Welcome to the final edition of The Daily Spin, hosted by David Peterson of The Low Major. Each day, David picks an album (from reader suggestions, new releases, or his own personal favorites) and reviews it, alongside fellow TLM writer Eli Powell and myself. Today, we’re looking back at the month of December, both here and over there! We’ll also both have a yearly recap post up in a few days, so keep an eye out for that.
Note: albums with gold dates were recommended by me.
Best Album
Nominees: Polydans (10.0), A Charlie Brown Christmas (Original 1965 TV Soundtrack) [2022 Mix] (10.0), Random Access Memories (9.6), For Emma, Forever Ago (9.2), Mercurial World (9.2)
There are two broad guidelines I’ve used this year to determine if an album is worthy of an unblemished 10/10. First, the subjective angle: I feel that a perfect album is, by its nature, a beautiful album. There are plenty of other emotions that music can and should stir in a listener, but my experience has been that regardless of the approach, what truly moves me is music which feels transcendental in some way, music that feels like it bypassed the process of artistic creation and instead came to be as a direct, pure expression of some deep universal truth. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming unquestionably ticks this box—it is 73 minutes of magnificent, joyous, awestruck majesty. It's almost impossible not to feel uplifted, if not enraptured, by this album.
Second, the objective test: an album should be the very pinnacle of its genre. This is very easy for me to say about In Rainbows, the best art rock record of all time, and not much harder to say about Currents and Polydans, which I think can reasonably share honors in the field of synthpop. This metric is what convinced me on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Across the Spider-Verse, and A Charlie Brown Christmas, because I have a hard time imagining better soul/R&B/reggae/rap, soundtrack, and Christmas albums, respectively. And then there's this record.
What can you even compare Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming to? It’s a surpassingly brilliant album, and I don’t doubt that it passes this test, but it’s difficult to say what genre it defines. RateYourMusic considers it first synthpop—which seems odd, I don’t think I’d measure it against Currents or Polydans—and then dream pop, which is a bit closer but still not quite there. Acoustic instrumentals play a major role in this record, surging atop swelling synths to create so many moments of utter exaltation, with vocals folded seamlessly into this mix in the way we know M83 can make look easy. It seems impossible to categorize this album in such practical terms, because, like I said above, its defining attribute is nothing so material or literal; it’s the overwhelming passion and joy that rings out through every one of its 22 tracks.
Maybe I’m biased, because for me, 2023 has been a year of fostering and celebrating that love for life, embracing hope against the odds and believing in a world like the one Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is dreaming of. But when it comes down to it, I have a hard time imagining anything more perfect than this.
Worst Album
Nominees: Shock Value (7.1), Manic (7.3), Utopia (7.5), Palaces (7.5), Volcano (7.6)
This album is just soulless, y’all. It’s fine and has a couple memorable hits—everybody knows “We Found Love”—but for the most part, it’s a playlist of solid-to-mediocre features strung together by instrumentals that need a few more backing tracks to hit. There’s nothing whatsoever about 18 Months that sets Calvin Harris apart in the genre, and it’s brought down by the inconsistent vocals as much as it’s brought up by high-quality production. It’s replacement-level pop with no distinct character and some big names that provide its few standout moments; I can see why it went platinum.
Personal Favorite
Nominees: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (10.0/+0.7), Before the Night (8.8/+0.6), Polydans (10.0/+0.5)
Early Coldplay, particularly this album, often draws very direct comparisons to contemporary Radiohead, which I don’t think is necessarily warranted. The two are alike in some ways, but there’s a very distinctly pop sound to A Rush of Blood to the Head that isn’t really present in Kid A, Amnesiac, or Hail to the Thief, the three Radiohead albums released in this early-2000s period. If anything, the comparison is a bit disingenuous (and it does often come from Radiohead fans trying to denigrate Coldplay’s popularity), because the way Coldplay approached pop in this era is brilliant and almost entirely unique. Chris Martin’s vocals are not at all bad, but they—and the whole lyrical melodic line—generally follow after the instrumentation on this album, which in a lot of ways feels like proto–orchestral pop. Part of the reason for the enduring popularity of tracks like “The Scientist” and “Clocks” is that nobody else in this genre has tackled the task of writing a pop hit this way, at least not with such surpassing success. Not all of this album is that good, but it commits pretty completely to eschewing the typical formula throughout, and that alone makes it pretty incredible. A Rush of Blood to the Head is not like Radiohead; it’s not like anybody. It’s something all its own, and it’s hard to think of anything then or since that comes close to its particular type of excellence and beauty.
Not for Me
Nominees: 55 (8.2/-0.3), Illumination (8.2/-0.3), If This Isn’t Nice, I Don’t Know What Is (8.7/-0.3)
The really long tracks lost me a little with our first St. Lucia record, and they lost me again here. It’s pretty music, but it has a fatal tendency to feel rather aimless, which isn’t helped by fitting a fairly typical indie sound (albeit with some interesting twists here and there). It’s not bad, but there isn’t much about it that’s particularly noteworthy, and it’s not brisk enough for me to really feel swept up by it. I can see why a lot of these tracks land with other people, including both David and Eli, but they mostly went in one ear and out the other for me.
Best Lyrics and Vocals
Nominees: Built on Glass, Manic, Random Access Memories
What makes a lot of Bon Iver’s work so unbelievably good, paradoxically, is not the meticulously crafted layers of electronic beauty pieced together to create something impossibly natural; it’s the simple vocal lines, which work perfectly to cap the extraordinary instrumental efforts beneath them. In practical terms, For Emma, Forever Ago is just an earlier step in Bon Iver’s musical evolution, but it almost makes more sense to view it as a road not taken—a more stripped-down form of music that puts those vocals first, rather than letting them be as understated as they become later in this discography. In its own right, it’s a testament to how utterly lovely these leading lines are, that even with some pretty standard indie folk orchestration, this is still a superb album. But it’s also a testament to the fact that Justin Vernon has since thrown this incredible strength on a backburner and used it in a supporting role while building up every other part of his work to near-perfection. This is an album almost any artist would be satisfied as the peak of their achievement; for Bon Iver it’s a debut, yes, but just as importantly a stepping stone, which is remarkable in its own right.
Best Instrumentation
Nominees: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, Polydans, Random Access Memories
The idea of a piece of media being “classic” is one that we have to be very careful with. In the wrong hands, that term can very easily become a dog whistle for conservative, defensive protection of art which is flawed in ways that become more obvious with every passing year. It’s worth stopping to consider who something is “classic” to, and if there’s a reason it might not go over well with certain populations—say, people of color or queer people who a work disenfranchises, disregards, or even actively insults.
Christmas media has a track record—imperfect, to be fair, but still strong—of surviving such discourse intact. Maybe it’s because of the sheer volume of it (and other holiday media), or maybe it’s because the fundamental message under most of it is so difficult to square with discriminatory beliefs and behaviors. In any case, there’s a wealth of classic Christmas movies, shows, and songs from the 19th and 20th centuries that have aged with remarkable grace. The core messages of stories like those told in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and It’s a Wonderful Life still resonate with people regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, and often even religious or political inclination.
Even in this uniquely mass-appealing genre, though, A Charlie Brown Christmas and its soundtrack album stand out. In many ways, it’s very particular to a specific setting; it would be understandable if a TV special heavily focusing on a group of white, Christian, American children didn’t hit with people who can’t relate to many or any of those experiences. By the same token, it would hardly be surprising if a jazz score that spares none of the genre's conventions (such as disregarding run times or seemingly unfitting tracks like “Für Elise”) wasn’t particularly popular among people who don’t enjoy jazz, soundtracks, or both. And yet, more than anything else in a field that excels at reaching a wide audience, the simple and universal joy, whimsicality, nostalgia, and comfort of these masterworks has endured for over half a century, beloved by as close to everyone as art can ever get. A Charlie Brown Christmas is a perfect Christmas film, and its soundtrack, almost without question, is the perfect Christmas album.
Best Album Art
Nominees1: A Rush of Blood to the Head, Illumination, Bloom
The album cover for Mercurial World is convoluted, yet clearly beautiful, a perfect fit for the music it accompanies. This tapestry of swirls and cryptic symbols, which you can see in a full gallery on Magdalena Bay’s delightfully early-2000s website, is the work of digital painter Ram Han, whose portfolio is worth exploring in full.
In Short
Polydans (Roosevelt): An artist I love in a genre I don’t tweaks his sound to lean into a genre I do love, and it predictably turns out incredible.
Illumination (Miami Horror): Like Polydans, but just kinda…less.
Goldrushed (The Royal Concept): Fun and peppy, but doesn’t have much to show you aside from a few instrumental flourishes and solid hooks.
Utopia (St. Lucia): Still suffering from St. Lucia’s struggle to gauge when a track is done.
Manic (Halsey): Strong vocals aren’t enough to fully set apart an album that I’ve otherwise heard a hundred times.
Heard It in a Past Life (Maggie Rogers): I don’t mind the production on Maggie Rogers’ voice here, really.
Built on Glass (Chet Faker): I would rather see either of these half-albums fully fleshed out, but it’s hard to complain too much with what we got.
If This Isn't Nice, I Don't Know What Is (Still Woozy): Insert album title joke here.
Strange Desire (Bleachers): It’s not bad, but it’s just missing a little something.
Mercurial World (Magdalena Bay): So much more layered and intricate than any other pop album I can think of.
Volcano (Jungle): 45 minutes of solid lo-fi soul, devoid of standout moments.
Before the Night (HOME): Some great synthwave that got stuck in my head half a decade ago (thanks, Summoning Salt) and hasn’t gone away since.
The Balance (Catfish and the Bottlemen): It’s fine, but why would you listen to it when The Ride exists?
MAYBE (Valley): Uniformly good, with just enough tracks that really grab you to avoid feeling trite.
Pure Heroine (Lorde): Nobody would expect the rest of the album to match “Royals” and “Ribs” in sheer brilliance, but it’s disappointing that it also doesn’t quite match those songs in style.
For Emma, Forever Ago (Bon Iver): A foundation for things to come.
Bloom (Beach House): The top of Beach House’s game before a subtle stylistic shift leading into Depression Cherry, which focused more on individual tracks than the album as a whole.
55 (The Knocks): A smash hit that never was, for some reason.
How Will You Know If You Never Try (COIN): Well, uh…a smash hit that never was, for some reason.
CRASH (Charli XCX): I’m still not over David ranking “Baby” as the worst track from this album.
18 Months (Calvin Harris): An album about nothing.
Shock Value (Timbaland): Less than an hour separates the masterpiece “The Way I Are” and a track titled “2 Man Show (feat. Elton John)” which features the line “two man show / that is, me and Elton John”.
Gossamer (Passion Pit): A lot like Manners, which we spun in…wow, January? Time really flies, huh?
Random Access Memories (Daft Punk): An album that feels like it defined ‘80s/’90s techno and funk despite following decades after those genres peak, and dips its toes in disco, prog rock, modern pop, and hardcore techno along the way.
A Charlie Brown Christmas (Original 1965 TV Soundtrack) [2022 Mix] (Vince Guaraldi Trio): The Christmas album.
Soundtrack to a Death (Mura Masa): Oddly relaxing and even whimsical, despite how active and electronic the sound is.
Palaces (Flume): Beautiful in places, but frequently overshadowed by editing and overpowering tracks.
A Rush Of Blood To The Head (Coldplay): Pop music like no other pop music.
A Moment Apart (ODESZA): ODESZA at its absolute finest, reaching some soaring heights on pieces like the title track and “Corners of the Earth”.
Strangers (RAC): An earlier, less ambitious version of EGO.
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (M83): Joie de vivre in musical form.
Honorable mention to the original artwork of For Emma, Forever Ago, which was not considered for these rankings.