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I’m in a bit of a pickle regarding my Best of 2023 list this year. Maximum Rocknroll asked me to contribute a list for their year-end roundup, but they haven’t published it yet and I don’t want to steal MRR’s thunder by publishing my piece here first. In MRR this list will be fleshed out with brief explanations of what I liked about each record, so hopefully they won’t mind me publishing the bare-bones list here. Here it is:
TIIKERI: Punk Rock Pamaus!!! LP (Open Up and Bleed / Vox Populi)
PUFFER: EP 7” (Roachleg)
PERSONAL DAMAGE: Atrophy & Entropy LP (Test Subject)
FAIRYTALE: Shooting Star LP (Toxic State / Quality Control HQ)
DIE LETZTEN ECKEN: Talisman LP (Static Age)
FLOWER: Hardly a Dream LP (Profane Existence)
WHY BOTHER?: A City of Unsolved Miseries LP (Feel It)
SALVAJE PUNK: Salvaje Punk LP (Toxic State)
ELECTRIC CHAIR: Act of Aggression LP (Iron Lung)
THE COOL GREENHOUSE: Sod’s Toastie LP (Melodic)
Like I said, Maximum Rocknroll will publish the full piece on their website in the coming weeks, and I’ll note in the newsletter and on Sorry State’s socials when it’s available to read. Since I’m not writing about the actual records here, I thought I’d reflect on my list and tell you a bit about how I came up with it.
I think 2022 was the year I used playlists to keep track of the new music I listen to. Currently, my Apple Music library has 5,043 albums, and before I started using playlists, I would listen to a new release for a few weeks at most until it got bumped from the “Recently Added” section and disappeared into my unwieldy library. Now I maintain a playlist called “current stuff,” and every Monday I look at what new releases have come in at Sorry State and add the ones I want to check out to the playlist. When I’m working in my office at Sorry State’s warehouse or driving around doing errands, I usually have this playlist playing on album shuffle mode. Sometimes it’s just playing in the background and I’m not really paying attention, but I hear this playlist so often that I begin to get a feel for which releases interest me.
Another part of my Monday playlist maintenance routine is deciding which releases I want to write about for the newsletter. I usually choose seven releases, six of which will appear in the Featured Releases section and one of which I’ll name Record of the Week. I then give each of these seven releases a few closer listens at home on my nicer stereo, giving them my full attention and taking notes I’ll use to compose the descriptions for the newsletter. Once I’ve written all seven descriptions, I decide which one will be Record of the Week. Sometimes I have a good idea of which one will be ROTW before I start, but other times I’m surprised when closer listening causes a new favorite to emerge.
The last part of my Monday playlist maintenance routine is pruning the “current stuff” playlist. After I’ve written about the record for the newsletter, if I really liked it, I’ll add it to another playlist called “Best of 2023 releases.” I put this playlist on album shuffle when I need the good shit… usually when I have to do a long drive or power through a task at work that I don’t really want to do. If a release doesn’t make it onto the “Best of 2023” list, it disappears into the library. I listen to my entire library on album shuffle a lot, but with so many albums, no release comes up very often. Every once in a while (but not very often), I’ll dislike a release so much that I’ll delete it from my library so I never have to hear it again.
When it was time to compile my Best of 2023 list, the first thing I did was look at that “Best of 2023 releases” playlist. Next, I looked back at the Record of the Week archive on the Sorry State website to see which records I named ROTW throughout the year. Finally, I look at all the physical releases I bought throughout the year. This last step is not as helpful as I’d like, since the new releases are all mixed up with the reissues and used records I’ve bought, and I have already filed away some. But this stage always adds a few items where I played the hell out of the physical version, but either I didn’t have a digital version or the digital didn’t get as much attention.
In the past, I’ve always compiled a “short list” of several dozen releases that I then shuffle around, hemming and hawing about whether each one should go in the top 10 or appear as an honorable mention. This year, though, I didn’t compile a short list at all. After reviewing all that data, I sat down and spit out a list off the top of my head. When I looked at it, it was exactly 10 releases and I felt good about it, and that’s exactly the list that appears above. No revisions, no second guessing (well, until I wrote all this reflection / explanation I guess). In the past, I’ve agonized over lists like these to where they felt inauthentic, like I got too much in my head about which releases “should” be on the list and ended up with something that didn’t reflect what I actually liked and what spoke to me. Looking at this year’s list, though, they are definitely 10 records I really loved.
That being said, there are a ton of excellent records that aren’t on the list. I listened to the Destruct, Rat Cage, Physique, Kinetic Orbital Strike, and Avksum records a ton and I thought all of them were great, but I wanted my list to reflect the diversity of my tastes. The Deletär album would have been on the list, but once we agreed to do a US pressing on Sorry State, that disqualified it from consideration. (I never put releases I helped put out or played on on these lists… it’s hard to be objective about them, though l love all of them as much or more than the releases that appear on the list.) I really loved the Mandy, Indiana and Mary Jane Dunphe albums, but I wasn’t sure if they met Maximum Rocknroll’s criteria for inclusion, so I didn’t put them on the list. A few other releases arrived too late for consideration. I think the Tozcos LP came out right around the time I had to submit my list to MRR, and it has completely dominated my listening since then. If I composed my list today, Infernal would, without a doubt, be on it.
One thing I really like about my list, though, is that each release I highlighted has something that elevates it above the level of simply being a good punk or hardcore record. For me, these year-end lists are about more than simply ranking the “best” records, whatever the fuck that even means. It’s about identifying the records that speak to our moment, that emerge from their context in some kind of interesting way. I’m sure the Tiikeri record would sound great in any context, but there’s something about the way it melted the hearts of so many hardcore maniacs this year (myself included) that makes me love it even more. Similarly, the Flower and Why Bother? records probably got fewer listens than some releases that didn’t make it onto my list, but the fact that I wasn’t expecting to like them as much as I did made them feel more significant.
So yeah, that’s the thought process behind my list. Now enjoy the rest of the SSR staff’s lists, which are hopefully formatted in a more straightforward and traditional way than mine…
Oh, and after all that stupid process, I still totally forgot about the Bloody Flag tape, which 100% would have been on my list. God damn it!