Best music of 2022: A fan delivers a twangy Top 30 list

In the almost-post-pandemic musical climate of 2022, we got to hear what our favorite musicians had gotten up to in the hothouse environment enforced by COVID isolation.

Some musicians reached back to their roots and some branched out in new directions.

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Here are the releases that caught and held my ear in 2022. As always, it is by no means a complete list or a survey of all the 2022 releases. And as always, it’s pretty twangy and harmony-drenched, and maybe a bit folkier than usual. It was that kind of year for me.

In alphabetical order:

Archers of Loaf – “Reason in Decline.” I’ve been following (and loving) frontman/singer Eric Bachmann’s solo career with great devotion ever since this quintessential Southern indie rock band broke up in the late ‘90s. This album featuring the original lineup welds the raw power of old school Archers with the songwriting nuance and vocal depth Bachmann has acquired in his solo career. Case in point: Album opener “Human,” which stomps like the Loaf of old, with Bachmann’s weathered baritone lifting if out of the mosh pit.

Big Thief – “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You.” I have listened to this album over and over and over since its release early in 2022, and I am still enchanted by its ramshackle whimsy, freaky humor, shambling acoustic brilliance and Adrienne Lenker’s completely unique vocal and lyrical gifts. It is impossible to resist the allure of a song like “Spud Infinity,” in which she rhymes “finish” with “potato knish.” There are 19 other such gems on this album. One of the year’s best.

Andrew Bird – “Inside Problems.” A new Andrew Bird album is always cause for celebration. Quieter and more intense than his magnificent 2019 release “My Finest Work Yet,” it simmers like a fragrant gumbo and releases its essence over 11 pristine compositions, including the title track, on which he sings, “Don’t talk to me now, I’m molting…I just got born!”

Bonny Light Horseman – “Rolling Golden Holy.” The possessors of two of indie music’s most idiosyncratic voices, Anais Mitchell (“Hadestown”) and Eric D. Johnson (Fruitbats), blend in perfect, quirky harmony and swap leads over one-man orchestra Josh Kaufman’s limber arrangements. “Cold Rain and Snow” is the warmest track about those weather events you’ll ever hear, with lovely vocals twined over a bed of acoustic picking and electric guitar twang.

Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler – “For All Our Days That Tear The Heart.” As a singer, Buckley is as astounding, enchanting and courageous as she is as an actress. With former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, she has crafted what is possibly the most thrilling album of the year - pagan and unfettered and supremely sensual. Do yourself a favor and Google the video of her performing “The Eagle & the Dove” on “Later…with Jools Holland.”

Nick Cave – “Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace.” So astoundingly  intimate and blushingly sensual that listening seems transgressive, this is Nick alone at the keyboard pouring his heart out for each and every one of us over 22 tunes that span his storied career. A sacred and profane offering from the hierophant of our age.

Madison Cunningham – “Revealer.” Cunningham is a monster guitar player, not flashy but with serious chops, and she flexes her songwriting muscle and opens her heart on this resonant, beautifully produced and aptly named album comprised of paeans to connections fractured, mended or sundered forever.

Freakons – self-titled. What a dream team! Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean of Freakwater and the almighty and iconic British band Mekons join forces on protest music for the modern age that plunders the folk (and punk) traditions of the old country and the new. This album shambles and rocks and squalls and will satisfy fans of both. The cross-pollination is perfectly showcased in “Phoebe Snow,” with its pointed lyrics, swaths of lap steel guitar and the glorious choral round at the end.

Gnome – “King.” Belgian rock trio Gnome (yes, they dress up like garden gnomes) throws prog metal, math rock, grunge, stoner rock, fuzz core and whatever else isn’t nailed down into the blender and whizzes it into a massively chunky, riff-rich, hook-laden, often silly (there’s a song called “Kraken Wanker” and another called “Platypus Platoon”) sonic cocktail. The bass player is a beast! Check out their fun videos on YouTube.

Gogol Bordello – “Solidaritine.” True to the band’s global roots and outlook, this release blends reggae, punk, jazz, skiffle, surf rock and what-have-you into its patented kick-ass gypsy punk sound powered by Ukrainian frontman Eugene Hutz’s nasal bawl and frenetic energy. Features appearance by H.R. of Bad Brains and a cover of Fugazi’s “Blueprint.” Bona fide.

Robyn Hitchcock – “Shufflemania!” Robyn Hitchcock’s first studio album in five years comes charging out of the speakers with the jaunty, driving opener “The Shuffle Man,” vintage Hitchcock nonsense buoyed by yummy harmonies and powered by skiffle rhythms and power-strummed guitars. The whole album is joyously absurd ear candy, with Hitchcock at his most Hitchcockian.

Langtry – “Music for Film, Dance and Bear Procession.” Local guitarist Patrick McKinney’s gifts as a composer blossom and enchant on four spacious, resonant tracks written for a film score, a dance performance and a procession performed in conjunction with an exhibition of collaborative works by local artist Linda Hall and photographer Becki Rutta. Exquisite and haunting.

Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder – “Get on Board.” Two legends team up to pay tribute to the music of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry and the result is a superbly loosey-goosey (but musically tight) album that sounds and feels like listening in on two old musical pals deep in their cups and jamming their hearts out after hours at the club.

Angel Olsen – “Big Time.” Olsen’s previous release “All Mirrors” was sheer sonic ravishment. “Big Time” is quieter, more pensive, and rootsier, with echoing pedal steel twining around synths and anchored by spare drums, but Olsen’s voice is no less lush and alluring.

Porcupine Tree – “Closure/Continuation.” Porcupine Tree delivers prog rock with big crunch and metal heft. One of the best drummers in modern rock - Gavin Harrison, who also provides percussion as one of three drummers for King Crimson - anchors a sound that’s edgy, bombastic, dreamy and fierce, often in the same song. The band sets the tone on album opener “Harridan, “ eight minutes of prog virtuosity, from Colin Edwin’s urgent, jittery bass lines to Richard Barbieri’s pulsating synth-scapes to Harrison’s skittish drums to founder/guitarist/vocalist Steve Wilson’s guitar chunk and soaring vocals.

Adrian Quesada – “Boleros Psicodelicos.” Quesada, of Black Pumas and Grupo Fantasmo, spins out Space age bachelor pad music to sip mescal by. It’s juicy, sultry psychedelica with Latin flavor and a stellar cast of guest musicians that include Marc Ribot and Money Mark, Gaby Moreno, Angelica Garcia and Girl Ultra.

The Sadies – “Colder Streams.” Furious twang and stripped-down, strapped-in guitar-driven alt-country/indie rock from Canadian Americana gods. Recording started before founding member Dallas Good died from heart complications. Brother Travis Good powered through his shock and grief to produce one of the band’s best albums, a collection of songs that are rough-edged, raw and fierce.

Shearwater – “The Great Awakening.” I would listen to Jonathan Meiburg sing the phone book. That said, he lends his muscular falsetto to carefully crafted compositions that have grandeur and grit. Pitchfork has called Shearwater’s sound “a baroque, naturalistic form of art-rock with almost no contemporary peers,” and that works for me.

Joan Shelley – “The Spur.” The Kentucky singer - whose voice is so reminiscent of fellow folk songstresses Natalie Merchant and Joan Baez - revels in her musical partnership with guitarist Nathan Salsburg (her life partner and father of her child) on songs that echo with an earthy, fresh appreciation of this glorious, sensual world.

Amanda Shires – “Take It Like a Man.” Shires takes no prisoners and makes no excuses on this album of fierce and edgy electric Americana powered by her gifts as a poet and musician. Husband Jason Isbell provides molten guitar licks on several tracks but this album is all Shires, lean, sexy and dangerous.

Sonny Singh – “Chardi Kala.” Utterly irresistible multi-culti music from the trumpet player for Red Baraat, a Sikh who celebrates the joy of his religion as well as its emphasis on social justice and community service. But mostly it’s just fun and will make you dance as well as think.

Spiritualized – “Everything Was Beautiful.” Somehow this British band’s sound withstands the travails of time and remains as fresh and hypnotic as ever. On standout track “The Mainline Song,” the joyous choogling intro trucks along like the train you hear at the beginning of the song as it builds on layers of harmonica, clarinet, skiffle band drums and Jason Pierce’s nasal, hypnotic voice before pulling into the station.

Spoon – “Lucifer on the Sofa.” Loud and proud rock powered by Britt Daniels’ distinctive voice (it has been called “a chalky bray”) and psyche-searching lyrics, this record released in early 2022 is ridiculously listenable.

Richard Thompson – “Live From Honolulu.” I have seen RT more than a dozen times in concert, with a band and solo, and he is always good. This show recorded in 2006 and released this year features the legendary (and unrelated) Danny Thompson on double bass and RT’s regular percussion ace Michael Jerome on minimalist drums and cajon. All three are in tip-top form - case in point is the chilling, pyrotechnic riffage from all three on “Shoot Out the Lights.”

The Unthanks – “Sorrows Away.” The first time I saw Becky and Rachel Unthank perform, it was in a tiny stone church in Orkney and I walked out transfigured and changed in some elemental way. I saw the Northumbrian duo and their band perform this latest album earlier this year at the London Palladium and again, I felt the molecules of my being shift. This is an exquisitely gleaming folk music gem with impeccable arrangements of traditional songs and new songs that sound traditional that take wing with shimmering harmonies and superb musicianship.

Sharon Van Etten - “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong.” Van Etten has grown into her husky purr, enough to let it fray around the edges on tracks like “Anything.” At the end of the song, when she’s moaning “I can’t feel anything,” she summons the specter of foremother Aimee Mann’s yelp at the end of “Voices Carry.” Heady stuff.

Vieux Farka Toure – “Les Racines.” The northern Mali guitar scion taps into his roots (“Les Racines” means “the roots”) and uplifts his father Ali Farka Toure’s legacy in tunes that are by turns bristling with ferocious guitar wizardry and ambling with resonant riffs. See also “Ali,” his collaboration with Houston trio Khruangbin on a groove-a-licious reimagining of his father’s songbook.

Le Vent du Nord – “20 printemps.” The Quebecois band celebrates 20 years of making music with an album of trad tunes that are sprightly, pensive, joyous, wistful and full of heart and harmony. Standout tracks include the gorgeous a cappella rendering of “L’auberge (The Inn)” and the tour de force “La navire de Bayonne (The Ship from Bayonne).” Worth a listen just for the band’s podorhythmie (foot-tapping percussion) and Simon Beaudry’s lead vocals.

Weyes Blood – “And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow.” Natalie Mering follows up her 2019 masterpiece “Titanic Rising” with a magnificent, meditative set of perfectly soundscaped songs. Her warm thrilling alto weaves itself into your psyche and before you know it, your own heart is glowing along with hers in the darkness. Swoony.

Wilco – “Cruel Country.” Twelve songs into this astonishing 21-track encomium, the exquisite slow burn of standout track “Many Worlds” starts low and slow, builds to a majestic climax and then sweetly fades nearly 8 minutes later. This is Tweedy and company performing live in the studio at peak power and confidence.

Kati Schardl is a former music writer and Features editor at the Tallahassee Democrat.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Best music of 2022: Tallahassee fan spins a Top 30 list