According to Apple Music, I listened to 4,038 songs this year across 348 albums by 1,215 different artists. Most of those albums were not recorded in 2022 — 423 minutes of my listening time, for example, came from the Grateful Dead, a now-defunct band that hasn’t recorded a new song since 1995, and 395 minutes came from Miles Davis, who has been dead since 1991.
That said, I added 533 songs across 47 different albums from 2022 to my Music Library this year. The Apple-Music-defined genres of those albums included African, Alternative, Electronic, Folk, Funk, Hard Rock, Hip-Hop/Rap, Jam Bands, Jazz, Pop, Psychedelic, R&B/Soul, Rock, Singer/Songwriter, and Underground Rap (an official Apple Music genre, I guess).
It is an eclectic group that does not include some of the year’s most celebrated albums but does include popular artists such as Lizzo, Kendrick Lamar, and Beyoncé, as well as niche artists such as The Gasoline Brothers and Natalie Cressman & Ian Faquini.
Without further adieu, I present my Top 5 Albums of 2022.
5. Benevento
Marco Benevento
Marco Benevento, a renowned multi-instrumentalist, has played with greats such as Trey Anastasio, Pink Martini, Ween, John Medeski, Phil Lesh, and Joe Russo. He recorded the twelve songs on this self-titled album in his home studio in Woodstock, NY, where he played all of the instruments and enlisted his wife and children to sing background for him.
The album sounds like an optimistic sun kiss of 70s Californian psychedelic jazz-pop. The drums include electronic and acoustic beats, and his vocals sound like they’re filtered through a drive-through speaker at a carhop along the Pacific Ocean. It’s difficult not to sway your head and bop your shoulders as you listen.
Each song on the album includes his incredible keyboard skills, and even the 36-second track, “Polysix,” which sounds like a sunshower composed by a child’s toy (manipulated by a computer), has enough of a dance groove to keep your foot tapping.
4. This Machine Still Kills Fascists
Dropkick Murphys with lyrics by Woody Guthrie
As a devotee of Bob Dylan, Wilco, and John Steinbeck, I’m a sucker for a Woody Guthrie lyric. As a Boston native, I’m a sucker for the homegrown Celtic punk-folk music of Dropkick Murphys. When you combine them, as the Murphys do on This Machine Still Kills Fascists, and add to them the blue-collar-fueled political progressivism embodied in the ass-kicking AntiFa movement, well, you’re gonna earn yourself a spot on my Top 5 Albums of the year.
The Murphys never try to present themselves as more than they are: a bunch of hardworking Bostonians who’ll kick your ass for disrespecting the neighborhood but who’ll always wrap their arms around you to sing a maudlin folk song that brings the bar to tears at the memory of the Irish lads who sacrificed their lives to defend their principles. They’re the kind of band that invites their friends, family, and fans into the recording studio to add beef to their raucous choruses. They play guitars, bang on drums, and spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to mic up bagpipes.
That doesn’t change on This Machine Still Kills Fascists, but they do it 100% acoustic this time. As they announced on their website, “That’s right – there’s not a guitar amplifier on this album!!” The lack of amplified electricity can’t stop their infectious driving anthems, and the addition of Guthrie’s pro-union, eat-the-rich lyrics makes this album exactly what our country needs right now.
Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow Dig a hole in the cold, cold ground Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow Gonna lay you fascists down
3. Unlimited Love
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Unlimited Love marks the first album from the Chilis in six years and the first to include guitarist John Frusciante in sixteen years. Produced (once again) by Rick Rubin, Unlimited Love captures the natural evolution of this quartet.
One has to remember that the Chili’s perenially shirtless singer, Anthony Keidis, perenially naked bassist, Flea, and perenially baseball-hatted drummer, Chad Smith, are all in their 60s, and even Frusciante, the teenage guitarist wunderkind who turned down Frank Zappa to join the Chilis in the late 1980s, is now 52.
This is not the same Californian funk-punk band that George Clinton and Maceo Parker introduced the world to in 1985. They’ve lost members to drugs, toured the globe, fought their addictions and lost and fought again. They’ve ascended the charts, won awards, been criticized for chasing hits, dated a Spice Girl, Cher, Madonna, Sinead O’Connor, Ione Skye, and Heidi Klum (among many others), slept with over a hundred women in a year (including the 14-year-old daughter of a police chief), and been charged with sexual assault against a fan in the crowd. They rode in the ambulance when teen-hearthrob River Phoenix overdosed, had children with multiple women, and made their way through at least ten former band members (most of them guitarists who tried to replace Frusciante).
Life has happened to these four, and the evolution of their music shows it. The songs on Unlimited Love were most definitely written and played by the Red Hot Chili Peppers we all fell in love with on Blood Sugar Sex Magick, but these are not young men anymore, and their sense of what sounds good includes emotions and complexities that their younger versions could not have heard.
Crazily enough, after being on hiatus for six years, the Chilis released two albums this year. Unlimited Love is the first one (and the better, in my opinion) but the second, Return of the Dream Canteen, is a quality album too, and you should definitely give it a listen.
2. Conspiranoid
Primus
No song captures the political reality of our late-stage democracy better than Primus’ “Conspiranoia.” The verses in this eleven-minute epic depict the dread fantasies of Lloyd Boyd the Paranoid and Marion Barrion the Contrarian. As Les Claypool, Primus’ prime mover, sings, “You can lead a horse to water / but you cannot make him drink. / You can guide a fool towards logic / but you’ll rarely make him think.”
If it were just the political messaging of the lyrics and the hilarious list of conspiracy theories spoken in the final three minutes, the song would still be a must-listen in a post-Jan. 6th America, but Claypool’s virtuosic bass lines, supported by Tim Alexander’s powerful drumming and Larry LaLonde’s experimental guitar excursions, keep every moment of this sonic behemoth fresh and exciting.
Conspiranoid is a three-song EP. “Conspiranoia” is followed by the infectious “Follow the Fool” and the haunting “Erin on the Side of Caution.” The other two songs are decent and fit the musical tone set by “Conspiranoia,” but it’s the first song that kept me listening to this EP again and again.
1. Omnium Gatherum
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
If you’re not already onboard with this Australian band, you’re missing the most excitingly unpredictable band since Ween. They released four albums in 2022: Omnium Gatherum (April); Ice, Death, Planet, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (October 7th); Laminated Denim (October 12th); and Changes (October 28th).
That wasn’t even the most albums they’ve released in a year; they released FIVE full-length albums in 2017! In short, they’re friggin’ nuts. Changes marks the twenty-third album released by this sextet since they formed in 2010.
There’s simply no way to describe King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. A single song may include death metal screaming choruses, smooth psychedelic bass lines, Beastie/Beck-like raps, jam-band guitar adventures, poly-genre fusions, melodic harmonies, and trippy production effects.
Any of the four albums released by KGLW this year could have been on the list, but with sixteen songs and a running time that exceeds 80 minutes, Omnium Gatherum provides the largest taste of what these incredible artists are capable of. Press play and let that baby surprise you at every turn.