Year-end Music Lists and Discovery

A playlist of the week's best new albums, interviews with Ben Lerner & Philip Glass, Said the Gramophone's songs of the year, an excerpt from E. J. Koh's new novel, and more

I revel in December’s year-end song and album lists as much as I do the best book lists, for the same reasons. I discover what I missed and what deserves a second listen before I put my own favorite album list together next weekend.

This year’s lists from Said the Gramophone’s Sean Michaels (my favorite year-end music list), The Quietus, and Bandcamp Daily have already introduced me to some great music, and I am looking forward to all the other lists forthcoming.

Do you have a favorite year-end music list? What was your favorite song this year? Favorite album?

A Playlist of the Week’s Best New Albums (5 albums, 88 songs, 4 hours and 28 minutes)

This week’s best new music includes albums from Bory, Car Seat Headrest, Wings of Desire, Jerskin Fendrix, and James Elkington.

Largehearted Likes:

1. NYLON’s 10 Painters To Watch
   For the 2023 Art Issue, NYLON brings you the newest crop of talented and thrilling artists, those who are pushing the boundaries in the ever-evolving medium of painting — and they’re only getting started.

2. Reservoir Dogs

   I started watching Reservation Dogs because it featured music by Mali Obomsawin in its third season. Brilliantly and unforgettably told stories about young Native Americans make this one of the year’s best television series.

Largehearted Book & Music Links:

1. A Book Club Took 28 Years to Read ‘Finnegans Wake.’ Now, It’s Starting Over.
   Fritz Senn, the founder and director of the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, which runs two weekly reading groups for “Finnegans Wake,” described the communal readings as akin to working slowly through a religious text, often intended to be read over and over.

2. Said the Gramophone’s best songs of 2023

3. Publishers Weekly’s Spring 2024 book preview

4. Fluxblog’s “At the Holiday Party” playlist

5. Ben Lerner on the Dangers of Digital Technology

6. Bandcamp Daily’s best albums of 2023

7. An excerpt from E. J. Koh’s novel The Liberators

8. Philip Glass on Moondog, Pop Music, and Mahatma Gandhi
   BROOKE WENTZ: How would you describe your music?

   PHILIP GLASS: That’s always a problem. The ways that composers define themselves are broken down now, and that’s a really good thing. It used to be called avant-garde music. Nobody calls it that anymore. Then we called it new music, but that could mean anything. So I think of it as concert music as opposed to, say, popular music.

9. Pitchfork’s best albums and songs of the year

10. The Best Podcasts Engaged in Literary Activism

11. Beirut’s Zach Condon discusses Hadsel, the Arctic country album he made in the warmth of a funeral
    “We put on a Hank Williams record and that knocked something loose in me. It was like all my pretensions just fell away. Then I started listening to everything […] it was all these guys being like, ‘I’m lonely; I’ve got a drinking problem,’ and they’re so honest and almost ridiculously baron.”

    
    

Last Week’s LHB Feature Posts:

Ben Meyerson’s playlist for his poetry collection Seguiriyas

James Elkins’s playlist for his novel Weak in Comparison to Dreams

Essential and Interesting “Best of 2023” Book Lists

Olatunde Osinaike’s playlist for his poetry collection Tender Headed

Scott Gould’s playlist for his story collection Idiot Men