OR: BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF ONE TUNE-JUNKIE’S EGO
OR: FUCK IT—HERE’S ANOTHER 2023 MUSIC WRITE-UP
By Roderick Snock
OK. This is it. You fucked up in 2022 and didn’t finish the annual listening retrospective. Considering you picked something like fifty songs to write about, maybe that’s unsurprising. But this year’s gonna be different. It’s gonna be better. It’s a different, better Roddie Snock, packing a fresh bag of listens and that same Snot Rock attitude they know and love. Never mind who “they” is—or, based on the recent lack of web traffic, who they isn’t. This is your moment, dog. Seize the keyboard and let ‘er rip.
Introduction
Or: Nobody Likes You, 2023
Maybe it’s the decade-plus of weed haze and a steadily increasing dose of lithium, but I find that I don’t notice much anymore. I’m talking extremely broadly here, too. I either (a) don’t see; (b) don’t remember; or (c) can’t bring myself to care about nearly anything. Whether it’s critical plot details in movies, just plain people-watching, the sights and sounds of walking down the street, all the subtle and less subtle hints my girlfriend drops when she wants me to do something productive around the apartment, or, of course, the literal recent events of the past year—none of it sticks, with one all-too-predictable exception: the music I listen to.
I’m serious. As I struggle to wring this annual encapsulation of my listening life outta my skull, I can’t really remember much that happened to me—well, for most of the year. That lack of consequential happenings makes writing this shit difficult. I’d love to be able to point clearly to a definitive experience I associate with every song that “meant something to me” in 2023. But I can’t. A more psychologically savvy listener could probably scavenge a few uncomfortable truths about my headspace from a cursory scroll through my full 2023 listening playlist, Speaker Fanged Leech (named after my boy Kevin “The Slime” McCarthy, may God have mercy on his bitch ass). But if there’s any deeper meaning behind the songs that made their way here, to this particular wringing out of an encapsulation, it’s lost on me.
Aw, who am I kiddin’? Things aren’t so bad. At the very least, it’s the holidays. And in a twist nobody saw coming, I’ve steadily powered down my Scrooge generator in recent years, due largely to my continent-splitting discovery that not all Christmas music sucks. Consequently, even the most depressed among us (me) can’t really complain too much when the year turns from its usual 24-hour cable news death spiral into a mandatory gratitude bonanza, precision-engineered to instigate reflections on how lucky we are just to have each other—or something. Look, I’ve gotta make this thing at least moderately positive so that my loved ones don’t worry too much about me.
Alright, alright, I know what you’re here for: The tunes. Same rules as in previous years. No rankings, no “newness” mandate, and no genre constraints. Anything goes, in any order. Shuffle that shit. And a Happy New Year.
Koko Taylor – Wang Dang Doodle
| GENRE | Chicago Blues; Dirty Soul |
| YEAR | 1965 |
| RIYL* | Dirty dancing in dive bars |
*”Recommended If You Like”
Given my basic ability to use context clues, and the lyrics to this song, I feel like I have a pretty good idea what Wang Dang Doodle means—But even if I didn’t, well, shit—Wang Dang Doodle indeed, motherfucker. Yeah, it’s undeniable—Koko Taylor yowls. She mows down every second of this sinister, seductive cocktail of chemical smoke and dry vermouth, daring the dance-less virgin cowards in the corner across the room to shake some ass and make her day—or, better yet, make way for someone who will. Through sheer shout-sung force, Koko twists this hook, this bitchin’ Chicago blues bomb, which is so damn cool it feels prehistorically eternal, into a sex-mangled rager war cry. The keys are ablaze and the bass is in the fullest imaginable effect. It’s the sound of watching the clock wind down to doomsday with a fat cigar between your fingers and some nondescript but overstrong drink’s lingering bitterness stinging and prickling the back of your throat. I’d never been so grateful for the sounds of gravel and razor wire harmonizing before this one.
Rare Earth – Get Ready
| GENRE | Psych Rock; Soul Rock |
| YEAR | 1968 |
| RIYL | The Temptations; Gratuitous quantities of LSD; The boys being back in town |
Yeah, the Temptations’ version is arguably—if not probably–superior. But there’s something hilariously “drunk karaoke” about this Rare Earth cover. And this isn’t even the 21-or-something-minutes-long version that they’re more famously known for jamming out—a masterpiece of early headbanger shred-psych. This one’s more radio (and, by extension, casual gathering) friendly. It lets the headbanger dude-bros like me in on all the genre-defining technicolor fun of psych and soul alike, if only for a glimpse. Come on, it’s not hard to imagine—a crowd of over-stoked, greasy-haired, proto-punk teenage trash bags shouting “YOU’RE ALRIGHT” in a stadium large enough to host a crowd the size of certain Eastern European metropolitan areas. This one’s a speeding bullet. Pull the trigger and horns play. If the shot hits, the target bleeds flowers. There’s a possibility, however slight, that they’d be singing this song in the U.S. Army to this day if George McGovern was elected President.
E L U C I D – Smile Lines
| GENRE | Hip Hop |
| YEAR | 2022 |
| RIYL | Detective novels; Conspiracy theories carved into the attic floorboards; “borrowing” from Ralph Ellison’s Louis Armstrong record collection |
Who doesn’t love an electric guitar sample? Some people, probably. But even they’d have to admit that E L U C I D is a hardboiled sleuth narrator of a rapper, stalking after clues in the shadows and smoke, constantly noting and cataloging the vignettes of strife surrounding him as he shuffles through their backgrounds, snarling at the camera the whole time. This album came out in 2022, but I didn’t get around to dissecting it until early this year. There’s a lot of narrative and even more intersecting themes and images on this thing. In other words, it’s not exactly a “fun” listen, and casual listening attempts might conflict with its cryptic and disconcerting energy. But it’s definitely inviting. “Smile Lines” is an example of the way E L U C I D’s twisting, slippery-but-punctuated delivery pairs with intense, antagonistic, cacophonous and heavy beats. The result is that this shit gives me a sense of dread and a sense of eager, angry, excited anticipation.
Labrador – Wear It Like A Badge
| GENRE | Americana-Psych |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Doing your fucking best to be a basically good person, but not always being able to fully do that; Neil Young & Crazy Horse |
Labrador’s most recent record, Hold The Door For Strangers, is a sweeping, emotive concept album about an overworked God with an overfull inbox. Comparisons to Crazy Horse are easy here—the lead guitar is mountainous and thick-bleeding psychedelic, such that the buildup and release of five minutes’ tension actually works. The vocals are Neil’s exact variety of passable by way of their emotional sincerity. To make matters better, these lyrics don’t suck at all—in fact, they carry a lot of the album’s slower-burning numbers. Here for example, the refrain of “blame it on the angels for taking their sweet time” conveys a solid enough thesis for the entire record. Don’t ask me why, but that sounds like the resonant, consistent use of a theme and a sort of musical-spiritual energy. It’s bleak and not bleak. It’s mundane and it’s profound. And holy fucking goodness, if that outro solo’s not the most gorgeous, apotheosis-inducing sonic heroin I’ve heard in ages.
SAKURAN-ZENSEN – TAXIMAN
| GENRE | New School Garage-Punk |
| YEAR | 2021 |
| RIYL | The Hives; Getting in fistfights on public transit; Needing to cool it on the uppers |
Not a lot needs saying here. It was the year the Hives came back (more on that later), and in a similar fashion, this scrappy little Japanese garage band won my heart with this scrappy little ripper. I don’t know what it’s about. Not even a little bit. I am, as always, the ugliest of American listeners. But there’s a much bigger part of me that doesn’t give a shit—a hit’s a fucking hit. That guy on Sopranos said so. And the energy here is hyper-mosh-manic, and the needle-anxious guitar solo is Parquet Courts on Sunbathing Animal, and the singer is Howlin’ Pelle’s psychotic overseas cousin, literally howling at the motherfucking moon (or the basement ceiling, maybe) while he jumps from the top of the amp stacks into the sky. Contagiously erratic and crash-through-the-walls massive, with equal parts goofy fun and fuck-you fury.
The Men – Anyway I Find You
| GENRE | Garage-Americana |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Taking acid and weeping to Stardust by Willie Nelson; Watching the sunset through an airplane window; Riding across the desert by moonlight with a dwindling water supply |
After that first chance festival encounter in 2013, where I saw them play “Oscillation,” The Men slowly became one of my favorite bands of the last ten years. Every album is different, but pretty solid at worst. It’s an enviable kind of consistency, and in keeping with tradition, this year’s album New York City pays tribute to some of the best American rock in the best American way. The band’s ventricle-stained sleeve songs wear the colors of classic proto-punk and hardcore, and as usual, the band churns those out with a frightening amount of day-at–the-office efficiency. For the most part, chaos abounds—guitars and vocals alike scream in unison, and only occasionally does the pace slightly slow. The penultimate track, “Anywhere I Find You,” is one of those slower moments—and also a perfect example of the Men’s unique garage-Americana. It’s a sound that they arguably do better than any of the other myriad approaches they’ve adopted over their many noisy years. Shit, they do it better than most bands whose primary output is some form of garage-Americana (more than you’d think, trust me). There’s a pain and longing here that even diehard country fans will recognize immediately—a weeping at the setting sun energy frequency that transcends entropy, with pained, wailing vocal harmonies and dancing guitars.
Hutchie – Seat Right Next 2U
| GENRE | DIY Country-Rock |
| YEAR | 2022 |
| RIYL | Ripping up the notes he gave you; Early Wilco; breakup songs |
This is one of the best bands I’ve been lucky enough to discover “first” among friends—but every time I play someone this song, they fall in love with Hutchie. “Seat Right Next 2U” is almost misleading—it’s completely cute, but far from fragile—and it’s also just such a good goddamn melodramatic “unrequited longing” song that it still somehow surprises me when it yanks those heartstrings hard. And yet, it’s anthemic. Triumphant chorus power pop country punk with a kind of weaponized sincerity that channels Wilco on Being There. This song builds in a subtle, but powerful way—and the corresponding rawness, the anguish here sneaks up on you between choruses. “He’s loyal as a dog” is a surprisingly mature, artfully nuanced double-entendre—loyal to who, exactly? And how? And when Hutchie howls it at the moonless sky, lamenting that “he don’t see nothing past you,” you’d better believe it hurts like hell and heals the heartbreak at the same time. It’s the sound of being “3,000 miles from home,” where you “just couldn’t help but crying,” when you take the phone call that guts you. And at the same time, it’s the sound of someone picking up the phone when you call them—and about halfway through, it spits, wipes the tears from its face, and picks up a fucking guitar.
Wednesday – Chosen To Deserve
| GENRE | Country-gaze (I think—the journalists told me) |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Lynyrd Skynyrd; My Bloody Valentine; Lucinda Williams; Suburban hijinx and reluctantly growing up; America |
I know, I know, I know—seems like everybody’s talking about Wednesday. But this album really is as good as everyone’s telling you. I mean, you know me—I’ve never been overly concerned with following music industry hype or trends. Plenty of music on this list wasn’t even released this year. But I want to believe that there’s been a dire need for a genre-card-shuffling, cosmic-shoegaze-alt-country-adjacent (whatever the fuck “country” means anymore) band like Wednesday—a band whose post-outlaw “fuck you” energy invokes the helter-skelter finale of Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera (a record I love unconditionally) even as it curls up cozily on the wall-to-wall buffalo hide carpeting to read East of Eden. In this song, Wednesday throttles listeners with an utterly classic kind of Guns, God, and Old Glory country-rock guitar riff, wielding it like Manifest Destiny artillery to shatter the skies above the postapocalyptic lonesome prairie. But with lyrics about the kind of relatable adolescent fuckups that haunt you to this day, they still rain sweet, hellfire-tender, blindingly vulnerable storytelling upon a nation that needs pretty fucking badly to rediscover and reconcile with itself somehow. Look—I don’t give a shit who the current best American rock band is—it’s a dumb discussion that really says more about whoever artlessly opines than anything else—but for fuck’s sake, this nation has been waiting, and I mean desperately waiting for the riff from “Chosen to Deserve.” It is simultaneously the chaotic, victorious beginning and the purest cathartic finale all at once, and to me it sounds the way I want an impossible national healing to feel.
De La Soul – Let, Let Me In
| GENRE | Hip Hop |
| YEAR | 1991 |
| RIYL | Dan the Automator; The Harlem Globetrotters as they appeared in Futurama; Angry Looney Tunes merch; Prince Paul; Making sweet, funky love |
I was as happy as anyone who didn’t grow up in the 90s when De La Soul’s catalog finally made its way to streaming platforms in March—I wasn’t even mad that I’d already scoured the internet for my copies of this record. Because this is just my favorite De La Soul song. It’s got a profoundly overconfident energy and a goofball charisma reminiscent of the genius stoner bros at your community college making a scene—maybe crashing a class with their boombox clearly communicating disdain for the political and bureaucratic stiffness of the institution. And somehow it’s also—wait, sexy? Who the fuck knows why or how, dude. It’s like watching cartoon visuals at a rap show after taking a little too much acid. They make passing the mic seem effortless, and they make any amount of posturing hyper-masculine dude-bro rap look wimpy and try-hard by comparison. It’s a hilarious, spectacularly great time.
Bully – Days Move Slow
| GENRE | Alternative Rock; Fuzz Pop |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | The Breeders; Soccer Mommy; Getting sober; Sticking your head in a speaker |
Bully has somehow become a favorite band since I first heard them in 2015. Alicia Bognanno has that kind of clear consistency—Feels Like was a fun-if-straightforward indie-alternative take on grunge-pop, and Losing sharpened the songwriting, if not necessarily the mixing, as it turned up the intensity. Then, almost unexpectedly, SUGAREGG fired on all cylinders in 2020, gut-punching its tale of bipolar coping mechanisms with humility and candor, sweetness and raw firepower, defiance, acceptance, and a few shoegaze influences. It was the best stuff she’d ever written, with the biggest hooks and baddest one-liners she’d ever dropped. Three years later, we get Lucky For You, which Sub Pop has spent a lot of money promoting, and for good reason—she’s upped the ante again, tossing out a feast of buzzsaw bubblegum so goddamned filthy-tasty that it guts the best of the next class of alt-rockers. This song has an utterly massive hook, tear-jerking, dangerous blood sugar levels of melodic fury, and snarling, intimate vocals that climb higher than Bully’s ever have before. It’s fast, immediate, intimate, and tragic—but it’s larger-than-life jubilant, too. It’s a celebration of life in the face of death—cheesy, but critical these days. This is weaponized pop-rock songwriting. This is growing up. This is the power pop the people deserve. Look—I’m not even trying to hide what a dork I am about this band, and miraculously, Lucky For You has so many new favorites that it’s hard to know which ones will stick the most. Someday I’ll write in far greater depth about Bully—in the meantime, I’ll probably be spinning Days Move Slow deep into next year.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Albert Goes West
| GENRE | Post-Punk; Art Rock |
| YEAR | 2008 |
| RIYL | Gazing wistfully across the horizon; drowning in righteous amplifier feedback |
Nick Cave songs are among the only ones I can actually sing the right way. I have a lower-end voice, which makes singing most rock songs kind of difficult. But I love shout-brood-wailing along when Nick sings “I ain’t going anywhere” in this adventure anthem, which features plenty of orchestral backing vocal booms and swirling, feedback-and-overdrive nomadic bulldozer guitar fervor. It’s hard not to feel, while listening, the sensation of being airborne, gliding majestically over the countryside on the back of some enormous winged religious beast god, and it’s dripping furious, toxic cosmic goo. And when he asks, “Do you wanna dance? Do you wanna move?” Well, fuck yes, man. What do you think? So it’s sha-la-la la-la, motherfucker. We’re coming in for a heavy, heavy metal landing, but don’t be afraid to bail—you’ll dream your way into the shredding horizon somehow.
Peter Ivers – Miraculous Weekend
| GENRE | Bizarro Pop; Post-Bubblegum(?) |
| YEAR | 1985 |
| RIYL | Staying up late to call your long distance girlfriend; Mac Demarco; Zappa |
I was only able to see my partner on weekends for a pretty sizable chunk of 2023. This was kind of our silly little “slightly long distance” (but not really, relative to the Bay Area) theme song. It’s quirky and flirty. Kind of like Spongebob Squarepants doing vintage indie synth-and-harmonica pop, dosed with a good little pile of Mac Demarco’s chili dawg sloppy sweeter songs. What more could you ask for on a rain-soaked winter night?
Lou Reed – Waves Of Fear (Live In Italy)
| GENRE | Classic Rock; Proto-Punk |
| YEAR | 1984 |
| RIYL | The Velvet Underground; Richard Hell & The Voidoids; Owning up to your mistakes, even if it hurts. |
I started listening to this song for a very specific reason, and it wasn’t that I just generally like Lou Reed’s live cuts a lot. Don’t get me wrong—I generally like Lou Reed’s live cuts a lot. But I bought a Peavey Bandit amp this year, and I heard that Bob Quine (my favorite lead guitarist of all time) used a Bandit when he played in Lou’s band. I don’t know if this recording’s solo is Bob’s or some other guitarist’s, but it’s a masterpiece of noise-rip regardless. It’s an innovative-as-fuck, pointy-on-all-sides lead guitar style that anticipated Rage Against The Machine as much as Fugazi. With his shout-snarled delivery, Lou’s self-loathing sounds absolutely celebratory here, almost like he’s overcoming the damn thing in real time, in your very ears. It plays like the grand finale of a Broadway musical about finally going to therapy, and it really does rock. Phen-fucking-omenal.
Screaming Females – Shake It Off
| GENRE | Alternative Rock; Pop |
| YEAR | 2014 |
| RIYL | Toeing the line between ironic and sincere enjoyment; NOT toeing the line between sincere enjoyment and sincere enjoyment. |
OK, I like it, OK? It’s a Taylor Swift song, and I like it. Are you happy now?
The Hippos – Wasting My Life
| GENRE | Quirky Ska-Punk; New Wave; Dork Rock |
| YEAR | 1999 |
| RIYL | Unrequited pining for the popular girl; 90s SoCal ska revival; DEVO |
This is what I’m talking about when I say, “Let the dorks have their rock.” It’s got pulsating pop sensitivity with a winking borderline-incel dirtbag comedian’s troll-tastic sleazeball charm. Listen to that cartoon theme song synth line and its Scooby-Doo chase scene bombast. It shouts its heartache from the mountaintop and it moshes its ass off, even though it clearly doesn’t really know how. The schlocky sincerity is almost too much to take—but it’s so much stupid fun that I can’t help but bounce spasmodically along with it, arms flailing like geek royalty, noodles in time with the wrong beats.
Thee Lovecult Band – Heaven Help Me
| GENRE | Psych-Americana Gospel-Rock |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Neil Young’s Harvest; Drunk karaoke as a coping mechanism; Getting down on your knees and begging forgiveness |
I was lucky enough to catch Thee Lovecult Band at a small venue in Bakersfield one night. Their sound brims over with an intoxicating, aromatic potion of enthusiastic, unironic soul, and a warm-you-to-the-bone dose of hometown bar band camaraderie. They’ll belt out group harmonies so earnestly that you’d think they were all wasted—OK, there’s a chance they are. But it works, because it’s cosmic and terrestrial at the same time. With skyward-climbing vocal harmonies, improvisatory wailing, reverb-drenched chorus guitars, it sounds as heavenly as its lyrics and title imply. Gospel meets southern rock, with psych-explosive feedback interwoven with a swirling, heartsick sentiment while the sky itself opens up. Except, instead of angels, it’s a choir of cowboy poets, singing around a campfire while the coffee boils by starlight. It begs any audience with a scrap of sincerity left to sing along, which, miraculously, is easy. I mean, if this song was nothing but its hook, it would still be fucking great— “I need heaven to help me[.]” Never mind that the arrangement is downright orchestral. It’s a new generation, clearly. Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and any number of these kids’ other musical heroes might even be proud of ‘em. I’m glad I get to watch it happen.
Robert Ellis Orrall – Boom! It Was Over
| GENRE | Country Pop |
| YEAR | 1992 |
| RIYL | Thinking your own tractor’s sexy; Cracking a cold one; Cluelessly letting a great thing slip through your fingers |
This guy is JEFF The Brotherhood’s dad. That band with the two brothers? Robert Ellis Orrall is their dad. That’s how I found out about him. And this is just a fun-as-fuck little country-pop jam. Unsurprising that Orrall’s got production credits on the first Taylor Swift album. I love the firecracker fiddle here, the perfect use of a minor chord, the blockheaded innocence this narrator conveys, and the damn-near idiotic plays on words—“It was love beyond a shadow of a doubt/that’s when the lights went out.” Oh, or how about, “She smiled a smile so sweet and calm/that’s when she dropped the bomb.” Get it? Because, “Boom?” Yeah, got it. But the chorus is as explosive as the title implies, and that cheesy pitch jump hits exactly the way it should. It’s over before it gets tiresome by a longshot. Ridiculously, wildly goofball contagious.
Thelma & The Sleaze – High Class Woman
| GENRE | Garage-blues |
| YEAR | 2013 |
| RIYL | Cranking it up to 11; Muddy drugs; Slutty Hugs; Camaros (the car and the band); All Them Witches |
I regret missing this band at the Ivy Room in Albany earlier this year. This one is such utterly fucking oozey-gooey, blood-and-sweat-and-who-knows-what-else-dripping fuzz-blues-throatfuck bliss for me. I want it at full blast, so fucking loud it melts my brain outta my head through my electric-pulsing eye sockets. Vocals, guitar, and that goddamn lurch it’s packing—scuzz me harder, baby. I need your distortion so bad it’s killing me. I’m aching for the back-breaking stab of your broken amp solo shred. The instrumental falls out, and Thelma croons like Eartha Kitt’s heroin-throttled evil twin over a cavernous, echoing hellscape. Everything comes crashing back like thunder. With the way Thelma or whoever sings the words “woman, won’tcha comfort me,” I want this song to choke me ‘til I’m gray in the face, gasping for more from beyond the grave.
Fucked Up & The Halluci Nation – Electroshock
| GENRE | Electro Hardcore |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Throwing rocks at cop cars; Taking too many pills; Moshing your skull inside-out |
A match made in electro-hardcore heaven. I love both of these groups, so seeing this collaboration (even if it’s only a few songs for now) was an unbelievably fun surprise this year. “Electroshock” blends a kick-you-in-the-throat smoothie out of the best of Devo, Vital Idol, Laughing Hyenas, really dirty 2014-era Silk Road speed, and any number of electronic musicians I’d be way out of my league to namedrop. Bottom line: this shit rips, whether you’re coming at it from an indigenous Canadian electro background or a critically acclaimed indie hardcore background. It goes from zero to a billion instantly, and it doesn’t slow down for a microsecond to let you catch your breath—it’s a pure pummeling session from start to fuck-you-finish, with fuzz-guitar cannons firing constantly and drum samples thundering the arrival of death in unholy trans-genre form. Abraham’s vocals are as potent as ever, but he sounds like he’s particularly having a blast here, in a way we don’t usually get to hear when he performs on much more frequently brooding Fucked Up albums. It’s a party track—if you ain’t no coward, that is.
Rupert Holmes – Answering Machine
| GENRE | Quirky Synth Pop; New Wave |
| YEAR | 1979 |
| RIYL | Drunk texting your ex; Feeding dog food to your cat |
I’ll always remember that fateful day in April, when JP the paralegal (my best work friend) knocked on the doorframe of my dusty, windowless office—and for the first time, someone finally called me out.
“I figured it out,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The huge gap in your music knowledge. It’s 80s pop.”
She was right. By that point, I’d already cemented my reputation among coworkers as “the music guy.” I’d been handpicked to “DJ” (meaning, choose songs from one of my more business-casual Spotify playlists) at every office potluck and holiday party to date, but I’d kept my song-selection methods—and my corresponding shortcomings—hidden to the best of my ability. JP had figured it out after hearing only a few playlists, because she’s damned fucking smart. So, thoroughly humbled, I asked her to teach me about the 80s. Rupert Holmes was one of her first suggestions for me.
“You’re a lyrics guy,” she said. “So’s Rupert Holmes. He’s a storyteller.”
Again, she was right. And even though both songs technically came out in 1979, even more than his workhorse musings on Piña Coladas and getting caught in the rain, Holmes’ “Answering Machine” makes me smile and giggle in the simplest, best way. It’s a tongue-in-cheek melodrama of missed connections and unrequited telephonic affection. Kooky synths accent goofily heartsick twists and turns in the narrative, then the perpetual taunt of the earworm answering machine apology. Funky-as-camping-socks guitar, and phone button sound FX that rival the best of old school sci-fi radio dramas. Like watching the climax of the will they/won’t they story in a favorite four-cam sitcom—on network, of course. Hella cute.
Cobra Man – Cadillac
| GENRE | Los Angeles Power Disco |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Getting ready for the big boxing match; Dancing away your woes; Kissing with tongue |
Admittedly, this is the second time I’ve featured Cobra Man in a year-end music thing. But this time, instead of a heartbroken disco club anthem, we get hot ‘n’ ready 80s training montage music. A montage of what, I’m not sure. But it’s gonna have to be ballsy as fuck to stand up against these furious neon-lit arcade racing sim cab synth pistons, and Broadway-big vocals about being the very best—like no one ever was. As furious as Sarah Rayne’s vocal performance is here, it really works in gloriously grotesque, shlock-tacular conjunction with her collaborator Andy Harry’s: the singalong bellowing, “You gotta play to win!” This one makes me want to do fucking jumping jacks and bench press encyclopedia volumes made of stone, etched with texts illuminating annotations of ancient party rock whatever-the-hell-”Power Disco”-is rituals. It’s equal parts shred and sparkle. It’s for letting your hair down, radiating all the heat, confidence and shimmering sex of a night on the town—and then going blow for blow in the no-rules ring with an opponent three times your weight. “Give it to ‘em good—like lightning.”
Ghost of Vroom – Still Getting It Done
| GENRE | Post-Deep-Slacker-Jazz |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Soul Coughing; Ambient Noise-Rock; Trash-Hop; Early Beck; Doing bumps of ketamine in the rock’n’roll dive bar bathroom. |
Drug struggles aside, something tells me Mike Doughty still knows how to party. He might not even want to recognize this about himself anymore—that, or maybe he knows it, but he’s grown to hate parties. Whatever. I know it to be true. I feel it in my soul and my bones. But it’s not a casual sweaty night at the club type of partying—no, and it’s no local scene on something-or-other night at the gang’s old favorite watering hole. It’s something dystopian and futuristic. It’s the darkest corners of post-nuclear speakeasies, tucked away like stimulant oases among Mega-City 69’s infinite dingy corners. Quantum computers project infinitely folding technicolor realities on the mirrored walls, and the drinks are a little more than a little too strong, and—wait. Where’s the supposed friend you came here with? Your hand drops to your side—where’s your gun? Suddenly the floor falls open, and everyone around you is brandishing blazing, blaring horns in your face. The other patrons’ crisscrossing voices are echoing together into a twisting monologue, and you’re being hammered (while you’re getting hammered) with drunken-fist stutter-stagger-swagger rapping, thunder-fucking drum samples, and the sounds of someone having dropped something more than a little sinister in your gut-churning cocktail of choice. It’s like listening to a psychedelic mystery novel, if the plot somehow involved a team of jazz-funk archaeologists trapped in a collapsing Pyramid where dancing skeletons play each other’s rib cages with whittled femurs. A certain spooky urgency is all over the place in Ghost of Vroom songs.
Junior Parker – Taxman (The Beatles)
| GENRE | Blues; Classic Rock |
| YEAR | 1991 |
| RIYL | The Beatles; Curtis Mayfield; The Blues, Dummy |
You could call this a low-effort bluesy Beatles cover and leave it at that. You’d be a dipshit—it’s a no-effort bluesy cover of the best opening track to appear on any Beatles album, miraculously remix-shredded by a genre legend, whose ability to effortlessly rip a smooth-ass riff is rivaled only by his ability to convert the original version’s snarky, lite-political boy band vocals into relentlessly charismatic, conversational narration about a folk villain who rivals the Sheriff of goddamn Nottinham. Fuck, that was a long sentence. Sorry about that. If you’re confused, don’t worry about coherence—just look at the adjectives.
Jerry Reed – Amos Moses
| GENRE | Swamp Rock; Country Funk |
| YEAR | 1970 |
| RIYL | Huntin’ alligators for a livin’ and shootin’ at the Sheriff |
Who the hell doesn’t love a folk antihero? Especially one who hunts alligators for a living, eats up his weight in groceries, is named after a man of the cloth, and screams “fuck the law” at the top of his red-blooded Cajun lungs while he skins his swamp-lizard living. I’m not sure where the friend who first played this song for me found it, but I’m glad he did—it’s fun as fuck. The guitar tone is somewhere between blues-rock and country-surf, and Reed’s bellowing drawl overfills the song’s omniscient narrator with sardonic personality. Doesn’t hurt that the bass brings as much unfiltered funk bounce as catching a ride to the house party with Andre Romell Young in 1992. Or, similarly, even more of a murderous rebel spirit than even the most bumfuck of hickshits—with the critical difference being that Amos Moses knows exactly where to direct his revolutionary rage: right at the Louisiana Sheriff. We need an Amos Moses HBO show—his history of being physically abused (and possible commission of patricide?) makes for the exact moral ambiguity that captivated us in Tony Soprano.
David Bowie & The Spiders From Mars – Waiting For The Man
| GENRE | Classic Rock |
| YEAR | 1972 (Recorded) / 2000 (Compilation) |
| RIYL | Lou Reed; Bowie’s Ziggy Era; Proto-Punk; Glam; Turning Tricks For Elderly Gay Gentlemen in 1970s NYC. |
I love and appreciate the creative relationship Bowie shared with Lou Reed. I know, they had their ups and downs over the years, including one case of assault and battery, and there have always been those rumors that they were more than friends—people will say a lot of things. I don’t pretend to know about that. But it’s a good reminder to me, listening to Bowie shred this Velvet Underground classic, to treasure my collaborators. The more of myself I pour into making my creative work good, the more I’m grateful for anyone who’s ever read a rough draft or sent me theirs. Anyone who’s flipped through a zine or swiped through a comic strip, and anyone who sat politely through a demo. Gotta take care of those relationships. Those are the people who value and see you for the soul you bare, the vulnerability you assume when you dare to create anything—not just the favors you can do for them. And this song—this ballsy, strutting-down-the-street, coquettishly warm best-friendship jam—just so happens to be about prostitution. When Bowie’s vocals really stretch skyward partway through, his righteous stoke is palpable. The best rock stars are just big rock fans anyway—and the best rock to love is the rock your best friends make.
The Hives – Countdown to Shutdown
| GENRE | Garage Revival; Punk |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Flamboyant earworm airstrike rock performed by Swedes in matching suits |
A talented musician friend and I once agreed that of all the great rock bands currently active, it would be the most unabashed fun to be a member of the Hives. This year’s Death of Randy Fitzsimmons album is about as unabashedly fun as any Hives classic, with “Countdown to Shutdown” being a shellshock standout based on brute force alone. Proving definitively that Howlin’ Pelle can still—well, howl, even after 30 years, this one serves up a hurricane of riff-rage and pummels the levees to dust. It drops an overabundance of end-times firepower on the city beneath, with wisecracking lyrics about the all too tangible end of civilization. No sonic wheels are reinvented and no prisoners are taken. Just the way it should be.
Bad Religion – Let Them Eat War
| GENRE | Punk |
| YEAR | 2004 |
| RIYL | The Clash; California Skate Punk; Rage Against The Machine |
This album turns twenty next year—crazy how true the message still rings, even if it’s a relatively simple one: Defiance of the American “for a just cause” myth. A stern Iraq-era reprimand from your Zinn-obsessed history professor that war is often a political convenience, and it’s not always a just cause just ‘cause your team started it. The last few years (and, in particular, the last few months) have seen a slew of stories in the news and everywhere about violence, violence, violence—both at home and abroad. And, in particular, when it’s justified, or whether it ever can be. I don’t think any average keyboard crusader, campus-housed jihadi, entitled bulldog Zionist, Fed Soc scum-sucker, or ANTIFA delusion-junkie can really answer the profound moral questions we’ve all had forced upon us. Nobody’s given me an answer that satisfies me, and I’m not capable of giving one to anybody else. I don’t think it’s our fault that we don’t know; we’ve got the national media fanning rage-flames while cowardly veteran lawmakers flee the mess they’ve made, and a new generation of scam artists arises. Authoritarianism is trending, and I don’t feel like it’s a cliché to say that. Go ahead—tell me I’m burying my head in the sand. The way I see it, I’m just digging deeper—and I’m still listening to Bad Religion, authors of some of the smartest punk rock ever written, delivering a genuine red-pilling of the old school variety. Sage Francis’ guest verse runs the risk of being corny, but the way it bleeds into the subsequent pre-chorus with the repeated lyric “Feed ‘em death” is arctic desert-chilling. When the chorus returns, it’s like the natural consequences of a grenade.
Snõõper – Running
| GENRE | Punk; New Wave |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | The first Devo album; Bootleg wrestling supercuts; Doing some light jogging |
Huge gratitude and massive kudos to Snõõper for putting on the best random set I saw this year, at a park in Oakland in scorched-Earth July. Everyone’s talking about their prop comedy and Jack White’s record label. Hype, hype, hype, hype, blah-blah hype. Fuck all of it. They back it up. I watched this band military-march through a marathon of fervently goofball new wave, rocking the stage like the Muppets having an orgy with George and Judy Jetson, Duke Nukem, and the B-52s. I watched this band’s bassist hop up and down like a hare in an ironic tracksuit in the middle of the crowd, still plugged the fuck in by a stretched-to-the-brink, Rapunzel’s-ponytail-curly cable, dancing and flinging sweat like he was going for Olympic gold at a schoolyard jump rope session, having apparently dosed so heavily on rank-ass alpha male amphetamine rhino boner pills as to ensure acquisition of not only the gold, but the platinum. The diamond. The double black diamond. The hammerings of Hephaestus. The infinity gauntlet adamantium crown of horns Blue Eyes White Dragon pinnacle of the high score leaderboard at the arcade Dance Dance Revolution. That rating on the spectrum of weirdo rock. Snõõper’s got it all, and “Running” is the best example of why: Incessant, urgent bass. Sassy robot vocals. Electronic caveman riffs. Cornball digital handclap sound effects delivered with such defiant, unapologetic abandon as to make them almost punk on their own—as if the rest of the song wasn’t already so thoroughly. Snõõper often gets mislabeled as “egg punk” (defined in short, stereotypically or self-importantly “smart” punk), but there’s a miraculously big-dick swagger to the lyric “Tie my shoes and I go to town,” accusations of yolk-slinging notwithstanding. This song’s chaotic, spiraling, industrial acid trip outro demonstrates pretty clearly that this band can rip every bit as hard as they slapstick-gag.
Fatboi Sharif & Steel Tipped Dove – Brandon Lee
| GENRE | Hip Hop |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Armand Hammer; Tom Waits; Mike |
I should feel like a pathetic little dork of a type for stacking this list with not one, but two Backwoodz Studioz releases from the last two years. This one’s by Fatboi Sharif, a shadow realm symbol-rattling magician with a penchant for distorting his vocals into a gurgling, labyrinthine void of malicious code-speak. Steel-Tipped Dove handles the mechanized manufacturing of an evil iron horse-beat, armed with mounted shoulder flails precision-engineered to destructively deploy Fatboi’s lyrical riddles. You don’t listen to this shit for storytelling or social commentary—nothing that would appear casually on the surface, at least. Calling it “weird” is definitely reductive, but it’s a fair description of the feeling songs like “Brandon Lee” convey: deep, inescapable, addictive rhythmic unease. What other feeling could a cursed hook fragment lyric like “crows in the satellite” possibly elicit, especially backed by those clanging bells and a haunted choir of damned souls? Even where Fatboi verges on classic rap braggadocio with references to his “paragraph power stance” and “hellstorm presence,” it’s all menacing metaphor—no tired didacticism or cartoon bad guy posturing in sight. If he wanted you to understand what it meant on first listen, he’d have made it easy for you morons—myself included.
Brontez Purnell – Girl From Ghost Town
| GENRE | Indie Rock/Pop |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Heartbreak in the sunshine; Relatable online dating experiences; Third Eye Blind(?) |
Brontez somehow makes this song’s massively nasty theme—getting unjustly ghosted by a crush—into an adorable, zero-fucks-given joke of the “who the fuck needs you anyway?” variety. Spoken-word interludes take the form of missed phone messages and instructions to “click your heels three times and kiss me,” trope-tacular but more than welcome for the sitcom-schlock sincerity seeping out of every second. We’ve got a peppy horn part, a chord progression that recalls “Semi-Charmed Life,” wistful synth ribbons, and a bittersweetness that could only ever sound like crying into a freshly picked roadside flower on a divine summer day. The percussion is massive and bouncy, like the red-starred ball from Toy Story embarking on a pinball-ricochet streak from Brontez’ broken heart into some other fantastic galaxy where boys actually call back. It’s a rare achievement to make casual heartbreak sound this sweet. Shrug. All tea, all shade. On to the next boyfriend.
Edison Lighthouse – Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)
| GENRE | Classic Pop |
| YEAR | 1970 |
| RIYL | The Monkees; Special Wedding Episodes of Popular Sitcoms; Love |
This one’s for my sister and my new brother-in-law. A few weeks after a friend from school sent me this song, saying he’d had it stuck in his head recently, guess how the fuck else it came up? My sister put it on a playlist for her wedding, an indication to some hypothetical DJ of what music would constitute a crowd-pleaser for this particular crowd. Even if this band really was just a bunch of session musicians who happened to score a hit (this one) together, it’s hard to hate something this happy—and that’s coming from me, the guy whose usual requirement for a great love song is that it’s somehow complicated by a conflict within the lyrics. But the vocals are so enchanting here as to almost actually convey the sense of being in love, backed by a string section that leans hard into the classic definition of “swooning.” Match that with the sort of vintage pop perfection that any given sixties boy band was backpackin’ into the building, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a “get your parents’ generation dancing at the reception” sonic nugget. The DJ didn’t play this, but I danced anyway—I was just singing “I’m a lucky fella, and I just gotta tell her that I’ll love her endlessly…” to myself in my head the whole time.
Diners – Domino
| GENRE | DIY Pop |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | Altruism; Finding Yourself; the sentiment behind “Rainbow Connection” (and the actual song) |
No surprise to see this one. I just love Diners. Blue Broderick writes (and sings) songs with an intimate, “let’s be friends” kind of endearing voice—like if Kermit the Frog was one of the Beach Boys—and such a potent ear for pop melody that I still can’t believe Diners didn’t blow up a long time ago. It’s not for lack of honest effort—I’ve seen Blue do free Diners shows for college radio kids, low-turnout benefits in Oakland backyards, and even an appearance at Bottom Of The Hill for an Asian Man Records 20th Anniversary show. In the meantime, Blue’s made records upon records, and I can’t help but whistle at least one or two songs from any given Diners album from time to time. And even though that’s been the case since about 2015, I can still say that Domino brings some of the most fun, unapologetically rock ‘n’ roll lead guitar parts I’ve ever heard on a Diners album. This title track is a great example—it’s steeped like strong tea in a not-subtle dose of Los Angeles sunshine, and that high-tone dances sweetly with Brian Wilsonesque backing croons. As a pretty ribbon on top, it’s laced with a solid trip sitter’s message about growing and learning and coming to terms with who you are—common themes in Diners songs, but themes that Blue expresses more expertly every time.
Mike Donovan – Sadfinger Meets The Mighty Flashlight
| GENRE | Garage-Psych; Art Pop |
| YEAR | 2023 |
| RIYL | The “weird” Kinks; Syd Barrett; Ragtime |
In 2023, Mike Donovan, who has officially completed his growth arc from scrappy Sic Alp to elder garage-psych spellcaster (the Tom Bombadil to Ty Segall’s Gandalf, or something), expertly crash-landed Meets The Mighty Flashlight, a collaboration with underground chameleon Mike Fellows. The whole project is a frayed-consciousness’ jagged ego death in post-jangle language. And this song, about as close to a “title track” as we get, might be the nastiest slice of psychotic basement trip meets Old West Saloon pop I’ve ever heard. It slides brooding, side-eyed, speech-slurring and sinister out through the Davies brothers’ brokest trash-amp, while the lascivious she-devil on Donovan’s shoulder breathes hot and heavily in his ear, whispering sweet spirit realm rock secrets to the sound of the pugilist’s piano. I’m serious—they punch those keys, like it hurts, and it feels good, but it feels bad—in a good way. Donovan’s vocals are viscous-liquid Lennon, embarking on a hard-stuff-fueled recording Odyssey on the baddest iteration of Syd Barrett’s Ship of Theseus. I think I’m mixing my Greek myths here, but there’s something classical about it—this thing’s got movements, and its druggy, meandering intro turns out, cathartically, to be the scaffolding for a sludgy rainbow cathedral of a synth solo. This song is explicitly reverent to the sixties and seventies, but with that reverence comes a timelessness—for those with the stones to brave the bluesy lo-fi noise and the creepy-crawlies it dishes out. The bass is smoke-filled, the drums are oil-slicked puddles on a lamp-lit street, and the lead guitar evokes a wide shot of some burning prairie—devastating, but red and orange and violet—like the setting sun. “Sadfinger” burns to the ground in the most soothing way.
They Might Be Giants – The Lady And The Tiger
| GENRE | Dork Rock; Alternative |
| YEAR | 2011 |
| RIYL | CAKE; Soul Coughing; early Beck |
This is ballsy. It’s an obscenely odd little Lewis Carroll analog narrative, like a lot of the best They Might Be Giants songs. But the horns, the deeply head-noddable beat, the sinister storytelling, and John Flansburgh’s stiff-suited businessmen robot vocal choir give it that tiger ferocity. It’s a tiger on sedatives, sure. But it’s wearing cool sunglasses, and it can talk—like one of the Aristocats. Somehow, the whole thing is also a prison-break movie? With this band, it’s often best not to question the ambiguities.
DEVO – Wiggly World
| GENRE | New Wave; Punk |
| YEAR | 1979 |
| RIYL | The B-52s; Flying your space age freak flag |
Picture this: It’s November 2023, and the local civic auditorium’s “Upcoming Shows” billboard reads the following: TONIGHT – DEVO; NEXT WEEK – Community Theater Production of Cinderella. That’s my way of saying I saw DEVO’s 50th Anniversary Tour in Santa Cruz late this year, and they were casually spectacular. Like hypo-manic astronaut rock retirees. They pulled a Team Rocket and Blasted Off Again through a bevy of bangers from Are We Not Men and Freedom of Choice, plus a smattering of other favorite deep cuts and covers. They didn’t play this song from their underrated second studio album—bummed me out, because it’s got a twang-tacular riff and a frantic shout-speak lyric delivery that conveys the urgency of a fistfight breaking out at the high school science fair. And honestly, the world feels pretty wiggly these days. This song seems to convey the full ferocity of the disdain I have for my daily digital content overload, and whereas I only wish I could scream it all away, this song seems convinced and determined to do exactly that—because this world is wiggly as fuck, and you’ve gotta wiggle it away—wiggle along with it—to survive.
Conclusion
‘Til next year, everybody!
Thanks for reading, as always. I’m still pretty skeptical of the idea that anyone could possibly give a shit about my personal listening habits in any given year, so your being here at all is very special to me. Here’s the full playlist, and here’s the condensed one. Shuffle well, and hey—try to enjoy the end of the year a little. Next one’s gonna be worse, probably.
Roderick Snock is the owner, editor, and honorary dictator-for-life of SNOT ROCK RADIO. He publishes comics @roddiesnock
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