tyson Mostenbocker and friends might be the only entry on this list that won’t make you ask, “Is everything okay, Jonathan?” Put together during the pandemic but delayed for release until this summer, the project finds these two seasoned indie musicians embracing levity and lightheartedness while maintaining their elevated earnestness. The resident West Coasters have always had an inherent knack for the anthemic and intimate and when they set their sights on the somewhat frivolous the results can be damn near rapturously joyful. With three-part harmonies and gang vocals that ebb and flow between yearning and raucous the album may encourage you to pack it all into your newly purchased VW van and drive up and down the West Coast surfing the beaches from sunrise to twilight. Rest assured this is an album that demands your attention, as it grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you with its unbridled enthusiasm and encourages you to sing along. That doesn’t mean though that this collection of songs is devoid of introspection. Explorations of identity and experience and love abound through cheery guitar melodies and synth harmonies. Truly, the balance is sustained masterfully, as evident on the first track, “I Want to Be Cool”, which sees Van Deusen proclaiming from the jump “I want to be cool!” to stating midway through “I want to be Dave Matthews!” to ending with croons of “All I want / Anything but / What I am right now”. The way these songs repeatedly tackle fundamental human questions with a bit of fun softens the burden of contemplating such heavy issues. This also enables the more somber and serious tracks and ballads to hit with full effect, taking time away from the jokes and jolliness to fully embrace the weight of these lofty matters. Especially potent is the one-two punch of the penultimate track and then album closer “Yes Maybe No” and “You Can Find the Light”. The continually building swell of “Yes Maybe No”, an ode to embracing human limitations, transitions into the sparse piano, light synth, and choir-esque group vocals of the band simply repeating “Take a breath / take a step / You don’t have to hide / You can find the light.” Such an understated exhortation is not only the perfect way to end the album, imparting a sense of serenity upon the listener after the previous gleeful offerings, but a wise reminder for future days of hardship.

Probably one of the more impactful albums of my last five years, Higher Lonely Power was dropped on New Year’s Day of this year and has haunted me ever since. The fourth album from the Detroit punk outfit was slated for a release before the pandemic but was put on hold, serving to only prime the world for the band’s first release in nearly a decade. At the height of their prominence, Fireworks were a pop punk band that had gotten comfortable with gradually incorporating more of their diverse influences to evolve their sound. It seems the extended absence allowed the band to free themselves from any restrictions that would prevent them from experimenting fully with the broad range of their musical palette. Their return is marked by an album unlike anything we’ve ever heard from a pop-punk artist, with the band toying with post-hardcore, post-punk, post-pop-punk, post-everything. The instrumentation is ambitious with orchestral arrangments, brutal crushing guitar riffs, bouncy melodies, fuzzed-out bass lines, and synth backgrounds that pull the listener along for the ride from emotion to emotion, all while the album’s theme of existential malaise and dread chases along. The scene and time Fireworks came up in was marked by alternative bands being outspoken about oppressive political and cultural ideologies. Higher Lonely Power finds them grappling with the reality of those ideas growing in power and influence in society with religious fundamentalism as their catalyst. Higher Lonely Power is not only a commentary and critique of that appropriation of belief, but a rallying cry for every person finding themselves frustrated with the status quo of abuse or hypocrisy purported by these institutions. Frontman Dave Mackinder spits out every religious phrase and allusion with a sense of rebellion and resolve, as well as confusion. Every song lyrically captures the dizziness of acknowledging injustice in the world and one’s own opposition to it while recognizing the powerlessness of confronting it. And yet each song resonates with the strength of a confessional, leaning on a vulnerability that encourages and empowers, letting one know they aren’t alone.

Questions that have plagued me through the past several years have been questions about consequence, about community, geography, and identity. It becomes all the more convicting and isolating to be wrestling with such fundamental matters at an age where external expectations are of stability and certainty and when one’s own reality doesn’t seem to align with those benchmarks. In such struggles, it is easy for one to turn to their preferred salve, be it vice or distraction or divine intervention. Amid whatever latest existential internal conflict I find myself in I’ve always gone to music, and I’ve found no greater comfort this past year than “All the Nothing I Know” by songwriter Nick Webber. The title reveals the intention, as Webber uses the ten songs to explore spiritual and existential questions with a vulnerability and honesty that is devastatingly intimate. His words guide you through a journey of struggle contemplating religious beliefs and systems, his own relationships, and his own humanity. The album opens in such a manner, with his own confession,

“God, I’ve forgotten how to pray.
I don’t know how to talk to you.
And at the end of the day
maybe I just don’t want to.

So here goes nothing.”

Ghost Variations, the album opener, continues on in this manner, relating the German composer Robert Schumann’s struggles with hearing voices in the twilight of his life with Webber’s own confusion discerning the nature and validity of his own beliefs. It’s an extremely skilled lyrical design, but in this cleverness, Webber never becomes too detached from his own experience and maintains a strong relatability with the listener, as he wails later on the haunting lines “I’m running through Your garden / Screaming ‘where the hell are You?’.” In this cry, Webber is anointed as the prophetic voice and reflection of his generation, one that is finding itself increasingly conflicted about faith. Webber guides us through these meditations with a beautifully layered tapestry of melodies ranging from quieter folk phrases guided by gentle finger plucking and light piano notes to impassioned indie rock. Webber’s strength as a musician is on full display, not simply in his mastery of the many instruments featured on the songs (save for bass and pedal steel, Webber plays and programs all of the instruments on the album), but how he deftly combines such diverse instrumentation to build upon themes elicit emotional resonance with his own feelings of desperation or confusion. He knows how to play at both ends, either quiet, sparse, and contemplative or stirring and fervent, and he knows just what secret chords to hit to embolden his impact. There are too many poignant and potent moments scattered throughout the album that even trying to summarize them feels foolhardy in its own right. From the country and folk stylings of “So Close” and “I Tried to Warn You”, to the ethereal piano and choir ballad “Of Certain Doubts”, to the rousing indie rock of album stand-out “Parabola” and the explosive penultimate title track, Webber cements himself as confident and capable as the patron saint of eclectic Christian indie rock, Sufjan Stevens. To accomplish all of this on one’s first solo release, (Webber is also a member of Denver rock band A Place for Owls), such elevated musical and empathetic moments, is the sign of such a talented and inspired songwriter, and to be able to listen and experience the creation of such talent can only be described as a gift. To be able to revisit, to find a salve, to find comfort and companionship in times of loneliness and distress is a blessing.

Check out playlist for my year in music below.

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