The 2023 Ho Media Awards
2023 made it easier to break out the tiers as I've done in the past. I also need to close the loop on the ones I mentioned last year that I didn't get around to - nothing terribly special there. There's one hold over that I didn't know had finally been released as it had been delayed a few times and that's the Fort Frances album below, but I learned about it this fall, so I've had time to think about it. I didn't know about Half Moon Run's "Salt" until just a couple of days ago, so I'm not ready to weigh in on that yet.
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was probably my favorite book both published and read in 2023. Tress of the Emerald Sea was fantastic, but a bit more predictable. Yumi was much more complicated and climaxed (and denouement-ed) in a way I did not expect. The Sunlit Man was good, but despite being hyped as the strongest Cosmere-connected book (or something to that effect), there doesn't seem to be any meaningful ramifications for past or future books here other than Nomad's identity.
Great albums:
The Veils, ...And Out of the Void Came Love
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Council Skies
City and Colour, The Love Still Held Me Near
The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein
Andrew Bird, Outside Problems
Fort Frances, Look At What Tomorrow Brought Us
Meh albums:
Bell X1, Merciful Hour
Local Natives, Time Will Wait For No One
WTF? albums:
The National, Laugh Track
Dave Matthews Band, Walk Around the Moon
Matchbox Twenty, Where The Light Goes
Slightly fewer albums that usual this year, but luckily again we're weighted high on the great end of the spectrum. It's a bit disappointing to hear the three awful entries in the WTF category (esp. as The National's two albums came out of the same recording sessions; Dessner tried to capture the folklore/evermore lightning in a bottle again and failed) come from bands who have previously made albums I have really enjoyed.
Most of these great albums are fairly somber affairs. If I'm going to judge by which albums I ever feel inclined to skip tracks on, the first three albums listed in this category would be my favorite three of the year. And if there's one where I feel that way less than either of the others, it's gotta be The Love Still Held Me Near. It's unfortunate that it took a lot of personal tragedy for Dallas Green to give birth to this album, but absolutely everyone else benefits from his losses with this one.
Council Skies is another great album from Noel, but it also follows his somewhat predictable pattern now of starting strong and losing focus as it goes. Like a tightrope walker who starts to wobble and lose his poise halfway across the wire, you wonder if he's going to make it (or at least make a concerted effort at failing spectacularly on the way down). "Love is a Rich Man" just doesn't do much for me, which is a real shame, because the tracks immediately before and after it are fantastic. That middle section is a bit of a shame.
The Veils' album is probably one song too long. "Diamonds and Coal" makes the slow section in the middle just a little too long, plus it just doesn't go anywhere. The second half of this album though...so good it's almost unreal.
Noel has one other predictable songwriting quirk - he writes a fucking mega closer. It's easy to forgive "Love is a Rich Man" when you can follow it up with this. Song of the Year is "Think of a Number."
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I was looking for some Typhoon updates on Reddit earlier this year when I found a thread about similar artists. The most upvoted answer was Lady Lamb. I'm pretty particular about female vocalists, but I gave her a shot. For once in Reddit's life, it was right! She'll take Discovery Artist of the Year by a slim margin over Pinegrove, whose newest two studio albums Marigold and 11:11 received a whole lot of play time this year.
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Let me tell you what you will NOT find on my list of Super Awesome Things I've Read This Year - The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This was my challenge book for the year. I really expected to enjoy it. Instead it was an interminable slog with an ending that Disney infinitely improved upon.
The best thing that I read overall this year was nonfiction for a change. I'll use my Facebook review here in lieu of trying to be original again:
Modern environmentalism tends to focus on the mind and body of the natural world and ignore the soul. "Cut down a tree, plant a tree. There, we're even." It's all very dry, very transactional. Kimmerer here presents a wide-ranging set of essays designed to find a way to speak to you personally about humanity's relationship with our Mother Earth and gently offers some easy corrective actions that absolutely anyone can take.It's radically empowering to hear from someone else who wants to do the right thing when the right thing is often considered "too hard." It's deeply and emotionally fulfilling to hear from someone else who shares the same motivation. And it's equally painful to hear the stories of the way we have all - even those trying to do the best we can - have failed in our relationship with our only planetary home. Whatever she's saying at the time, Kimmerer manages to say it all with depth, eloquence, and even (when appropriate) humor. She really makes you want to cultivate the virtues of gratitude for and reciprocity with the natural world, which is something we all very desperately lack today.If you're willing to read this with vulnerability, genuine curiosity, a desire to do better, and a willingness to face ugly truths, please give this a try.
I'm not sure how much new material I'll read next year because I'm aiming to do a full reread of The Stormlight Archive to prep for the release of Wind and Truth in December.
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I can't think of the last time I saw a new movie other than "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," so I guess that wins by default, despite a weirdly off-character Optimus Prime.
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Onward.
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