The 2022 Ho Media Awards
2022 almost got it right. A grand total of 21 new releases - one short of perfect - crossed my desk last year. It was enough that I couldn't even get to all of them. So with apologies to Turnover, Jaws of Love, Richard Edwards, Trampled by Turtles, and Beirut, their albums aren't going to feature in this post in any other capacity. I've probably heard half of the Turnover album already just because they released so many singles, but I haven't found the right moment to sit down with this one and all of the other mentioned.
The full list of eligible albums is:
Florence + the Machine Dance Fever
Glen Phillips There Is So Much Here
Collective Soul Vibrating
Charlie Winston As I Am
Death Cab for Cutie Asphalt Meadows
Muse Will of the People
Embrace How To Be A Person Like Other People
Hanson RGB
Liam Gallagher C'mon You Know
Andrew Bird Inside Problems
Shearwater The Great Awakening
The Smile A Light for Attracting Attention
Bear's Den Blue Hours
Arcade Fire WE
RHCP Unlimited Love
Normally I would be able to divide a year's albums into roughly equal chunks: great, meh, and ew. But honestly, this year was pretty great. Dance Fever is a little disappointingly held back from true next level greatness by the 2-3 short tracks that are little more than unfinished ideas. C'mon You Know has a lot of great tracks, but it's a stylistic mishmash that never manages to gel properly. The only one on that list that didn't land for me at all was A Light for Attracting Attention. I've tried to listen to it all the way through several times and I think I've quit on it before the halfway mark every time. Maybe I just need the right atmosphere and driving isn't it; I'm not ready to give it up yet.
With so many good ones, it's uncommonly hard to pick a favorite.
Blue Hours was the favorite for the first half of the year. I have to be feeling really down, really masochistic, or really daring to listen to this all the way through though. "Selective Memories" is a story about a parent with dementia that cuts pretty deeply. And honestly half of the songs are just as uncomfortably vulnerable in other ways. I can't watch this without crying.
Spiders & Shadows (2022) from Mawrgan Shaw - Animation on Vimeo.
WE made a really good case for itself in Q3, especially as it was the soundtrack for my hike in Vermont. It's still a bit awkward however, as it's essentially four song suites and a closer. Seems like there should have been another track or two to break up the space between each suite. It's as inspiring and reassuring as Blue Hours is devastating, though. Maybe it's as simple as being an album about middle age that speaks to a father on the cusp of 40, with tracks like this one:
More recently, Asphalt Meadows marked a strong comeback for DCFC after their previous, remarkably forgettable album. Some of the harder tracks here ("Roman Candles" and "I Miss Strangers") sound like a flashback to The Photo Album, which is pretty high praise. I don't know if there's a lot of 10/10 tracks here, but overall I think the average track ratings across each whole album puts this album over the other two for Album of the Year. There's a lot of variety here, but something about the nostalgia of "Wheat Like Waves" jumps out at me at weird times.
My Song of the Year doesn't come from any of these three albums. With the simple guitar riff, gut-wrenching lyrics, and Embrace's trademark talent to cathartic build-ups, "The Terms of My Surrender" takes home the 2022 trophy.
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I spent a while looking for bands in the vein of The Twilight Sad earlier this year. I didn't find much that really stuck outside of We Were Promised Jetpacks, who I've slowly but enjoyably been working through. Other Lives seems to be a really solid Lord Huron alternative, particularly the album Rituals. But for a new-to-me, top to bottom discography that couldn't be beaten, it's gotta be the manic and baroque stylings of Typhoon that win Discovery Artist of the Year. Thanks to Discord/Divolt for helping me find these (and other) new tunes.
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Locklands is the end. The end of this arc, the end of these characters, and very very likely the end of Bennett's time in this universe. The ending messed me up for days and I had already stayed up much too late many nights before that point trying to finish it off. This series, where the magic system amounts to using magical writing as a way of altering reality similar to computer programming in our universe, felt really original to me. SF/F fans who have read more widely in the genre could probably point to other authors who have done the same thing before, but it's completely new to me and I loved it.
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It wasn't perfect by any stretch. Marvel's continuity crew can only do so much to make sense of all of the different plot lines they're juggling right now when alternate universes are in play, but Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness seemed to struggle more than most. It probably comes down to the rewrites necessitated by Sony moving Spider Man: No Way Home's release date around. I'd still call it the best movie I saw this year. Thor: Love & Thunder was good, but had one too many things going on to give enough time to everything that needed time.
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Onward.
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