We're happy to present "Post-Trash's Staff Picks: The Best of 2023" as voted by the site’s wonderful contributors (including their individual lists). With 22 of our writers submitting their votes, we had 315 different records nominated and only the top nine records received a score of sixty or higher.
Wishy is a force of Midwestern exceptionalism; a blanket of whirling guitar music and a breeze of soothing pop melodies all brought to life by leaders Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites. With their new label home, Winspear, and help from friend and producer, Ben Lumsdaine (Durand Jones), Wishy has released their debut EP, Paradise.
Cruel throws another hat into the busy, increasingly-young Chicago ring, with a mosh-able, riff-heavy debut EP on Fire Talk’s new tape imprint Angel Tapes. To-the-point at only four songs over eleven minutes, Common Rituals flexes a driving rhythm section, loud two-guitar attack, and blown-out yelled vocals.
Laverne, the band’s upcoming third album is due out February 2nd via Midnight Werewolf Records and Best Brother Records, shows that the kinetic friendship energy that has embraced Rick Rude’s music over the years is in fine form. Heck, they’ve never sounded better, offering equal parts force and warmth.
While a lot of bands are delivering truly unique and innovative releases, few of them have managed to deliver anything with quite the same energy as Pons. On their latest album, The Liquid Self, the three piece has constructed a shipwrecked concept album that is as lyrically dense as it is full of brooding atmosphere and chaotic ups and downs.
Czarface lives on. Hip-hop’s mightiest heroes are back with their ninth LP Czartificial Intelligence. Made up of Inspectah Deck and Boston’s 7L & Esoteric, the group is known for their intricate lyricism and plush old school production. Their latest, a major label debut released a decade after their inaugural album, is no exception.
Following “Middling,” our introduction to the new line-up back in May, Candace Clement’s All Feels return with a new two song single, Shoreline / Absent, out today via Flower Sounds (See Jazz, The Lentils, Bobbie), a gorgeous pair of thoughtful alternative rock songs that could and should be FM gold.
The Guided By Voices archive resembles a murmuration by now with thousands of melodies and ideas flocking together to create a singular movement, in which individual elements matter less than the beauty created by the entire whole. Nowhere To Go But Up is a minor, but essential, part of this greater entity.
Roseland Live NYC – which paired a gripping performance by Gibbons and co. with a full band and orchestral strings, horns, and woodwinds – would be the last music Portishead would release for over a decade. Now, 25 years later, the band has reissued the album as Roseland NYC Live 25, newly remastered, and for the first time in its complete form.
It is a sign of mutual respect and adoration to make something together as one package to grace listeners with. Queensburgh by Baked and The Zells is the latest addition to the DIY canon of splits. Two of independent rock's heaviest hitters have delivered a special split that anyone will be able to appreciate.
Blacklisters strike the perfect level of sardonic humor and cultural disgust, so interwoven it’s hard to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Sludge and bludgeoning density are paired with acidic noise and a stumbling resolve that feels like a reprieve from polite society or a scourge on meatheads worldwide.
Brunswick, Australia’s Hooper Crescent are relying on a formula with their second album, Essential Tremors. While the quintet could have returned to the guitar heavy tangled post-punk of their debut, they’ve opted to push into new territories, exploring a different set of sounds while keeping their established framework in tact.
Soul To Burn, is a wild ride of high voltage rock ‘n’ roll grooves and swaggering hooks, but it’s also inherently complex, the sound in a constant state of contortion. These songs are accessible from first glance (“Rhodia” is a smash hit), with dissonant vibrations and riotous rhythmic shifts bending to create something casually digestible.
Blotted and vibrant are the bruises that we acquire in the midst of growing up. In the midst of those challenges is nineteen year old Perth singer/songwriter Mia June and her debut EP, Don’t Forget Your Bags. Out on Father/Daughter Records, we find her with a collection of songs that feel both fresh and exhilaratingly spirited.
Wurld Series filter influences including Guided by Voices, Jim O’Rourke, and Robert Wyatt through a DIY lens that’s uniquely their own, balancing Luke Towart’s sturdy songcraft with pensive, pastoral experimentation. Post-Trash caught up with Towart recently to discuss these and other influences on their sound, and to talk The Giants Lawn.
